//The Wire//2300Z July 9, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: TENSIONS RISE BETWEEN GERMANY AND CHINA REGARDING RED SEA INCIDENT. TAIWAN BEGINS LARGE-SCALE MILITARY EXERCISE. WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES NEW TARIFF ON COPPER.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Far East: Taiwan began their largest annual military drill yesterday evening, with this year's exercises being the most substantial to date. This drill is scheduled to last 10x days, roughly double the length of last year's maneuvers. Germany: Controversy has resulted from an incident that occurred in the Red Sea a few days ago. German authorities have stated that a Chinese warship operating in the Red Sea deliberately targeted one of their aircraft with a laser with the indent to blind the pilots and/or damage sensor equipment. This incident prompted Germany to summon the Chinese Ambassador to account for the situation, and tensions between the two nations have increased as a result. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Yesterday the White House announced implementing a 50% tariff on all imported copper. Following this announcement, the price of copper skyrocketed by 13% to a new high today. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The long-term economic impacts of pumping the price of copper are best analyzed by economists. However, the real-world impacts to the average person are plain to see. Anytime a precious metal sharply increases, theft of that metal also rises. Copper theft is already a growing problem in most areas, so opportunistic criminals will likely take advantage of this new high to steal and scrap everything that isn't bolted down (and also most things that ARE bolted down), at least in the short term while the price of copper remains very volatile. Regarding the lasing incident in the Red Sea, these types of events happen very frequently. However, these more soft-targeting efforts are generally a good indicator for which way the wind is blowing in the international arena. Right now China is not very friendly with the west, but particularly the European Union at large. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

//The Wire//2300Z May 04, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VBIED ATTACK CONDUCTED IN OREGON. NAVCENT PUBLISHES TRANSIT PLAN FOR VESSELS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, WITH MIXED SUCCESS. IRAN CLAIMS TO TARGET US NAVY "PATROL BOAT" IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, CENTCOM CLAIMS TO SINK 6X IRANIAN GUNBOATS IN GULF. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN GERMANY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Strait of Hormuz: Major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last night, President Trump announced the creation of "Project Freedom", a plan to allegedly "guide" third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf, so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear, and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait, with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US Forces conducted kinetic strikes on 6x Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz, or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American Patrol Boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claim that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analyst Comment: Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, "patrol boat" might not refer to an actual Riverine Command Boat (RCB), but might refer to a Destroyer (DDG) or maybe a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel, then claimed that the missiles were "warning shots", so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions, and multiple hulls are burning in the Strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. United Arab Emirates: After this morning's scuffle in the Strait, four Iranian drones/cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah, as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the Strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to it's target, with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to re-closed their airspace for the next week. Southern Atlantic: An outbreak of Hantavirus has been reported onboard a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far, and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina, and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain onboard the vessel. Europe: This afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany, after one assailant rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig, near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack, and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene, but has not yet been identified, other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany, and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. -HomeFront- Oregon: Saturday morning a Vehicle-Borne IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility, before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks, along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high-order explosion and instead mostly burned, consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack, and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst Comment: Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism, even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA) due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack (the vehicle ramming, and the IED detonations). USA: Around the nation, fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again, with a total of 8 states reporting diesel prices over $6.00 per gallon: Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide, only two states are below $5.00 per gallon for diesel (Texas and Georgia). Analyst Comment: While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices, keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market, as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial-goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began, with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform, to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher, these fees are certain to increase as well. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does NOT make it so. It is unclear as to what decision making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair-quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation...intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is...something. Telling ships that the US will "guide" them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support, is hard to believe...but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the Strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of Destroyers into the Strait (if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed) to provide the bare-minimum "security" in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing "Project Freedom" confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that their route takes ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the Strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts, but if they are indeed in the Strait they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two (possibly three) successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project Freedom began cast doubt on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the Strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces; it's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime chokepoints and the terrain of the battlespace offer finite parameters to work within...it's a small Strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared (or at least marked) many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100+ merchant ships transiting the Strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranian's cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully (while also losing the same number to missiles), is what most would call a pyric victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this Project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain, and what the United States and Iran will do. But therein lies the problem...insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on *all doubt*, but rather *reasonable doubt*. And right now it is very reasonable to not want to transit the Strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by western forces. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

//The Wire//2300Z February 19, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WAR EXPANDS IN THE CONGO. TENSIONS BUILD BETWEEN THE US AND UKRAINE FOLLOWING ZELENSKY BEING SIDE-LINED DURING PEACE TALKS.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): The advance by M23 rebels in the eastern districts of the country has continued, with the rebels capturing the city of Bukavu yesterday. Separately, in the northeastern region of Bunia, Uganda launched an invasion of their own, deploying special forces soldiers throughout the region. AC: The flimsy attempt to conceal the M23 "rebels" as an independent group has largely fallen away, as the military uniforms that the "rebels" are now wearing more or less confirm that these forces are in fact mercenaries slow-walking a Rwandan invasion of the DRC. Uganda now wanting a piece of the action is very likely to escalate the situation further, and probably marks a new era of the decades-long conflict. Europe: Tensions remain elevated between the United States and Ukraine, with Ukrainian leader Zelensky expressing a variety of hostile sentiments towards the United States for himself not being invited to the peace talks conference currently underway in Saudi Arabia. -HomeFront- USA: The arrival of winter weather conditions throughout much of the central and eastern parts of the nation has caused significant travel delays. Many airlines have issued ground stops for much of the central United States due to poor weather conditions. In Kentucky, the casualty figure has risen to 14x fatalities resulting from the recent flooding disasters throughout much of the state. Arizona: This morning an aircraft collision was reported at the Marana Regional Airport, which resulted in the destruction of two small planes. Two fatalities were reported as a result of the collision. AC: As the focus remains on aviation mishaps nationwide, it will be up to the individual to conduct their own analysis to determine if these events are happening more often, or if the increased media coverage is skewing the overall risk assessment. Washington D.C. - Various Presidential actions continue, with a handful of cartels being formally designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) this afternoon. AC: This decision was made weeks ago, and already in practice as evidenced by the significant intelligence collection efforts recently undertaken by the United States in Mexico. As the formalization of this decision is solidified in policy, the ball is now in the court of the various cartels to determine what their reaction will be. On the diplomatic front, relations between the United States and Russia have improved significantly over the past few days, at the expense of rapidly deteriorating relations with Ukraine and most of Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an official restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, as part of ongoing conversations pertaining to peace talks. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: As has long been theorized since the start of the war (and as the conflict in Ukraine draws to a close), a lot of things are going to happen in very rapid succession. Perhaps most frustratingly, a lot of things are going to happen that may seem to be nonsensical to some. This is due to the rabid censorship efforts over the past few years that have painted a specific picture...the vast majority of those in the west have largely been looking at the war through a lens that is completely one-sided. This is nothing new, however, reality is often a great equalizer in the realm of information warfare...at a certain point all of the propaganda and gaslighting falls away to reveal the reality of the situation. In the case of Ukraine, there are many people who likely still believe everything they have heard about the war, the motivations for the conflict beginning, and so on. As such, when the lies are increasingly more and more detached from the truth, the more damage is done; the bigger the lies are, the harder they fall. Over the next few weeks, the American taxpayer is going to learn a lot of inconvenient truths, and as a result may feel a level of betrayal as the situation does not turn out the way that it has been portrayed for years. More specifically, harsh statements will very likely continue to be traded between the United States and Ukraine as it becomes more clear that ever since the West became involved in the conflict Ukraine has had very little agency or leeway to decide their own fate. Ukrainian leaders may even seek to bite the hand that feeds them, as that hand starts feeding them less. Likewise, many European nations which have been involved in the war will probably continue to express hostile sentiment toward the United States (as Germany already has), for a variety of reasons: some probably justifiable, some not so much. Either way, the rapid pivot away from the policy of the past four years is likely to cause issues domestically among Americans who have differing (and often combative) opinions on the war. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for November 30th through December 6th, 2025. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived once again at that magical time of year when holiday festivities are underway and we get to talk about everyone's favorite topic, operational risk management and general personal security practices. Oh, I know many of you are struggling to contain your excitement for the inevitable risk management chart this week. But first, let's start with global strategic concerns. Most of the events that have taken place around the world this week are fairly standard. Uh the UK is continuing to be more or less an example of a dystopia. Holiday cheer and diversity barriers have gone up all over Europe. Multiple terrorists have been arrested this week in the United States. Somali continue to defraud the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota. And the ground component of the war in Venezuela is about to kick off. So pretty usual week at this point. Uh I think our scale has shifted for what is considered to be normal these days. But either way, that's the general overview for what's going on this week. For strategic movement this week, all eyes again are on Venezuela, mostly because the president of the United States has confirmed that the ground war is to begin soon. On my end, the indications and warnings of an impending ground operation in Venezuela are continuing to grow. Of course, there are a lot of deception tactics being used to obuscate what is actually going on. So, we're not going to know the exact date and time of when the operation is to begin, and we might not even know what the operation consists of. It may just be initial strikes. It may just be more of a special operations effort to snatch Maduro. Who knows? I know we all get tired of mentioning Venezuela because, well, we've talked about it for months now and nothing has happened. But rest assured, I think that we're going to get an answer one way or another very soon whether or not this is a giant bluff or whether or not we're actually going to go into Venezuela. And personally, I I think we're going to do it. But again, this is all speculation and we're just going to have to see how it works out. Moving to kinetic events for this week, we unfortunately have a very tragically full map. This week has been very busy when it comes to extremely violent attacks and terrorism concerns around the US. But starting off with the terrorist attacks that were halted before they were conducted. There were two this week or at least allegedly two. You can never really be certain with these sorts of things. So the first one was in Dallas. An Afghan man was arrested after he hopped on TikTok in what I suspect is a drunken rant and said he was going to blow up a building in Texas because of this that or the other. It's not really clear as to what he was arguing for or about, but either way, somebody reported him. He got rolled up for making terroristic threats online. So, pretty standard arrest there. There was also the more suspicious arrest which occurred in Delaware. This was again another possibly Afghan, possibly Pakistani national. It's it's hard to say. I haven't been able to confirm that one way or the other. Either way, a man from that general region was arrested after a traffic stop revealed that he was planning a terrorist attack at the University of Delaware Police Department. Once again, details on this incident are kind of sketchy, so there's not a whole lot that we can go on to figure out what this guy's deal was. However, the gist of the story is that man gets pulled over or approached by police in some way. He becomes quite hostile, antagonistic, uncooperative. And what does that do in every single jurisdiction in the United States? Well, you get arrested. And that's exactly what happened. They searched his car, found a bunch of weapons. Well, not a bunch of weapons, just a couple of weapons. But in anyway, they found a notebook which detailed his attack plans and had sector sketches and uh the floor plan drawn of the UD police department. So obviously the investigation continues. They search his house, find a Glock with a switch and an AR, few mags here and there. Not a lot of weapons to be honest comparatively, but a lot for a potential Afghan Pakistani national who's going to UD, right? Once again, like I wrote in the wire, there's a pretty big uh disinformation campaign on that one. So I don't know what the truth is just yet. But I just wanted to kind of briefly mention that. Either way, that's another potential attack stopped before it began. Concerning the attacks that actually went through, there were several this week. Some were just general crime, some were more uh terroristic in nature. The more terroristic attack was, of course, the Molotov attack that took place in Los Angeles at the federal building there in downtown LA, which took the form of an individual throwing molotovs at the entrances to the building. This attack did fail. the suspect was arrested at the scene and the Molotovs didn't actually go off or they weren't lit or something like that. But this does go to show that the pressure continues to mount uh and we continue to have daily terrorist attacks around the around the country when it comes to things like immigration. We have sleptwalked into accepting terrorist attacks because they're against ICE agents and because they're against federal officials and federal facilities. And these attacks will continue because there has not been a very harsh crackdown on terroristic threats like this. And it's also uh something that's very hard to prevent from happening in the first place, especially considering the tens of millions of American citizens which are now taking the side of the cartels, taking the side of the gangs, taking the side of the illegal immigrants, and are now essentially insurgents. This immigration issue has been the catalyst to prod many people into accepting a lifestyle of terrorism. We all know that ICE can't go anywhere in this country in a convoy without some random soccer mom seeing them and ramming her vehicle into the convoy. These kinds of attacks have just slowly become accepted as norm now. And now arson attacks and molotov attacks are becoming just as common. So that's a big concern moving forward. The other two attacks that I focused on this week that were more high-profile incidents were the shooting in Omaha, Nebraska and also the stabbing on board the Charlotte light rail system once again that occurred a couple of days ago. The Omaha incident involved a shootout between police and what is now very likely to be an illegal immigrant, although that's that's a little bit unconfirmed at the moment. The short version is an illegal shoots a man right in the chest while he's shopping for groceries at a local convenience store. Manh hunt ensues, suspect located by police and shootout commences. Two police officers were shot during this incident and a third was wounded by shrapnel. All of which are going to be fine from what I can tell by local media reports. But the suspect was very heavily ventilated during the incident and he uh did not survive the encounter. And finally in Charlotte, there was another stabbing on the Blue Line light rail system throughout the city. Looks like it was a pretty kinetic event. And in the context of the whole Arena Zeritzka stabbing from a while ago, this has kind of put Charlotte back in the spotlight once again because even though that initial Zeritzka murder got a lot of attention because of just how horrific it was, this latest incident has shown that things have changed in Charlotte, but they've changed for the worse uh since that initial murder. Crime has not gone down on the light rail system. As a matter of fact, it's gotten worse. And the same very horrific concerns remain as before. Charlotte has become kind of the poster child for public transit violence. There were a couple of shootings and murders on uh the bus system as well over the past couple of weeks. So, this does highlight once again that Charlotte was a pretty nice city even just a few years ago, but now it's become an utter uh dystopian uh place to be. So, so that's gotten the spotlight put back on Charlotte once again. And speaking of dystopian incidents, yesterday an event came to light in Portland, which we'll talk about in a moment, which is definitely going to have more widespread concerns for public transit safety throughout the nation. And this is yesterday's acquitt of a suspect who stabbed a man, conducted a stabbing attack a couple of months ago. He was acquitted yesterday by a jury who stated that the victim's use of a racial slur after the stabbing attack justified the stabbing attack. So, yeah, you did hear that, right? uh we'll get to it in just a moment, but once again, very kinetic week. It's very likely to be a kinetic week as we move into the holiday season. So, we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along. Now, moving down into the regions for this week, I guess we'll start with the Southeast, although this is again a national issue. For those of you who did not know, CloudFlare went down yet again yesterday. It was down for a couple hours. This is the second Cloudflare outage to strike within just a very short period of time, taking down a good chunk of the internet while the uh issue was being worked. This time around, Cloudflare states that this outage was intentional. They had to briefly uh take things down to work a security patch, right? To to patch a security issue. I'm sure that the software engineers will come up with a very good logical explanation for why these things are happening. However, from my wheelhouse, the end customer, right? I'm not a software engineer, and maybe it's just me, but I think that it's probably a little concerning that we're now starting to have regular and routine, nearly total outages of the internet at large. Even if it's just for a short period of time, these things are fairly catastrophic problems that highlight a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed. So, the average consumer doesn't really care about the meat and potatoes of how all this stuff works. They just want their internet to work. And if Cloudflare is going to start having regular issues, even if it is something that they cause themselves, that's a problem, right? So, it also means that the average citizen is going to have to start thinking more and more about off-grid communications. And being able to have a plan, even if you don't have an off-grid communications method, like radios or something like that, even just having a plan of what to do in the event that communications go out, is probably a very good idea at this point because these things are becoming vastly more common than they used to be in the past. So, something to keep in mind for sure. Now, digging more into the North Carolina stabbing incident, there aren't a whole lot of details that have come to light yet because this just happened as I'm recording this on Saturday morning. Of course, anytime a situation is still developing, it's going to take a long time for the details of exactly what happened to come out. So, we are of course operating on a lot of speculation at this point, but this stabbing looks like a pretty serious one. So, eyewitness statements don't really help us understand what went on. We don't really know what took place on that train, but somebody was stabbed very, very violently, very brutally on the blue line, the same line that got a lot of attention from the Zerutka murders. So, all in all, we're going to have to wait and see what the details of this case shake out to be. However, personally, I think we have enough information to make a decision. I think we have enough information to conduct our own risk assessment and risk analysis to determine that it would be a good idea to keep your head on a swivel if you are forced to take public transit at this point. If you have the option of avoiding public transit in pretty much any city at this point, it would probably be a very good idea. I know a lot of people can't avoid it. A lot of people have to use uh public transit because that's their only option, right? And it may even be a little bit safer than walking uh the streets in some cases depending on the time of day in the city. But either way, keep your head on a swivel. I'm serious. Things are getting pretty spicy out there and we'll get more into that at the end. Right for now, just know these things continue to happen. Now, moving up to Washington DC, the big story, the hot ticket this week has been the arrest of the alleged J6 pipe bomber who has been identified as Brian Cole Jr. of Northern Virginia. Now, in terms of what we actually know about the suspect and about this investigation, the details are very few and far between. So, there's really not a whole lot to go off of. However, just to cut right to the chase to save some time here, this is incredibly suspicious. This is probably the most suspect case to come out of DC in at least an hour or two. So, uh, there's probably very little trust and faith in any kind of federal investigative effort at this point, especially when it comes to the timing of all of this. But personally, I think that based on the information that we have so far, which is not much, I think there's probably two different outcomes. Either Brian Cole Jr. is the guy and they've known as the guy for years and they've just not wanted to prosecute him for uh the terrorist attacks for some reason. Uh something something prevented them from going after him or the guy who they say it is is not the guy and it's somebody else. Either way, this entire thing smells like Washington and it stinks, right? If Brian Cole Jr. is indeed the J6 pipe bomber, then all right, fair enough, I guess. But that doesn't explain why suddenly everyone was prosecuted except for this guy for many, many years because it looks an awful lot like they had the evidence on this guy for a while. Of course, the other potential is that he's not the guy and this will come out in court or they're trying to burn somebody because the blaze got really close to identifying who really uh was the J6 pipe bomber and they had to give us a name. So, a name materialized and we can tie this up in a neat little bow and we can all forget about it, right? I guess it worked though. I mean, it still muddied the waters enough to where nobody really knows what exactly happened on that day other than there are fingerprints of the CIA and the FBI all over literally every part of the J6 fiasco, right? But especially the pipe bomber. So, I very strongly doubt that we're ever really going to know what the full story of that day was. So either way, have to mention it because it's a pretty groundbreaking development, but once you dig into it, it like, oh man, there's not a whole lot we can go off of. So, switching gears to move out west, we can talk about a different incident that occurred this week, which has a little bit more specific concerns for safety on things like public transit and just out in society in general. This is the acquitt of a stabbing suspect who just shanked a random guy on the street back this summer, but the jury acquitted him for a very unique reason this week. So, the suspect, Gary Edwards, stabbed the victim, Gregory Howard Jr., just on the street in Portland back in July. Once again, fairly standard stabbing attack. It's become kind of a common thing. Uh, but the defense council's argument was just absolutely mind-boggling. So, the criminal defense in this case is that Edwards, the suspect, who is a homeless man who is known for stabbing people randomly on the street. He has a long criminal history of doing this many times before. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and approached the victim and he wanted to trade that knife for cigarettes. Now, neither of these guys know each other and that's the criminal defense. Okay, that is ex that's how the defense attorney [snorts] says things went down. From there, a scuffle occurred in some way, and the story gets a little blurry until the cops show up, in which case the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker after he had been stabbed. And the jury in this case a couple of days ago said that that was justification for the stabbing. So, the defense council story is that this the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker that caused the man with the knife who already had the knife in his hand to stab the victim. And that according to the jury was a perfectly acceptable reason for self-defense. Now, once again, the stories diverge, right? The defense council, so Edward's attorney, argues that the slur is what caused the stabbing incident, which first of all is ridiculous in and of itself because shouting a racial slur at someone is not permission to murder them. But either way, leave that for now. But the evidence in the case, like the actual documented history of what actually occurred, only proves that the victim shouted the slur after being stabbed. So right now, not a single shred of evidence actually confirms that the victim started anything. So the truth of what actually happened is this crazy homeless guy ran up to a guy with a knife, stabbed him, and the victim shouted a racial slur back at the guy. And that's the truth of what happened. That is what all of the evidence confirms. But because it's Portland, right, the jury said that that was a perfectly uh acceptable self-defense scenario. So, for all of you who don't live in the crazy insane wonderland that is Portland, what does this mean? Well, the bottom line for all of us now is that the jury in this case states that if you're a white guy who gets stabbed by a black guy in the street and then you yell a nasty word at the guy after you've been stabbed, that is retroactive justification for that stabbing attack. So, yeah. uh pretty dystopian, but something you need to be aware of because these kinds of things are happening all over the place. Even in the worst case scenario, let's just say that in this case, the white guy did shout a word at this guy before the attack, right? And that's word is what prompted the attack. In no way, shape, or form does shouting a word at somebody justify stabbing them to death on the street, right? This is insane, right? So, even if this guy did do it, which no evidence points to him actually shouting a bad word at the guy, there's no justification for this. But a jury went above and beyond to say that there is, right? So, no evidence in this case shows the white guy doing anything wrong. He just minded his own business on the street, gets approached by a homeless guy with a knife in their hand, and the situation devolves from there. So, that's probably the best uh lesson learned that we can kind of glean from this story is that, yeah, tensions are pretty high. Yeah, people are pretty crazy out there and stabbing attacks continue, but you also have a pretty good chance now of the attacker not just being led out of jail before their trial by a judge. I mean, that's a that's a common thing that happens, you know, all around the US, but there's also a pretty good chance that a jury will do something like this and justify someone trying to kill you because you said a word, right? We can see how we're we're moving towards that and now a court has backed that up. So now that's all I have for the United States. Let's shift gears and talk about the United Kingdom for a moment. And I will expand a little bit more on some of the events that have come to light in the grand old UK this week. So first up this week, we have a man who was arrested for the possession of quote unquote extreme music, which allegedly violated terrorism laws in some way. So that was kind of a more of a dystopian sort of situation that occurred this week. separately. Another man was arrested this week for posting photos of of himself going to the United States to engage in the timehonored tradition of shooting stuff in somebody's backyard. Well, he posted these photos of his trip to the gun range of him firing, you know, shotguns and rifles and such. He posted those images on social media in the UK and got a visit, got a knock at the door, which turned into an arrest, as that always does. And finally, probably the more disturbing case this week is a woman who was arrested for using a slur in a private text exchange with a friend, former friend, who ratted her out to police because she called the man who attacked her a bad word. Right. So, regarding the extreme music arrest, the suspect in this case, the hardened terrorist criminal, the man who was arrested was identified as Norbert Gears, who was a collector and reseller of vinyl records. And he was arrested after at least one record from his several thousand record collection contained music that the UK classifies as illegal. So, this guy had a few thousand LP records in his collection. He's just kind of a buyer and seller of records, both for hobby purposes, but also probably more along the lines of kind of like a side hustle sort of thing. But either way, in the process of buying and selling a bunch of records, right? Turns out he had not one but two naughty records, right? They're songs. They're vinyl records of songs that were made by a professional recording studio. And when he listed these particular records online, somebody ratted him out. Somebody he probably listed it on eBay or if there was maybe a local version of uh British eBay. Somebody ratted him out and of course having no no records, having no no speech in the UK is uh very much policed. So they ransacked his house, raided his collection and found the two offending LP vinyl albums. And for this, for owning two music records, he got 40 months in prison. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison for owning music. Honestly, at this point, I'm very curious as to what records he had because I kind of want to buy them now. So, if anybody knows what music albums he had, I'm very curious as to what in the Sam Hill music is so bad. Like even lyrics-wise, like I mean there's some pretty bad music out there, but nothing you should go to prison for 40 months over. Good grief. Either way, that's a pretty dystopian case to come to light. But in the UK these days, it's completely unsurprising. This case, the forbidden music case, came to light after another, probably more disturbing case, to be honest, in which a woman who has been identified as Elizabeth Kenny was arrested and criminally charged for calling a man who had beat her a [ __ ] in a text exchange with a friend. That now former friend reported her use of the word to police and she was arrested. She used the word to describe the man who had assaulted her so severely that she required hospitalization. And what's more interesting is that the judge in her case, JP Robert [ __ ] specifically stated that he personally uplifted her sentence. He personally is throwing the book at her for personal reasons due to her alleged homophobia, which is a severely punished crime in the UK. Like that's worse than murder in many cases to be honest. But nevertheless, the man who attacked her, she was talking to her, you know, what she thought was a friend about a man who had beat her so severely she was in the hospital. But that man who was being described in the text exchange, nothing has happened to him. He has not been charged or arrested uh in any way for nearly killing the woman. So, if we read past the headlines in this case and we dig a little bit deeper, we can see that this is probably a textbook case of people using the criminal justice system to target others for personal reasons. Remember, Kenny was texting a person who she thought was a friend and discussing the brutal attack that the as yet unnamed man had conducted right at that time. She did not know that her friend actually took the side of the attacker. Uh so when Kenny sent photos of her wounds that she had uh sustained from this guy beating her, right? Her use of the word [ __ ] in that text exchange was her former friend's jackpot, right? That was that was the clincher. and the use of that word served as an easy way to get her arrested. So, the British authorities of course dutifully did their part as speech crimes are by far the most heavily police crimes in the UK right now. So, so that's kind of the situation we're at. Both the UK and the US have this uh problem here. In the UK, you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's justification to throw you in jail forever. Whereas in the United States, if you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's permission for that person to kill you. Very interesting times in which we live. But either way, continuing the trend, another case of speech crime policing has come to light. Uh, which occurred some time ago, actually, but it came to light this week because criminal charges were filed, which revolved around a man being arrested and criminally charged for posting a photo of himself holding some firearms during a trip to the United States. The man in this case has been identified as John Rishilu Booth and he was arrested by Yorkshire authorities after posting some photos from his trip to America. And we all know how this goes, right? Now, these types of events, the one where the guy posted some photos of himself uh shooting guns in America, these types of events are quite useful for understanding how the British and even American authorities operate. And digging into this case is kind of fascinating. So, Booth was initially visited at his home by police who hit him with the classically British, and I mean classically British warning, right, to be careful what you post online, right? The Br, for those who don't know, the British police love to do this. You You do something that they don't like, but isn't illegal. They will show up at your door and issue you a warning. Warning, citizen. And really, what they're trying to do is both intimidate, but also fish. They're trying to fish for something. They're trying to get you to talk. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself. And here in the United States, this happens all the time, too. Yes. Even in the land of freedom, uh we have the same exact tactic being used. something that's not illegal that's being done, but we're just going to come to your door and warn you about posts that you've made online. Right? This is a very common thing that happens. And in nearly 100% of cases in the UK, at least whenever someone gets this visit, this knock at the door by the the British police at their door, they're just going to show up a few hours or a few days later and arrest you anyway. So that's just the way things work out. And in this case, he was arrested for posting a photo of himself holding a gun in an entirely different country. So, he wasn't even holding a gun in the UK. He posted vacation pictures that were taken in an completely different country. But, of course, that doesn't matter to British police. They're just following orders, right? Somebody wanted this guy arrested and the police obliged. In the UK at least, it is a very, very bad idea to post a photo of yourself on the internet holding a gun because in the UK at least, the mere sight of a firearm, right, the mere photographing of a firearm, that is enough uh in many cases to catch that criminal uh intent to cause fear of violence charge, right? That's a very broad charge. The police love to to wave it around in the UK. A lot of laws in the UK are kind of like this right now. There's a whole class of laws where essentially they're if you make someone uncomfortable, if you make someone fearful, you know, like these very subjective things that there's no way you could prove it in court, well, guess what? It doesn't matter. Going to jail forever anyway. So, this is a very common thing in the UK now. There are a whole class of laws that uh essentially make it illegal to cause anyone any kind of offense or any kind of fear. Depending on the context, you could be arrested for basically anything in the UK at this point. I mean, you hit the brakes too hard. You put a letter in the mailbox aggressively. You say, "Excuse me," in the wrong tone of voice to someone in a grocery store, and you could get thrown in the slammer for life. So, treading lightly has become kind of a skill in the UK. Uh, it's just the way things work out. But these things are, of course, worth being aware of here in the United States. Not only because, well, we have a a bit of kinship with those in the UK, but we also tend to get a lot of the things that trickle down from the UK to us here uh sometime. So yeah, all around all of these issues are are just a culmination of uh things that are not super great. However, it's also something that I would not personally dwell on or focus on so much that you just kind of let it consume you, right? That's that's not something that's very productive. We want to acknowledge the things that are happening that are concerning, but we also want to take steps to move through some of this stuff. And today, like I mentioned in the beginning, I wanted to focus a little bit more on managing risk. Right? I know, I know. everyone's favorite topic uh when we talk about risk. But a lot of people these days are asking what can I do? What can I do to stop this madness or at least try to reduce it somewhat? And to be honest, I don't know. I don't know how to fix the world. But I do know some things that might help. And the these are easy things that you can do on your own. Things like risk management, right? That's a very easy thing to do. So when we say, you know, somebody's got to do something, well, this is what you can do, right? It's not very productive to sit there and doom and gloom about the situation you may be in and the situation that western civilization may be spiraling towards right without trying to do something and this is something that you can do right you want a solution here it is or at least one of them so when it comes to managing risk during the holiday season I think this is a very important thing to consider as we move forward through these very risky times right terrorist attacks in terms of like the classic you know jihadi style terrorist attacks are spiking or at least it seems like they are statistics-wise I don't actually No, because a lot of these are not classified as terrorist attacks because they want to skew the demographics of who's actually conducting violence. But at least here in the United States, we've had several high-profile terrorist attacks either being conducted, becoming routine, like with the ISIS stuff, the counter ICE stuff, you know, vehicle ramings, molotovs, those have become routine. But we also have things like general crime. Like I've said before, public transit in the United States is very much a death sentence in certain cities and at certain times of day, right? The chance of you being involved in a stabbing or a shooting in some parts of this country are astronomically high during certain situations. And because of that, we have to conduct risk assessment and risk mitigation from a very wavetop level. We have to both balance the way the world is today. We have to see the world for for what it is. We have to see the risks for what they are, but we also have to balance that with living our lives. On the one hand, we cannot ignore the extreme risks to our personal safety and the personal safety of those around us. But we also can't, you know, live like Rambo every minute of the day, right? Even if we may want to. On the one hand, risk aversion is not the answer, right? A lot of the classic prepper arguments are that, well, you should never do anything at all because you might have a bad thing happen at some point, right? Well, that's that's not a realistic view of the world. But on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are pretty severe risks sometimes and it's a very delicate balance, right? You have to assess the risk. You have to manage the risk as best you can, but you also have to not let things get too paranoid and too paralyzing so that you don't do anything at all. A good example is public transit, right? A lot of people are forced to take it. They don't have any other feasible option, right? Or it may be the least of two bad options. If you have to take a train or a subway into work and the other option is to walk, you know, a dozen blocks or so past all kinds of very very bad things on the street, you might be better off on the subway system. But that doesn't mean that you can't be a little bit more attentive. You can't be a little bit more prepared, right? You can't be a little bit more ready and aware just in case something does happen. And that's kind of hard to do sometimes because being responsible and assessing the risk and mitigating the risk as best you can is often very inconvenient. Like I've said a few times before, do you think that I personally enjoy carrying, you know, a tourniquet in my pocket everywhere I go? No, it's not convenient, right? Do I enjoy carrying around a lot of medical gear every day? No, I don't. But I do it because the alternative is to not have anything at all. That's not being paranoid. That's mitigating risk. But of course, everyone's going to have to conduct that analysis on their own. And one of the ways that you can sort of start thinking about this mentality is just look at what you did yesterday. Did you go to work yesterday and have the ability to render aid to someone or yourself who has been slashed in the face by an attacker? Did you have the ability to mitigate that situation? Where is the nearest tourniquet to you when you're sitting on the subway going to work in the morning? There is a lot of focus in the prepping and prepared citizenry and the serious citizenry world on things like firearms to stop threats before they get worse or stop threats before they begin hopefully. And that's all well and good. We do need that. We need all this gun content, right? We need this self-defense, concealed carry kind of stuff. We do need all of this stuff, but what we also need for a lot of people who that's simply not an option for, what we also need is a focus on risk mitigation in other ways, such as medical stuff. There needs to be an increased focus on a lot of this stuff. As important as these tools are, they are not the end all beall solution to everything. If we look around at the headlines for the week and if we look around at a lot of the incidents that have occurred, yes, firearms would have made a difference in many of these attacks. But we also have to remember that in many cases firearms would not have helped very much. Not to armchair quarterback or anything like that, but just to kind of solidify this idea looking back at the Arena Zerutska attack, having a firearm on her would not have helped that poor girl a whole lot. It just would not have. It would The attack was too quick. It was from behind. there's she would not have had time to draw. It would not have helped. You know, it's hard to say based on one case study, right? But it's also quite likely that medical supplies would not have helped her either. But in other cases, having the tools on hand to do what you can would have been helpful. And when it comes to the larger example of, you know, risk management, we see this in Europe as well, right? All over social media this year. People in Germany have been taking photos and videos of the diversity barriers, right? the big concrete ballards that they try to make a little bit more festive by putting bows and decorations on and such that are meant to protect a lot of these Christmas markets from vehicle ramming attacks. Well, what does that tell us from a riskmanagement perspective? You know, if if you're going to a Christmas market and there are D-Day level anti-tank fortifications surrounding the market, you've got armed police everywhere. There's metal detectors, there's all kinds of security in place, then doesn't that show you that at least somebody in government thinks that this this place might be attacked? And if that's the case, don't you think that maybe there is something that you can do to help assess risk in that situation? For instance, you can look at a lot of these fortifications and see, well, they're not going to be adequate. Such as this photo that I found circulating the internet uh with regards to the security practices at a few Christmas markets around uh around Europe. I think this one was uh in Germany. Now, anyone, but especially a terrorist can look at the these barriers and see these are not going to stop a vehicle by any means. So, what have the authorities done in this particular case? Well, what have they done? They have identified a vulnerability. So, they've pointed out, hey terrorists, look at this one particular area. We're concerned that you might drive a vehicle here and that this might be a a pretty good target for you, but also we're not going to take the efforts to mitigate the risk. So, we're going to identify which places would be good for a terrorist to attack, but we're also not going to take efforts to mitigate that because we have very inadequate barriers up. In this specific example, having a piss poor barrier in place is worse than having nothing at all. Because if you had nothing at all, a terrorist might not identify this place as being a target. But now that you've put the barrier up, you've pointed out that you're scared of an attack, but also that barrier doesn't do anything. These are the kind of things that we have to think of when it comes to managing risk during the holidays. Yes, it is very very good that in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the more traditional places where Christmas markets tend to be a a big thing. I mean, it's a [snorts] huge thing in Germany, right? So that's why I'm using Germany as the example because they're kind of the forefront of the the Christmas market, the town square that gets transformed into kind of like a winter wonderland for for every season, right? These things are amazing uh to go to and see, but they're also huge security risks and they're a good example for average citizens to be able to look at a situation and assess the risk on their own. And tying all this back to what I said in the beginning of we don't want to just live our lives being ultra paranoid for no reason, right? I'll give you the example, right? If I were to look at a Christmas market and I see a lot of vehicle barriers up, if I see a lot of police standing around, if I see a pretty big security presence, there's a double-edged sword there, isn't there? Because on the one hand, you see, all right, these are good risk mitigation efforts, right? I feel a little bit more safe when there's a concrete barrier beside me that I can hide behind and just in case something goes wrong when you're trying to pick out presents and stuff like that, right? But on the other hand, it does point out that there have been very little mitigation efforts in other ways throughout Germany that would prevent the attackers from being there in the first place. For instance, you can put up concrete barriers all day long and that'll uh that'll do something. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good mitigation effort, but an even better mitigation effort would be to deport the criminals and the terrorists before they even conduct the attack in the first place. Germany has not done that. Germany has not increased their counterterrorism investigations and their efforts. So all they are doing, they're putting all their eggs in one basket and putting a lot of concrete around a soft target. And that's their primary means. No, concrete barriers should not be your primary means of counterterrorism. Concrete barriers and vehicle ballers should be your last line of defense so that after a terrorist slips through all of your other mitigating u measures, they're stopped before they can have any kind of good effectiveness. Right? So that's the higher level thinking that we have to kind of adopt even when we're doing something as innocent and wholesome as you know trying to pick out stocking stuffers for people. And once again, I know I keep saying it, but we want to make sure that we're not being too paranoid sometimes. I have to keep telling myself this all the time because look at my wheelhouse. Look at my line of work. I sit here pretty much every day and look at the horrors of the world going around. And I'm not saying that's something that everyone should be doing. I am most certainly biased to looking to threats. I'm most certainly biased personally towards identifying counterterrorism concerns. Every time I go into a large venue where there's large crowds, I look and I see the risk. I'm not saying that everybody should adopt this position entirely because it tends to be a little bit heavy sometimes. I'm just saying it might be a good idea to have a more casual approach. If you're in a town square, in a big mall, in a big crowded venue or something like that, and you see that security is quite poor, maybe factor that into your own risk assessment. I want to most certainly continually pump the brakes on a lot of the fear that goes out there. There's a lot of money to be made in telling people to be afraid of terrorist attacks. There really is. Just scroll social media, scroll YouTube, and you will see every prepper on YouTube gets on there and says, "Ah, the end is nigh. We're all going to die tomorrow from some mass terrorist attack." That's obviously not true, right? There there's a lot of nuance here and that nuance doesn't really sell, right? Telling people, "No, there's probably not going to be a gigantic 9/11 style attack occurring in the United States anytime soon." Telling people that doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get monetization. It doesn't sell. So, people don't do it. telling people that there are 10,000 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States right now. Well, you know, that gets a lot of clicks, that gets a lot of monetization, even though, you know, these sorts of things are basically impossible to predict, right? So, all in all, be careful. Conduct risk assessment, conduct risk analysis, conduct risk mitigation as best you can. You don't have to live in fear at all, to be honest. You really don't. But that doesn't give you license to be stupid. And what you don't want to have happen is to be in a situation and something happen and you be powerless and you be helpless. Trust me, I have been in those situations before where I was not as prepared as I could have been. And I think back on those situations all the time. So, you don't want to have that retroactive guilt and say, "Look, you know, I I knew I was going into a risky situation. I knew that I was going into a packed venue. I didn't carry any medical supplies. I didn't conduct any kind of analysis to figure out where the exits are. My phone battery was dead, so I couldn't even call the police when an attack happened. You don't want this to be you, right? You want to be smart. You want to be prepared. You want to do what you can without going overboard, right? Don't go overboard with all this stuff, but you want to do the best you can. And I think that's probably a good perspective to have as we move forward into the holiday season. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. We'll call it a day. Rant done. Uh, here are the sources and research. As usual, I've been updating my online maps, my RGIs maps as we go along. I've been pushing fresh KMZs out to my GitHub page for those of you who want just the KMZ part to load into your personal ATAC instance, stuff like that. All this complicated stuff. I know I haven't gone into much detail on it yet. Um, but that's coming. I've just gotten uh quite behind. Been working on a lot of stuff that has just taken so much time to do. So, if any of you have messaged me or uh sent me something and I haven't responded for a while, feel free to ping me again. I get tens of thousands of emails and messages a week and I'm sorry I I just can't reply to all of them. But but I I do try. I really do. It's just man, it's just a lot sometimes. So, please forgive me if I haven't replied to you in a while. Uh it's just taken me a long time to get kind of caught up. Either way, that's what I have for this week. Thank you guys all for all of your support. Thank you for sticking with me uh today. Be safe out there. Do the best you can. Keep moving forward. Keep your chin up. All this bad stuff in the world just means you've got an extra chance to do good stuff. So look at it like that and I think we'll be all right. So thanks again and I will see you next time.

This is Wire 4 2300 Zulu, May 4th, 2026. Precedence is routine. Information cut off is 2200. Bottom line up front, VBIED attack conducted in Oregon. NAVCENT publishes transit plan for vessels in Strait of Hormuz with mixed success. Iran claims to target US Navy patrol boat in Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM claims to sink six Iranian gunboats in Gulf. Vehicle ramming attack reported in Germany. Beginning with international events in the Strait of Hormuz, major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last Trump announced the creation of Project Freedom, a plan to allegedly guide third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and the west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US forces conducted kinetic strikes on six Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American patrol boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claimed that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analysts comment, "Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, patrol boat might not refer to an actual riverine command boat, but might refer to a destroyer or maybe a littoral combat ship." CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel then claimed that the missiles were warning shots so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions and multiple holes are burning in the strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. In the United Arab Emirates, after this morning's scuffle in the strait, four Iranian drones or cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to its target with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to reclose their airspace for the next week. In the Southern Atlantic, an outbreak of hantavirus has been reported on board a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain on board the vessel. In Europe, this afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany after one The rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene but has not yet been identified other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. On the home front in Oregon Saturday morning a vehicle born IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high order explosion and instead mostly burned consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst comment, "Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a complex coordinated attack due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack, the vehicle ramming and the IED detonations." Around the nation fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again with a total of eight states reporting diesel prices over $6 per gallon. Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide only two states are below $5 per gallon for diesel, Texas and Georgia. Analyst comment, "While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher these fees are certain to increase as well. Analyst comments for this wire: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does not make it so. It is unclear as to what decision-making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation. Intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is something. Telling ships that the US will guide them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support is hard to believe, but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated, not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of destroyers into the strait, if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed, to provide the bare minimum security in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing Project Freedom confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that they're route to take ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts. But if they are indeed in the strait, they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two, possibly three, successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project freedom began cast out on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed, there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case, military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces. It's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime choke points and the terrain of the battle space offer finite parameters to work within. It's a small strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year-round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared or at least marked many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100 plus merchant ships transiting the strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranians cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully while also losing the same number to missiles is what most would call a pyrrhic victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain and what the United States and Iran will do. But, therein lies the problem. Insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on all doubt, but rather reasonable doubt. And right now, it is very reasonable to not want to transit the strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by Western forces. This concludes the wire for 2300 Zulu, May 4th, 2026.

//The Wire//2300Z May 04, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: VBIED ATTACK CONDUCTED IN OREGON. NAVCENT PUBLISHES TRANSIT PLAN FOR VESSELS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, WITH MIXED SUCCESS. IRAN CLAIMS TO TARGET US NAVY "PATROL BOAT" IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ, CENTCOM CLAIMS TO SINK 6X IRANIAN GUNBOATS IN GULF. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN GERMANY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----   -International Events- Strait of Hormuz: Major developments have taken place in the Strait over the weekend. Last night, President Trump announced the creation of "Project Freedom", a plan to allegedly "guide" third-party commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf, so as to at least get non-affiliated ships out of the combat zone for humanitarian reasons. Today, the details of the plan became more clear, and it also became clear that the Iranians did not agree with this plan, nor were they notified ahead of time. Early this morning, the United States revealed that the plan was actually the publishing of an alternate traffic scheme for merchant vessels to transit the Strait using Omani territorial waters. Immediately after this plan was published, two merchant vessels made the crossing attempt, both of which were either struck with Iranian cruise missiles or drones. Later on, a third vessel was reportedly on fire in the Strait, though the cause of the fire is not yet known. Following this incident, the IRGCN released a new map of the Strait, with two no-go barriers depicted to the east and west, further stressing that the Strait is closed. At some point throughout the day, the United States has claimed that two unidentified vessels were able to make it out of the Gulf, though the names of these vessels have not been released yet. Separately, kinetic targeting between the United States and Iran appears to have resumed on the high seas. After the United States announced the implementation of Project Freedom, US Forces conducted kinetic strikes on 6x Iranian gunboats patrolling either the Strait of Hormuz, or the Persian Gulf itself. On the Iranian side, the IRGCN have claimed to have targeted what they describe as an American Patrol Boat with two cruise missiles during the earlier strikes on merchant vessels. The Iranians claim that these missiles were not targeting the vessel, but were serving as warning shots to prevent the US vessel from proceeding further. Analyst Comment: Due to the linguistic and cultural barrier, all Middle Eastern nations tend to use doctrinally incorrect terminology when referring to American warships. In this case, "patrol boat" might not refer to an actual Riverine Command Boat (RCB), but might refer to a Destroyer (DDG) or maybe a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). CENTCOM issued a carefully worded statement confirming that a ship had not been hit, but did not address the claims directly. On the other hand, the Iranians have been known to make outlandish claims regarding the targeting of American warships, so it's equally possible that the Iranians tried to sink the vessel, then claimed that the missiles were "warning shots", so as to save face from successful interceptions. However, last night the sky over Hormuz was filled with munitions, and multiple hulls are burning in the Strait as of this morning, so out of all of the prior claims made by the Iranians, this one is the most plausible situation where the Iranians might have actually come close to hitting an American vessel. United Arab Emirates: After this morning's scuffle in the Strait, four Iranian drones/cruise missiles were reported in Fujairah, as Iranian forces targeted the large oil refinery complex which has been used to circumvent the need for merchant tankers to transit the Strait. The UAE indicated that three of these munitions were intercepted, but one made it through to it's target, with several large fires being reported at the refinery this afternoon. In response to these attacks, the UAE has begun to re-closed their airspace for the next week. Southern Atlantic: An outbreak of Hantavirus has been reported onboard a cruise ship which is currently moored off the coast of Cape Verde. Three passengers have died from the virus so far, and two other passengers are reportedly symptomatic. The vessel remains under quarantine while the extent of the illness is investigated. The vessel had previously departed Argentina, and the full ship's itinerary included stops in the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and a few other smaller islands as part of an Antarctic tour. Roughly 150 passengers and crew remain onboard the vessel. Europe: This afternoon a vehicle ramming attack was reported in Germany, after one assailant rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in Leipzig, near a strip mall at the southwest corner of the main town square. Two individuals were killed immediately during the attack, and three others remain in serious condition at a local hospital. The assailant was detained at the scene, but has not yet been identified, other than authorities stating that he is a 33-year-old male from Germany, and at the time of his detention was verbally incoherent. -HomeFront- Oregon: Saturday morning a Vehicle-Borne IED attack was conducted at a gym in Portland. One former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club rammed his vehicle into the main entrance to the facility, before detonating a series of explosives inside the vehicle. The explosives were comprised of several propane tanks, along with unidentified materials. The devices failed to produce a high-order explosion and instead mostly burned, consuming the vehicle. The suspect was the only person killed during the attack, and several other explosive devices were discovered in the vehicle that did not detonate during the fire. Analyst Comment: Local authorities have specifically stated that they are not treating this incident as a case of domestic terrorism, even though this incident meets most traditional criteria for a Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA) due to the attacker using multiple weapons during the attack (the vehicle ramming, and the IED detonations). USA: Around the nation, fuel prices increased substantially over the weekend once again, with a total of 8 states reporting diesel prices over $6.00 per gallon: Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, and California. Nationwide, only two states are below $5.00 per gallon for diesel (Texas and Georgia). Analyst Comment: While many citizens are beleaguered by high gas prices, keeping an eye on diesel is even more important. Diesel prices are directly tied to the consumer market, as everything from food to medicine is transported on trucks and trains that use this fuel. Many commercial-goods companies instituted price control measures two months ago when the war in Iran first began, with Amazon for example instituting a 3.5% surcharge for all third-party sellers on their platform, to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. As the price of diesel and other distillates climb higher, these fees are certain to increase as well. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: In the Persian Gulf, wishing does NOT make it so. It is unclear as to what decision making process has been used by CENTCOM in the creation of Project Freedom, and it is hard to imagine that the plan really is indeed what has been implied. It's always easy to armchair-quarterback the war, and criticism of the operations so far has been plentiful all around. However, there's no way to sugarcoat this situation...intentionally putting civilian lives at risk without offering sufficient protection is...something. Telling ships that the US will "guide" them through, but this guidance essentially just being a roadmap and no substantial support, is hard to believe...but it sure looks like that's what happened this morning. As with this entire war so far, every single event will be analyzed and debated not just in terms of effectiveness, but also of intent. On the more nefarious end of that scale, one of the more plausible theories for the events of the day is that the goal was to not really open the Strait, but to get the Iranians to fire first, break the ceasefire, and thus justify a resumption of the bombing. Granted, the US doesn't really need a reason to continue the war, but sending a couple of Destroyers into the Strait (if they actually did that, which isn't confirmed) to provide the bare-minimum "security" in order to convince a handful of ships to cross, is not in accordance with traditional naval doctrine. Especially since the wording of the notice announcing "Project Freedom" confirms that NAVCENT clearly stated that they haven't cleared the mines, but that their route takes ships through the minefield. Consequently, using merchant vessels to clear a minefield by driving through it is an interesting choice that will result in cost savings for the US Navy, but is not likely to result in companies trusting the United States. CENTCOM claims that US Navy vessels are in the Strait and protecting merchants from Iranian targeting efforts, but if they are indeed in the Strait they are sailing with their transponders off, which is not exactly indicative of a safe situation. Plus, the two (possibly three) successful Iranian strikes in the minutes after Project Freedom began cast doubt on the success of those escort efforts. One of the critical requirements for warships escorting merchant vessels is to actually protect merchant ships from harm, and if this cannot be guaranteed there's not much confidence in the overall mission. As with any war, there are knowns and unknowns. Deception and obfuscation are critical parts of all warfare, and in this case military deception has been used on all sides to achieve military objectives. Granting CENTCOM leadership as much charity and leeway as reasonable in their planning efforts, it is possible that what is transpiring in the Strait cannot be observed with total certainty by outside forces; it's possible that one or two ships are sneaking through with their transponder turned off. It's also possible that a larger operation is brewing. The US has a lot of tools in the toolbox of deception, but the grand question is how much deception can actually work in such a tight space. Maritime chokepoints and the terrain of the battlespace offer finite parameters to work within...it's a small Strait, and a dude with binoculars perched on any point of 500 miles of Iranian coastline can clearly see any merchant shipping attempting to cross it at any time. Weather is nearly perfect in the region year round, and day or night, there is zero way to conceal a large vessel's transit through the waterway. Considering all angles, it's theoretically possible that the US Navy has actually secretly cleared (or at least marked) many mines, if not from above the waves, then from below. The US certainly has the technical ability to get one or two ships out, but getting traffic back to the pre-war numbers of 100+ merchant ships transiting the Strait every day is not going to be possible without the Iranian's cooperation. Sneaking two ships out successfully (while also losing the same number to missiles), is what most would call a pyric victory at best, and since there are roughly 2,000 merchant vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf right now, this Project has gotten off to a rocky start. From the perspective of the commercial maritime industry, there's simply no way to know beyond all doubt what threats remain, and what the United States and Iran will do. But therein lies the problem...insurance companies and merchant mariners alike don't make decisions based on *all doubt*, but rather *reasonable doubt*. And right now it is very reasonable to not want to transit the Strait due to the risks, which remain insufficiently mitigated by western forces. Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the ukrainian war intelligence update for sunday the 23rd of january 2022 as always this is being recorded the day prior on the 22nd of january starting with the european geopolitical update one of the major bits of information that has come out over the past 24 hours has been the united states evacuating their embassy in kiev nbc staff have been given the notice to start evacuating this is not a very rushed evacuation this is more of a more deliberate evacuation and due to the united states history recent history with evacuations failures this is most likely a preemptive evacuation to get all as many non-combatants out of the way as possible so that they don't face a political defeat yet again something also that was interesting that actually happened quite a while ago but is becoming more relevant with the the times is russia passing legislation or rather guidance regarding mass graves so this is something that would that happened back in december actually on december 20th this was uh finally approved and this is uh you can actually read it yourself if you speak russian for those of you who don't this is coming from the russian civil defense and the translated title is the urgent burial of corpses in wartime and peace time the general regulations for this so this is something that's kind of interesting because this is something that you would expect from cold war russia right like that they very much love their psyops right so you would expect moscow to pass something like this or put forth regulations regarding mass graves of civilians and things like that as a scare tactic right that's what you'd normally think this of well they actually haven't been they did this very quietly so me personally i'm kind of on the fence as to the psyop value of this because no western media has picked this up very few people have have actually followed you know what the duma does and and what regulations are passed by various uh you know government agencies within russia and this was quietly done only a couple of places i've seen actually have have actually figured this out and read the documents it's only a 20-page document but since it's in russian most people you know can't read it but in any case i think it's very interesting that it's more i think that it's it's less of a psyop and more of a logistical constraint right this is a logistical attempt to realize that hey russia saw at least in the conflict that has happened already in ukraine they saw a lot of casualties you also have to remember russia is dealing with the chechen war grazing places like that in which they have a lot of experience with conflicts and fighting in civilian urbanized areas and they've seen a lot of casualties so they're starting to you know cross their tees and dot their eyes when it comes to logistics of so many casualties coming out because of this so again this might be a cold war era psyop that the russians just love doing or this could be a legitimate uh logistical problem that the russians are trying to solve before they get into this conflict and uh they're trying to you know get this and get their uh stuff in order uh in any case this is becoming more relevant because this document and this guidance fault comes into effect on february the first so is this cut this is coming up and i thought hey even though this happened a while ago this is still relevant also within russia there is a massive massive naval exercise underway in the north sea this is interesting because once again the north sea is kind of russia's you know home plate when it comes to their naval forces and they've got a lot of their experimental stuff up there that's really the home fleet is where where russia keeps theirs in north sea it's interesting because this time of year it's extremely cold usually you're not going to have a whole lot of activity coming out of the north fleet north fleet this time of year but again russia trying to pull out all the stops to either politically pressure or military militarily position for as much as they possibly can and i i did want to mention that this exercise the declared areas for this exercise a lot of those areas fall within norway's economic exclusion zone so norway's territorial waters russia's conducting exercises in something that doesn't happen very often they've done this in the past or they've you know they've declared uh they've dropped no tams uh for these specific areas and uh kind of overlapped norway a little bit when relations are not so great but they've done it again so again worth mentioning another russian move over the past 24 hours is russia decla or demanding actually a return to the 1997 nato borders essentially what russia has demanded is something quite outlandish wherever you're at on the spectrum of of this this incident here russia has um essentially wants romania and bulgaria to be kicked out of nato and for nato's armies to be pulled out of romania which is this is an outlandish and utterly ridiculous uh uh demand that would that would be very akin to the united states demanding that brics break up as a as a economic partnership that just doesn't work right so to me this sounds like uh russia demanding something that they know without a shadow of a doubt that nato is not going to do just so that russia can seem like the reasonable one in this which is what russia has been trying to do the entire time and you know we've got a lot of political stuff going on here in the united states and people are picking sides on this kind of thing and and uh talking about you know the military-industrial complex versus the uh historical agreements we've had with ukraine and i you know whatever but i think that's probably going to complicate things a little bit more because russia declaring or demanding uh things that are impossible also kind of interesting is germany doubling down with their lack of support for ukraine not only are they refusing to give ukraine weapons themselves but they are also trying to prevent estonia from giving aid to ukraine so this is kind of another little diplomatic spat over some howitzers that estonia is trying to give to ukraine howitzers which were oh man the history of this goes back a long ways and it's ridiculous it's utterly ridiculous uh howitzers that were stored in the former east germany and then they were sold to like some other european nation and now estonia has them and now germany says that since they were stored here we still own them it's such a ridiculous thing that germany is trying to prevent another independent nation from sending their own weapons to another independent nation but again i guess we'll see how that works out to me i just i'm reading this you know as an as an american i can't help but think this is very interesting and speaking of interesting uh the great russian fleet the flotilla that is heading presumably to the black sea i've got just a little bit more information on that so this is the minsk this is actually an archival photo i tried to get as much of a beam on shot as i possibly could but i wanted to show you that uh like last time i mentioned that it would be kind of a sucky journey if these vessels these landing craft these amphibious landing craft were loaded with soldiers and i think they are because based on this archival photo we can do a little bit of hip pocket imagery analysis so for all you imagery analysts out there take a chill pill because i'm working with powerpoint here and that is that you can you can take a look and do some very basic analysis and see that you know the average human being is six feet tall right and there's a guy standing on the deck we can cross-reference this with a guy who's obviously standing up straight six feet there on that part of that leaning up against that stanchion there and what we can do is we can do a little bit of magic here and start measuring things we can also confirm this six feet height based on the number which which size we know and we can determine that based on what we can see in this image is as least distorted as we can get it that the minsk has 16 ish feet of freeboard when unburdened meaning from the from the deck of the ship down to the water line is about 16 feet now of course this will vary in c state and change based on a lot of different stuff but my point is this this is an image of the minsk as it that was taken as it was transiting through the baltic straits and again this is the this is the other side of the ship uh but it is again as close to a beam shot as we could find straight on uh perpendicular to the side and of course the sea c-state's more turbulent which excuse the results a little bit but um since this is a rough approximation we can enhance right and bring it in and we can do the same overlay that same graphic and see that uh the minsk as she was transiting through the baltic straits has about 12-ish feet of bree of freeboard so you can see quite obviously she's riding low and it's even more apparent with the quarter lev which is riding a little bit lower again the sea state's a little throwing things off a little bit but we can see that these ships have something on board they might have a full complement we don't know i'm sure some someone out there in the ocean world has figured out which units are on board already but we're still tracking that down in any case i wanted to show that hey these these ships have got some teeth on board so i guess we'll have to see where they go next moving to the overall uh sit temp for the ukrainian theater i wanted to show that we have kind of a lot of updates regarding the forces that we had templated for the last slide really the the biggest updates i want to show you on this particular slide are the s 400 battalions uh that we mentioned last time uh turns out they're not uh they're not battalions they're they're actually uh divisions so quite a lot more uh sam capability within uh belarus right now and our assessment is that these s 400s are not so much there for ukraine obviously the one situated to the south kind of is but the other one to the west the other division out west in belarus it's kind of spread around the countryside that's really as a message for nato it's not going to be as effective where it's positioned and you know granted these will provide a lot of help for maintaining that top level air cover for ukraine which is going to force the aircraft ukrainian air force to fly a little lower uh and thus right into the jaws of the sa-7 traps right that have been used by russian forces in ukraine for a while now so that's a common tactic and the s-400s would be great in that role so that makes sense as to why they're there also we have seen an increase in activity around the 20th guards army stationed in they've honestly been there for a long time but we're seeing a lot of cargo moving through this area to support units and various subordinate units of the 20th guards army as of the past 24 hours likewise further south down in viliuki we've seen the third motorized full division have a lot of activity around their little footprint area for over the past couple of days they've been fully established now for a while for a few weeks but we're starting to see a lot more activity with them we'll come back to them in just a minute so let's jump to the fronts for the northeastern front like i mentioned we have the third motorized rifle division hanging out around vilyuki we'll talk about them in just a second what i wanted to mention here are the units stationed slightly to the east of korsk which are the 138th motor rifle division and the 25th motor rifle division they moved into this area sometime between a couple of days ago and a couple of weeks ago don't know when they got there but that's where they're at we've got pictures of them circulating on social media and also up in razny that is the 90th guards tank division we don't know if the whole division is there but we know that at least three btgs from that division are located in that area moving to the eastern front the third motorized raffle division is more or less fully established in the village area with the 752nd motorized raffled regiment and the 237th tank regiment hanging out in salote also they have spread out slightly further east the 252nd motorized rifle regiment and the 99th special artillery regiment and bogoshar moving down south to rostov the eighth combined arms army headquarters has seen a lot of activity lately mostly moving around the 150th motorized rifle division which is stationed there those are forces that are permanently stationed in rostov that's a massive army complex for the russians obviously uh considering that's a good access point to really the rest of europe for them hanging out to the east almost off the slide is the 20th separate motor rifle division which is stationed in volgograd now those guys have been there for a while uh the only reason i wanted to mention this is because this unit used to be a brigade but it was upgraded to a division last month so they're most likely preparing for some kind of action either reinforcing or whatever they're doing but you don't reinforce the unit and upgrade its strength without having a plan for that and then the further down south we have in krasnodar the 47th missile brigade and the 238th artillery brigade uh these guys have been stationed there again for a long time just wanted to put them on the map because they will most likely be major players if and when this thing kicks off also before we moved on i wanted to kind of update this graphic by showing what the front line actually looks like now the front line is not really a border if you go and you search on google or any other mapping service you'll you'll see the map the line that we have drawn as well this solid red line that's like the the furthest most point of russian controlled territory however using this this uh dashed line as a reference you can see that fighting is occurring in between the dashed line and the solid line so this is a very wide uh front as you can see there's a lot of fighting that has been taking place in this this zone this sort of very much militarized zone i should say it that way moving down south to the southern front we have seen a little bit of activity on the crimean peninsula not so much but uh we did want to add in the units that we do know are there because they're they're normally stationed there which is the 810th naval infantry brigade the 126 separate coastal defense brigade and the eighth artillery regiment which are hanging out around sevestopol and maybe a little bit to the east as well and then circling back around to the biela russian border the northwestern front has seen a little bit of activity mostly units moving closer and closer to the borders so in the town of belarus we mentioned last time this btg that we were able to geo locate this is not a btg anymore this is actually a brigade now specifically the 38th motor rifle brigade so we'll give them the 38th flashing there and designate them as such also in the gomel region we have a bella russian unit which is the 38th guards air assault brigade they're one of the more specialized and elite units within the beale ocean military so i just wanted to template them on the slide because we know that they're there and that's pretty much it i did want them to show though where these units are in belarus because this is the graphic that the uh mod of belarus has put forward showing where their exercises are taking place now let me flip back and forth and you can see that this is where belarus says they're conducting military exercises and with the exception of the airborne units which we don't know where they're at this is where we have units templated in belarus so as you can see none of these units here on the eastern side of belarus down near the border with ukraine none of these guys are supposed to be there even according to belarus's own graphic so i think that's kind of interesting and shows that this claim of an exercise is is all a sham right it's all just a ploy to get uh forces closer to the border without nato doing anything now jumping back to our overall map here i want to talk a little bit about theories of maneuver and to do that i have to talk a little bit of politics um and that is the minor incursion uh scandal that has occurred within the american white house over the past couple of days so um biden himself has made a lot of gaffes a lot of misquotes and he's said a lot of offensive stuff even before uh taking office so he has a very long history of political gaffes right and he's said some pretty bad stuff over the years but i think that this seemingly innocuous statement that he made when he was talking about that a minor incursion is a different story right that's a different story when it comes to ukraine so ukraine an invasion is bad but in a minor incursion that's a different story right that kind of attitude whatever the wording of the actual quote is is irrelevant that attitude that was conveyed uh is a game changer so even though the white house came back immediately and did damage control on this on this gaff right saying that biden misspoke and that their policy regarding ukraine hasn't changed and you know blah blah blah right i still think this is a really big deal because the world is watching and even though the leaders of other countries in europe do not have any respect for biden's cognitive abilities and they know that he's prone to misspeaking the music stops when this minor incursion quote dropped because that simple misstep which i personally think was 100 intentional but either way this has given putin permission to invade i don't know how much more clear the united states can can make it that the u.s political leadership is perfectly supportive of this invasion as long as russia doesn't go too far and upset our friends to the west and all of this political stuff as annoying as it is to talk about when we're trying to count tanks this is important some pretty smart dude once said that war is a continuation of politics by other means and this situation could not be a more perfect example of that so when it comes to russia's overall tactics it's really hard to say what's going to happen because what russia can do will differ from what they will do so on the eastern front we might see a minor incursion right a straight-up invasion to the east uh because there's been fighting there in the past it's relatively uh abandoned from a civilian perspective area it's really just a front line it has been a front line for a very long time for many many years now people in the area understand and know what's going on they know it's a war zone so in theory at least you might have fewer civilian casualties if you were to invade into the area that's already a well-known war zone i don't know maybe they might also try to launch with an amphibious landing first and take the city of odessa they might do that they might not land in odessa they might land in the city they already more or less exert a lot of influence over which is maripole to the east they might land troops anywhere along the coastline of ukraine they might land them in crimea just as a simple way of moving a lot of troops around and then drive them up i would think that would not work so well but you know anything's possible i guess right generally speaking i should also point out that a lot of military strategists focus on the dnipa river right the nipper river is a huge a huge body of water uh it's it's not insignificant it's it's um you're going to need some kind of bridge or special craft to get across it right it's not a mud puddle here and a lot of people think that that is kind of like a diplomatic stopping point uh in years past when we've we and others have theorized about when russia invades fully will they stop at that river and and most people seem to think in the past that yes russia will drive as far as the nipper river and that will be kind of their way of exerting influence and taking back that part of ukraine and then further on they'll decide to cross it and when they've gotten a lot more supplies and things set up because remember these btgs are not really good for logistical support right so they can easily overrun their own supply lines and russia has a long history of of doing exactly that uh to some people invading russia so russia doesn't want to to repeat the lessons that they taught to others right however i think that with each passing day and seeing the number of forces that we have in the area now what we're talking i'll give the low ball estimate of 60 btgs 60 btgs in the area that's a lot of people that's a lot of forces and you i don't think you'd need that to to take uh the eastern part of ukraine if that's all you were going to do you wouldn't need all these forces historically i should mention that in talks with diplomats and military strategists throughout europe uh the general theory has been that since the cold war i should say that your uh that russia can take um a nation or or two nations one or two balkan nations with around 30 btgs um and this is a quote that is a statistic right just a made-up theory right that has been repeated at so many military conferences i've i've lost count and if that quote is true if that you know idea is is valid i should say then we're sitting at 60 we're sitting at double that for ukraine right so they've got more troops than what they need then again ukraine's been spending the past what seven eight years now recovering from uh what they what their mistakes of demilitarizing right so now ukraine has got some teeth as well um this is not going to be an easy fight for for anyone involved i think the general consensus is that ukraine is going to lose no matter what but again you also have to remember ukraine whatever you think about it whatever you read in the news or watch on vice right about the ukrainian military you also have to remember they're fighting for their homeland right and again like i mentioned whether or not another foreign nation should fight for someone else's homeland is is irrelevant in that debate because ukraine is fighting for their home and you never want to underestimate the group of people that are fighting for their homeland because they're quite literally fending off a foreign invader so again very important thing to consider because these dudes have been fighting to the last man for years now and that was only during during the fight for the dawn bass really they've been fighting to to literally the last man in every unit in many cases i should say so there's a lot of things that can happen uh i will point out though that as far as what russia is going to have to do russia's got some tall orders right and they're going to have to be quick about it because the spring thaw is about to occur in just a few weeks and really when we talk about the spring thaw what we mean is look at this terrain look at this this terrain to the south and to the east of ukraine that's open tank country that's what russian tanks were made to just punch through really easily but you also have to remember that ukraine would have the advantage when the when the spring thaw happens meaning that tanks while they are of course you know more or less all-terrain vehicles right they have trouble maneuvering in mud just like everything and we're talking you know mud up to your up to your freaking neck here in some of the parts of this country and you get tanks stuck your armored columns start slowing down that's going to tip the scales in the favor of ukraine who are going to have to use a lot more asymmetric tactics uh when it comes to taking out a lot of this russian armor and if russia wants to get in to ukraine do what they got to do and then get their armored columns and their btgs out again um that's going to be a tall order to do because the the clock is ticking so that's why that's that's why all this urgency that's why if you look around you're saying russia's going to do it any day now well it's because the clock's ticking right they only have so many they only have so much time before they start losing the overwhelming advantage or pieces of the overwhelming advantage that they currently have now when it comes to actual locations kharkiv will have to be taken very quickly they're going to have to take car cave quickly in order to provide support for the assault on dinipro so nipro is a city right there on the nipper river and it is a crucial hub for central ukraine so this is going to be very important for russia to take quickly if that's what their goal is they're going to have to punch all the way to the nipple river and if that that's going to have to be what stops them because that's really the only geographic feature that can stop russia in eastern ukraine everything else is very open and there's plenty of roads to drive on so you don't even have to go cross country most of the time so kiev is also another massive military target uh but again bringing the politics back into it for a minute depending on what nato does russia might leave ukraine's capital alone for the time being i don't know it all depends on what russia really wants to do then russia might launch a minor incursion right to the south uh into the war zone area that's already there link up with crimea which they already have tried to do quite a bit and then punch north who knows right it all depends on what nato's reaction is going to be if nato comes down like a freaking sledgehammer on russia and starts you know using russian tactics against them which is unlikely i should mention but if they do that then russia might say oh um don't want to tick off nato too much but right now we're seeing a very much permission being given by the big dogs in nato which are the united states and some of the other more significant military powers so right now i think putin and russia has got they've they've got all they need uh to do this they've got the permission they've got the logistical constraints they've got the energy crisis going on in europe which is complicating things and giving russia the advantage on the economic front when it comes to that kind of stuff so you know i i should also mention that this just just stacking on top of how confident russia is i should also point out that russia has left herself extremely vulnerable to a counter-attack by nato um almost comically vulnerable right it's almost like it's a joke um and again this is very very remote but the forces that have been moved around for this shindig are not something that can hold their own against nato right the btg as interesting of an idea as it is and the btg i should mention is the right tool for this task right the btg is a great style of unit to use in ukraine again it's what it was made for essentially but the btg as a concept is not super great for the powers of nato right this is we're not seeing russia mobilize her entire military we're just seeing her mobilize btgs cherry-picked from here and there we're not seeing main human wave infantry divisions being stood up or anything like that like you would normally see if nato's nato counterattacks were a concern so russia leaving herself vulnerable to a counter-attack by nato that just kind of points to to how confident russia is that nato's not going to do anything at all so if nothing else even if you don't know what nato is going to do i can tell you what russia thinks russia is betting very strongly on uh nato not doing anything uh anything significant that is and we've seen that over the past couple of weeks because i can tell you that that russia has been in the mood to call all the bluffs of nato so nato is not gonna it is not gonna do anything significant because russia is gonna be right there to call those bets so that's all we've got for now uh stay tuned for some more disturbingly outdated maps here from us in the future uh we'll continue these briefs as long as this becomes as long as this is an interesting thing to follow for people and uh yeah i guess we'll have to see uh what the next few days and weeks bring because we don't have that much much more time before russia has got to start moving either either committing one way or the other either invading or start moving all of these troops and men back to where they came from for the for the spring times i guess we'll have to see how that all works out but in any case we'll be here doing what we can so thank you again for watching thanks again for your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

all right good morning again everyone welcome back to the s2 underground uh this is the kabul update for monday august 23rd as of about 11 a.m eastern standard time so let's jump right into it uh quite a few updates over the past couple of days so let's start with the most pressing which is a lot of rumors or sort of confirmed not really confirmed reports of isis the islamic state threatening personnel refugees american soldiers coalition soldiers in and around the kabul airport so this is something that we kind of expected the islamic state still does maintain control of very very small parts of terrain they are sort of like an insurgency within the insurgency so when the afghanistan war was going on we had tamped down isis pretty good they were only in very small select areas in the in the very rugged and rough terrain in down in nangahar a few of them pushed forth and forward up into kunar uh and where they sort of just hit out and a few of them remained in and around the kabul area so there are some reports reports coming from both the taliban themselves and u.s intelligence that are indicating that isis is trying to target and sort of increase their own brand so remember they are sort of the with the insurgency within the insurgency uh the taliban are enemies of isis uh as of now but as anyone knows who's been in and around the afghanistan conflict for a while uh allegiances uh come and go like the wind so one day someone can say they're isis the next day they could say their taliban it just really just depends on on how how the wind's blowing that day i suppose so it depends on a lot of factors as if these threats are genuine it's best to say probably they are with a lot more and more people getting crammed into the area around the airport and even inside the airport itself that's just a ripe opportunity for some separatist group or some agency that we haven't even heard of a splinter group of a splinter group of a splinter group to come out and conduct an attack so they could get their street cred up so that's always a threat it's pretty minimal at this time but we we really don't know so i'm sure the official us intelligence reports have more on it but from our ocean side of the house and the open source open source world there's just really not much information out about it also overall the situation has been worsening over the past couple of days and particularly around the night time us and coalition troops have had to close all of the gates into the airport for a few different reasons for one capacity inside the airport is just too much and the security forces are not being able to control the crowds inside the airport as well as they should or as well as they could so they're having to actually shut the gates and leave people outside until they can clear some people out with you know getting them out on flights so it's a way of keeping the the area uh secure and not not crowded and things like that so just be be mindful of the fact you might see reports from a lot of journalists over the next couple of days of hey these gates are closed why are they closed well that that's why it's just capacity reasons and also sometimes if there's a shooting or or somebody gets unruly or something like that they will close the gates just to kind of help you know let things dissipate and let things work it work its way out i'll let people calm down a little bit and then they'll resume getting people inside the gates also on the political slash u.s front here at home the civil reserve air fleet has been activated by the the presidential regime uh government so uh this is basically the united states government drafting different airframes physical aircraft from civilian airliners uh commercial commercial airlines to shuttle people outside of non-combat zones so we'll talk we'll talk a little bit more about how the evacuation process is going once you get out of afghanistan but right now it's i think 18 i think 12 to 18 aircraft have been formally drafted into the u.s military control so that they can shuttle people uh around the world once they're out of the combat zone they're not sending in you know at american airlines you know you know 737 into kabul that's they're not doing that other countries are but uh the united states is not doing that and it's only a few airframes this is a program that's been around for a while for a very long time actually and it's something it's sort of like a lottery u.s american airlines american commercial airlines they basically draw straws for a specific period of time and that during that specific period of time they have to make sure that they have aircraft that are ready to go at a moment's notice within a 48-hour 24-hour window and that's been that's happened it happened on friday we got the warning that it happened on friday and it's now officially happened and that has the aircraft are being transferred right now also speaking bringing things back to the gates themselves there's been a lot of confusion at the actual gates with soldiers from different nations being manning these very cramped quarters there's been a lot of confusion as to what kind of paperwork gets is needed or required so there was a lot of reports last night or sorry two nights ago of canadian citizens with proper paperwork being uh turned away at the gates because the guards did not know that they the canadians had special paperwork so that's something to keep in mind is if you have people or if you yourself unlikely that you're watching this video but if you yourself or your interpreter or something like that is trying to get through the gates and they have non-standard paperwork or if they have paperwork from a different nation or something like that it's best to find a gate that you can get through uh well get through in the first place i suppose but just be mindful that you might get turned away uh in the confusion of this now a lot of this by the time this video gets out will probably be corrected but i just want to let everyone know this situation is about as confusing as it can possibly get so just bear with everyone they're going to get everybody out it's just going to take some time and speaking of paperwork the taliban has been reportedly halting locals uh stopping them at their own checkpoints before they can get to the the coalition checkpoints at the actual airport itself this is something that it's a lot of its rumor uh but we have seen this happen and the reasons of which are are mixed so the us and well the u.s isn't really saying much at all but like reporters or people familiar with the united states side of the situation are saying that the taliban is stopping locals from leaving so local afghans like interpreters or or people that are just trying to get a p2 visa they're not letting them leave if they have other coalition paperwork they're letting them through so that's one story another story is from the taliban itself they're saying that no they're not they're only stopping people who don't have any paperwork to leave the country so like people that are just trying to be spectators or trying to to take advantage of the situation they're stopping people that that that are like that now of course that's the taliban and they're known to lie about pretty much everything they do so there's that and then other reports are saying that there's really no problems whatsoever this is the us government story and we know that that's just an utter lie so there are problems getting through checkpoints getting through the actual airport itself getting through taliban checkpoints and getting through the coalition checkpoints to the airport itself so that's a pretty good explanation of what's going on on the ground let's go ahead and jump to the map and talk a little bit more specifically about the situation on the ground as of this morning okay so here we are on the map this is wintec i've loaded in our kmz and our imagery that we have dropped we've been updating this kmz and the imagery constantly over the past three days and this is the latest information that we have so as you can see uh we colored the south side of h kaya yellow just to indicate that this is in fact a fluid zone uh there's really not it's not really not clear as to what's going on or who's where but it seems to me like everyone is everywhere so let's zoom right here into the pax terminal itself the the americans specifically the americans have sort of retaken or pushed back uh or negotiated with the taliban to push so that they could maintain control of the actual pax terminal itself uh the taliban do maintain a checkpoint right here that's uh confirmed as of this morning uh and actually see if i can zoom in yeah taliban 313 units a taliban special forces unit is stationed right here at this grid as of well this morning uh afghan time uh the actual corridor in and out from the main gate to the main pax terminal is fluid it looks like once you're past this point there are coalition forces here at this gate there are also taliban here at this gate mostly taliban but once you if you can get through you can usually make it un unmolested to the actual pax terminal that's if you can make it past this last taliban checkpoint these are like uh forward observation posts really for the taliban to keep an eye on the americans that are that are stationed there and these guys here are really just it's just pure bedlam right here uh dozens of cars all kinds of heavy machine guns mounted machine guns crew served weapons everywhere uh we're even seeing light artillery light artillery like mortars and things like that but they're they're trying to keep those hidden it's really just a show of force anybody who can carry a tube can carry it right so uh pushing forward over here to the abbey gate uh situation there there are crowds all along the every square inch of uh perimeter border around the airport is clogged with thousands of people so there's that hotel baron is located right here not going to talk much about that at this time pushing forward over here to eastgate again large large crowds uh and then north gate as well right here still lots of crowds now let me go ahead and turn on a specific layer for you guys okay i turned on the layer in the kmz that shows the actions over the past 24 hours or so so there was a small arms firefight this morning between afghan former a a who are maintaining security alongside german soldiers and unknown assailants so like i mentioned earlier these these small attacks uh as as one might understand and like i mentioned in the i think the very first briefing uh the taliban is not a they're not as hierarchical as a coalition forces right so it's not like a taliban commander says you know do this this is these are your marching orders and everyone's just going to follow the orders now 99 will but the cellular nature and the the gorilla nature of taliban forces over the years has indicated that or it just means that you're going to have some rogue dudes and uh rogue dudes are dangerous so these could be taliban guys it could be isis they could just be some you know hooligans that are trying to take advantage of the situation that's a very uh a very prevalent threat right now people trying to steal stuff or extort civilians that men might not necessarily be taliban or isis or just bad dudes all right so that's the situation uh oh let me actually point out there was a vbiad threat vehicle born ied threat at the abbey gate it was cleared pretty much as soon as reporters found out about it i don't know if it was genuine or not it could be anything right the situation is just changing by the second so it's hard to say what's what's actually going on yeah that is the situation on the ground of really the most significant updates over the past couple of days uh really the rest of the city hkia proper like uh here to the west and down south uh things are pretty normal like it's shockingly normal you hop on snapchat maps or on twitter and you start hopping on the um the actual local language twitter accounts for a lot of these areas and it's it looks like it's not not there's nothing going on honestly now granted there's taliban everywhere throughout the whole city and they're they're taking over everything every government checkpoint every government building is now has a lot of taliban soldiers outside of it but honestly you you wouldn't notice if you look at a lot of the snapchat stories and things from these areas so really the most chaotic parts of the city are hkaia itself and in some parts of the former green zone but that's really just because there's a lot of taliban uh in the former green zone uh it's sort of like their um their prize right their spoils of war so going through those buildings and getting what they can and you know setting up outside the u.s embassy is kind of a pride thing for them so let's jump back to the powerpoint let's talk a little bit about the future and as well as some of the other things that have been going on around the country over the past couple of days all right so like i mentioned the northern alliance is back in town uh the son of the former leader of the northern alliance uh is is back and is uh conducting a lot of combat actions so as of august 19th this was this is a map of obviously afghanistan of all the districts that the taliban controlled and it was all of them all of the districts were controlled uh by the taliban on august 19th moving forward into the 21st we can actually see that the taliban actually lost quite a few districts to these guys northern alliance fighters are just popping up everywhere the guys up north have always been a little bit different so and they remember fighting the taliban last time so a lot of those districts were pretty quickly overwhelmed now it's hard to say if that overwhelming was done due to the skill of the northern alliance guys or just because they had strength in numbers at that particular time we have been seeing over the past couple of days uh significant numbers of taliban we're talking several thousand up to three thousand um have been pushing forward into these areas to retake them so as you can see a lot of these areas are contested yesterday the northern alliance actually lost a couple of districts but they took a couple we would classify them as being taken granted the situation is still fluid and as of this morning things are pretty much right back to where they were a couple of days ago with things still being contested most likely it looks as of right now that the northern alliance is is they're winning in their respective areas because they are striking with speed and with strength in numbers in those specific districts but once the taliban war machine gets uh spun up and they can move their fighters up there up there up north uh things are gonna things are gonna change so uh that's something to keep in mind and definitely something to keep an eye on over the next few days uh to see how that northern alliance resistance movement is uh kicking off so finally i wanted to touch on how the refugee situation is working once people get out of kabul once they get out of afghanistan what is actually happening so this is kind of busy and there's a lot of stuff going on so let's just take it a step at a time so first is once the flights leave kabul they you know they transit out via the normal air corridor and land in doha qatar cutter uh from there that's a staging area they either land there or if doha is full which has happened over a couple of days literally they just can't process any more people they transit to american bases in kuwait but most most people like the overwhelming majority people are going to doha and then from doha they're actually going to ramstein air base in germany for further on processing or once they get to ramstein they then can file their paperwork and get things organized to actually transit to follow-on nations to wherever they're going there are a couple other ways to get out of afghanistan though so another route that's very common is to go through tashkent through the through the capital of uzbekistan they're they've been very helpful in facilitating that movement directly out of kabul for a lot of civilian airliners uh and there's also another route which is uh sorry once they get to tashkent that's that's not a final destination for a lot of people that's they're going to go elsewhere so that's really just a staging area at this point even though uzbekistan is going to most likely take a lot of refugees also in uh new delhi uh in india has taken a lot of direct flights uh they've rescued i think a few hundred people at this at this point maybe a couple thousand honestly by now uh so that's really these are really really the main avenues of departure for leaving the country now as far as which nations are taking whom uh so far uh there are a list of temporary staging nations so the nations in which people are just going to temporarily stay are qatar kuwait germany turkey uzbekistan pakistan tajikistan kosovo albania northern macedonia italy and switzerland it's not clear as to if the people that are staying there right now in these countries are going to stay there or not some nations have stated yeah these are just this is just a temporary situation till we get things figured out other nations have indicated that they're going to take more uh that some of those some of the refugees can stay there and it of course depends on nationality as well now as far as commonwealth nations uh all members of the four eyes community have uh said that they're either going to assist or help or or take some it's really uh hard to say but obviously the the four eyes community is really uh leading the leading the effort when it comes to uh then probably the numbers that they're going to take also western europe these nations france germany belgium denmark and poland they have indicated that they are going to take some or they have already taken some also eastern europe czech republic and italy really most european nations have been very very hesitant to actually commit to saying yeah we're going to take all of your refugees or we're going to take some of your refugees or we're going to take only these citizens or we're not going to take you know normal afghans but we'll take interpreters it's just really confusing nobody wants to take these refugees to be honest because europe has a refugee crisis already so without delving too much into politics it's it's a complicated situation and there's a lot of political actors on all sides pulling everything different ways and it's hard to say who's going to go where central south america really only colombia has expressed interest in taking some refugees and likewise same thing in africa only uganda has said they're going to take refugees i think they actually have taken 300 so far and as far as your brics nations brazil has indicated that they will use the same uh track that they developed to take venezuelan refugees you can if you're afghan you can now use that same track to get into brazil uh russia interestingly has indicated that they are not going to take any refugees from afghanistan they're the only nation that i've seen so far that has said that they're not going to take anybody everybody else has just kind of either not said anything or they've said like we'll figure it out russia has said vladimir putin himself said flat out no we're not taking any now they did not say that they wouldn't help transfer people and lend resources and things like that but they he said that they can't they can't come here essentially and then also india has already taken quite a few refugees and is planning to take even more as we move forward so just another reminder we have all of these resources available on our odyssey page if the link will be in the description box below just in case you guys wanted these files we'll be updating them constantly as long as uh the situation is is going on we're going to be following this really until it closes out so all these briefings will be on there we've realized we've probably got a lot of new members and a lot of new followers to the channel uh over the past few days so if you don't like youtube and or it's not working for you go to odyssey all of our videos are backed up there and this is where we're dropping all of our stuff like the kabul imagery pack we've pre-downloaded a series of of images and geotiff files that are easy to put on gps's and end user devices and things like that if you wanted to either follow along or you are trying to use this for your own intel collection and things like that go for it there you go we're updating this kmz i think we're on version 17 now um and we're going to consistently keep updating that with information as the time as time goes on and once again just wanted to show this slide again for people who have not seen it this is some resources you can use if you're trying to get out of the country or if you are trying to help people get out of the country right now there are a lot of people trying to help with this situation which is outstanding uh but that does not mean that the situation is less confusing and immigration is confusing on a normal tuesday right and it's even more confusing in an emergency situation so uh really there there's not much that we american citizens can do to help people on the ground but we're doing what we can uh to help get some of these to get to get all of these americans home safe and sound and our allies as well so thanks everybody for watching stay tuned for the next update we'll we'll have it out soon and we'll continue to update all the all the products that we've been putting out on this and once again thank you everyone for all of your support and we will see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the intel update for sunday the 10th of july 2022 and it is being recorded the day prior on the 9th of july so let's get right to it up first as usual our infrastructure incidents and concerns and we're going to kind of breeze through these a little quickly because there haven't been too many that are worth talking about in the infrastructure category this time around but up first in the northeast in connecticut there was a grocery store that caught fire and burned down in the early hours of the morning of july 4th really no information on this whatsoever just wanted to point out that it did happen uh it's kind of a smaller grocery store it's not a national chain and grocery store fires are unfortunately quite common so i don't know if this one is more to fairies or not just wanted to kind of put it out there moving down to the southeast uh i'm sure there was something that happened of note but i haven't quite found it yet so uh through my several hours worth of digging i haven't really found anything worth talking about for the southeast so we'll just go ahead and go to the east central midwestern region which of course again not very much going on this time around but there was a fire metal processing facility i think this one is very vague again more some of the more industrial fires in uh smaller townships don't really get a whole lot of press uh if they get any press at all so even the local news agency for this one out of white house ohio didn't know what in the sam hill was going on with this one so it looks like it was just a small fire at a metal processing facility uh the cause is unknown and of course the investigation is underway so it is this one looks like more more of your routine ones but but you can't really tell of course because there's just no information on it again keeping michigan in our minds we have the abbott laboratories flood recovery no news on that front so we're still waiting for an update from abbott laboratories moving to the west central midwestern region same story nothing really new to a report i'm sure something happened but i haven't found it for this time around so let's go down to the southwest in which case there was only one thing of note and it was of course again a liquid natural gas pipeline fire so this was out in fort men county texas there was a decently large as they always are pipeline burst in the middle of just a farmer's field so i don't know if somebody clipped it with you know some kind of agricultural implement as is extremely common because for those of you who don't know most pipelines are pretty they're not very deep underground they're only a few feet in most cases sometimes less than that so people hitting pipelines is not exactly an uncommon thing to have happen in in a lot of areas but again this one was in such a remote area and there wasn't any apparent construction going on in the mid immediate vicinity so there's no real telling uh what the cause of this was but again since it's a pipeline burst explosion type thing we're probably not going to hear about what the cause of this was and finally for the west again nothing significant to report so let's go ahead and move to the suspicious fires really only have two fires to add for uh this briefing and that is on july 1st in paterson new jersey the greater assembly house of prayer caught fire this one have no information on it whatsoever moving on to number 10 we have on the 8th of july in waverly tennessee a fire at the glenwood church of christ this one is we have a little bit more information on but still very sketchy not a whole lot of information gets put out there with regards to church fires specifically church fires but the local authorities have been kind of hesitant to say that this is under investigation for arson but the even just the local sheriff kind of commented that this is just one of seven or eight suspicious fires in the local area over the past few weeks so it looks like there might be something going on there in waverly tennessee but again we have seen this this kind of behavior pop up in various places around the country just these kind of arson style incidents right so again we're really probably not going to hear a whole lot about these suspicious fires that have been occurring around the country because we can call them suspicious but you know if a local jurisdiction calls them non-suspicious fires then you know where are we gonna what are we gonna do you know there's if that's kind of where the investigation stops you know the investigation stops right so uh we'll move on to the more unfortunate slides which are the kinetic incident trackers now i had to change this uh quite significantly because i did not have nearly enough room to make these all make these fit all on one slide so we're gonna have to break these down again by a region so we'll start again with the northeast region and talk about some of the more kinetic incidents that have occurred over the past 90 days or so really the two newest additions to this unfortunate uh tracker come to us from worcester massachusetts and they are two centers uh that were the target of jane's revenge in roughly the same kind of area and those were the problem pregnancy which is a clinic and again a clear way clinic as well so two pro-life clinics or resource centers or however you wanted to word it were attacked again by jane's revenge who claimed these attacks on their websites moving down southeast we have quite a diverse arrangement of terrorist attacks for this cycle uh beginning with the new additions for this time which are on the 3rd of july in hillsborough north carolina the holy family catholic church was vandalized no agency has claimed this particular attack but it was most likely antifa due to the graffiti they left behind this is just again one of many different church vandalisms that has occurred over the past 90 days the next day on july 4th also in north carolina in asheville north carolina there was an ied attack uh on a local statue or what the site of a former statue so again this is not particularly surprising asheville north carolina has a pretty solid antifa uh sort of left-wing militant presence and it would make a lot of sense because asheville actually took down a lot of their statues remember when last year or the year before last where all of the you know every government agency was looking to destroy any kind of history they possibly could of the civil war or things like that asheville north carolina had a lot of statues that they tore down and it looks like a couple of dudes affiliated with antifa or some other leftist group tried to build some homemade pipe bombs to blow up basically the the base of where a statue used to be so there wasn't a statue there anymore the the government had already destroyed it or removed it these guys were just trying to do to make again some kind of stupid attack on the site of where a statue used to be but again they were arrested of course and um i guess we'll see how that goes probably will be bailed out almost immediately uh but on on the same day in richmond virginia there was a mass shooting that was actually thwarted by a local citizen so this is a very interesting case that of course has been blacked out by the media because the two guys who are planning on conducting mass shootings against soft targets at july 4th celebrations uh these two guys were illegal immigrants so of course the mainstream media would not report on this kind of thing but i thought this was a very interesting case because the attack was thwarted very interestingly of course the richmond virginia police claimed 100 of the credit uh but it was actually stopped by a concerned citizen who reportedly overheard their plans to conduct a mass shooting so i'm very interested to see what the details are because overhearing a terrorist attack being planned is that almost never happens so was this were these guys literally like discussing their plans like in their house and their neighbor heard them or were they discussing it in a public location and someone overheard it i'm not entirely sure but either way this concerned citizen reported uh what they heard to the local authorities who then searched their place and got them to confess slash found all of their uh the weapons they were planning to use yeah very interesting case of domestic terrorism uh being thwarted on u.s soil again by concerned citizens so very interesting case indeed and finally in georgia one of the more interesting cases that i'm sure has swept all the way through the bottom depths of the internet by now uh this is the ied attack on the georgia guidestones so this is a very very very interesting case depending on how far you want to go down the rabbit hole of weird stuff on the internet and so for those who don't understand why this is such a polarizing slash interesting event it really surrounds the georgia guidestones themselves which are a very controversial monument that was put up a few years ago by unknown secretive groups slash agencies slash individuals right uh and this you can go read the wikipedia page before it gets deleted from the internet about what the georgia guidestones actually said um but it's depending on how strange you want to get into it what's undeniable i should say let me just start there what's undeniable is what the tablet says said it's a stone series of stone monuments kind of like an american version of stonehenge right our stone monument outdoors in the middle of nowhere that has some really weird inscriptions on it uh basically ten commandments so to speak for humanity i guess but the reason why this has been so controversial is what the commandments are so what's undeniable is that these tablets endorse things like mass genocide population control medical tyranny eugenics and things weird things like that right so of course it's going to get a lot of press when something like this gets blown up a lot of people have in the past attributed this as like a a monument to like either satanism or just like a sign of the antichrist or something like that like a world economic forum thing it's really hard to kind of put this into words what this thing actually was i think the most interesting part about all of it is not really the the rabbit hole stuff that you can go down on the internet but the the fact that this was attacked using uh ieds right in the past the the georgia guidestones of course based on the controversial things that these that's inscribed on these tablets these have been the subject of attack for a long time they've been vandalized graffiti has been they've been sprayed up with graffiti a lot this is this is nothing new what is new is someone using explosives to try to blow them up so yeah pretty interesting um i think though what's more interesting is the fact that there was pretty good security at the georgia guidestones like perimeter uh due to the past attacks that have kind of happened uh they put up a lot of security cameras and they've got a pretty good like you know security perimeter i won't say it's great but it looks to me like from what i've seen uh pretty decent and especially for in the middle of nowhere georgia and yet this kind of thing still happened i think though what is the most interesting part about the entire thing is that this ied attack occurred in the early hours of the morning on july 6th so way right in the middle of the night uh on july 6th well by the end of that day after the detonation had occurred they the guidestones were dismantled and destroyed people noticed construction equipment out there tearing down the rest of the monuments so from what i know about investigations of ied attacks on u.s soil i'm very highly suspicious that the site of an ied attack where you're trying to conduct chemical forensics and and conduct an investigation gets dismantled in just a few hours right after this idea attack happened like you would think there'd be crime scene tape around this sucker for at least a week or so while people are trying to figure out what happened and maybe go after the people because you know id attacks are not they're not common here in the united states especially against you know like a hardened structure like a stone tablet right so i don't know i think that the destruction of these guide stones immediately following the the explosive attack on them i think that's sketchy though i don't really know what else to think about it but again this is kind of a more weird one but since we don't really get to talk about ied attacks too often uh you know except in the context of like antifa or somebody i thought i'd mention it and especially considering i know that people are going to have a lot of questions about it so i guess we'll see what comes of it but my guess is due to the highly suspicious and secretive nature of the the guide stones themselves uh my guess is we're probably not gonna hear much about this uh anymore so i don't know we'll see though moving to the east central midwestern region we really just have three additions for this time three different terror attacks uh all three of course claimed by jane's revenge and all three are vandalism so the first one was in detroit michigan where a pro-life center a pregnancy center again was vandalized as expected and as you can see on the slide there numbers four and five occurred on the 22nd of june in jackson michigan both of them occurred they they shared an office so one of these uh places that was attacked was a pro-life center the jackson right to life center and the other one was interestingly enough a congressman's office so republican congressman tim wahlberg's office was vandalized along with the right to life center there it's a small building they kind of shared the same structure and people uh graffitied it up pretty good and damaged some of the facilities there so so again not really surprising this is kind of the mo by now for a lot of these leftist groups but again just wanted to mention it because we're seeing these attacks increase all over the nation moving to the west central midwestern region we have two new editions for this time both of them vandalism both of them claimed by jane's revenge again pretty standard by now uh one of them was a pro-life center in saint paul minnesota uh which was uh the birthright center uh company there just is kind of like a pro-life center uh they were attacked on the fifth of july and then going back to the second of june i forgot to mention this one on the last last time this is in des moines iowa an organization called dsm street medics which is a like a pro-life resource center they were also vandalized and again claimed by jane's revenge moving to the southwestern region we have a whole lot of nothing i haven't been able to find any in the states of arizona new mexico texas or oklahoma though i'm sure different attacks have occurred i just haven't found them yet so a lot of these are very much buried by the media and i'm sure that you can understand how hard it is to find these uh digging through the depths of the internet these days but again we'll keep an eye on the southwest but usually we're not really going to see too much just because of the climate and the nature of these attacks right so so for the western region we have two new additions for this slide this time both of them occurred on the 27th of june uh the first one was in portland oregon uh the mother and child education center it was like a pregnancy center was vandalized again by jane's revenge now i should note that this one is very interesting uh the local locals seem to think that this might have been an accident because the mother and child education center is they have not picked a side on the roe vs wade thing so they are not pro-choice and they are not pro-life at least according to them it's really hard to kind of say why they were targeted because they don't i'm not entirely sure if they offer abortions at this facility it seems like they're more along the lines of just just an education center and they kind of appeal to everyone at this particular place a lot of these pregnancy centers you're going to find are very much pro-life as you would expect but this one is more more center of the road which is a little confusing to me but it is portland right so it kind of makes sense in any case i looked at the photos of this facility's vandalism and it seems like it it could very well be a case of mistaken identity because this the name of this place is mother and child education center and if you look at the logo of the agency it looks very much like a pro-life facility so my guess is that the roaming bands of antifa members who have basically nested in portland over the past decade or so probably just saw the sign and said you know what we're gonna we're gonna attack that place so so yeah either way this one looked like it was more of a target of opportunity rather than a deliberately planned uh coordinated attack and on the same day on the 27th of june in longmont colorado a facility called life choices which is a more of a pro-life center education center type type thing uh it was set on fire and that is currently being listed as arson so so again not a lot of this is surprising unfortunately but still got to keep a keep an eye on this just so that everyone's aware of the the levels of terrorism that are going on around this country before we moved on i briefly wanted to mention that there has been some congressional interest in all of these attacks that seem to be popping up all over the country for instance senator chuck grassley of iowa sent a letter to the fbi last week urging the fbi to investigate the more than 40 pregnancy centers that have been attacked since the roe vs wade leake this is in addition to the letter tom cotton sent to the department of justice last month also urging the fbi to do their job the fbi has responded by saying that they are instigating excuse me investigating these attacks and have again encouraged citizens to report suspicious activity to their various hotlines but until something is done the average citizen is having to take a crash course in counter-terrorism in a nation which arrests people for trying to stop terrorist attacks on u.s soil so not exactly an easy task but this is certainly a great time for the average citizen to educate themselves and remain vigilant and when it comes to future terrorism we have really one just kind of warning to go out there and that is that several groups affiliated with antifa your more leftist militant groups uh have been offering bounties or encouraging the attack of supreme court justices in washington dc so far uh bounties have just been offered up for public sightings of brett kavanaugh specifically uh with bonuses for if he's still at a location when uh the the terror groups when the terrorists arrive so again they're looking to target supreme court justices deliberately and openly now uh which again is not surprising unfortunately but what is kind of interesting is places like the white house press secretary deliberately uh egging this kind of stuff on so the precursor to to this is uh brett kavanaugh being swarmed uh while he was out trying to have dinner at a dc restaurant so this kind of spurred these more leftist groups iww antifa uh any kind of communist party of you know whatever city these groups are really looking for for blood quite literally and are openly encouraging violence against public officials so my guess is that due to this latest event involving brett kavanaugh the conservative justices at least will be hidden away in secure locations for the foreseeable future uh and almost certainly they were probably looking at doing this before the roe versus way decision was released the leftist terror groups around this country are really predictable at this point but with leftist politicians again to include the white house press secretary openly encouraging these kinds of attacks we have to assume that these attacks will probably be used on conservative politicians or public figures as well so it will probably expand beyond just supreme court justices right when it comes to leftist groups in this country they're really only whipped up into action to do politicians bidding for them every few years or so i mean of course you're going to have your your classic um communist groups that are pretty much in well not pretty much they are in every single city in this country uh at this point but usually they're really kind of small groups uh your more deliberate terroristic kinds of attacks like your jane's revenge type stuff that only really occurs uh ever so often once they've kind of get their resources back or they get their funding uh the reason that i think we're seeing a lot of this now is because of course roe vs wade was a hugely uh motivating uh recruitment tool for them for one and it also allowed billionaire politicians to funnel this money into supporting their their demonstrations their protesting and especially their bail funds so as far as what all this means for the average citizen uh really the takeaway is to remember that while politicians have taxpayer-funded armed security for protection which have zero legal implications to think about you do not and you most certainly do not want to be collateral damage so if you're at a location that might be a target for leftist terror groups remember that defending yourself against these terrorists will in all likelihood result in you being the one prosecuted uh we've seen this in new york very recently uh and in texas but this sentiment has been echoed in pretty much every state around the nation in sporadic cases right uh i of course don't mean to be overly pessimistic on this but i just know that i myself do not have the budget to spend years of my life going through a kyle rittenhouse style show trial i would rather egress from an establishment that is undergoing a mob style attack rather than let the terrorists force me into action that's of course just my own opinion but i always think it's important to remind everyone of the way things are right now within our multi-tiered justice system high-ranking politicians might have security but if you are dining at the next table over what do you think is going to happen their security team is for them not for you and the legal implications of you being forced to defend yourself are not of their concern either no politician is going to bail you out of jail or pay your legal fees because their presence near you caused a mob to target you and you had to defend yourself so please keep this in mind as we move into a time in which politicians of one party are allowed to openly encourage the harm of their enemies and government agents arrest citizens for defending themselves or their families again not a pleasant thing to think about but i think it needs to be said constantly especially since genuine domestic terrorism is becoming a norm in the united states moving on to significant governmental actions we'll keep the peachy mood going and talk about ups so ups united parcel service has apparently gone absolutely insane and is now not only canceling their contracts with gun parts companies such as brownells but they are now openly stating that they will be opening and stealing your packages if their scanning sensors detect that you have ordered something they do not like and if this sounds vague it's because it is ups has not been clear about any of this the gun community has rightfully expressed outrage over this especially considering that ups is going above and beyond to create their own laws i guess that this is surprising to a lot of people that a company would confiscate packages that even the atf says are completely legal but for those of you that have been following us for a while you know that we here have been focused on companies that create their own laws for a long time now like i've said many times before this is a huge problem and i don't know what the solution is i think that the classic argument of they are a private company so they can do what they want uh is kind of ridiculous at this point there are only a tiny handful of postal carriers in this country and all of them are heavily federally subsidized with your tax dollars and in many cases directly controlled by federal government we all know how social media companies have put political regimes into power and how defense contractors have taken your tax dollars to develop technologies that they then refuse to sell to u.s taxpayers so ups doing this is a little surprising because of how quickly they made this decision especially at a time when so many companies are going broke because of their wokism ups is neck and neck with their competition and they decide you know what we're gonna do we're gonna go above and beyond full steam ahead on the woke train to follow laws that don't even exist when you control the mail you control information i say good luck with that ups and let's see how that works out for you but my guess is that people are going to be focusing on using other shipping options the one or two other options that they have for shipping gun parts around the country moving on to number two this is kind of the incident that has been highlighted by many a conservative news agency over the past couple of weeks and this is a story that the biden regime has sold about a million barrels of crude oil to a company that is owned by the communist party of china not only that but this oil came from our strategic oil reserves so we quite literally uh emptied out our reserves of at least a million barrels of oil to sell to china that alone is pretty damning but it gets better the company in question is sinopec this is indeed completely owned by the chinese state government but in 2015 a private equity firm called bhr partners purchased 1.7 billion dollars worth of shares in that company sinopec bhr associates was created by the bank of china and you guessed it hunter biden as if that is not delicious enough for you it gets even better hunter biden to avoid any hint of impropriety announced that he would be resigning from bhr partners during joe biden's presidential campaign but guess what as of the second quarter of 2020 after the election mind you hunter biden was still listed as a board member so pretty interesting i was not able to independently verify whether or not hunter biden is affiliated with this company still but i would stake my entire existence on the entire biden family being up to their neck in this rampant and blatant corruption i think it's pretty clear that that's exactly what's going on by now so i guess we'll see what happens with this case but my kindergarten level assessment is that nothing will happen at all as a result of this corruption but we may see a few republican congressmen get upset for a bit but that probably won't result in much being done uh in the long run and since hunter biden was recently caught smoking crack cocaine while in detox for smoking crack cocaine uh detox that his father paid for i think that this hunter biden saga is just going to keep giving us very interesting tidbits as we move on down the line clark that's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year so let's wrap things up with a few international issues first up is the netherlands like i mentioned uh the dutch are still protesting in quite significant numbers uh the police have actually fired several live rounds at least once during the demonstrations at farmers so it's really unclear as to to what's going on with regards to these smaller spot protests that have kind of popped up around the nation this is very much a nationwide protest at this point and the demonstrations are becoming a bit more lively uh with more and more people joining the demonstrations as people start to realize just what the the world economic forum controlled dutch government is trying to do to its people uh similar protests have popped up in various spots around europe as well such as in france for the same reasons so i guess we'll have to see how kinetic things get as more and more european citizens start to realize what their governments have done to them or are trying to do to them as one might expect the farmers specifically in the netherlands have gotten a lot of support from people who realize that farming is kind of an essential activity and their government's efforts to restrict it are kind of not a good thing so we'll have to see how this develops my guess is that these protests will probably grow quite significantly based on the severity of these draconian climate change policies that are far too numerous to even mention but are kind of popping up everywhere around europe moving over to germany germany's largest housing group a company called vanovia has announced that they will be involuntarily turning down the thermostats in their rental units the retail units that they own for the foreseeable future during the hours of the night when things get the coldest so a company smokes person said that from the beginning of the next heating period the plan is to throttle the heating between 11 pm and 6 am so that heating only heats up to 17 degrees celsius which is about 63 degrees fahrenheit at night for those that are unfamiliar with this company vinovia is a very infamous company in germany it's probably one of the most hated corporate entities in the country uh because they are a they're very well known for unethical business practices so this is not a surprise at all however they own over half a million apartments so they're not a small company whatsoever so again i would expect this trend in germany to become very commonplace uh however we might actually see the german government start trying to ration natural gas uh probably very very soon uh they're kind of floating that idea right now there's a lot of rumen to a lot of rumors flying around regarding rationing natural gas because of germany's own decisions and their reliance on russian natural gas which is now not an option for them so that's going to be interesting to follow as with most things it does present a few other considerations though wood-fired stoves and other heating appliances have completely disappeared from store shelves as german citizens race to prevent their government from freezing them to death this winter this presents a lot of problems the energy crisis in europe specifically in germany uh has presented a lot of problems mostly due to how most people on earth are completely inept when it comes to basic survival skills the same people that think chocolate milk comes from brown cows also probably think that their home is heated by magical fairy dust so you're going to have a lot of people who are completely confused as to why their home is freezing cold and these people who have never even thought about basic things like energy and heating are suddenly having to figure out how to heat their home when their government or their company decides to restrict their heating modern caveman moments like this are likely to cause quite a few problems as inexperienced people race to keep their homes warm this of course is not to cast shot and florida on the germans this is certainly an american thing too the number of people that are somehow baffled every winter when their pipes freeze and burst is quite astounding when it comes to heating in the winter though there are a lot of other issues as well winter time is when people tend to buy some of the more unsafe heating appliances like cheap chinese space heaters which then burn their house down and guess what time of year is most difficult to fight fires in wintertime injuries for firefighters usually spike during the winter hydrants and hoses freeze ice and snow present challenges of their own and all of this happens at the exact time of year that residential home fires spike it is a tale as old as time and one of the main reasons for murphy's law not only will everything go wrong that can go wrong but it often does so at the most inopportune times or when it is most difficult to fix the issue such as residential home fires in the winter so for any german citizens out there please be careful with your heating methods this winter you've had this pair of extra gloves this whole time yeah we're in the rockies jumping over to the pacific in japan the assassination of former prime minister shinzo abe has grabbed a lot of headlines this week i don't really have much to say about this one but we do not often see the assassination of high-ranking politicians so i did want to mention it abe was very much a controversial figure mostly due to his political ideology which some would describe as ultra-nationalistic we here in the u.s hear that and think well alright then but we have to remember that what is nationalist or ultra-nationalist in other countries is not exactly the same definition as here at home but yeah he was still a very controversial figure in japan the west supported him because of his hard-line stance on china which won him support for many japanese citizens as well not much is known about the attacker just yet i'm sure lots of media agencies are doing profiles on the guy by now but for sure various antifa elements are celebrating this assassination as expected so who knows what is interesting is that crime especially gun crime is pretty much completely unheard of in japan this is not something that is easily understandable by a western audience much like lots of japanese culture i guess it's kind of hard to explain but i will say that it's pretty clear that this assassination has rocked the nation for sure stuff like this especially with an improvised firearm are completely unheard of in japan i think what kind of sells this idea is this photo from the assassination which reminds us that the security detail for a former prime minister carries revolvers so yeah that kind of points out how different the culture is in japan with regards to firearms and law enforcement moving to sri lanka the situation in sri lanka has deteriorated to about as close to a full-blown collapse as i think we're going to see protesters stormed the presidential palace yesterday in order to demand the president's resignation and generally voice their displeasure at the government causing them to starve the prime minister has agreed to resign and allow the formation of a new government and the president actually just a few minutes ago as i'm recording this also announced that he will be stepping down as well although even with these resignations it is unclear if anything can be done at this point to stop the economic collapse and mass starvation moving to our friends across the pond in the united kingdom the news this week has been the resignation of boris johnson this follows a several months saga for boris starting with the party gate scandal and ending with his covering up of his appointment of a serial sexual predator as deputy chief whip so yeah not a super great past few months for old boris thus his resignation we shall see how the conservatives handle his resignation and who might replace him but no real news on that front moving to our friends to the north up in canada there have been quite a few issues regarding telecoms this week mostly stemming from the rogers communication incorporated outage rogers communications is a major telecoms sort of conglomerate that offers a lot of services they handle everything from normal citizens cell phones to 911 networks to to credit card transactions to wi-fi they handle a lot of different things and they have had a widespread outages since yesterday rogers has issued statements late yesterday evening that they should start having some services come back online as of the evening of the 8th although today is the 9th and it's there's still a lot of different outages particularly with things like 911 call centers and things like that so it's really hard to tell when they're going to be fully recovered from this but yeah again canadians figuring out exactly uh how vulnerable it is to put all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to telecommunications here in the united states we see this frequently like just last time i briefed uh we had an outage with our unemployment services and this one company which managed the website for unemployment or unemployment benefits you know websites to where you apply for that kind of thing that one company provided services to over 40 states and because they went down they took 40 states unemployment systems down with them so again we're finding out just how vulnerable it is and how little of these systems are not networked you would think that a lot of these systems are either air-gapped or on different networks or somehow not completely vulnerable to one thing bringing the entire nation down but i think we're finding out these days especially over the past couple of years with the rise of cyber attacks that this is most certainly not the case and systems which should be air-gapped like 9-1-1 call centers most certainly are not and finally in afghanistan it has been a while since i mentioned something with afghanistan and i wanted to end on something that doesn't really have much intel value but is utterly fascinating to me and that is the unearthing of mullah omar's vehicle from its hiding place in afghanistan for those that don't know who this is muhammad omar mostly just called mullah omar was the founder of the taliban in afghanistan and has been an almost mythological feature in afghan culture over the years back in the early years of the war he went into hiding and remained so until he died reportedly of tuberculosis in 2013 and now a few days ago we've learned from pictures posted on social media that his followers have unearthed his personal vehicle that he had placed into hiding during the initial invasion his followers posted photos of themselves digging up the vehicle that he used to escape from the 2001 u.s invasion apparently this was the vehicle that he used to drive from his home in kandahar to his hiding place in zabel where he remained for the majority of the war in hiding sometimes just a few hundred meters away from american fobs and outposts based on these photos it's clear that he and his team had buried his toyota corolla wagon underground in the event that he needed it again and now that the taliban have their victory they are now starting to literally unearth some of the items important to the history of afghanistan and their own history as the taliban as distasteful as it may seem to even have the slightest respect towards one of our nation's most vicious enemies especially with the fall of afghanistan and all of the pain that caused i myself can't help but be fascinated by the history of stuff like this and i hope that in the coming years we get to hear some of the stories from the other side of the wire so that we may better understand how we lost that war for now i think that a simple toyota being dug out of the ground illustrates that we cannot possibly begin to imagine how much we don't know about that war the exact same thing happened with vietnam too general nguyen zapp the head general in charge of the nva survived the war only to remain a mystery for the most part and mullah omar like general zapp remains an enigma to the west despite both of these men having a huge role in being the leaders of the only organizations to ever topple multiple superpowers i just think that if western military leadership isn't really interested in learning from their enemies i certainly am and i would be especially interested to learn the stories from the other side of the wire lest we repeat the same mistakes again mistakes that cost us dearly anyway i didn't mean to get all philosophical i just thought that was interesting and i really can't wait to get started on some more of the warfare studies sort of content that we've been researching for the past few months so thank you again for watching everyone and thank you again for all of your support i really do mean it especially for those of you who support us out there on patreon on youtube you guys are just really awesome and helping us out that way allows us to keep bringing this kind of thing to you i think we're going to be pretty busy trying to track a lot of these more kinetic incidents that have occurred here in the united states here at home and also overseas in the international arena definitely going to be a busy next few weeks and months unfortunately so we'll keep an eye on that and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for February 7th to the 14th of 2026. It's been kind of a quiet week by comparison, I guess. Only a few major terror attacks to be aware of, so basically everything is fairly standard for this week. But anyway, we've got a lot to talk about, so let's get right to it. Around the world this week, things have been pretty busy on multiple fronts, but nothing entirely new. Here in the homeland, the civil unrest that flared up in Minneapolis and other major cities has simmered down for a couple of weeks now, although some cities have been host to an increased baseline of violence. Overseas, several investigations have been initiated in conjunction with the Epstein document releases, and civil unrest appears to be popping off in some major cities in France due to recent clashes between protesters and activist groups. In the UK, stabbing attacks continue as before with about three or four stabbings being reported in London more or less every day. Same story in France and Italy, whereby civil unrest and domestic terrorism has bloomed into season a bit earlier this year. As the Olympics are ongoing in Italy, many different terrorist cells have been sabotaging rail lines in a few different cities. And in France, French nationalists are fighting French anarchists in a few major cities after protests have become intense riots over the past few days. Otherwise, in the Middle East, the situation is heating up yet again, and the US is starting to dump military resources into the region once more. Timeline-wise, we're looking at a couple of weeks before any potential happening is on the menu. Unless the Pentagon just wants to bomb a few targets like they did last time and make me look like an idiot, both of which are always likely. Keeping track of airframes and ships is basically a full-time job for a whole team of people, but at a very wave-top level, the US has been observably pumping more resources into the region at a steady pace over the past few weeks. So, overall, a lot of things to keep on the lookout for over the next few weeks. Switching things up a little bit, let's move to Western Europe before we get into the actual homeland for this week's, and and let's talk about some developing incidents that are going on right now throughout France. The spotlight has been on France in the headlines over the past few days due to a couple of different incidents which have recently uh a lot of attention. The first incident is the stabbing attack that took place yesterday at the Arc de Triomphe by which a known and convicted terrorist conducted another police stabbing uh wounding one soldier at the uh flame lighting ceremony for their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This is a fairly standard ceremony, I think. I'm pretty sure they do it every day at 6:30, but either way they end up, you know, rekindling the flame at their uh Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and there's usually a small crowd or uh either of tourists or people who, you know, want to you want to pay their respects and things like that. And last night an assailant tried to uh stab everybody at this event. So, the attacker has been identified as Brahim Barrir, who was also tried, convicted, and imprisoned for doing the exact same thing in Brussels back in 2012. So, he used to be a pretty high-ranking member of a lot of different extremist cells throughout Paris and was kind of uh a figurehead for a lot of things. Uh maybe not so much a public figurehead, but he was very heavily involved in a lot of extremist uh groups and things like that in Paris over the past, well, decade or so. Back in 2012, he actually traveled from Paris, where he was known to be an extremist, to Brussels specifically to target police officers, which he did. So, he got caught, tried, and convicted for that and at some point he was either let out or just mysteriously appeared back in civil society once again and conducted the stabbing attack again last night. So, not entirely a great look, especially considering the hard times that seem to have fallen upon Paris over the past few years, but down south in France a much more serious situation is underway, which has involved of civil unrest. So, in the town of Lyon, Antifa has gotten quite a bit upset over the past few days after anti-immigration activists in the south of France have started to kind of voice their opinion a little bit more and that's just made uh Antifa quite a bit upset and a lot of these French anarchist groups upset. They have the same same kind of cellular arrangement that we have here in the US when it comes to our far-left extremists. They've got the same thing in France, except their guys are a lot more violent in in case. So, they actually beat a man to death, one of the security guards or uh an activist who was serving as an inner security role for a French feminist movement group was trying to conduct a protest and you know how in the US we have a lot of protest and then counter protest. Well, the same thing in France. So, a few days ago or a couple of days ago, one of the French feminist groups who is more along the lines of stopping violence against women from the immigrants. That's kind of the way these groups are starting to form. One of these groups was mobbed by Antifa and it turns out one of the guys that they had gotten to help protect them, one of those guys got beaten pretty severely and unfortunately he passed away last night. So, as a response to this, the French nationalists have come out and a lot of nationalist groups have come out to oppose Antifa and suffice it to say things are going to get pretty spicy over the next few days. So, we'll be watching this pretty closely simply because there are a lot of parallels between France and the United States and of course, you know, France is Europe, right? It's Western civilization, right? So, they share a lot of the same societal goals that we do even though our cultures are very different, it's still still the same thing. It's all Western Europe and the United States. So, we're all in the same slop bucket together. So, a lot of times we have the same adversaries and same enemies and that is certainly the case in France, the UK, Germany, wherever you want to name it. So, keeping an eye on these things is going to be important over the next few weeks. Similar story throughout Western Europe in terms of the Epstein files. So, while many here in the United States may be lamenting the fact that nobody's really been arrested kind of at all with regards to the names that have come out of the Epstein files in Europe, they actually have been doing something. Now, I think many Europeans, like many Americans, don't exactly have a whole lot of faith in their judicial systems, but at least they've done something. So, Norway has actually launched a criminal investigation and I think they actually dropped criminal charges on a former prime minister of Norway for his association with Epstein, but the the crimes that they're all that trying to prosecute are all corruption based, so they're not like human trafficking based. So, that's kind of how Europe is handling it right now, and so far they've got three major diplomats in Norway, which are implicated and are being investigated. So, at least they can say that they're investigating their guys. Now, they probably won't be arrested or anything, but I don't know. Who knows? Hard to say. There are grumblings and rumors of the same thing, same kinds of investigative processes being undertaken in France and also in Slovakia. Again, hard to say how all this is going to work out, but I wanted to mention it in any way because a lot of people here in the US are saying, you know, nobody's been arrested, nobody's even been questioned or interviewed, whereas in Europe they actually kind of are. So, that's kind of interesting, but again, the bar could not be any lower when it comes to getting some sort of accountability or justice for the whole Epstein thing, but we'll get into that in just a moment. Here in the homeland for this week, the big flare-ups have died down a bit, but the violence has continued as far left activists continue to figure out that terrorism actually works. Ever since ICE pulled out of Minneapolis, or technically reduced their posture there, far left activist groups have perceived this to be a victory, especially since the FBI has basically ignored all the terrorist groups which have been running rampant in Minneapolis for years. So, as of right now, the mood among many far left groups is that of sheer unchallenged victory. They certainly think that they have won by kicking ICE out of their city. Now, is that entirely true? Uh, probably not, but that's up for you to decide. It's certainly complicated. What is very clear is that the inaction of the feds, not just ICE, but say like other law enforcement groups which are in charge of maybe, I don't know, counterterrorism, in many cases this inaction has encouraged far left groups to think that violence, arson, vehicle ramming attacks, and terrorism in general is an acceptable line of effort to achieve their goals. Even though it certainly is not, they certainly think it is. Thus, the middle-aged women who should be picking up their kids from school rather than trying to firebomb empty buildings without even trying to conceal their identity. So, we've got that going for us at least. Otherwise, the situation remains pretty much the same as before nationwide. Locals in Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. have reported that the stench in the air has become palpable and there's also a major sewage leak as well. Almost a month after roughly a billion gallons of raw sewage was dumped into the Potomac, locals have been advised to avoid all contact with the Potomac. Unless you're from Mumbai, then you should be all right. But, for the rest of us, the levels of E. coli are few thousand times the safe limits. And if you've been fishing or boating in the river over the past month, you probably have some kind of giga turbo aids by now, which is interesting because when the spill was first announced, the local water utility claimed that the levels of E. coli were at safe levels. But, it turns out they messed up the decimal point because, of course, they did and it was actually 100 times what they initially reported, which is slightly suboptimal news for anyone living in Northern Virginia or Maryland who has been in or around the river over the past month. And speaking of foul toxins from whence there is no escape, the Epstein files situation continues to grow more and more as investigations start putting pieces together. Right now, it's been pretty hectic as there's a disconnect between the big voices talking about the Epstein files and those little voices actually doing the legwork to look through the Epstein files. An influencer or politician finds one document and shouts about it on the internet only to look like an idiot because they didn't understand the overall context. Yes, Epstein's network did very bad things, but if we actually want to eventually make progress towards stopping the harm, we have to have some sort of structure, which is what I'm working on myself. I'm just warning everybody that over the next few weeks, the headlines are going to flash by in a blur with everyone jumping from one conclusion to the next without any weight added to the outrage. So far, there has been a severe under-reaction on the Epstein case simply because I think a lot of people either can't or don't want to understand the scale of it all. I mean, Epstein was a very bad dude, but I personally don't think he was the worst. I think there's far worse out there. I don't even think his network was the biggest. I think the reason he got rolled up is because a competitor got a hold of it and started to chip away at his own network. So, it would be wise to operate off of the assumption that there are very big and bad fish out there that we have got to do something about. I mean, think about Epstein's network like a big Fortune 500 company, right? I mean, when Enron went under, all the dudes who worked for Enron at the like the middle management and you know, lower levels, they went on to work for other companies, right? So, the same thing happened with Epstein's network. Yeah, you may get the head of the snake. You may get Epstein and Maxwell and a few others at the very top, but the middle managers, the dudes who facilitated all the stuff and the low people on the totem pole, all those people escaped and got away along with all the the big whales and the big fish out there that were the clients. So, we've clearly got our work cut out for us, which is why you might see a lot of hesitancy to prevent the Epstein files from being released. I mean, they're not just trying to cover up past crimes, they're trying to cover up current operations. At least that's my own opinion and right now opinions don't matter a whole lot in a court of law. So, we've got to be able to prove a lot of this stuff with data. Like we all know what was happening with the Epstein network. We all know who was running it. We all know who was behind it. Okay, maybe not all of us, but some of us know. But in terms of actually getting some traction and shutting these networks down, we've got to have a lot more data. We've got to have a lot more to go off of. We have to have an overwhelming burden of evidence here and that's going to take a lot more than just some guy with a comically large microphone on a podcast yapping about it. It is very clear that Epstein did not traffic people to nobody. He trafficked people to somebody. And those somebodies met those kids at a geographic point on Earth. And that, dear friends, I can plot on a map. Knowledge is half the battle and we don't just need to know names, but we also need to know places. Again, knowledge is half the battle and I don't want to be too biased here. I know this is quite self-serving cuz I work on a lot of map stuff, but the reason I do that is because I really do think it helps to visualize where these things are taking place. But anyway, enough about Epstein. More information's going to come in time. The goal right now is to add some method to the madness and not get caught up in the whirlwind of gotcha journalism on this sort of thing. These people aren't going anywhere. They are quite proud and very smug with the fact that they got away with it. They don't really care that their names are in the files, right? Well, we'll see about that in due time, but for now a lot of long nights crunching numbers are ahead, and that's what I'm going to work on at the moment as safely as I can. Moving down to the Southwest for this week, I wanted to briefly touch on what happened in El Paso a few days ago because this was kind of an interesting item of note that came about a few days ago, which has brought about a lot of rumor and speculation regarding what in the Sam Hill actually happened. And here's what we know so far. Just before midnight on February 10th, a series of two airspace closures went into effect in El Paso, one of which was centered on the El Paso Airport and grounded all of the aircraft at the airport for some time. This, of course, freaked a lot of people out because shutting down one of the most heavily trafficked airports in the United States for 10 days is not something that is done lightly or on a whim. The complete lack of notice whatsoever also adds to the seriousness of this event. When the NOTAM dropped, routine flight operations were being carried out, and there were even aircraft on the taxiways preparing to take off with the air traffic control personnel being just as confused as everybody else when the airspace closure went into effect. For about 7 hours or so, rumors were the only things flying during the ground stop, and speculation still abounds regarding what this was all about. After a few hours uh shortly before sunrise, the White House officials stated that this airspace closure was implemented due to cartel drones breaching US airspace and presenting a threat to aircraft in El Paso. But beyond this vague explanation, not much else is known with reasonable certainty. It's certainly possible that this is the truth. However, cartel drones have come over the US border like daily for the past, I don't know, 10 years or so. However, if this was a cartel drone or a swarm of cartel drones trying to smuggle drugs over the border or cause some kind of mayhem at the airport, which is a kind of a long way from the border, but anyway, if that's what it was, then clearly it's something that was different from the nightly drone flights that are usually picked up every single day along the border. So, clearly it was an anomaly of some kind and I very highly doubt we'll ever know what it is. Now, once daylight broke and everybody was trying to figure out what had actually happened that night, another potential theory came out, which I'll I'll mention even though it's completely unsubstantiated rumor, but I'll mention it just in the context of wider situational awareness. So, some politicians and other officials, which have leaked this to the media, they've made the claim that nothing actually happened the other night, but this is actually the result of a personal vendetta by FAA Director Brian Bedford, who was upset that the US military was testing a laser-based directed energy weapon for shooting down drones at Fort Bliss last week and they were doing that without telling the FAA about it. All of this is kind of coming out now. It wasn't really talked about that much in the media when it actually happened, but last week the US Army downed you know, they shot down what they thought was a drone. Turned out to actually be a party balloon from Fort Bliss and when they did it, they didn't actually tell the FAA about it. So, again, this is all rumor, but this would explain what might have happened. The FAA personally intervened to drop a NOTAM on top of El Paso solely to piss everybody off and hold the El Paso airport hostage and thereby drawing attention to his personal gripe about coordinating with the military. Anybody who's ever worked in government knows that this is a possibility. After last week's laser weapon use, the FAA probably made the passive-aggressive decision to drop a blanket NOTAM on El Paso the next time a drone was spotted, which took place a couple of nights ago. So, if this is what happened, it would be the most embarrassing, yet least surprising outcome. But, again, this possibility is solely based on the whispers of journalists and not any real concrete data. So, there are probably many details that are false. Another theory, which has gotten some level of traction on the internet, is especially amongst the, you know, quieter communities out there, is that this was actually not really a drone, but maybe something else. El Paso, specifically, has been ground zero for a lot of new and developing cartel tactics and activity due to Juarez being a major port of entry. And El Paso was at the center of the concerns of smuggled MANPADS 2 years ago, a case which faded into obscurity with nothing more than assurances being made via the telephone game of, "Well, I just heard that got resolved." Which is why a lot of people are theorizing that this was about MANPADS instead of drones. For the record, I don't think this was about MANPADS. I think if it was, the NOTAMs would have been a lot larger, I think. Plus, there are a few other things I would have expected to have seen. I know a lot of people are bringing up this MANPAD theory because the format of the NOTAM made many people think, myself included, that the NOTAM was trigger-based. As in, something got detected on some mystical system the US government has, and this NOTAM was either issued automatically without a human involved in the process, or somebody hit that big red button on the wall to shut everything down while they were figuring out what was going on. This part of the theory is quite accurate, I think. The format of the text NOTAM was non-standard and very quickly typed out. None of the usual national security airspace verbage was put in there. It was It was basically just a hand-typed very short notice. The fact that this notice did not have any deconfliction information, no frequencies to contact, or any exceptions for medical aircraft is a strong indicator that this was a custom NOTAM built for something, and was probably triggered upon a certain event happening. Now, was this event a handful of cartel drones, or a man pad or was it just a personality spat between Fort Bliss and the FAA? That I don't know and I don't think the public will ever know with any certainty. So, something to keep an eye on, especially since the other NOTAM, the trapezoid-shaped one to the west of the city, that one's still active and it's going to be active for a while. So, most certainly something to keep an eye on, especially as the situation around the country gets hot and stays hot. So, that pretty much wraps us up for this week. I've run out of time today. I wanted to talk about more about you guys know how it is. I've been troubleshooting a lot of things that I've been working on over the past couple of weeks and there are just not enough hours in the day anymore to do all the things I want to do, but but that's okay. Some weeks are like that. I know the past couple of weeks have been a random assortment of world events, but that's the way it goes sometimes. So, wrapping things up with the Ghost Net Reports for this week, it was a good net all around. This week I switched up things and chose a web SDR located out in the middle of the country to try to pick up different stations exchanging information on the airwaves this week. And I got a few here and there, but not as many as I usually get on the East Coast. So, that's just the way that it works sometimes. Some of the more remote areas of the US have web SDRs and not a whole lot of people live there. So, you're not going to get a whole lot of messages. The range on HF radio is always farther than you think, but it's never far enough, is it? So, sometimes that kind of gets in the way of things, especially if you're out in the middle of nowhere like middle of the Dakotas or something like that trying to get on HF radio. You might need to choose a different frequency and different antenna arrangement, but all in all the work continues on and boy, do we have a lot of work ahead. So, let's get after it and do the best that we can. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you again everyone for sticking around and we'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is a special topical intelligence update for the seemingly imminent ukrainian war for friday the 21st of january 2022. as always this brief is being recorded the day prior on the 20th of january let's start by covering some international events that have taken place in europe over the past 24 to 48 hours the larger one that actually occurred a couple of weeks ago but is rapidly becoming more of a pressing issue is the submarine cable that has been cut between the mainland of norway and the svalbard archipelago so for those of you who don't understand what the significance of this is 99 of all communications on planet earth take place uh over undersea cables quite literally very large cables that are strung between nations between continents that actually carry information these cables serve as a vital link of information from country to country and serve as really a basis for the internet as we know it we can't really send information from one place to another quickly via wireless methods such as satellites so we have to rely on these what are essentially bottlenecks in the form of submarine or undersea cables and just a couple of weeks ago norway found out that one of their cables between the mainland of norway and the svalbard archipelago was cut this cable was of somewhat military nature it was really for their satellite communications network for their space program and things like that but i'm sure it also had a military use they used this cable to send and receive information from that massive satellite communications facility now i should mention this in the context of the ukrainian conflict because this is a very significant event russia since the end of the cold war has really looked at different ways of asserting power and dominance over the western world as one might expect in a post-nuclear age meaning that russia has nukes the united states has nukes were set on the nuclear front but russia has spent a very large part of their military their naval budget to create a special directorate which is meant to map and tap and destroy undersea cables this is evidenced by their really their naval efforts and their submarine technologies over the past a few decades but re as of late we're starting to see a lot more of this technology come into the open and russia has made it a significant part of their naval mission to conduct intelligence operations on a lot of these cables that are on the sea floor either quite literally sending a little mini submarine down from a larger submarine to grab on with little mechanical arms to grab onto these cables and quite literally drill into them to try to tap the information so there's an intelligence gathering thing russia also recognizing that the majority of internet traffic goes through these cables in a wartime setting their mission would be to not just to tap these cables to try to get the information that's in them but all but try to destroy the cables effectively decapitating most military communications and civilian communications without ever firing a shot this is a big deal for europe as well as the rest of the world the united states as well russia themselves do not have a very large uh need for submarine cables for undersea cables because russia is of course the largest nation on the planet they span what 12 time zones or something like that so they have a large land mass with which to send and receive information from one side of their empire to another and almost all of russia's allies border russia themselves so it's quite an easy a little bit easier for russia to have a solid communications infrastructure whereas the united states europe the united kingdom places like that have to rely on these undersea cables to maintain communications so the reason that this submarine cable being cut is a big deal is that um we don't know if this has ever happened before we know that the russians have we've got pretty solid concrete evidence that the russians have successfully or at least tried to tap undersea cables before we've got evidence of that that's become public knowledge lately we know that they map things we know they practice trying to set explosives on these cables to sever them but we don't know if they've i can't personally think of any ins if any case where a cable has actually been severed intentionally and a norwegian shipping or rather a cable laying company who of course once again once this cable was cut they sent a repair team out that repair team discovered that it had been very deliberately cut so we here in our very very limited uh intelligence picture of the geopolitical sphere right we think that this is probably a warning to europe essentially russia saying hey don't mess with us in ukraine let us do what we got to do in ukraine and we won't cut any more of your cables this sounds very much like something putin would do it sounds very much like the senior military leadership like lavrov would say this sounds very much like russian doctrine at this point but again this is very much speculation but i did want to bring this up because a submarine cable and undersea cable being cut is a very very significant event that we need to pay attention to the other big bit of news has been the significant russian naval activity over the past 24 to 48 hours a large flotilla of russian landing craft and amphibious assault ships has left port in the baltic sea with the destination unknown technically but presumably the black sea so far the ships are as follows the minsk the kaliningrad the korolev the olenagors goroniek the georgie hobodonazets and the peter morgan of have left port and are again like i mentioned presumably headed to the black sea the first three ships make up the bulk of the baltic sea fleet when it comes to their amphibious assault craft and the other three ships are much older craft but still capable that are on loan from the north sea fleet moving on to sweden this is something that might be unrelated but it might also be a very significant again threat to the rest of europe is that sweden has observed several significant unmanned aerial vehicles in the vicinity of several of their nuclear power plants as of the past day or so this is something that is currently being currently being investigated no one's really quite sure what's going on but again with all of this significant military activity within europe it's really something that that should be noted additionally the three nations of estonia latvia lithuania have been offering weapons to ukraine they just need to get through their various political systems to you know sign the sign the bottom line to make sure that happens again lithuania latvia and estonia uh coming to ukraine's aid in the form of military shipments they're probably not going to be able to offer very much but a lot of european nations are stepping up to supply ukraine with military arms if they cannot provide troops for their defense on the opposite side of the spectrum germany has refused all aid to ukraine they're not giving them any weapons whatsoever and it's very much a germany has slammed the door in ukraine's face when it comes to military equipment uh also relations between poland and ukraine are not super great right now uh historically uh poland and ukraine have not really gotten along so well uh as one might expect due to the fallout from the the cold war and that you know decades of of back and forth on that but recently as in the past couple of days there has been a significant uh significant problem on the border with regards to rail logistics so both poland and ukraine have been trading accusations at each other over this poland states that or accuses ukraine of stopping all train traffic uh rail traffic from ukraine into poland all trade what's uh shutting it all down um and that hurting the polish economy well the ukraine has stated that poland has not abided by their agreements when it comes to trade and things like that so it's really hard to tell who started this but there's a little bit of a spat when it comes to rail logistics between poland and ukraine now this matters because poland's got to be sweating right now i'm sure that their military forces have deployed uh quietly a lot of uh troops to the ukrainian border because essentially if russia invades ukraine depending on how far russia goes uh poland might be the last the last bastion ukraine is definitely the only thing keeping russia off poland's border and that's got to be upsetting poland quite a bit likewise rail problems if there are rail logistical problems if ukraine has stopped shipments into you into poland if that is true that means that the rail logistics are undergoing some kind of uh upset right and this is going to be a huge problem for anyone trying to egress from ukraine you know during this war that's you know many people ourselves included think is about to break out so for those people who are in ukraine and think oh well i'll just hop on a train to poland well you might not be able to because of the railway congestion due to this little diplomatic spat between the countries so again this that might be a remote possibility don't really know but again logistics is one of those things that people often forget or discount in times of conflict and this could be a very big problem in the future i also wanted to touch on kazakhstan for a minute the russian deployment to kazakhstan has come to an end and the airborne troops that took part in that are now being relocated either around russia or into belarus or places like that for those of you who weren't following the kazakhstan event it was basically over as soon as it started there was a small coup that occurred in kazakhstan the the dictator was attempted to be overthrown by a smaller contingent of politicians and and things like that and the the coup was put down with the aid of russian airborne troops and other forces that that came to kazakhstan's aid to help quell that rebellion kazakhstan's had a dictator style relationship in the political sphere in kazakhstan for a while now so it's not surprising but this for sure did one of two things for russia one it allowed their airborne troops to again get one last little training exercise with live rounds if you know what i mean uh for airborne operations but it also uh maybe pushed back the timeline that russia had for uh invading ukraine if that is in fact what they're going to do yeah the airborne units the russian airborne is going to be very very much needed when it comes to securing key um key locations like airfields as well as the assault for uh kiev here in a minute so that's really all i've got for significant events outside of ukraine let's go ahead and take a look at some reference material that we're going to need to know uh when this conflict kicks off and that is the composition of the standard russian battalion tactical group the btg concept was created much for the same reasons that the united states bct or brigade combat team was created for regional conflicts around the world russia has historically not been super great when it comes to expeditionary things so unlike the united states military whose main goal has been expeditionary ventures russia has really not structured their military around that so much but we can talk more about russian military doctrine later really what i wanted to focus on is some terms and graphics for specifically the btg because the btg is what we're going to be talking about a lot this is the main style of unit that is being used in that has been used and will continue to be used in ukraine if this conflict gets any more kinetic than it already has so let's go over what exactly a btg is and what kinds of units uh subunits are inside one right so symbology for a battalion tactical group btg it's a smaller style unit it's not really the upper echelons and organizational structure for btgs is very interesting russia likes to use these btgs in very small areas independent of one another so rather than deploying entire regiments or cores or armies around russia they prefer to cherry-pick btgs from all over the russian federation and send them to a specific area to work together so it's more of a it's i i don't really know how to describe it other than maybe it's a little bit more autonomous than the traditional uh russian style of command structure but essentially this is supposed to be the swiss army knife of russian military units so within a battalion tactical group within it within a btg the main meat and potatoes is the motor rifle company in other words mechanized infantry so one motor rifle company consists of usually two motor rifle platoons and a weapons platoon now the weapons platoon can of course be anything from heavy weapons to some kind of towed weaponry that we can get into a minute this can vary quite a bit right um but usually usually this is the basic uh composition and there are usually three of these motor rifle companies per btg up next is artillery so this is a very significant part of the battalion tactical group they not only have their mechanized infantry but they also have artillery on board to handle any kind of support actions for those infantry and this is a very significant part most russian artillery is in the form of rocket artillery but the btgs have been observed to be using 122 millimeter self-propelled howitzers as their main force for btgs again like i mentioned this can be swapped out so we can have a lot of mrls or multiple rocket launcher systems being used in in lieu of the normal howitzers that we might see but for the most part again this is the basic complement within the artillery battery there's also a specific mortar platoon and then also again a couple of platoons of towed guns now again in the russian military doctrine they have a very long history with sort of anti-tank guns and towed guns and things like that these can be mounted so we might see some kind of track based guns we might see the normal toad guns towed behind like a normal truck usually the russians like to have these in uh direct fire mode so we're talking like um anti-tank uh guns that are being used in direct fire mode in an anti-tank role but these also can function uh in an indirect fire roll so uh for engaging targets uh at a longer distance up next we have various uh different kinds of platoons that kind of fall underneath the the structure and they can go wherever they're needed first up is recon so again the one of the downsides of the btg is that it doesn't really have the ability to project power beyond its own footprint so much but they do have a very small reconnaissance effort organic to the btg so that's interesting also they have an asg 17 platoon typically for those that don't understand what that is that's typically like a an automatic grenade launcher platoon similar to the u.s mark 19. also russians again have a very long history of using flame projection platoons usually these are uh rocket based or rocket propelled flame throwers some some weaponry that is again unique to the russian russian military doctrine we don't really tend to use that so much in the u.s doctrine anymore but again the russians do use that and again they also have a specific the russian doctrine calls it a machine gun platoon but think of this as your weapons platoon again uh just taking into account various different kinds of weaponry that can either be dismounted or mounted so again these guys all kind of work together they're not really going to be operating so much as an independent platoon for different things and then finally a very small ada detachment we're talking maybe a couple of dudes with uh with some sa7s so some man pads just for localized very short range air defense and then finally we have various support functions we have signals supply engineers maintainers and medical so again just like a very very much similar to a western style structure uh with regards to the support functions so that is the basic structure of the battalion tactical group as used by russia in the you know recent times like i mentioned again this can vary so much this will vary widely when it comes to support units and what other units are going to be working in conjunction with various btgs to accomplish their mission some btgs will get an extra grodd style mrls system we might see you know trench diggers being used we've already seen pictures of those being attached to various btgs we might even see a btg get thrown in with an electronic warfare outfit or or a very large high level a high altitude sam site or even maybe a ballistic missile site so sometimes this can this can vary so much that you can't even really discern the original uh the original btg so just keep that in mind when we're talking about these kinds of units this is kind of the baseline that we're working with all right so jumping to the map to show a kind of overall projection of the russian forces that are currently deployed now i feel the need as many intel analysts uh do feel sometimes to put a lot of caveats on what i'm about to show because uh this is very very significant if this is in fact true uh the units that i'm about to show are from ukrainian estimates that are as of november but i'll show you the product they came from here in just a second but these ukrainian estimates look something like this now for those of you who are familiar with military structures and the operational terms and graphics this slide should make you slightly queasy because that's a lot of men that is an extremely large amount of forces that are spread all the way around ukraine now again i do want to kind of caveat again that much of that comes from this particular slide that has been widely circulated by um your average ocean analyst to your mainstream media alike this slide was taken from a larger series of slides from the ukrainian government as of last november and it's a combination of actual units and projected units so this is kind of this might be a little bit misleading because we can't actually sit here and independently verify that all of these armies and and brigades and divisions are where they are right we can't verify that so this is of course again coming from the ukrainians now i should also mention that if there's anybody who has the motive to overestimate russia's you know forces that are on their border it would be ukraine right um because so so there is an element of well how much do you trust ukrainian intelligence and i don't know from my very very limited experience working in this kind of area and doing a lot of research from what i've been able to tell the ukrainian intelligence is pretty spot on and it's very close to what u.s intelligence estimates are so sorry i can't give you more than just a hey trust the ukrainian intelligence but but unfortunately our own internal estimates are actually quite a bit worse so this is what we have estimated being used in the theater within at least the next couple of weeks some of this is confirmed these units are confirmed to be in this locations other places other units are not so we'll get into this when we talk about actual when we go to each front here in just a minute but right now the official us government estimates that have been either leaked or intentionally released to the press are that roughly 60 btgs are right now on the border or are maneuvering to the border uh with ukraine either in belarus or you or russia proper now from what we've been able to tell that's a very low ball estimate we've seen ukrainian sources and a lot of other open source sources thinking that maybe that number is around 80. so we're talking maybe 60 to 80 btgs online right now now as far as what's the magic number a lot of people in the intel world think that the magic number is 100 so when russia gets about 100 btgs online and and ready to roll that's when they're going to start rolling across the countryside but again that's just speculation although a lot of this is just guess work when it comes to the a lot of the intel work that's being done by us and by others as well some of the big dog additions uh that the ukrainian slides and the ukrainian intelligence products have not had but we have observed being in the area roughly in these positions actually are the s 400 ada detachments and battalions now this is a big deal these are very high level very sophisticated surface-to-air missile systems and that's roughly where they're located but again we can talk more about that when we get into it a little bit later we also as of this morning we're able to confirm one uh bm27 oregon mrls battalion being in that area maybe a division i don't really know just yet but i guess we'll have to see and then also in addition to that we also have the russian government actually doing us a favor and confirming that they are sending 25 su-35 fighter aircraft and all related support equipment and vehicles to belarus in that deployment now it is important to note that russia and belarus have half-heartedly declared that they are simply conducting a training exercise that's the reason for all of this deployment and i say that that's a half-hearted defense because that excuse is almost certainly a joke honestly because most of the deployments that have been confirmed by local sources have not been anywhere near the declared training areas for this exercise right and most of the units that have been observed are not officially a part of these so-called exercises so it's kind of a farce to say that this is an exercise that's kind of a half-hearted attempt so the softball assessment is that of course russia and belarus are using this exercise as an excuse to get men and equipment closer and closer to the border without nato doing too much we're also hearing rumors via the social media accounts of russian soldiers that are actually being deployed for this that russia has left their conscripts behind so they will not be taking part in these quote unquote exercises right now this is a big deal because conscripts are a really large part of russian military doctrine russia a while back after the fallout soviet union wanted to go with a more volunteer they wanted to go with an all-volunteer army but that wasn't possible not enough people were volunteering for military service um because you know the russian military is kind of a um it's a very tough organization i should say that and uh it's not very popular people didn't really want to join it so russia has kind of had to go with this hybrid hybrid sphere of uh having volunteers uh run a lot of the more sophisticated equipment and be in more of the elite units whereas conscripts being deployed as basically um just support roles and things like that now you'd think that it would be the other way around you'd think that the conscripts would be basically cannon fodder well that's not that's not the way it's worked out because the political leadership in russia vladimir putin specifically has been very hyper attentive to this to make sure that the russian people the russian public doesn't they they really the russian public really does not like it when conscripts get killed in action so it looks much better in the papers if if you know any combat deaths that are seen are from volunteers so that's something that the russian government has most certainly been hyper attentive too but again they've left their conscripts behind for this deployment which points even more to this not being a training exercise because if it was a training exercise you'd bring your conscripts along but you don't want your conscripts to get killed in any frontline fighting because that just brings morale down within russia all right so let's talk scheme of maneuver for a bit uh the general theory of maneuver is going to be as follows most and and this is not our assessment this is really just a culmination of assessments from a lot of different organizations and people who have been talking about ukraine for a very long time there are a lot of assumptions being made about the russian way of war and what's going to be done and whatnot i'm just going to give you the very broad brush strokes of of what is roughly the theory as to what's going to happen most people think that there's going to be a northern and southern push along several fronts so and this this can happen in different orders but most likely we're going to see a push from the east to the deneba river really early on in conjunction with a push from the south up through crimea we're also expecting a push from the north through kharkiv all the way down and also a concerted push for kiev additionally forces uh stationed in moldova in the essentially what's a russian puppet state they can provide supporting roles that can provide locations for staging uh things like radar and electronic warfare and stuff like that we're not really going to see too many troops being deployed from moldova or too many russian troops being staged there but this will be yet another front that the ukrainians will have to fight on if it comes to that my guess is they're probably going to hold off on using moldova as a base until they see how the rest of this goes additionally from the from the northwest we're going to see most likely a lot of airborne units being staged in belarus for taking out or securing various targets again airborne's mission especially the russian concept is to land in areas without transiting over the land right so parachute down into areas to hold and secure a specific objective until the land forces can come and and support that role as well so we might see airborne units being used all over ukraine to secure various airfields there's a lot of airfields in the west that are still being used so we might see that occur as a way to prevent the ukrainian air force what's left of it from ever getting off the ground in the first place we're also going to see significant dominance in the form of aerial superiority being used to blanket ukraine to make sure that not even a paper airplane gets off the ground so moving down to the specific eastern front as we see it right now this is the incursion zone this is uh where the invasion has already occurred like i mentioned donetsk the donbass area luhansk really is where the front line is you can see that red line that shows where the current front line is as of well right now now we have uh ew platforms being templated again i should mention this is all speculative we don't really know where these ew units are but it will be fairly easy to find them because the russians have been very very very instrumental in developing the field of electronic warfare the russians have put a lot of time and effort into developing out their electronic warfare capabilities and using that in war and we have seen ew units very large significant ew units being used in years past roughly where these units are templated now so we're just going to assume that they're there for now and once we get a better location for it we'll update you there as far as other units goes we don't really have any specific locations just yet but again we'll update you on that moving down to the crimean front the southern front this is of course where the crimean again the crimean incursion slash invasion has already occurred now let's talk amphibious stuff for a minute now the six ships that are inbound from the baltic and slash north north sea fleets they are most likely a lot of people are thinking that odessa is going to be a major target odessa is a major port town significant um significant cargo offloading capacity in odessa it will be a great place for an amphibious landing somewhere around there so that they can use those amphibious troops to hold the city for the crimean uh soldiers to come across and uh take that as well uh and support that so i i don't know if that's going to be the goal i think that it's it's kind of who knows this might be all trickery we might see them being dropped up uh in the aids of uplands you never really know until it happens i suppose remember the russians are masters of of military deception they call it maskarovka right so they like the chinese are very instrumental in the field of military deception the russians are as well once we get a better idea of where the the ships are going to be located we'll template them there um they're not obviously they're not there yet they're not in the black sea yet they just passed through the english channel this morning so again we'll we'll figure that out once once uh once we figure out where they're going they might stop at sylvester poll uh in crimea and unload some troops we don't really know if they've troops have been unloaded already it would be kind of an unpleasant journey if these guys were already loaded on board and they're you know sailing halfway around the world just to get to this location but i guess we'll see how that how that works out in either case we'll have pictures of these guys going through the turkish straits to get up to the black sea anyway moving up to the northeastern front we don't really have too much templated just yet this is kind of a blank map we'll have to wait and see where these units actually pop up but i can tell you that most of the staging activity that we have seen either people recording videos of trains unloading or offloading or or stuff like that that's in going to be in bryansk so that's where a significant portion of troops are being staged presumably for the northern thrust for kiev and sidestepping a little bit to cover the belarussian border this is the northwestern front like i mentioned significant more intelligence on this front so far because we've been able to just pick up a lot more uh information from bilateral media so the first big addition is really the first mrls unit that we have seen move really close to the border really there's somewhere in the gomella region we haven't been able to specifically geo-locate them down to a specific lat long yet but we were able to identify them as the 165th artillery brigade so that's the that's the flash that we'll use on them for now there's also at least one uh btg in the town of yeltzk belarus a local tv station actually went out and interviewed the guys so um we'll have to follow back up on that but that is very very close uh to the ukrainian border so that's all we have for the fronts this time we'll continue using this format depending on how things go again this may all be a farce we might just be fooled again and russia decides to pull out and not launch the invasion this time due to the uh weather who knows but i whatever happens we'll uh we'll let you know what goes on so again thank you for tuning in and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today i wanted to offer a quick update on the situation in afghanistan as we see it uh right now obviously the situation is very fluid things are changing by the minute so chances are by the time this video even gets out things will have changed quite significantly most likely however i did want to throw together some slides really quickly and show what the situation is on the ground from a strategic level all the way down to what is happening on the ground level as best we can now some things we cannot talk about but we will do the best that we can to get the information out there for those of you who have not been following what's going on so let's start right with the top right at the strategic level with the political situation so as one might expect the situation has gotten quite intense in the white house as over the past few days the situation is not good clearly and a lot of american people are looking to the white house the the voice of international diplomacy for the united states for some sort of guidance or or any re uh any leadership really and that's not really happening at the moment so there's a lot of internal conflict right now within the united states political system which is compounding things overseas particularly when we get to what units are actually going or actually being allowed to do on the ground as well also as of a couple of days ago it's it's come out it's become public knowledge that the state department is charging uh or planning to charge uh american citizens up to two thousand dollars per person to be evacuated from the country um now this is not a new policy this has been around for a very long time uh but it looks bad it looks very very very bad because americans are now asking wait a minute where's our tax money going uh you're freely flying in you know immigrants from the u.s southern border and they're not you're not charging them a dime but you're charging american citizens uh who are over there at the behest of the us government uh you're charging them uh money to you know ex-fill them from the situation it doesn't really look good and again points the internal conflict of the united states government also we're having international concerns as well china has openly and directly threatened taiwan with an invasion due to the u.s quote unquote abandoning china which is or sorry abandoning afghanistan which is china's words whether or not that's true remains to be seen most likely this is just political you know word play and things like that it's just posturing is really good at taking advantage of a weakness in the united states to make themselves stronger so this was to be expected and it's i would not necessarily classify it as a a serious threat at this time however i would fully expect to see a lot of chinese aircraft to uh fly into taiwan's air defense zone which is usually usually is what china does in situations like this so be on the lookout for that it doesn't mean the war is going to kick off between you know taiwan and china any day now but it does mean that the situation is tense this afghanistan situation reaches far beyond the borders of that beleaguered nation as we're finding out right now also pointing to the uh the recent um woes within the united states military these are coming to a head right now general milley has claimed he he is going with the i nobody told me i didn't know excuse uh which is a basically he is saying that there's no way that any of us knew that the the uh afghan national army and the afghan government would collapse as quick as it did and this is an absolute and complete lie every anyone who has ever been to afghanistan knows that this is a complete bs and many many many many many documents are coming out right now that confirm what literally every human being on the planet knew which was that the a a was incapable of even basic defense against against the taliban so there you go politicians in uniform aka our senior united states military leadership getting caught up in their own words yet again is coming to coming to fruition and also getting into the lower level stuff uh the taliban has already begun breaking their promises um the general attitude in the beginning a few days ago when this all started the general attitude was that it kind of makes no sense for the taliban to attack americans now um the u.s is leaving with its tail between its legs and in a very dishonorable fashion and the faster the that the taliban can facilitate that movement the better um remember the taliban are are patient like these guys have waited decades and they are very very patient so they can wait a couple more weeks um before they you know start their bloodshed throughout the country again but that patience is running out in a lot of areas all right so moving on to more afghanistan specific information as i mentioned the situation is rapidly deteriorating with every day that goes by some people might have noticed that the situation has kind of stabilized just a little bit with the addition of thousands of us troops on the ground at hki the airport there in kabul but there are still tens of thousands of americans stranded throughout the country uh not just in kabul but in other places uh throughout the country which have completely and totally fallen to the taliban really the only places uh that right now that are not being held by the taliban are the actual airport in kabul and some more tribal regions up in the north where the northern alliance has uh they've gotten started again uh so the boys are back in town when it comes to the old northern alliance but we'll see how that goes when it comes to the airlift the evacuees have been the traditional process is that when the aircraft takes off right those pictures that we're seeing with all the afghans on it that are leaving afghanistan they're not coming directly to the united states no they're they're going to qatar or qatar however you want to say it um that's where they're being evacuated to uh for uh more in processing well there's only a certain amount of capacity there on u.s bases so other us bases are having to be opened up throughout the throughout the region to uh house house these you know thousands of people that we're trying to get out but you know spaces space is running out um capacity is uh is filling up and yeah so that's going to be a pressing issue over the next next few weeks at least also is the rather shameful reports we're seeing from u.s forces not being allowed or the united states as a whole is is refusing to leave the wire that's the kind of headlines that are getting out there uh all of the other nations that are taking part in these airlifts out of kabul they're running rescue missions like ever like several an hour right they're running rescue missions 24 7 all over the city to get people out of safe houses and get people out of out of harm's way and back to the airport to get out well the united states is not doing that in uh any significant numbers now we do have uh confirmation that a lot of um secret squirrel stuff is going on um and so we can't talk more about that so that we don't want to endanger any lives on the ground there but suffice it to say uh pictures uh tell tell a thousand words and videos even more so and uh u.s forces uh have not been utilized to their fullest potential despite the fact that we have a lot of motivated uh young men on the ground there that are willing ready willing and able to go complete the mission they are not being allowed to by their superior officers which is um a lot of adjectives but disappointing among the most and then finally we're also running into logistics issues a lot of people have started raising the issue of where the aircraft getting re refueled at this is the large one of the largest air air lifts of modern history and uh these aircraft are thirsty and they're not they're not having the fuel capacity and when it comes to military logistics this is being handled so this is not a crisis at this point i would say however logistics always add a level of complexity to an already emergency situation so that is yet another way that this situation is deteriorating logistically it's it is a nightmare and also this airlift could take weeks uh at the current rate we can do the math and we've looked at the satellite imagery and we can count pretty well uh here and at the current rate the the airlift of not just uh american citizens but all the afghans as well is say say that we're only just going to take the people inside the airport uh that could take weeks based on the number of aircraft we have and the number of aircraft that other nations have contributed uh that could take a very long time so this is uh this is not uh this is not something that is going to be solved overnight this is a situation that is going to take weeks possibly at best and that is not a that is not including um or considering any rescue missions that would require aircraft to fly around the country afghanistan's a pretty big country and helicopters don't have the range to just fly from one side of it to the other they've got to refuel somewhere so there you go you know logistics again very very important so let's take a look at what's actually going on on the ground outside the airport right now as best we know it okay so here's the situation on the ground in the vicinity of the airport as best we know it this is the general perimeter of hamid karzai international airport known colloquially as hcaya the northern part of the base or airport is under military control that's where the united states is setting up their stuff and uh to the south is the civilian side is under civilian control uh traditionally so normally when the afghan war was going on military dudes are on the north side civilians are on the south side it's kind of a crap shoot right now as to who's where but most civilians that are inside the airport perimeter are being held on the south side so that we can more efficiently load them via the normal pax terminals there the main road into the airport is conveniently called airport road and this leads to the main entry control point or ecp now this is where you're seeing most of those videos come from the video that's going around is kind of viral where the the taliban are firing into the crowd that occurred right there um a lot of the the pictures and videos coming off of of american soldiers helping people over t walls and things like that that is there at that main ecp um so yeah that's where most your content is coming from if you're seeing a video chances are it's from there uh also most afghans are coordinated or at least stacked along airport road along the main stretch into that main ecp and also along the road to the west as the road continues west around the airport this is where a significant number of afghans are gathered this is where we're seeing the the videos of people climbing over t walls the wall there along that western portion is very tall so it's hard for people to get over but yeah it's still where a lot of people are are gathered trying to get into the airport all right so moving on to friendly composition and disposition so we cannot and will not talk about the friendly disposition at this time for opsec reasons but we can give a rundown of the current composition of friendly u.s forces so uh right now we're seeing on the ground being confirmed by the us government is the first battalion eighth marines uh second battalion first marines first battalion of the 194th field artillery which is from the iowa army national guard as well as elements from the 82nd airborne which are kind of scattered throughout theater at this point as far as we know also there are other various units that are there we cannot confirm or deny that they're there the us government cannot confirm or deny it there but we've got videos of these guys being there on the ground so there you go also left out from the slide are uh various special forces teams from other like non-phi by nations that are scattered scattered throughout the whole place so it's just too many icons there's too many people on the ground there to kind of track them all and most of these guys are out in the city as well so there you go now as far as enemy disposition as one can probably guess by now the entire city has fallen to the taliban who control virtually every part of the city particularly among along major roads which are easier to traverse for with their equipment that they've captured so significant numbers of enemy forces throughout the entirety of the city surrounding the airport on pretty much all sides also we're seeing significant amounts of taliban activity roving roving patrols of of lightly armed but still decently heavily armed considering most civilians are unarmed arms taliban patrols along airport road to the west there and also along the main stretch which are looking for any sort of opportunity to take i guess is the best way to put it for youtube censorship i guess also there are checkpoints that we have been able to confirm via social media videos um we don't really know exactly where these are at but we do know that one is at least out in front of or across the street from the interior ministry which has been taken over by the the taliban and is now serving as sort of a government building for them for their uh for their government uh so yeah taliban checkpoints pop-up checkpoints these things happen everywhere it could be something as simple as just a dude stopping his vehicle in the middle of the road and boom he's now the checkpoint so as anybody who's been to afghanistan knows these these dudes are really good at setting up checkpoints um between a a checkpoints and in other places really really quickly to extort citizens they've been doing this for the past couple of decades and they're really good at it and those skills are coming to fruition right now especially considering a a is nowhere to be seen so that is the current situation outside the airport now looking at this image if we were to shift the uh focus a little bit to the south uh we're going to push south and show what's going on or sort of where things are at just give people an understanding of where things are at in the city uh the us embassy in the green zone are or the former former green zone are to the south so if we look if we shift the camera the the imagery down a little bit to the south we can see there's the main ecp there's that uh main airport road there of course taliban has maintained maintains control over most of the city and that's where the the former u.s embassy was located is now currently in taliban hands along with the presidential palace now along with all of that like these icons indicate these icons are not specific to anything but there are civilians everywhere uh there are also american citizens everywhere throughout the city it's not a small city by any by any means and it is very difficult to traverse this terrain with the taliban at every corner and on every uh every street so there you go that's a that's a about as good of a rundown as we can give in the short time that we have and hopefully this was helpful at knowing what is going on and where everything is at right now the things are subject to change we could put down each individual tile bench hook point that we know about and honestly it'll probably be gone or changed or moved or something like that so this is a good broad overview of very specific and tactical level situation so moving forward into what people can do about this if you are looking at this like we are here in the united states and you are feeling a lot of things about what's going on i just know that you're not alone the situation is very tough tough to watch tough for a lot of people people who've been there people who haven't been there people who are concerned about the state of humanity are are very upset about this right now and uh rightfully so but but we can do something about it um so if you're looking for ways to help or things that you can do to help with this unfortunately there's not very much you can do but you can absolutely call your representatives i know this is going to turn a lot of people off because a lot of people dislike their politicians right now but phone calls in america are practically free and it doesn't take a lot of time to get through to your local representative and at least leave a voicemail that some staffer or unpaid intern has to listen to and catalog that can at least maybe do something and it's very helpful i'll always make make sure to of course you know be as as calm and collect as you can be um the messages for representatives that are just shouting into a voicemail box don't tend to really get anywhere and uh you you tend to get on a list anyway so if you if you feel uh called to do something you can at least call your representatives and maybe just maybe enough pressure will uh will force some action on the united states political leadership maybe it's a long shot but hey it's it's worth some it's worth it's better than doing nothing at this point also if you happen to see any photographs or or stories of family members or or or people that are stuck on the ground that are trying to share their story to get out of the country um please unless you have specific knowledge and are weighing the the costs and and the the benefits of this of doing something like this please refrain from showing the faces or or retweeting or reblogging or sharing uh the faces of of any locals that might still be trapped there that might be targets for the taliban we do have confirmed reports that the taliban are watching social media like this and they are hunting these people down already so this is happening it might not be happening on a widespread scale just yet but just give it time remember if you put something on the internet it will be there forever uh the internet is forever and um that's something to consider especially if uh you might be trying to do some good but you might end up hurting someone in the process so please consider that moving forward as we go forward into this and third if you feel so so called to do so charity is is another option there are a lot of not genuine charities out there that will certainly try to exploit this situation so please be careful if you choose to go and contribute to a charitable organization that tries to help the situation out either helping refugees or helping afghans or helping interpreters or even helping u.s citizens that are stranded there there are a million charities for each of those so just please be mindful of the ones you choose and please please be aware that there are some there's some sharks out there that are trying to take advantage of this situation to make a quick dollar so please be mindful of that but that could also be an option if you if you are or know of a charity that is honorable um and is is doing good work so that's another option as well and fourth i know it's hard to hear these days but um and it doesn't sound like much but uh being kind to another human being really does go a long way especially in the world today there are a lot of bad things happening and uh just being kind to someone else is a uh is a good way to make sure that we've got good things still happening at least on some level so that could be very helpful as well and if you or anyone that you know personally is in need of help here is some contact information that can help you if you have you have different options based on your status so american citizens obviously have have higher priority for us government flights so there are a few things you can do if you're an american citizen there's always a step program that is absolutely a great thing granted yes it has become very much aware that the united states government is not willing to help its own citizens in afghanistan at this time but this step program will at least put your name in their database that says you are there and they're going to have to answer for why they didn't get you at some point in time also following the the u.s embassy in kabul on their social media and also the state department on social media helps as well they're pushing out a lot of updates um via via the internet and a lot of times if the internet is hard to load in afghanistan the internet is garbage there right like we all know this you might not be able to load a full website page but you probably could load twitter right so that could be very helpful as well also also make sure please to follow the other nations the united kingdom france and germany those embassies are helpful as well we have confirmed reports that the united kingdom france and germany are out in the city and they are they're putting in work and they're getting stuff done and they are picking up as far as we know this might not continue but we have reports that they are picking up people whoever they can um it doesn't matter if you are a citizen of their nations um despite what the united states is doing right now that uh you might actually have a good shot if the united states can't get you out the united kingdom might be able to get you out if you are an american of course no guarantees but hey at least we know that they're doing they're doing some good work number four kind of obvious and get to the airport as quickly as you can as fast as you can avoid the main roads don't travel alone we're seeing the taliban along that main airport road extorting citizens and even murdering people left and right despite what the western media is telling you uh the videos on social media that they cannot censor are uh are proving otherwise and there at the bottom of that column are some contact information we'll we'll put this information also in the description box below if it helps also if you or chances are if you're afghan you're probably not watching this video but if you know someone who is an afghan and they're having a hard time they have two options really that we know of the special immigrant visa the siv process this is something that has been a broken process for many many years now but there's the website for the paperwork and also if you're not eligible for the siv process you can apply for a p2 visa and there's the website for that paperwork as well that website is affiliated with the us department of state even though it's a dot org website so there you go i'm afraid we we can't help but so much but hopefully this has been at least somewhat helpful for for those that are trapped uh in a very bad situation so yeah hopefully this was helpful for everyone please please keep afghanistan in your thoughts moving forward and if even if you cannot do anything about the situation the best you can do is remember like i mentioned earlier there's there's a lot of bad stuff going on there's no doubt about that and we can rewrite the history books the the powers that be can uh can change that 24-hour news cycle to be something else and you know we can go on and eat ice cream another day right but some of us are never going to forget and that's sometimes that's all you can do so years from now when everyone else has forgotten about what's happening right now we can remember and sometimes that's enough so let's not forget what's happening here let's do what we can and uh let's continue moving forward as best we can through these tough times so thanks for watching everyone hopefully this was helpful and we'll see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so this is going to be a quick and dirty update uh for the 24th of february 2022 on the invasion of ukraine we are recording this at 0-100 juliet time which is eastern standard time and which is also the same as 0-800 bravo time which is ukraine's local time as usual most likely by the time this brief gets out things will have changed very drastically so as always take everything i'm about to say with a grain of salt because things could quite literally change in just a few minutes so let's get right to it i had planned to cover quite a lot of international events that have occurred in the past 24 hours we were right in the middle of actually finalizing a brief to push out because the invasion seemed quite imminent as it's already happening right now so what i'm going to do is not really talk about what has happened i'm going to talk about what is going to happen by the time most of you start watching this video so um by the morning of the 24th of february in the eastern time zones we fully expect a lot of things to happen roughly around the same time and that is really to to do with the financial markets uh right now we're already seeing specula speculative uh trading not looking super good so as one might expect invasion occurs markets crash right i don't know if it's going to be that magic c word the crash you know i don't know if it's going to be quantify or qualify as a crash but i would expect markets to dip quite significantly so pre-market trading has kind of indicated this already along with energy prices starting to skyrocket in various places around the world so just remember that if you see a lot of people you know spreading fear or you know the skies falling types of rhetoric in the financial sector on thursday morning uh just be advised this is to be expected uh no it's not good um russia openly declaring that they're invading another country and it's a full and total invasion it's you know it's not a minor incursion uh that's not good for markets obviously and um you know it's going to be a kind of a very turbulent time with that regard we're also seeing as anyone with two brain cells can see that cyber attacks will probably occur in various places around the world we've already seen over the past week a lot of mysterious unknown actor cyber attacks occur in places like germany and ukraine and you know obviously ukraine and other nations around the world even here in the united states we had amazon web services go down right for no apparent reason so uh stuff like that's probably going to happen i don't know if it's gonna be like extremely dire nobody really knows nobody can guess how bad this stuff's gonna be but i would venture a guess this is just my gut feeling is that we're going to see a lot of cyber style events because vladimir putin has very much signaled that he is not interested in any kind of nato actions he's not interested in considering what nato might do with regards to ukraine he's just saying you know screw it invade fully right we went from this is just a drill right four or five days ago to now we're invading and we're going to demilitarize ukraine so that's kind of a huge jump in rhetoric and um vladimir putin has pulled out all of the stops i don't think he has done anything this significant in a long time this is even more more open uh and more um more dedicated than the original invasion of ukraine which was done with a lot of secrecy while the world didn't really care about it but anyway i'm digressing on that too much as far as sanctions from the west or what the west is going to do over the next few days first of all i would rule out any kind of of military action the united states nor the rest of europe is going to get involved in this conflict we're just going to watch it on cnn like everybody else militarily that is so we we've done everything we possibly could as a nation at the nation level to let the world know that we are not going to uh militarily intervene in ukraine beyond of course the the special dudes who are going to do what they do no matter what um but as far as conventional stuff no we're out we're done we're just gonna watch this on tv for the most part as far as sanctions goes anybody with again any common sense can see that sanctions are kind of laughable at this point but the united nations might give it a half-hearted effort but again i would not expect any kind of significant sanctions europe and the united nations as a whole is far too dependent on russia and russia is far too determined russia's determination to take ukraine outweighs the united nations give a damn factor if that makes any sense so the united nations has long been kind of recognized as being a useless entity other than the occasional um you know political moves and things like that but really for the most part sanctions wise we're not going to see too much we might we're going to of course see we saw the other day nordstrom 2 be sort of canceled but my guess is that nordstrom 2 will miraculously and quietly begin the process of being certified again after a few months after things have cooled back down and ukraine doesn't exist anymore but i guess we'll have to see on that so again not too much coming from the west not too much is going to come from the west we'll probably see as we have already seen every nato navy vessel is going to be on high alert and checking out what the russians are doing every military unit in europe is most likely on high alert right now but other than that we're not really going to see too much at least that's what we think moving on to the naval updates i don't have too much for the north sea i'm gonna have to come back to this one later in the med similar situation other than to again say that pretty much every single naval vessel in europe is on a high alert right now so um again things like this kind of bring up those old skull old school cold war mentalities of hey look when everybody's on alert at the same time we have the potential we have the potential for accidents and accidents are very dangerous in a situation like this right accidents can start things and start events into motion that spin out of control very quickly so we have to be mindful that even though the united nations and nato and the united states is not really going to do too much we also have to remember that everybody's on pins and needles right now and the tiniest mistakes can have very long lasting effects so let's get to what everybody here wants to talk about and that is the combat actions that have taken place over the past few hours just a quick overview we are seeing uh combat actions occurring along all of the fronts including the moldova in front that didn't make it onto this slide but we just got the word in that explosions and and lots of combat actions are taking place in transnistria along that front as well so let's dive into each individual front and talk a little bit about each on the northeastern front a lot of the combat that has taken place over the past few hours has been in the vicinity of kharkiv we're assessing based on what open source information we can get which is very few and far between at this point that it looks like the russian russian forces were using vladimir putin's speech at 0-400 local time to conduct coordinated shaping fires along the entire front from kharkiv all the way down to the eastern front as well so we're seeing again russia use pretty standard military tactics of before you roll your armor into the into a nation before you begin your invasion uh you use your artillery in this case russia's rocket artillery to uh conduct what's called pre-shaping fires right or some other term that i forget right in order to take out things like air defense right air defense is very crucial if you're going to be using a lot of helicopters and bomber aircraft so take out the air defense take out military targets such as command and control air fields that you're not planning on using later things like that in order to make sure that if the ukrainian air force can get off the ground they probably can't land again so this is something that russia has been doing over the past few hours and they have been using an impressive amount of artillery the ukrainian government has also confirmed that russian troops have been confirmed to be on the ground across the ukrainian border and armored columns are advancing on the city of kharkiv so we'll see how this works out again by the time this video goes out karkiv might be in a state of siege we don't really know how this is going to work again i just want to let you know that as of right now russian forces are advancing on kharkiv along the eastern front we have seen fighting uh taking place uh for many days now as you can see here we've been building this slide out because this has been building on the eastern front at least for a couple of days now fighting renewed around 24 to 48 hours ago and really along the entire eastern front combat actions were undertaken shelling very heavily with you know conventional howitzers and things like that a few occasional garage strike here and there but as of right now we're starting to see russian forces advance on the city of marapol so ukrainians have been observed to be engaged in combat in moropol i don't know right now if it's within the city or if it's still in the outskirts of marapol of course the russian pro-russian sources are claiming that marple's already fallen don't know about that haven't seen anything from the ukrainian side and probably won't but we'll have to call that there's also rumors right now again i should stress rumors that there are amphibious landings occurring in marapol that has not been confirmed we'll talk about the other amphibious landings that have happened but marapol again would be a prime target for amphibious landings but again misinformation is is just really way out of control from all sides on this so it's really hard to get a beat on what's actually going on moving down south the proverbial first shots of the renewed ukrainian invasion occurred at kalanchak specifically the kalanchak outpost which was hit at zero four zero four there's a screenshot of the ukrainian security cam that was online that allegedly captured the the opening salvos of that attack but since then we've confirmed that russian troops have been moving north through the crimean peninsula there also i should mention here on this slide odessa has been confirmed over the past few minutes here the ukrainian government has confirmed that the essentially the entire ukrainian naval surface fleet has been destroyed in port in odessa and russian landing craft have made amphibious landings in the vicinity of odessa that's a big deal don't know where the where this occurred at uh we'll have to find out exactly where the landings occurred again don't know which ships uh took place in this landings i just put all of them here on the slide to kind of get everybody in the mindset of understanding how many landing craft russia has in this sort of theater and how many could be taking place in this amphibious landing so just to kind of give a rough idea but again we'll refine that once we know how many troops landed and where they landed at and what their goals are moving to the western front here in transnistria again not much to to know uh there have been confirmed to be lots and lots of air defense artillery firing lots of gunshots being heard by locals in transnistria don't really know what that's about don't know if this is an attack or it's one of those things where it's a fog of war thing people are shooting things off because they think they're under attack i i don't really know transistory is pretty remote even the areas where russian troops have been known to to occupy it's a pretty low population area so um it's really hard to say exactly what's going on but my guess is by the time the sun starts coming up in earnest over there we'll get a better idea as to what's going on but again there really aren't that many troops in transnistria um they're definitely well i shouldn't say definitely there have been observed in the past to be around 5 000 russian troops those estimates came down a few years ago even as of last year some analysts were thinking it's like maybe even less than a thousand obviously if russia was planning this from the very start they probably would have funneled in a lot of troops into transnistria if they considered that to be an inadequate front but my guess at this stage my gut instinct is that transistory is really just an alternative front to keep ukrainians busy potentially a good site for um air defense uh and surface-to-air missile capability to keep the ukrainian air force busy um that would make sense for russia to do but again hard to say this is all speculation with regards to the transit history at this time we'll know more in the morning though and finally up north kiev is most certainly on the menu when it comes to russian attacks here it seems like i mentioned before that the idea of a minor incursion is completely off the table we're now we're now talking total invasion here at least that's what it seems based on vladimir putin's own rhetoric as of the past few hours and the fact that troops uh russian troops are now advancing through the chernobyl exclusion zone uh it is unclear as to if the chernobyl exclusion the chernobyl um you know power plant itself uh the historically you know relevant location that that is it is unclear as to if any combat has been you know taking place there because there are a lot of things in chernobyl that don't really react too well to explosions and bullets so that would be something that we're going to keep an eye on as best we can but right now it's it's unclear there's been a heck of a lot of shooting up there though and russian forces are currently advancing through the area again uh like i mentioned the chernobyl exclusion zone is is for military only right at this stage it's an exclusion zone you can't go up there if you're a civilian so it's not likely we're going to have some guy you know with a smartphone you know getting us a good video for twitter here it's going to be military only forces and they're going to be kind of occupied with the people that are trying to kill them so again once russian forces get a little closer to kiev we'll probably know exactly what's going on there this could be everything from a full-scale thing through full-scale invasion through the chernobyl exclusion zone this could be a probing attack who knows i also wanted to mention on this slide in kiev the kiev airport there's some stuff going down there there hasn't been any information for a while but apparently the airport out to the east of the city has had some small arms fire been heard by a lot of locals a lot of gunfire a lot of explosions at this airport so there's everything floating around again speculation is everywhere right uh but a lot of people are either thinking that the airport was attacked in some way or that russian ground troops as in special forces soldiers who had infiltrated into ukraine are trying to take the airport and seize it as a way of keeping that airport open remember ukraine is a very large nation right and this is the problem that that occurs just in the field of warfare if one nation is trying to invade another nation the person doing the invading is not going to want to destroy everything in that country because they're going to need to use that stuff too right so even though we are seeing russians target military hardware and critical infrastructure it's going to be really interesting to see what russia chooses to keep and not go full scorched earth on this thing because again russia is invading ukraine right for a number of reasons one of those reasons is resources so it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to have kiev a city of millions right a city of millions of people and have their only airport or one of their only you know bigger airports at least uh to be completely destroyed like donetsk right donetsk airport it was was you know a different story than the one right now so it's something to keep in mind as we see the battle for kiev get underway here in the next few days and before we conclude today i briefly wanted to touch on evacuations so we're going to get a lot of questions i know a lot of people are going to be asking about okay how can i egress from ukraine well uh right now we're kind of waiting for the smoke to clear right it's very very unlikely that russian troops will be able to completely and totally take the entire nation of ukraine in a day right it's going to take several days uh but at the same time you need to be moving with purpose if your goal is to leave ukraine belarus is not an option belarusian the belarusian border is already closed they've closed all rail and the ukrainian government itself said they were closing all land borders as well so something that's not really not really feasible if you feel like you can make it then go for it but most people seem to be heading west to poland poland or moldova poland being the obvious choice but moldova being another choice as well just due to geography right now we're seeing a lot of reports of russian aircraft in ukrainian airspace we can confirm via the radio networks that have picked up strategic bomber uh communications platforms and the q the uh basically the com frequencies the bombers use to get uh strategic messages those are hot right now so i know that's kind of gibberish to those of you who aren't intel folks but basically this means that russia is probably going to begin strategic bombing or launching a lot of cruise missiles at places in ukraine most likely critical infrastructure within the next few hours probably before this brief goes out so again subject to change who really knows what's going on but that's where i put my money in any case this is going to affect evacuation efforts because right now the highways are clogged ukrainian military vehicles are going to be stuck in the same traffic jams that all civilians are stuck in for the most part there's obviously you know the military's going to take priority of course but when it comes to like traffic control and things like that but for the most part there aren't that many roads and west so and the kiev traffic is already starting to stack up so again it's trying to weigh do you want to stay and wait for russia to finish their pre-invasion bombing and striking and cruise missile launching or do you want to risk going out in that because time is of the essence and you know soldiers are coming your way it's it's really going to have to be a call based on people on the ground any average person on the ground in ukraine is going to know more than we do right now but one more tidbit of information i wanted to pass on which is cyber i would fully expect the internet to go down or be complete or be spotty uh cellular coverage to be denied um and uh things like inner basic internet connection will most likely be very very very much restricted also you might have trouble with gps stuff we do know russian units possess the capability to jam gps signals so you might not even be able to rely on your gps again another lesson why having physical paper roadmaps is vital so again there's multiple ways that this can happen we're talking uh russian like physical kinetic strikes as in you know russian bombs blowing up power stations can take power out uh they can take cell phone towers down things like that uh you're also talking electronic warfare stuff jamming can be a can be a factor as well and then also just on top of that everyone in ukraine's on the phone right now everyone in ukraine is on the internet right now trying to figure out what's going on so just simply even if there wasn't any kinetic actions right now the the sheer number of people overloading an already pretty bad communications infrastructure is going to just overwhelm the system right so please keep that in mind and please be prepared um don't go somewhere don't leave a safe cover unless you know where you're going and how to get there and an alternative route an alternative route if you can't make it stuff like that basic stuff i know that anyone there is is probably going to not exactly be relying on us to be a huge help but we're going to do what we can to try to kind of at least map where russians are at so that we can hopefully hopefully get some civilians out of there so that's all i have for right now everyone thanks for sticking with us this is going to be a rough next few days again i would like to remind everybody that when it comes to these relatively real time updates just keep in mind that you're either getting speed or quality but not both so we're going to have a lot of updates with regards to our slides and the information we're presenting because things are changing so fast and the fog of war is a real problem it's a real problem not just for us but for everybody else so so thanks again everybody for your support and and remember to to always keep things in perspective right even though this situation does not look good uh it doesn't really look very positive for the future of ukraine or or really for europe for that matter um but just try to keep things in perspective try to try to not let all of the things you're going to see over the next few days scare you too much but a little bit of fear right it is good and motivating you to change your own ways right so if you can learn a lesson from the atrocities that we're already seeing in ukraine that will at least be something good right so try to do that try to try to focus on the good things and try to focus on the good improvements that you can make in your own life moving forward at least that's what we're going to try to do so thanks again and we'll see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for the 20th of December 2022 and as always it is being recorded on the day prior so let's get right to it uh first up I wanted to address some of the updates that we've had following the Moore County North Carolina critical infrastructure attack uh the attack on the electrical substations down there so so as many of you know this incident uh has had many different challenging aspects to it for one there has been the actual attack itself the circumstances surrounding the attack the details of what exactly was attack and how attacks were carried out and then the other side of things are the responses to it so there are two major groups of concerns there so let's first talk about the actual electrical substation attack itself uh really not much more is known uh it has been kind of an information black hole since our last briefing on this incident the only really thing that we have to update are the responses to the situation right so speaking of the actual attack itself we really don't know much more there haven't been any arrests there have been several warrants issued at least according to the local sheriff down there but those warrants are sealed so we don't know what they pertained to so there have been multiple uh Financial incentives being offered uh totaling as last I checked up to 75 000 which in that part of North Carolina to be you know kind of indelicate is is a pretty pretty big sum so uh the fact that no one has come forward yet even with this uh pretty substantial reward being offered for any information pertaining to the attacks that kind of tells me that there's the authorities are kind of struggling on this one to kind of figure out what happened just my gut feeling is that since this is such a remote part of the country I mean Southern Pines itself is not really that remote I mean it's a city right uh but you know where these attacks occurred it's it's rural North Carolina and there's really not a whole lot of State you know either state or federal government surveillance down in that area I am absolutely certain that you know as with every electrical substation in the world or at least in the United States there's probably surveillance footage of who conducted these attacks however it's probably so inconclusive that no one can really get any information from it cell phone data is almost certainly being surveilled down there as well and I can guarantee you that everyone in Moore County probably has had their cell phone data pulled by the FBI at this point again that's just a hunch but I mean hey look at the kind of surveillance that we're living under nationally you know every day the fact that there still hasn't been an arrest and there still hasn't been anything it's kind of like um the whole situation with a missing person right if someone goes missing and there isn't and they're not recovered within you know 48 Hours the chances of them being recovered are pretty substantially low the same kind of thing applies to attacks like this is that as time goes on if we don't get an immediate arrest uh you're probably going to be very hard-pressed to find someone now even though I'm sure a lot of people don't really want to hear this I must talk about the potential for who could have done this attack and really it could have been anyone uh however I do want to address the main concern that I've seen kind of floating around out there and it's just kind of the the elephant in the room at this point when we see infrastructure attacks and that elephant is people thinking that this could have been the government doing this as a way of either sending a message or trying to knock off critical infrastructure in areas where they know there is going to be significant resistance to their actions these General sentiments are are real right there this is not something that we're just you know seeing you know being made up this is a real sentiment tensions are very high and these sentiments these feelings these atmospherics right the situation on the ground gets made a lot worse by the County's reaction to this electrical substation attack so let me just cut right to the chase with that and explain what I mean so here's what we had we had a critical infrastructure attack two electrical substations were attacked specifically with the intent to cause damage and bring the power offline for whatever reason we don't know the full end goal I suppose but we do know that somebody somewhere wanted the power out in Moore County North Carolina and they knew exactly how to do it following this incident which is bad enough as is the local government went and did a lot of weird stuff and what they did was the the first thing they did as soon as the power goes out curfew there we go right the the attack occurred uh on around seven ish seven to eight ish I think on the third of December by that by the next morning the fourth of December curfew was in effect and it stayed in effect for several days while the crisis was you know kind of working its way through the problem with this is that that's not all that's not all of what they did the local government the local County officials shut down tattoo parlors because literally the county officials stated the reason why they didn't want tattoo parlors open is because it's a good idea it's not a good idea to give people tattoos in the dark like what in the Sam Hill is going on down there the other thing that was also concerning is the local Health Department uh also shut down every single restaurant or establishment that lost power during the crisis they shut down those restaurants and they only let them reopen if they could prove beyond all doubt to the health inspector that they their food was safe that they didn't uh you know like lose Refrigeration or something like that and uh the food spoil while you know sitting in a hot refrigerator so a lot of weird stuff happened this is not typical like power goes out all the flipping time all around this country all around the world and there is very rarely like I can't remember any situation where a health inspector literally says you cannot serve customers until we come in and reinspect and make sure that your food did not spoil during the power outage like that's just utterly ridiculous uh to me so we had a lot of weird stuff happen down there it's almost like as soon as the power went out every single authority figure even at the smallest most unimportant level uh immediately became tyrannical and they wanted to wield their power as much as they possibly could like when was the last time anybody body who regulates tattoo parlors was any had any kind of relevance in the world whatsoever I mean I hate to phrase it like that but that's the truth so yeah a lot of weird stuff happened a lot of what we might consider to be tyrannical stuff uh instantly occurred as far as the local government uh you know was concerned at the lowest possible levels and like I mentioned these thought processes get Amplified because what is the first thing that happened right there have been power outages all over this country and and uh electrical substations attacked all over this country right we had an IED a vehicle-borne IED detonate in downtown Nashville a couple of years ago no information since then but no curfew was announced when there was an actual no kidding IED attack in the United States of America and really nothing happened because of that they cleaned up the debris and everyone went about their day like it never happened right here in North Carolina the power goes out in five minutes later the sheriff's declaring a curfew everyone stay in their homes right that's a huge deal right you have to look get things like that and you know I'm I'm really sorry for the people who can't see the writing on the wall for what this means because sure you want to catch the bad guys you want to catch the guys that did this but at the same time you've also got to think why am I getting why am I getting punished for this when there's why the why the extreme overreach here we've got so many law enforcement like all of these electrical sites had the entire County's law enforcement at them right also infuriating to see are is the local response to it I mean there were so many people um that that thought oh the curfew is perfectly fine the sheriff's doing a wonderful job this is great yeah nobody needs to make tattoos in the dark despite the fact that most tattoo artists actually use headlamps routinely during their job but despite that fact there were a lot of people that thought that the local authorities were doing a good job and that these tyrannical measures were not tyrannical at all they're just you know trying to keep our community safe only other hand you've got a lot of people down there that are smart enough to see the riding on the wall and say hmm yeah curfews not a good thing the damage has already been done you've already got you know your entire police force uh stationed outside of every other electrical substation in the county you know why the curfew here what's the big deal so there are a lot of people I just want for for people who aren't aware of this because this brief goes out to you know a lot of people people who aren't in the area might not understand that people in the area people in Moore County a substantial number of them cannot see the writing on the wall as to why this was a bad thing right they look at the power going out and they think that's the biggest issue that's not the biggest issue the biggest issue is your local authorities trying to tyrannize you during a crisis so now you're not just fighting the crisis but you're up against you know authorities who you know have guns and that's not a huge it's not a good uh thing so a lot of people don't realize that they're really up against three major groups of adversaries when it comes to things like this now you know it used to be man when I was growing up when the power went out you know the local authorities were were you know helpful they they do what they can they may not be the best well-equipped but nowadays man what is what has been the response the response is the authorities you know pointing guns at the citizens who didn't do anything wrong you know that's kind of the the attitude that that comes out of this that a lot of people especially in you know places where these kinds of things happen don't realize they don't realize the adversarial nature of the relationship and because they don't understand the adversarial nature of the relationship they're going to get you know kind of you know bad things happen to them and they're they're going to realize it far far too late so the next time this thing happens right because let's face it as we get further into this brief you're going to realize that electrical infrastructure attacks are on the rise like you would not believe now every time there's a substation attack throughout the country you have to be prepared no matter where you're at in the country you have to be prepared for your local police officers to keep you in your home that's the precedent that's been set you have to be prepared for a curfew at any given time and so few of us remembered that over the past couple of years of curfews if you know what I mean but also your next door neighbors could quite literally be your adversary because you dared to oppose the creation of a curfew so I think I've talked this one to death we'll move on now to uh the actual Regional updates uh but I really just wanted to make sure that we kind of ironed things out and talked to this one out a little bit more with regards to what this attack means this is a very severe incident that requires a significant amount of reading between the lines to understand the impacts of so let's move on to the Northeast region so far I haven't found anything for the Northeast there have been a lot of things that have occurred right I don't want to again I want to remind everyone that just because it's not on the slide doesn't mean that it hasn't happened it's just I haven't gotten to it yet and I haven't run it to ground with a bunch of different sources right these things take time so uh I haven't really focused on the northeast just yet so we'll go ahead and move on to the Southeast region so moving to the Southeast region we can kind of see why I think this is worth talking about a little bit more because even in North Carolina the latest attack back on the third slash 4th of December in Southern Pines that attack was not the only one uh there have been several others uh there was one uh back on the 11th of November in Maysville North Carolina this one really didn't get any news because it didn't really affect any customers the power was able to be rerouted successfully and even though the substation was offline for gosh a considerable amount of time I think a couple of days at least while the repairs are being conducted the customers didn't really feel the impact of it so again this is rural North Carolina and there's just not a whole lot of information in some some of these places right I think the interesting thing so far is that North Carolina is a very uh heavily militarily Centric State and I find it very interesting that two electrical grid attacks have occurred immediately outside or in the general vicinity of we have the Duke Energy attack in Southern Pines North Carolina taking place just outside of Fort Bragg or really rather Camp McCall the special side of uh things and we also have this attack in Maysville which is is sort of in the general vicinity of Camp Lejeune and also Cherry Points not too far away technically I guess so there's also a few Coast Guard bases down there but I'm not sure if you'd Factor those into the to the thing but I do think it's very interesting that these attacks are occurring outside of or in close proximity to military bases I don't know that's just kind of my gut observation here I don't know if there's any kind of you know link there investigatively you'd think that investigators have to be thinking about that but I guess we'll see as time goes on moving down to Florida a very interesting series of attacks occurred in the sort of Tampa Bay area and I say area because six at least six as of now electrical substations have been taken offline or affected in some way by vandals and or people seeking to attack the facility now again I have to be super vague about this because not a lot of the details are public and we just don't know the details of what these attacks looked like we do know that Duke Energy has disclosed that there were multiple quote unquote intrusions to their facilities throughout the area now it being Tampa Bay you know the Tampa area being Florida we have to kind of remind ourselves that a lot of electrical sites are tampered with broken into um affected in some way by copper theft right with the economic situation in the country being super you know not great at the moment we had we were realizing that things like catalytic converter theft copper theft purchase metal theft is at an all-time high you know it's not helped by the markets I guess either way but we have to think about that um I think that's a possibility so I wanted to mention it right up front but I also think that it's probably not very likely you don't have six different electrical substations attacked or vandalized you know within a very short time frame I don't really know what to think about this it's just one of those things I wanted to bring up in the context of our you know National infrastructure electrical infrastructure being under attack like in unprecedented numbers so I I thought that since it occurred after the North Carolina attacks uh and those North Carolina attacks were so high profile I thought maybe it was copycats and that that could also be a theory as well but really we don't know hardly any details about these attacks in Florida so I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see moving to the East Central midwestern region uh kind of an interesting one this is uh this got kind of viral news because it was yet another food production facility that caught fire slash exploded uh this was at the Star of the West Milling Company in Kinto Ohio just outside of Cleveland uh this one is a little complicated uh to to kind of talk about because I'm not entirely sure if the facility actually is functional because when you when you try to Deep dive on these things you can read the headline you know Star of the West Milling Company catches fire right but when you actually start looking into this facility you start finding news articles from you know months and years ago stating how operations have ceased at this facility so I don't know if this facility was actually active at the time we do know that it was vacant and there were no workers at the time of the fire sound familiar to literally all the other briefs that we've you know talked about these facilities are always vacant at the time of the fire interestingly enough but also it was labeled as a historic site because it's a very old historic building you know in Kent Ohio so I'm not entirely certain if this facility actually produces food I saw several news agencies claiming that you know several hundred thousand pounds of flour you know this is what this produced but I I don't know if that's what it currently produces whether or not the building was actually occupied and producing food at the time of the incident is really important and it matters a lot because if the building was you know vacant and it had it wasn't producing any food and there was just kind of an abandoned building well if you know a building that catches fire that's abandoned we can just kind of chalk that up to a normal arson kind of event however if it was a functioning facility we really start after thinking in terms of all right this might be a more deliberate attack on critical infrastructure so again we'll keep an eye on this I'm sure someone out there who goes by the facility and knows maybe it's both maybe it is a historical site and maybe it did do some kind of limited production of flour or or grain processing of some kind uh but yeah I just wanted to kind of talk about this one because even the local media doesn't seem to know what this facility was actually doing at the time of the fire other than you know being vacant with no workers at it so kind of interesting and we'll again have to wait and see what the details are on this one moving over to the West Central midwestern region two incidents of no um two of which are quite interesting so let's start with Kansas back on the 7th of December uh TC energy which is a company that maintains uh the flow of of product through the Keystone Pipeline the original Keystone Pipeline I detected a leak of roughly 14 000 barrels which spilled interestingly enough into a local Creek in extremely remote Washington County Kansas the pipeline was offline for a significant amount of time about a week or so as far as I can tell while repairs were being made but right now really no one has disclosed the company hasn't disclosed nor have government agencies disclosed what the cause of this leak was was this a deliberate attack or was this some kind of you know maintenance error again when we're looking at critical infrastructure attacks I know I've said it multiple times but let me reiterate that it doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious a lot of times these critical infrastructure incidents are purely maintenance right and we'll get to that here uh when we're when we talk about Iowa in just a second but we don't necessarily have to look at things from a from a purely nefarious Viewpoint right these could be legitimate incidents that are really just maintenance issues now that doesn't mean that they're that they're all you know hunky-dory and everything's fine no we have seen over the past couple of years a sharp increase in maintenance issues because of supply chain issues causing parts to wear out more quickly and they're not being replaced things are being used past their life cycle and we've got a whole just a mess of a you know chain of causation of really bad incidents right so the potential for really bad stuff to happen is very very high right now and it's not just because we're all thinking that there are you know deliberate attacks on our critical infrastructure which there most certainly are but a lot of these are are just purely mistakes now I wanted to say that uh with regards to this one because when we swing over to Iowa we can talk about the C60 Factory slash recycling facility uh incident now this was a very high profile sort of I guess we should call it an incident rather than an accident uh which was a large explosion at that facility now this facility is a recycling facility they primarily focus on recycling shingles back into oil or petroleum products of some kind now this incident I'm sure will make every Osho uh official just absolutely cringe because it's almost like they went down the list of everything you should not do at a facility and they did all of those things for instance at this facility at the time of the fire slash explosion the sprinklers were not functional at all throughout you know the whole facility also the facility had a long history of fires in fact there had been several Fires at this facility involving diesel fuel uh the day in the days prior to this uh explosion and local and the actual employees of the facility were putting out these diesel fires with uh hand fire extinguishers so you know that tells you something right there also employees had not actually been paid there were few employees who noted that they had not been paid for oh they had a backlog of about a month's worth of pay they were missing from this facility again another huge red flag uh and there were other complaints too stuff like employees complaining that the facility management refused to provide them with literally the absolute Baseline of Osha mandated stuff like hard hats and reflective vests so you start to get kind of a bigger picture here um of a more negligence kind of incident right as if things were not bad enough the facility is now a Hazmat Zone because the chemicals that they use or something at this facility is now leaking into both a local River sort of tributary thing and also into the ground so that's not good for the local environment so the reason that I wanted to bring this one up is because again we have to keep in mind that right now is really really risky for a lot of Industry right if we're not trying to take out Bad actors or monitor deliberate attacks on our infrastructure we're doing it to ourselves right so just gross negligence is a huge problem right now and we have to keep in mind just like what I said uh you know a couple of briefs ago I think we really really really have to be vigilant so if you are a factory worker or if you work at an industrial site please please please be careful because here's the bottom line we all know how vulnerable our system is right now our entire Global infrastructure is just cripplingly dependent on everything going right at all times it is so so easy to completely disrupt and destroy a lot of our critical infrastructure and no one has really paid attention to any of this stuff until stuff starts happening unfortunately so we have to make be vigilant and understand that government agencies don't even really care until after the fact right and a lot of times they don't even really care even if an incident does occur so it's really down to you the average everyday worker to make sure or at least be aware if something's going on now I I understand a lot of people work in places where you know OSHA violations are a huge thing and there's really not anything they can do about it because you know do your job or you're fired kind of thing I get that but you don't want to be that guy who works at a facility and it gets you know impacted in some way under mysterious circumstances and you knew you could have done something right you knew that the thing that got attacked was the thing that you knew was vulnerable the whole time you don't want to have that happen and uh I think that these two incidents here both the pipeline incident and the the recycling facility incident really highlight and drive home these really really important issues that there's really no one here coming to save us right we know this but we also need to start thinking about that in terms of Industry as well so let's move on to the Southwest now this is a rather empty slide because I am still trying to figure out how to talk about this issue and this is the Border crisis down on the southern border between the United States and Mexico mostly the border between between Texas and Mexico because Texas is really one of the the only States down there that's actually burying kind of the brunt of uh the the immigration crisis down there I'm not really sure like I mentioned how to start talking about this because I could do a whole two-hour brief on just this issue alone but for those of you who are not aware of what's going on down at the border the situation is pretty bad I understand that immigration is more of a political issue than it is an everyday daily life issue for most of America like I get it so I really think what's needed for Americans to understand what this issue is is a a rephrasing and a more eloquent description of what's going on down there at the border and why it matters for someone living in a state not even close to the border right people who hear immigration they they don't they think of it in terms of a national gross you know large political issue right something that gets talked about during political debates and not really something that affects them on a day-to-day basis and I really really want to stress that the immigration issue is not just a political issue this is a huge huge problem and it is affecting the daily lives of millions of people right we're not just talking about from a welfare standpoint or a taxes standpoint or a job standpoint the crime that is coming along with this and other socioeconomic factors are a very very big problem and I'm not doing a super great job at expressing why it's a it's a big problem so rest assured I'm going to get a little bit more deliberate when I talk about this later on so again I just really wanted to draw attention to the southern border and remind everyone that I am not ignoring this deliberately I just don't know how to summarize and break down this very very large issue uh I can say generally that we have seen a huge influx of people and you you know you see these numbers on TV right you see the numbers either on social media or on some you know website or something and you just you just can't put into your mind how many people that actually is uh you you think you just see a number and you can't understand that you know ten thousand people coming across a border in a day that's a that's so much more than you could possibly imagine right these are a lot of people and they're going to go somewhere uh one of the facilities that they're going is actually the Fort Bliss Don Yana facility uh I think that's just over the Border in New Mexico actually uh but it's still I think technically Fort Bliss I'm sure somebody knows out there when I went through Fort Bliss a couple of years ago the doniana facility was still just kind of like a vacant facility nobody was really at it um but since the Afghan crisis occurred they actually stood that facility up and that's where all of the Afghan refugees or most of the Afghan refugees have been since that incident uh before they you know quietly were shelf to other parts of the country right so I know people forget about you know hey the Afghanistan crisis was a huge thing but there's a reason that we covered that incident with such you know such detail it's not just because of you know my own personal connection to Afghanistan but because these facilities were stood up and now shocker look these facilities are now being used to house illegal immigrants coming across the border so the village as it's colloquially called is now being used to house immigrants that have come over in these recent waves of new and new people coming over so uh as far as how they're going to stay there or how this is going to work nobody really knows again we try to think of this a lot of people at least try to think of this in terms of a large political issue but since it's a political issue there are differing opinions on what should be done with you know these tens of thousands of people coming across the border uh if not you know millions of people over the past few years and because of that nobody is really getting down to the nitty gritty details of how the everyday management of this crisis is happening for instance we've kind of briefly mentioned this a while back when we were covering you know the actual the the Inception of operation Lone Star uh but the the operation uh including I think six different units or six different commands uh command structures to Halt the uh immigrant waves coming across the border from from Texas's side of things uh that's really been a mission that is highly highly controversial a lot of people particularly troops on the ground have expressed that this is a garbage mission that they're being mistreated very strongly by the state they're either when this mission was first stood up they weren't getting paid they're being taken away from their families and activated you know for a mission that is you know what they feel is kind of pointless with regards to how they're employed in the mission so there's a lot of discontent there conditions for troops are have gotten better uh but they're still I mean it's it's the southern border it's really hard to describe there's nothing there a lot of these places are just not super great places to be I mean you know no offense to anybody living in El Paso but you know I've been to El Paso several times and it's not exactly a fantastic fantastic place so so yeah you've got it's just a whole nothing about this is good right you've got you know your liberal National leadership that is kind of turning a blind eye to this and pushing the buck off to everybody else but you also have your conservative State leadership perfectly fine with mistreating troops for political gain which at least it's not my words these words from the guys down there and a lot of these a lot of these cases so you see how this is a no-win situation for anyone and a lot of people are down there trying to make the best of this situation and try to do some good but unfortunately it doesn't really look like there's a whole lot of good to be had with this whole mission so so again I know I'm kind of rambly today but I really wanted to to talk about the southwest region particularly the Border crisis and I want to talk about it in much more detail as we go along this is kind of like the heads-up notice of hey even if you're not affected by the border crisis you you really you really are uh so even if you don't live near the areas where the Border crisis is occurring uh trust me it's it's rapidly becoming your problem problem as a lot of these people are filtering to other parts of the country so start getting spun up on this area start reading and start understanding what's going on why is this such an issue and why do why is it worth talking about so much and you'll start understanding the socioeconomic factors and the the cultural factors that make this a very significant problem that affects the country as a whole right so again we'll talk about this more in depth and I'll be a little bit more eloquent next time but for now I just wanted to remind everyone hey border crisis is getting worse and um you might want to start paying attention to it and finally moving out west we can wrap things up for the United States again with more electrical grid attacks so many of you know that I personally lived in the Pacific Northwest for a few years there uh some some years ago so I tend to you know this is my own personal bias I'm trying to kind of overcome but it's really hard to to describe the Pacific Northwest to someone who has not lived there it is real it might as well be a different country um you know I was born and raised on the East Coast to you know down in the southeastern United States and I moved out there and talk about culture shock I got less of a culture shock going to the Middle East than I did going to the Pacific Northwest um so I say all of that to say look electrical grid attacks in these areas are pretty standard uh particularly in Portland OR Seattle every single day there is somebody doing something to some critical infrastructure in those cities either it's deliberate or or an accident or something these cities might as well be Gotham City at this point because these places are just absolutely horrible places uh so when you know I hear of an electrical substation attack in Portland OR Seattle I basically ignore it I don't even include it in the briefs you know I probably should but it's like okay what else is new this is a very common thing so why am I talking about it now well because there are uncommon electrical grid attacks being undertaken in the Pacific Northwest so there have been six different attacks over the past two to three weeks in Oregon on the Oregon side of the border and I think there were a couple in Washington as well I need to double check that but these attacks have not been inside the city limits of Portland or Seattle or or even Olympia or Vancouver or anything uh these attacks have been at really seriously remote places like in the middle of nowhere like drive four hours and you get to these sites and interestingly enough these attacks bear a striking resemblance to the attacks that occurred in both Florida and in North Carolina recently in which case there were there was limited breaching occurring uh you know Gates were forced to open or like chain link fences were cut or or something to that effect again we don't really know exactly how the attacks occurred because the authority is not going to release that data but the attack style was very very similar to what we've already seen somebody breaching a perimeter you know a fence around a substation and conducting Small Arms attacks on specific equipment now this is a pretty pretty big deal because a lot of these places again like I mentioned are remote and that may not sound like much but that's really the whole kind of thing if I'm not mistaken one of these attacks actually occurred at the Bonneville Dam complex I don't know if it was uh the substation that serves the dam or whatnot but uh the Bonneville complex is a huge huge hydroelectric uh Dam facility that provides a lot of electricity to the state of Oregon and really the West Coast in general so anytime anybody comes close to one of these big facilities we gotta stop and look at this right and there have been six of these different attacks throughout the region really really close together so these I don't I mean again with with things being the way they are these could be copycats these could be deliberate attacks I literally don't know and no one else knows either we can only assess right and like I've mentioned a few times before you know it sounds kind of callous to say and you know you know kind of nonsensical to mention but the the honest truth here is that a lot of people are not really going to Care uh who conducts the attacks whether it's antifa or the FBI or the CIA or some you know bubble with a rifle or something nobody really cares at the end of the day they just flick the light switch on the wall no power now they're gonna you know be affected in some way because of that right of course we here try to be at least a little bit more analytical than that uh when it comes to these kinds of attacks which is why you know we're talking about it but the sad truth is is that we really just are not going to get the information all we're going to have is some news report from some local news media station that barely gets National coverage saying oh this electrical substation was offline for a couple of days due to an unknown incident or or my personal favorite weather concerns because weather is like the number one thing that takes out electricity across the country and uh just my just my hunch is that a lot of the a lot of the weather that we're seeing isn't really weather but again that's just me theorizing uh with no evidence whatsoever to back it up but you have to start thinking about these things uh in terms of being a little bit more deliberate especially if you start thinking about well you know who do electrical outages you know impact they impact the general population because everyone that has Authority in this country is going to have a generator from your local Police Department to the hospitals to you know the White House they're all going to have generators so you're not really harming anybody by taking power offline but yourself so you really have to wonder who's behind these attacks um even though each individual attack is its own case study so so now that I'm completely all over the place today let's go ahead and close things up with the United States and move to Europe and really today I want to talk mostly about Western Europe so uh sorry Eastern Europe we're going to talk about you another time because Eastern Europe is getting kind of spicy right now uh down uh down in the Balkans um but I need to get a little bit more data on that before I start talking about that potential conflict so let's start with the United Kingdom our friends across the pond there you guys have had quite a bit of problems with uh two main concerns which again are not new we've been talking about these for weeks and months and years now uh but the two biggest concerns have been food and energy prices mostly uh the price of these two things are becoming a huge problem for citizens though The credibility of most statistics on the planet is very questionable right now uh many British mainstream media sources have cited recent studies claiming that one-third of single parents are skipping meals uh regularly perhaps most disturbingly there is limited unconfirmed reporting out of Wales that people are being reduced to consuming pet food in Cardiff again we all know how the media loves a sensational story so there's no telling how true these reports are but many citizens throughout Europe are posting about their own food insecurities on social media so that does lend some credibility to these reports you know I hate to drop kind of a bomb like that and then just kind of walk away and say well maybe not maybe maybe it doesn't matter but that's how it is you know with mainstream media these days you see something really shocking and then you kind of have to balance it out with a lot of reason and unfortunately with regards to the food energy crisis throughout Europe we're not going to find a whole lot of Reason these days to balance out the bad news unfortunately so so food and energy have been a huge problem for residents of Great Britain and a lot of Western Europe as well jumping to Mainland Europe there in the Netherlands the world economic Forum continues to wreak havoc on the Dutch food supply with Farmers being forced to only use a fraction of the fertilizer that they need in order for the wef controlled government to meet their climate goals look I'm just going to be honest with you today the the Straight Dope is that throughout Europe there is a concerted effort to reduce the global food supply and the Dutch government is among the top offenders in the humanitarian crisis that is currently underway the Dutch government has cut livestock production by 30 percent across the board and has shut more than 3 000 Farms down and confiscated the land because those Farms are quote Peak polluters right look we we all know what's going on and we all know what we need to do get really good at farming and living without electricity while at the same time your government is hunting you I I can't really mince words on that one because it's the truth at this point we have been given the advantage of Prior notice and it doesn't take a genius to predict how severe these things will likely become and I understand that European viewers like watching an American cover European news it much it must be a bloodbath to be honest but at the end of the day I think that maybe an outsider's perspective is probably a little bit more helpful than you might think because we're dealing with a lot of the same issues here and let's be honest a lot of the problems in Europe are being created by or heavily influenced by or encouraged by you know very powerful Americans so so when I say that the culture in Europe is much different than the culture in America like trust me I understand that that's the understatement of the century and I also understand that the culture of literally every single European nation is extremely different from every other European nation I understand that I know but when I say really strong things like you know what I just said about the Dutch government it's it's not meant to be you know unnecessarily Americanized you know dramatic right these are some serious issues here and we've got to stop mincing words at some point so when we're talking about these issues in Europe people understand that they're serious and we see the same thing happening here in the United States so I just wanted to put that out there for uh the average person out there who might be thinking you know well this is just an American's opinion on things well yeah it is but I also think that you know hey it's pretty clear as to what's going on the good news with all of this is that we've got a lot of time to get creative with Solutions especially throughout Europe where electricity has become temporary and food has become a luxury the same kind of seriousness for lack of a better term applies to the energy sector as well while most nations are grappling with both shortages of and high costs of food the other main issue for Europeans uh is energy both the extreme High Cost of energy and the lack of availability in many areas this is already a huge problem for a good chunk of Europe right can handles for instance are sold out throughout most of Germany Finland has told citizens to not plug in their electric cars on cold mornings and uh Britain's National Grid operator has indicated that blackouts will be a major possibility and once again average citizens are left holding the bag with all of this uh German political leadership has fortunately scrapped the plans to shut down Germany's last three nuclear power plants and several coal-powered plants have been brought online out of mothballs to meet Germany's power needs will this be enough to prevent blackouts I highly doubt it I mean I'm no energy expert but it doesn't take a genius to see that Germany's actions much like the actions of most other European nations are far too little far too late however we shall see what the creativity of the citizenry will bring about now is the time for Europeans to start taking interest in their own Survival and reduce the Stranglehold their governments have over them even if their governments do not desire that outcome seeing as how Germany has been an example of companies involuntarily turning down thermostats for climate reasons now would be a pretty good time for everyone to perhaps remove their smart thermostats electric wheel companies not letting you charge your electric car well maybe now it's time to rethink that purchase or at least take measures to fully own your technology and be able to charge your vehicle off of solar panels or other means that governments cannot control these things may seem simple in retrospect but right now this is what average citizens are being faced with around the world including here in the United States so we shall continue the tradition by ending on that foreboating note and we'll have to talk about some more stuff next time I know that there there has been so much news and so many incidents that have occurred over the past well since the last briefing that there's just way too many for me to talk about and I've just kind of got to take a step back and and reassess what's going on here so for those of you who think oh there's nothing going on now trust me there's there's stuff going on uh it's just it's just overwhelming uh to cover all of this stuff so try trying to kind of pick the stuff that I've already kind of thought about quite a bit and um and we'll go from there as a side note uh I'm really trying to avoid these briefings becoming a sort of I told you so because we've been talking about a lot of this stuff for a very very long time and it's from I know it's it's it's probably annoying for you but it's definitely annoying for me when I basically talk about the same thing over and over and over again because the same exact things are happening over and over and over again you know there's there's nothing I can do about that but I'm trying to find ways of making these briefings a lot more efficient and a lot more useful rather than you know me just reading you the news but as you all know these briefings have been kind of a Meandering experience over the past few years so I guess we'll keep Meandering a little bit further thank you again to everyone out there for watching us and supporting us over the years and more than that thank you for supporting yourselves as we all know you know chances are if you ended up watching this video then you know you know how things are going we don't really need to to preach or tell you what's going on in the world you can plainly see it for yourself and I really do appreciate the amount of innovation the amount of dedication uh and the amount of hard work that we have seen people you know undertaking uh in these tough times and you know to prepare for the Times uh that are about to get tougher you know right now we're just at the beginning of this Global goat Rodeo so here's your motivation to keep getting better keep getting fitter and keep learning and take all of the hardship that you've experienced so far and put it to good use turn your disadvantages into advantages even if for right now we have to fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the ukrainian war intelligence update for monday the 31st of january and as always it is being recorded the day prior on the 30th of january before we get into the geopolitical update i briefly wanted to touch on a challenge that ourselves and a lot of others are going to have to deal with that we're already dealing with now with regards to finding out accurate information regarding what's going on in ukraine this will make the rest of the brief make sense so i thought i'd mention it now in this challenge is what we call circular reporting circular reporting is a mainstay of most journalistic agencies these days but for the intelligence group or the ocean analyst it is the bane of our existence so here's how circular reporting works the first step is for someone to post something on a social media platform in this case we'll go with twitter right somebody posts a tweet about something and then that tweet gets seen by a lot of people so he gets seen by one person who is who then talks about the particular event and then it gets seen by a third person and that third person now says hey we've got multiple sources confirming this information is true like we like to throw that word confirming out a lot which i don't think a lot of people know what confirming actually means confirming does not mean you read two tweets on the same topic it means that you you went through an actual process to verify that the information is true but nevertheless we have a lot of people going around saying that oh this is confirmed this is confirmed well what does that even mean but in any case you have a third entity a group usually a journalistic agency which now sees this entire conversation taking place on social media and now they're starting to spin things out of control right and now they see ah we've got multiple sources confirming that world war iii is about to break out right when in actuality really you can circle all of this back to the original tweet which isn't verified it's not anything special it's just somebody saying something so this is a huge problem it's not just a problem for the ocean world this is really a problem for the human world as well you know person a tells person b a story who tells person c a story and then person a b and c show up at your shop wanting to get paid for human intelligence and they're all sharing the same exact story so you can't really say that's three sources right because they all heard it from the same person we see this all the time in the intel world both on the professional side and on the ocean side of things it's just a huge problem that not very many people are interested in addressing because circular reporting is a great way it is a fantastic way of coming to the conclusions that you want you can cherry pick information you can say that you've got multiple sources when really it's just going back to the same guy so you can get whatever narrative that you want to push by using circular reporting so please keep this in mind when you're taking in information regarding this ukrainian situation uh even we here have become bogged down with circular reporting over the past week or so and the fighting hasn't even really kicked off in earnest yet if it ever will so with that out of the way let's jump into the geopolitical update first up is norway and finland uh so both of these nations as well as the rest of europe honestly but mostly norway and finland have been undertaking a lot of civil defense actions with regards to any potential uh actions with russia a lot of nations around europe are dusting off their old civil defense manuals and starting to either refund or um take civil defense seriously again uh since the cold war and norway and finland have been undertaking a lot of steps to do so over the past few days for norway specifically we are seeing circular reporting or rumors stating that the official government has sent out letters to 4 000 residents of norway informing them that their vehicles have been identified by the military as a potential wartime asset so if norway goes to war with russia the army is going to come confiscate their vehicle now again i should stress that's just rumor at this point we haven't seen a copy of this letter if it exists and if you do any searching for it online the reporting is very circular and you can't really find anything about this it's not on any of the official press releases of the norwegian civil defense force or the army so i don't know so until we get a copy of the letter we're just gonna have to treat this as rumor but it does make sense likewise similarly in finland the finnish military has been observed to be emplacing lots of air defense artillery surface-to-air missile sites and things like that around key political locations key cities critical infrastructure things like that so basically dusting off a lot of their old cold war civil defense plans this makes sense considering russia's actions in the region but we also have to remember that this could also just be another posturing attempt both norway and finland and really every other nation in europe knows that russia sees what they do so if finland is observed to be putting up sams around their capital and norway is sending letters to their citizens this is a message to russia that you know they're getting ready right so uh it might be more of a psyop than it is a legitimate civil defense concern however with the amount of russian posturing in the region it does make sense for a lot of legitimate civil defense plans to be reignited and people start taking civil defense seriously again speaking of preparations being made germany has also announced that they have are going to evacuate non-essential personnel from their embassy in kiev as well uh this actually hurt a while ago almost immediately after the united states declared that we're going to bring our uh people out of our embassy that the non-essential personnel and stuff like that so the reason i want to talk about these embassies is because this is actually a very big deal you might not think that closing an embassy is kind of a big deal but it really is closing an embassy like fully and totally closing it is essentially in the international arena telling the world that there is no diplomatic solution left um so that's a big deal and even though the united states has not totally closed our embassy and germany hasn't either even the action of getting non-essential personnel out of the area is signaling to the world signaling to ukraine signaling to russia and the rest of europe that the united states has no hope for fixing this diplomatically and we're trying to get our people out you know the rats are jumping off the ship right because we know it's going down essentially embassy actions are a really great way to kind of figure out what governments are going to do clearly the united states thinks ukraine is a lost cause same thing with germany and i guess we'll have to see how many other european nations feel the same way moving to russia an interesting note that has come out recently regarding russian preparations for this invasion surround the stockpiling of blood in ford areas limited reporting has come out recently indicating that russian forces have begun to stockpile uh fresh whole blood and other medical supplies in front-line areas historically when we're talking about the doctrine of warfare this is a last-minute logistical preparation that takes place right before a major conflict this is not unique to russia this is just hey if they're stockpiling blood this means that this is serious and it's pretty much imminent right as such the forward staging of blood and other medical supplies is a very strong indicator of an impending conflict so this is just another check in the column of russia being serious about invading ukraine this time however this report is coming from the u.s government right so take that with a huge grain of salt literally no one on the planet has more motivation to lie about intelligence regarding ukraine than senior u.s military officials who are personally heavily financially invested in the military-industrial complex so any reporting coming from the u.s and coming only from the u.s that cannot be verified by any other means right is kind of suspect uh this might be a lie from the united states to make the situation look more dire in order to profit financially even more i mean just look at what lockheed martin's stock has done over the past three months so war is very big business for some people but for us down here it just adds another layer of complexity it's another reason to why it's difficult to find accurate information that we can use to make decisions and speaking of us troop movements the united states has recently announced that they will be sending several thousand troops to the european theater we don't really know where they're going to go yet most likely a lot will go to poland uh hungary has already stated that they will take 3 000 so we'll see how this all works out but what does this mean a lot of people are seeing troop deployments and they're they're going into full freakout mode because they don't want uh us troops to be involved in a conflict with russia which is a valid valid argument mostly this is what would be considered a proportional response according to the cold war playbook russia gets a bit aggressive and the u.s sends a few thousand troops to poland it's a tale as old as khrushchev it literally goes back that far russia expects us to do this this is what they're planning for and the rest of nato expects us to do this as well what is not going to happen is troops being sent to ukraine itself that's not going to happen in any significant numbers remember the us has had a training mission in ukraine for years now so there are small numbers of advisors in ukraine already but it's not any significant number and of course the beardy dudes with nice pants have been in ukraine doing stuff for years now but by and large we're not going to see massive deployments of conventional troops within ukraine that would be a massive escalation of force one that the united states and nato is not prepared to back up with any other forces and we also have to consider that the united states rhetoric has been that we're we're not going to defend ukraine so so as scary as it is to start sending thousands of troops over to europe uh this is not particularly out of the ordinary now if we start seeing the rhetoric being changed to include the defense of ukraine now we'll have to change our assessment on that because if we start sending conventional us troops to defend ukraine well you know this shooting match might be over before we even get a brief around to talk about it honestly so i guess we'll have to see how that works out also within russia we're seeing media outlets pushing the narrative that panic buying is occurring in kiev i wanted to point this out because it's kind of spinning out of control in russian media and this is blatantly not true life in kiev is what i would consider to be disturbingly normal there's really not a whole lot going on in kiev of course a lot of people are trying to leave right now the people who are trying to get out like foreigners and americans and things like that but it's really not in any kind of panic mode there's no there aren't any shortages of anything that we can find on the grocery store shelves like russian media stating it's there's really not much going on in kiev with regards to the civilian populace you know being panicked and whatnot but we can talk a little bit about the attitude in ukraine a little bit later because that's a whole other can of worms also within ukraine i did want to mention that there was an insider attack at the southern machine building factory in denipro a ukrainian conscript who hasn't been named yet killed four of his fellow service members a few days ago no more details other than that though with the world on pins and needles looking for the telltale russian false flag attack incidents like this draw a lot of attention likewise over the past few days there have been protests in kiev regarding a new tax law that requires vendors to use cash registers so that they can be more easily taxed this is an interesting little domestic issue right but again with the world on the lookout for russian assets destabilizing ukraine's government any kind of anti-ukraine or anti-ukrainian government protest or riot at this point is highly suspicious no matter what it's about right then again who knows just because there are what a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand two hundred thousand russian soldiers on you know the ukrainian border doesn't mean that domestic issues magically go away but considering that this kind of thing is right out of russia's playbook for destabilizing a government we have to watch events like this closely moving on to the naval update for the mediterranean sea the task force of six russian ships has made it into the med they pass through the straits of gibraltar a couple of days ago so they are on their way to the black sea we don't know exactly where these ships are at in the med because they're out of ais range but once they start getting closer to the black sea and they start going to the turkish trades then we'll know exactly where they're at so we'll keep you updated on that moving up north a little bit to the gi uk gap and the north sea uh for those of you who don't know what the gi uk gap is it is the body of water the geographic area it's kind of a nomenclature for the body of water in the north atlantic between greenland iceland and the united kingdom very common nomenclature when talking about russian submarines and the routes they take when trying to transit down to the american east coast or conduct operations in the north atlantic and speaking of russian naval operations the russian government has declared that they will be conducting a live fire exercise in the areas depicted on the slide off the coast of ireland right there the russian naval ships surface vessels we don't know which ones yet we'll be participating in a rocket firing exercise in the square box and the circle the circular box there is the landing area for where the rockets are supposed to land so the big question is why would russia do this in this particular area well the obvious answer is political pressure right russia wants to make the united kingdom well aware of the fact that they are an island nation and the russian navy is quite powerful but i think there's another reason this area is not new this is the same area that last year a russian tu-142 was observed to be circling and flying around presumably communicating with a submarine so russia has done a lot of activity in this particular area they did a lot last year and they're again signaling they're going to do some more and if we overlay this next chart i think you'll understand why this is the map of all of the undersea communications cables in the area and as you can see the training area right for their rocket exercise right and heavy air quotes is directly over a series of cables that runs uh from the united kingdom to new jersey so gee i wonder what russia is going to be doing in their exercise right it's almost like russia is going to be conducting this exercise to have an excuse to have uh surface ships in the area for submarine activity down below of course this is speculation russia has not declared that submarines are going to be taking part in this exercise but we can pretty well guess that that's what's going to happen and this kind of makes sense honestly because russia has for those of you who don't know russia has a very long history of losing submarines they have lost more subreins at sea than any other nation and as such usually when russia is doing some kind of risky behavior like going down to the sea floor or something like that when they have a submarine operating in an area they usually have a surface based reef rescue vessel nearby so if we start to see russian submarine rescue vessels the vessels that we know do this will know that there are submarines in the area but honestly you can just look at the map here and pretty much guess this is what russia is going to be doing now i know what a lot of you are thinking is this a way for russia to start cutting cables between the united kingdom and and the united states uh i personally don't think so yes there are very strong indicators that the last cable that we talked about the cable between norway and svalbard that cable was cut actually was a piece of it taken out and it's almost certainly russia right but i don't think that they're going to be cutting cables this time i think they're probably going to be mapping or training or something like that or even better if this is yet another political move to let the united states and the united kingdom know hey we have this technology now and it wouldn't be a shame if we cut your cables kind of a way of politically pressuring the us and the united kingdom again so again i don't think russia is going to be cutting cables this time if they were they wouldn't be declaring a training exercise they'd just be sneaking out and doing it right or planting explosives on multiple cables to sever them all at once right so by declaring a training exercise in this specific area this is almost certainly a political message more than it is an actual military exercise right but i thought it was interesting this uh this kind of thing when it comes to russian submarines and cables this gets the attention of a lot of very high ranking people in the military and in the political structures around the world so you can rest assured that even though this sounds like kind of a small issue this is a very big deal and a lot of very powerful people are getting a lot of briefings on this i would be willing to bet so for those of you who want to learn more and get the grids for this actual training area there are a few grids going around on the internet but i'm not quite so sure how accurate they are i haven't pulled the actual grids from the russian government but here is the no tam for it again highlighting how important no tams are we can actually get the corner grids for both the firing area and the operational box for the russian surface vessels so this might be subject to change this might this box might be larger or smaller this is just for aviation assets to allow to um let aviation assets know that they're not going to be uh able to fly in this area due to the rocket launching so when we get better grids for where this operational box will occur we'll update you then i also want to mention that there's a little bit of a diplomatic issue between ireland and russia over this uh irish fishermen and other fishing groups have stated that they will be protesting this uh this military exercise the fishermen have agreed to abide by a safety standoff of a few miles but we will in all likelihood be seeing fishing vessels shadowing whatever russian assets make their way down for this exercise and as we can see this exercise takes place at least the no tams are in place for the third and the fourth of february so again once we get more accurate information about this and once we actually do confirm that these no tams are for the naval exercise this might be a totally different exercise because this is a common firing area i should i should mention we'll provide that update when we get more information before we move on to the actual fronts i wanted to talk a little bit about some climatology data and the weather again we're seeing a lot of information being talked about in the mainstream media and so we just wanted to offer a little bit of clarification with regards to the data itself so this is a chart showing the average uh temperature in kiev during the month of january last year and this is february of 2021 as well as we can see the temperature kind of fluctuated a lot but it did get a lot warmer towards the end of february but it also remained cold up until the midpoint of february so that's last year now if we look at the chart for this year this is the month of january 2022 we can see that really on average uh the month of january has been quite warm or at least warmer than it has been in the past so that's why people are saying that ukraine's winter has been unseasonably warm this year ukraine actually hit a few records with regards to temperatures high temperatures over last year so that kind of makes sense now we can kind of project what february is going to be like based on the averages so this is a chart showing the average temperatures by month from 1985 until 2015. so not super helpful but it just kind of gives you the gist of what what the deal is so what i wanted to talk about is does this even matter that much yes weather is one of the most important factors for planning military operations and is usually a critical factor for the success or the failure of a military objective we've talked a lot about weather over the past couple years on our channel and how important it is for military operations and that is true it is uh it is a very big factor when considering military operations planning and things like that but it's not the only factor and in the specific case of russia invading ukraine before the spring thaw sets in i'm not sure if frozen ground will be enough of a deciding factor for whether or not to begin this military campaign a lot of mainstream sources a lot of think tanks and ocean sources are are holding on they're grasping onto this the ground temperature as if it's the only factor for whether or not russia is going to invade and i don't know if it is i don't know that and no one up to and including the joint chiefs know that and honestly i don't think that even most russian military leaders know what the final decision factors will be either it's all guesswork based on history and what we know about russian military doctrine but things can change and even most russian soldiers are probably asking themselves is this for real this time so when it comes to weather it's all a gamble russia might decide to wait and see if conditions get colder in the early part of february and allow much of what is now muddy terrain to become frozen but that's a gamble because if february turns out to be mild just like january was they will be even more disadvantaged than they are right now then again all of this can change in a single day with the arrival of a freak cold front that brings temperatures down for a couple of days usually it takes a couple of weeks of cold temperatures for the ground to freeze within an acceptable level but who knows russia might jump at the opportunity if the conditions are right in any case we do know this climate conditions even right now are less than ideal for a ground invasion with armored elements and conditions might or might not get any better than they are right now the grand question that will remain unanswered for the time being is what conditions russia will deem to be acceptable and whether or not those criteria will need to align with other factors that are also important for the invasion moving to our overall theater slide the theme for all of the fronts today is going to be there are a lot of updates but not a lot of updates that we can put on the slide so we're seeing a lot of reinforcements reinforcing pretty much every unit that we have seen so far but not a whole lot of them that we can actually verify with any level of acceptability so let's go ahead and jump into the actual fronts themselves on the northeastern front really the biggest activity we have seen is up in brian's as one might expect pretty much every unit in the area being reinforced with supplies logistics we're seeing a lot of logistics logistical vehicles and supplies being moved into the area we're also seeing forces in belarus being reinforced quite heavily but we'll talk more about that when we get to that front moving to the eastern front there have been reports of conflict breaking out in the outskirts of moorpole as well as donetsk this is nothing major it's not a major offensive or anything this is most likely just harassing attacks that have been pretty standard in these areas over the past few years conflict on the outskirts of marpol as well as within the entirety of donetsk has really been a mainstay over the past few years so even though you're seeing a lot of combat breaking out along these fronts it's not necessarily a prelude to an invasion just yet we're watching it closely though so if we start seeing harassing fires beginning or stuff that's out of the ordinary with regards to what combat has normally been in this area we'll let you know but for now it seems to be status quo on the eastern front moving down south really the biggest update has been the reinforcements coming across the crimean bridge which links russia with the crimean peninsula there has been a lot of significant activity observed along this bridge over the past few days units have been streaming across this bridge into crimea 24 7 for the past couple of weeks so the reinforcement and staging activity within crimea continues as we move forward moving to the northwestern front like i mentioned pretty much every unit that we're seeing being staged in belarus is getting reinforcements uh the town of yeltsk has been host to a lot of these reinforcements as well as really the whole gomel region we're also seeing forces being staged at various military bases belarusian military bases around the area such as this one in the town of richista this is a normal belarusian military base highlighted in yellow there towards the bottom of the slide but we're also seeing a lot of videos come out because the town there as you can see envelops the main rail yard there so we're seeing a lot of civilians post videos of armored vehicles and being staged there in richista so we and a lot of others will definitely be keeping an eye on a lot of belarusian military bases to monitor the buildup over the next few days i also wanted to briefly touch on evacuation options so this is something that a lot of people are starting to think about i know we've touched on it very briefly in the past but i wanted to dive a little bit deeper now that the u.s government has essentially stated that u.s citizens are on your own for getting out of ukraine if and when this stuff kicks off so air travel for the most part when and if this full scale conflict begins all air travel will be unreliable at best we are expecting most major airports within ukraine to become inoperable within the opening stages of the invasion again this all depends on what russia does but i personally would not plan on aerial evacuation being a viable option it's still a viable option right now it's status quo there are flights leaving kiev all the time but when this stuff starts you've got to start thinking about other things right remember civilian airliners have a history of being shot down in this theater by russian assets so egressing by land by vehicle or by rail is a much more stable and reliable option however that also presents challenges in the worst case event of a full-scale invasion occurring i would expect trains to be either targeted by russian aviation assets or be confiscated by the ukrainian military to move troops to the front lines similarly with roads expect dozens of miles of traffic jams on every single road leading out of the country roads to the west in the more rough terrain might also be of lesser quality as well traffic through mountain passes is precarious in normal times and even more dangerous when there is a flood of people hurrying to escape the country and unfortunately another major consideration is jab status quite simply you might not be able to escape ukraine if you are not jabbed depending on what country you're trying to go to i know this sounds outlandish but here is an email from the us state department that has been circulating on social media talking about this exact topic we've had to censor certain words so that youtube doesn't delete our entire channel but this email covers the regulations for entry into the nations that border ukraine as we can clearly see evacuating is not as simple as one might think again for those that think that these regulations will change in the event of a war breaking out that's fine if you want to think that but that's a gamble and we have to remember that a precedent has been set with regards to evacuations and jab status remember when cruise lines refused to rescue islanders from saint vincent when a freaking volcano erupted people literally had to choose between living on an erupting volcano and getting the jab to escape so there is already a very strong precedent for governments private companies and other agencies to deny life-saving evacuations or medical treatment based solely on your job status so keep that in mind when considering evacuation plans as always with massive events like this which draw the world's attention there is a time in which the waters become muddy with regards to information like we've mentioned personal politics get involved and this makes it very difficult to find accurate information we have a lot of powerful players saying a lot of things about the ukraine situation and this heavily influences the risk management actions of individual people to explain this let's take a look at the political situation in ukraine a bit of political strife has emerged between the political leadership in ukraine and the political leadership here in the united states ukraine's leadership has publicly taken the position that this overwhelming buildup of russian troops along their border is not as big of a deal as the united states is making it out to be whereas the united states and other nato members are in panic mode now trying to cut through all of the political posturing and other bs surrounding the ukrainian conflict here's what i think the cultural difference is everything ukraine's leadership is both weary of the past eight years of war and at the same time completely understanding of the situation regarding a potential full-scale invasion ukraine has been living with an invasion for a long time now so even though we americans might look at ukraine's statements of everything's just fine and think wow they're crazy the threat of an invasion just doesn't carry the weight that it does with americans you will constantly hear stories all over social media about how ukrainians and kiev are just going about their daily lives and acting like nothing is wrong and in many cases these reports are true i myself would agree that this is a bit perplexing to me as well but that's me a westerner who is not living in that situation now all of this being said i do want to caveat that by pointing out that there is a significant civil defense effort underway in ukraine there are a lot of ukrainians arming themselves and preparing defenses so i don't want to make it out to look like the ukrainian people are completely naive as to this invasion potential there are efforts being undertaken the larger point that all of this illustrates is the political turmoil that is currently present among the political leadership of all parties involved the ukrainians are accusing the us of overhyping the threat and accusing the political leadership of not understanding that this conflict has been going on for some time meanwhile back here at home you've got military leadership salivating at the prospect of sending someone else's kids to get killed in a war so that their raytheon stocks will go up and on the other hand you've got people who don't support the military-industrial complex and don't want to fight a war that isn't our own but also recognize that russia is a powerful entity and one of the very few entities that can affect your life here at home so it's probably not a good idea for them to freaking invade europe meanwhile we've got pundits and political groups using their politics as their metric for what their opinions are rather than the situation on the ground all of this political stuff is frustrating and there are a lot of strong opinions out there about ukraine already but unfortunately this is a big factor in determining how this ukraine situation will affect our lives here at home so thank you for sticking around as we try to provide information and intelligence on this incident especially as it applies to the 20 000 plus americans that are still in ukraine as well as the people here at home as we all know international incidents like this have a way of coming to our doorstep extremely quickly so even though most people don't care about this stuff we will keep on the lookout for information and lessons that we can learn so as to avoid a repeat of history here at home so thanks again for watching thank you for your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground man it has been a long time since I've put out a brief so hopefully we'll be able to get through some of the issues that have been kind of a top priority for us here over the past few weeks just a small administrative note I'm actually still working on the format for this brief it's going to change quite a bit I think as we move forward and try to figure out some of the more interesting things to talk about so for now really the only thing that I'm going to talk about in the domestic United States is petroleum oil and lubricant production we'll jump back to the more kinetic incidents and some of the more interesting critical infrastructure stuff but like I said I've got a lot of catching up to do and a lot of data to sift through so we'll have to revisit that at a later date but for now I have primarily been focusing on Pol or petroleum oil and lubricant refineries based on how often very large facilities have exploded or caught fire lately I thought it prudent to start cataloging the major incidents that we have seen this year so far this year the most serious incidents that we have seen have been the fire at the BP husky Toledo Refinery which ended up killing two people and the incidents surrounding the marathon refinery in garyville starting with the BP husky Toledo incident both BP and federal investigators have been pretty tight-lipped regarding the incident that claimed the lives of two Refinery workers this is completely expected following such a serious event that results in the death or Serious injury of workers the long-term effects of this plant being offline are unknown but as it stands one of the largest refineries in the Great Lakes region is offline and from what I can tell the entire Refinery is offline and unfortunately it's pretty likely to stay offline for a significant amount of time because BP just announced significant layoffs at this facility following the fire moving to the marathon refinery in garyville unknown parts of the facility are still offline following a fire and possible explosion which resulted in unknown damage back on October 7th that's pretty much all I've got a big fat nothing do don't know any more than something happened don't know what don't know how bad it is and don't know when the facility is going to be back online this incident is interesting because as some of you may remember this is the second incident involving the garyville refinery this year back in February this facility suffered an explosion in one of the towers that are used to process distillates for gasoline Diesel and jet fuel though like anything surrounding the Pol refineries the details on these incidents are sketchy at best so we never really get precise details following any incident either way it's not a good thing when things keep exploding at the third largest refinery in the United States moving back in time a bit we remember that this hasn't been a good year for Valero who has witnessed several large Fires at their refineries around the country this year back in April we saw a very large fire at their complex in Monroe Louisiana which injured eight workers and more recently a large fire broke out at their Corpus Christi facility on November 3rd wrapping up the recent events that surrounding our Pol refining capabilities many refineries are offline on the west coast for both planned and unplanned maintenance such as two Phillips 66 refineries in Washington state and in California so some of you might be asking so what well the bottom line is that even though we're dealing with a lot of unknowns it can't be good for this much refining capability to be offline at once again we are missing crucial data we know the total production capacity of every single Pol refinery in the U.S but when you start factoring in partial shutdowns or planned maintenance with unknown timetables we can't really get a good beat on what the bottom line is it's not like the colonial pipeline incident when basically the entire network was dead in the water for six days or so most of the specific data that we need to understand what impacts these shutdowns will have is either proprietary data that you have to pay thousands of dollars for or again concealed for national security reasons wouldn't be a super good idea to point out exactly what the vulnerabilities of our refineries are however we can generally say that again this many refineries being offline down for maintenance damaged in some way or still recovering from damage that occurred years ago is not good for our national energy security Now the next question becomes why why are so many refineries burning or exploding lately is this out of the norm or is this something that we're just noticing more well we can get into the specifics of the reported incidents at a later time because there are complex problems with the ways that these major events are reported but generally speaking I think that these major incidents are the result of a few factors which are overstretched Crews inexperienced workers increased demand resulting in maintenance issues poor maintenance in general and of course the more deliberate actions that while probably rare we will never know about but nonetheless must factor in as well after all we cannot completely dismiss the in insane rhetoric that we're seeing from world leaders specifically regarding energy whatever the reason for these fires or explosions we will never get enough info to make a call either way what all of this really means is that we are really counting on all of the workers at these types of facilities to be vigilant and be careful the average citizen can't do a John Brown thing about a Refinery fire all we can do is Observe and plan accordingly if a Refinery fire breaks out that is going to immediately impact prices or availability as was the case with the fire at the Whiting Indiana facility back in August so if you work at a pol Refinery or really any large industrial facility please be careful and remain Vigilant you are on the front lines and the first and sometimes only barrier preventing a lot of really bad things from happening anybody who's worked in Industry knows that oftentimes safety takes a back seat especially if your supervisor says do this or you're fire third but the game has changed now and a large industrial accident that could have been prevented is not just going to hurt a company's bottom line it's going to directly impact the lives of everyday citizens likewise pay attention to your company's security practices if you see someone you don't recognize in a place where they are not supposed to be say something take a few minutes to check out your work center and make sure that everything is where it's supposed to be and that the right stuff is tagged out and that there isn't anything extra hanging out in the workplace you all know what to do I certainly don't need to lecture anyone I just think that at this point the only thing that we can do is remain Vigilant report safety or maintenance violations when you can and keep an eye out for anything shady moving on to significant governmental actions uh the Biden regime announced this week that they will continue tapping into the Strategic petroleum reserves releasing another 15 million barrels shortly before the midterms the short-term impacts of this are of course gas prices being kept artificially low even though nationally gas prices are creeping up again in places like California as the midterms are now over we might see the Biden regime slow down on tapping into the spr as a motivation to keep gas prices low is not really necessary anymore at least until the next major election in 2024 or until some other distraction is needed on a national scale the grand strategic question is and has been how far will the Biden regime go will they continue to tap into the spr until there simply is nothing more to tap I don't think anybody knows that at this point clearly we have the benefit of data we know how much Pol we consume nationally and we know how much we are importing and producing here at home and we know how much the spr currently holds when the spr starts running dry the Biden regime will be faced with a rather Simple Choice considering the complexity of the Pol industry either increase Imports or increased domestic production clearly Biden's visit to sweet talk the Saudis back in June didn't work out as OPEC just a couple of months ago announced that they would be cutting production granted OPEC doesn't necessarily put all of the weight of their decisions on their relations with the United States but there is enough of a link there to be concerned either way the clock is ticking it is true that even though the very first executive order Biden signed was to negatively impact the Pol industry the Biden regime has also quietly renewed some oil leases out west in order to boost domestic oil production most people think it's too little too late and only lip service but at this point it's something I guess as always it's hard to say how much of an impact these things have and the average citizen is most likely focused on the political and social implications rather than the large strategic economic ones it's quite clear that there is a concerted effort being undertaken by powerful governments individuals companies and non-governmental organizations which are intended to control populations via High petroleum prices and availability too you can't effectively organize a Revolt if you have to choose between food and a tank of gas and both food and transportation are actively being used right now as Weapons by governments all around the United States and around the world speaking of power and control the Biden regime has also declared that they will be extending the c19 emergency until April of next year in a move that surprises literally no one not much to say about this one other than when April rolls around it'll be extended again and again and so on again not much to say on that just wanted to let everyone know who had not heard moving on to the more spicy event that has come to light we at last have the still breaking FTX crypto laundering Scandal here's a brief rundown of what's happened FTX was the fifth largest cryptocurrency Exchange in the world or at least it was up until a few days ago when their founder and CEO Sam bankman freed suddenly got on a plane and disappeared into the night urging that there had been a Cyber attack and for all users to delete all FTX software immediately well details are still kind of sketchy but it seems like bankmen and other senior FTX staff had installed backdoor code into FTX software that allowed them to literally drain every user's account or at least that's what many users have reported after they logged in to see that they had a balance of zero due to the nature of how cryptocurrency exchanges work it's not clear as to how much money has been stolen so far figures have been in the ballpark of a few hundred million dollars worth but some estimates have been as high as tens of billions of dollars here's where the story gets a bit sketchy and also why you will not hear much about this at all from corporate Media or at least they're not going to make the link and that is the relationship between the Democratic party FTX and Ukraine what is Undisputed fact is that FTX had partnered with the state of Ukraine with President zielinski personally being involved in ftx's plan to quote turn a bit coin into bullets many of you remember that Ukraine had set up a specific banking system in coordination with Ukrainian Banks so that money could be sent by anyone around the world to support Ukraine's efforts to Stave off Russia's Invasion at the time this was touted as a way of preventing the usual fraud among ngos that happens during every crisis fake Charities pop up and money gets stolen or otherwise doesn't make it to the intended recipients we all know how less than honest individuals sometimes make their way into the charity world so this system was touted as one of the first options that people had to donate money and be sure that it actually didn't make it to who needed it claims which were backed up by Ukrainian Banks well it turns out that this system or at least the cryptocurrency side of the system that was maintained by FTX was all a scam FTX was the major entity who accepted donations of cryptocurrency and exchanged that currency for the fiat currency that the Ukrainian government need needed to run the war remember all of this was blessed off by the Ukrainian government and the donation page itself was literally hosted by the Ukrainian government on a government website a website which mysteriously vanished a few days before the FTX Scandal broke so the picture becomes a bit more clear but wait there's more Sam bankman the founder of FTX was the second largest donator in the history of the democratic party coming in just behind George Soros in terms of campaign donations for the midterm election that we just had a few days ago this is especially troubling considering how much of our tax money has been sent to Ukraine we have all been following the reports of the donations of U.S tax dollars to Ukraine but we never really see the meat and potatoes of how and where that money gets transferred we just see reports of Congress agrees to send 37 billion more dollars to Ukraine we don't actually see the account numbers that this goes into or how these transactions are handled what we see is the US government pumping U.S tech tax dollars into the money pit of Ukraine we don't know where it goes and the half-hearted attempts to provide some accountability for that money have not been fruitful at all and now we find out that the guy who's neck deep in the entire world of Ukrainian Finance has absconded with the doe oh and by the way he's one of the largest Democratic governors in history and he only created FTX in 2019. so the internet is a blaze with people being flabbergasted and incredulous that the following scenario has actually gone down the general thesis that many people seem to see right in front of their eyes is that the US government gave Ukraine a lot of money which was how should I say put in the washing machine and transferred back to the Democratic party in the form of campaign donations if this is true or even a shred of it is true then this would obviously be a pretty bold move and one might call it the crime of the century though in my opinion the crime of the century has already occurred anyway this incident is almost 2 insane to believe even after all of the stuff we've been living through over the past couple of years I myself do not know the full story no one does just yet but I am inclined to believe that what happened is exactly what we think happened even though we do not precisely know how U.S tax money is at play here we don't know how that factors into the whole crypto thing and how finances were transferred or if U.S tax dollars were a part of this fraud at all I'm still inclined to be a bit pessimistic on that front however taking a step back for a moment to look at things strategically if this is true then I think we have much less time than we think we do a washing operation as bold as this one potentially compromising official US Government transactions of U.S taxpayer money man Bernie Madoff had nothing on this accepting of course the c19 and Jab issues this could very well turn out to be the crime of the century oh but the two incidents are not entirely unrelated because you want to guess who funded the research that so-called proved that Ivermectin did not work yeah that research was funded by a group called together which was bankrolled by you guessed it FTX so there's that anyway it's also tiring and can be quite depressing if you dwell on it so we'll just leave it there for now and we'll come back and talk about some more details that are sure to come out over the next few weeks that pretty much wraps up the domestic issues for now we'll focus more on some more specific issues at a later time but right now let's jump to Europe there have been many major incidents that have taken place since the last brief but I wanted to focus on just two events for right now first up was the attack on the nordstream LNG pipelines in the Baltic Sea here's what we know so far back on September 26th the terminal operators detected pressure drops on both the nordstream one and two pipelines various Naval forces were dispatched to the scene of the suspected leak where this large kilometer wide gas field was discovered over the next few days several more leaks were detected additionally various military sonar arrays throughout the region reported hearing underwater explosions at the same time the leaks were detected clearly this was a deliberate attack an act of sabotage the question remains to this day who did it taking a step back for a moment I must acknowledge how serious of an event this is and that I cannot really go into much detail about what I'm about to say some of you might know that I have a bit of professional history surrounding undersea cables and pipelines most of the information surrounding what goes on down on the sea floor is very very secret and exactly what's capable is not public knowledge so all of that is to say that when I first heard of this attack I became more concerned than I have been in a very long time I truly thought that nukes would be in the air by the end of the day and that's because this event is again supposed to be one of the opening moves of a war with Russia throughout intelligent circles The Cutting of undersea cables and pipelines has widely been considered to be one of the opening moves of World War III this is because both the US and Russia the two biggest power players in the undersea game are traditionally believed to reserve such actions only in case of War it's what's been done and prepared for since the Cold War and there's just a sort of cultural understanding out there it's very similar to the idea of ballistic missile submarines we here in the U.S have ballistic missile boats and so does Russia and we both have fast attack Subs shadowing each other's Boomers pretty much at all times the understanding is that if anyone gets the order to launch the ballistic sub gets their missiles off or at least tries to before the other guy's fast attack boat Torpedoes them that's just the understanding that's in place a grand game of nuclear chicken similar situation with undersea cables both the US and Russia play games and we map and tap each other's cables or at least try to Russia doesn't have too many undersea cables or pipelines but of the few pipelines that Russia does have arguably the two most important are the Nordstrom one and two pipeline systems so here we are again witnessing an event that is by all historical accounts supposed to be one of the opening moves of a very kinetic nuclear war both cable and pipeline cutting are on the list of things that have happened already this year so maybe I need to take my own advice and reassess things from a 5th generation Warfare perspective sure anything can happen but two months have elapsed since the attack on the Nordstrom pipeline systems and we haven't all been burned up to a crisp adjust yet but the question remains who did it to that my answer is this every 5i partner plus Norway Sweden probably Denmark and the Netherlands and of course Germany as well all of these entities know 100 percent who the real culprit is these nations have spent an obscene amount of money and dedicated a significant portion of Naval intelligence to tracking Russian vessels particularly the ones capable of laying charges to to cut pipelines so the US government knows for sure who did it and of course I know it when we look at the list of Nations that can do something like this we're looking at pretty much anybody this is mostly due to the depth at which the attacks occurred if we're talking a super deep depth only accessible by especially crafted submarines we would really only be looking at just the us or Russia having this capability however since the leaks occurred in comparatively shallow water the list of suspects is pretty large so let's take a look at motivation let's let's see who would be motivated to blow up the Nordstrom pipelines well we can rule out Germany since that pipeline was their most direct source of natural gas at least prior to the Diplomatic problems that arose from the Ukrainian War just to be clear as a side note the pipeline wasn't actually in use at the time of the detonations which has been kind of the result of the Diplomatic deadlock regarding energy and the Ukrainian War speaking of the Ukrainian War what about Russia Russia built and owns both pipeline systems so what would they have to gain by blowing up their own pipeline well for one Russia could blow up the pipelines knowing that Western Powers wouldn't be willing to show the highly classified proof that Russia did it which would allow Russia to avoid the international finger-pointing that comes whenever they throttle the Pipelines so Russia could get what she wants denying Europe a critical supply of natural gas while at the same time remaining blameless that works right well not so much the issue is much more complicated than that for one and secondly Russia has so far been content to throttle the flow of natural gas whenever needed why would they blow up something when they can simply throttle it plus ever since the Ukrainian War has kicked off again in Earnest Russia would have to expect that Europe would sanction the pipeline anyway so it wouldn't be a solid source of income granted the situation for liquid natural gas in Europe is pretty desperate right now so who knows what Germany in particular might have done so we're sort of stuck aren't we well not really who do I think blow up the Nordstrom pipelines I think the United States did it why do I think that well it's pretty simple let me answer this first question first if Germany if uh if Russia invades uh that means tanks or troops crossing the uh the the border of Ukraine again then uh there will be uh we there will be no longer nor stream too we we will bring an end to it what what how will you do that exactly since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control we will I promise you we'll be able to do it yes that was a clip from February of this year in which the president of the United States clearly and directly threatens the Nordstrom pipelines granted Biden does not directly say we will blow up the pipelines but come on man I think that's pretty clear so if we take this quote at its full value I think that's that's pretty I mean that's clear enough for me to draw an assessment however if we wanted to go a step further and just and recognize the fact that a lot of times Biden doesn't really know what he's talking about we can look at the international reactions to get a better understanding of who it might have been and that's really the other main reason that I think it was the United States the the reactions of nearby Nations while the blasts took place in international waters the blasts were within the economic exclusion zones of both Sweden and Denmark both of which have stated that they are not treating this attack as an attack on their nation which is fishy because they certainly could have made that claim and militarily have been preparing for just that scenario for decades it's a case of militaries preparing for X event training long and hard solidifying their response if x event occurs then X event does occur and suddenly everybody's all about solving the problem diplomatically it doesn't make a whole lot of sense granted I do have a sneaking suspicion that based on what I've seen over the past few months world leaders are genuinely concerned about starting a kinetic World War III uh I think that of course this is an issue to get more into at a later time so I don't want to digress too far but I do think that despite the fact that we're fighting you know in a military-industrial complex and a lot of money is being made on all sides by the threat of conflict throughout Europe I don't think that anybody really genuinely wants it to actually break off you know break out in Earnest which is some halfway good news I guess because it seems like everybody had the justification to do something militarily about this pipeline issue and no one has everybody is trying to kind of sweep it under the rug now this could be because the European nations are genuinely concerned about poking the Bear in any meaningful militarily you know way not just rhetoric they could be concerned about that for real or it was the United States and they knew about it ahead of time or they figured out so they're not trying to push the investigation too hard either way I am absolutely positive that the dudes over in the Russian Gucci directorate are punching the air right now because blowing up pipelines and cutting cables is pretty much the only reason they exist so all in all what does this mean well the entire Nordstrom project is probably dead in the water so to speak repair is going to be tricky the issues of corrosion and winter weather being the chief concerns plus nobody's really keen on rebuilding a pipeline that's just going to sit there idle anyway as long as the Ukrainian War rages on and Western hysteria continues with it the North Regine pipeline project is probably probably going to be over it will be interesting to see what the Western response will be in the long term though we've already seen levels of mild-mannered temperance that are only present when one is the culprit of what one is investigating so time will tell what washes up with this one in a similar vein the other major supposedly World War III starting event occurred just a couple of days ago and this was the missile strike that killed two farmers along the Polish border these two farmers were killed by at least one projectile at approximately the same time that Russia had launched a large-scale rocket artillery barrage in Ukraine initial reports were that the one or possibly two projectiles that killed the farmers were an errant missile fired by Russian forces however subsequent analysis of some of the debris revealed that the projectile may have been a missile from a Ukrainian s-300 air defense system right now a lot of finger pointing is going on with all sides engaging in prop propaganda as expected the response from Ukraine Poland and the rest of NATO has been very telling in the minutes after the incident The only voice we heard was zielinski's who was foaming at the mouth to get Poland to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter which is the one that refers to an attack on one member state is an attack on all in other words zlinsky wasted no time at all to draw NATO into their War just as he is done from the very start also interesting has been the response of the United States seeing as the United States has also been chomping at the bit to further their money laundering operation in Ukraine the United States has been very quiet the Pentagon immediately issued a press statement basically saying we can't corroborate that the missile was Russian in origin and Biden outright refused to answer the reporter's question on the topic as well pretty fishy for a regime which has been looking for every opportunity to expand the conflict perhaps most troubling has been Poland's response which was quite serious as you would expect following the death of Polish citizens for a while their Poland was was considering activating Article 4 of the NATO Charter which basically invokes military consultation of member states and Poland still might do that that would be probably the minimum that they would do if the missile had actually been Russian in origin uh we would be looking at the classic military response of some kind of surgical strike on probably the facility that launched the missile or the unit that launched it but now that we find out that the missile that killed two polish citizens is almost certainly Ukrainian in origin well now the rhetoric has completely changed and the incident is now quote an unfortunate accident I feel like NATO and Poland are going to brush this one under the rug and try to memory hold this one why well there are a few theories that I and most of the internet immediately had the fact that Ukraine immediately called for Article 5 to be invoked was suspicious especially considering the speed at which this announcement was was made right it's almost like it was pre-prepared I mean the crater was still smoking when zielinski got on t TV and made his claims that you know Nick Poland should invoke article 5. so this whole incident is so fishy that many people are thinking that this whole thing was intentional on the part of Ukraine and intentional false flag attack intended to force NATO into the conflict the whole thing gets a lot more fishy considering that Lloyd Austin the U.S Secretary of Defense during a press conference made the statement that Ukrainian air defense Interceptor missiles have had a 100 percent success rate meaning that every interceptor missile that has been launched has destroyed its Russian Target or functioned as intended so the story that this might have been a malfunctioning Ukrainian missile that missed the Russian missile it was aiming for and landed in Poland that story you know it would have been likely in any other situation but man as time goes on it's looking less and less likely but again this is all very heavy with speculation at this point I think that once again the larger lesson here is to be very careful where you get your information from I myself have taken step back or rather a giant leap back from All Things Ukraine because the truth is completely non-existent regarding most things that have happened during the war so far sure there are lots of smaller more tactical Lessons Learned you know that stuff is helpful but if I had to pick one lesson that I've learned so far it's that fifth generation Warfare is real and that this war is just as much of a psychological one as it is physical so when it comes to where things stand right now the situation throughout Europe is tense for sure and will be so for a long time the impacts of cross-border fires whether it's an intentional false flag attack a genuine mistake or something else combined with blown up pipelines will most certainly be felt intensely for the foreseeable future fortunately neither event has resulted in us being burned to a crisp at least not yet and all that somewhat cheery news I think we'll wrap things up for today am I concerned about the fate of Europe and by default the rest of the world yes absolutely I can only say I'm concerned so many times before it gets tiring but we'll carry on we're already far past my own personal benchmarks for when I would have imagined a global war to break out which I think means that World War III has already started as I've been saying for about a year now can we walk things back and head in the right direction sure will we I don't know either way the result is the same for average People Like Us make good decisions learn new things meet new people and drink some water taking things one day at a time certainly seems to be a good place to start so let's keep doing that anyway that's all I've got for now I hope to finish up some of the more doctrinal stuff we've been working on pretty soon here so stay tuned for that and of course we'll be working on some communication stuff in the near future as well so thank you again for all of your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

hello again everyone welcome back to the underground this is the briefing for thursday the 20th of january 2022. sorry it's been a while since our last brief we have been super busy trying to work on a lot of communication stuff a lot of educational stuff that's going to be coming out sometime soon and of course uh the past at least two to three weeks have been filled with preparation for the ukrainian war which is looking more imminent with every passing moment as a result we're going to keep this brief light today and we're going to go ahead and skip past the stuff i normally talk about and just start with logistics so i really don't have that many specific logistics but if any of you have been to the grocery store over the past week or so you know that this is a common trend these days for whatever reason i don't know if this is a genuine shortage or if it's one of those manufactured shortages where a journalist writes a newspaper article or something on twitter and it starts trending and sooner or later everyone's out of everything but it's most certainly a very tangible thing that a lot of places are having shortages right now we're talking shortages of pretty much everything you could possibly imagine consumer goods meats fresh fresh food products uh all kinds of stuff and some of this in different areas can be attributed to staffing shortages other parts of it other areas of the country is really hard to tell what the logistical challenges are but just know that there are a lot of shortages i i simply cannot name them all you'll see a lot of things on on twitter like the the hashtag bear shelves biden is trending on twitter but unfortunately again these kinds of pictures don't really give us that much information they tell us a snapshot in time that that one specific area if someone even tells where the picture is it only gives us a snapshot and we don't really get a good idea of what's going on so somebody could take a picture like this and circulate it around social media and then you have to deal with man pictures of of things like the earlier shortages people saying oh look at you know look at my local grocery store and it turns out it's a picture from like three years ago it's really hard to tell this stuff um so yeah i hate to just kind of leave everybody hanging on the logistics front that oh yeah there's shortages of of what well everything um yeah so something to keep in mind as we start getting a lot of the winter weather for a lot of parts of the country you know that that normally brings about shortages and speci especially in areas like like where we're at where we don't normally get a lot of winter weather but we get just a little bit you know and everybody gets kind of crazy so something to keep in mind is logistic logistics is going to be a a problem for the foreseeable future at least at least for the next couple of weeks and we can talk about that a little bit when we go to critical infrastructure so one of the bigger items of critical infrastructure news coming out this week is the 5g rollout scandal scenario i don't really know what to call it basically what's happening is a lot of cell carriers are rolling out 5g in a lot of areas and foreign airlines are are actually boycotting flights to the united states so as a as of the past 24 hours we've seen many many many foreign airlines cancel flights to the united states in response to the rollout of 5g in larger parts of the united states so the reason for this is that at least in europe they have found that the radar altimeters or the radio altimeters or or different kinds of systems on board aircraft both fixed wing and rotary wing are being affected by 5g they think nobody really has put out any concrete data on it that i've seen so far it should be fairly simple you know what what bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum does 5g operate on and you know what bandwidth do you know aircraft systems operate on well you know aircraft are different so in any case what is the result of this is airlines are canceling flights so no american airline company has done anything as far as i've seen they're pushing back on it but they haven't actually canceled flights so yeah this has just kind of spun way out of control over the past 24 hours or so and it's become a really big deal really quickly even though 5g has been out in a lot of areas in the united states for a very long time now i mean where we're at we've had 5g for a very long time there's like a you know a 5g tower like like less than half a mile from where i live and you know it's it's been there for at least a year and a half now i think so you know i don't really know what the effects of this are going to be on aviation long term but i can tell you it is causing a lot of consternation within the aviation community specifically when it comes to foreign outside the united states aviation assets trying to have flights to the united states also number two they're keeping in the theme of logistics uh or at least disruptions there has been a rash of or rather i should say a lot of viral videos come out lately regarding los angeles rail theft so i'm sure a lot of you have seen the videos um if i can find a clip that i could think i can get away with putting on youtube i'll put it up but honestly it's everywhere it's on every social media app and platform nowadays you've probably seen the the pictures of these uh train uh derailments there was actually a train that was derailed that a lot of people are thinking is due to people trying to derail the train to stop it to get the consumer goods out of the shipping containers so yeah this is something that's like normally i wouldn't touch because it doesn't have a whole lot of intel value and it's just you know it tends to be one of those really inflammatory social issues it doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on things um but it it just goes to show you the power of looting like you know it it's one thing to talk about you know so you know a lot of people hundreds of people going in and looting like a consumer goods store you know like a luxury goods store like a luxury clothing store or something like that and just running out with stuff well you know that just kind of speaks to the crime in the country or the crime in a specific area but now we're starting like when we're starting to see trains derailed so that people can steal amazon packages that's a big deal and i would i would be very surprised if the larger shipping companies specifically the rail companies themselves from an insurance standpoint their insurance companies might force them to start using different tracks in different shipping hubs so we'll see how this goes um this has been a problem in california specifically los angeles for a very long time i haven't really seen this be an issue anywhere else in the united states there have been a lot of train derailments and terrorist activity up in the pacific northwest i do know that that has gotten almost no press over the past couple of years but there have been quite a few incidences if you can search that on your own but yeah if we're starting to see trains derailed just so people can steal stuff yeah that's going to be a huge liability because trains are very expensive and they you know just because they're carrying amazon packages and on one car they might be carrying medication on the next car or petroleum on the next car or some kind of you know chemical substance you know somewhere on that train so again huge deal something to keep an eye on and yeah i guess we'll just have to watch and see what happens thirdly again something to keep in mind is cellular communication not being reliable now this is a again a very huge deal i feel like this is the brief of very huge deals uh because usually when we when we talk about things like censorship we're talking about things like social media and there's a reason for this because social media has found exceptions to telecommunications laws or different parts of us code that they can use as justification for censoring things for instance a lot of social media apps claim that they act as a publisher and a publisher can choose what content they host and what content they don't however a lot of people are of the opinion that a lot of social media are acting as public infrastructure and that you know kind of changes his rule well well here's the thing stop talking let's stop talking about social media for a second cellular communications telecommunications providers they are public utilities and public utilities that is a big no-no to sensor we're talking going all the way back to like the watergate stuff and wiretaps that's how far back this legislation goes when it comes to specifically telecommunications providers either censoring or tapping or surveilling different kinds of communications so while the you know the social media stuff social media censorship that's relatively new as of the past 10 years or so this uh cellular cellular communication and telecom agencies in general are very much uh have very strict rules when it comes to this so when you've got uh like t-mobile is one of the bigger ones that says hey we have the right to censor your text messages well no you don't there's a whole stack of us you know code that says you can't do that but they're continuing to do that so again this is a a much larger thing that is worth paying attention to because i i really don't think a whole lot of people think about their text messages being you know censored like we we all kind of this is 2022 right we all kind of know that there's federal surveillance on pretty much every communications platform there is but when it comes to a cellular company choosing to not let a link go through that's a big deal and then like i also mentioned number four there wrapping up our critical infrastructure stuff again we're going to talk ukraine in a specific series we're going to launch another series on that depending on how things go but the short version of why the ukrainian conflict matters for united states infrastructure is that in the united states critical infrastructure particularly when it comes to cyber uh stuff that's a vulnerability there are lots of vulnerabilities in the cyber realm and russia may seek to capitalize on those vulnerabilities as a way of weakening the united states even further and kind of using that as a way to you know pump the brakes on us interactions basically russia is very much fond lately at least their senior military leadership is fond of giving warnings and things like that so we might see you know a pipeline go offline we might see an electrical grid go down and uh and that might be russia's way of saying hey stay out or else we're gonna do worse so we'll come back to that i guess when we talk about ukraine a little bit later but um yeah lots of vulnerabilities for our critical infrastructure these days and there's not really a whole lot we can do about it i guess except be prepared on an individual level moving on to significant governmental actions one of the most uh significant events that has occurred has been the supreme court overruling biden's medical mandates when it comes to uh private companies 100 persons or more i haven't read through the actual verdict yet i haven't read the opinion that the supreme court has put forward on it yet but it looks like the mandate for medical workers can stay and the mandate for everybody else has to kind of go away we're seeing a lot of things that are going to affect different communities very differently with this and here's what i mean um what the supreme court has said and i have to look at the wording again to confirm but from what i can tell it seems like of course this is all opinion anyway uh it seems like the supreme court says hey if you work in health care you have to get the jab because of medicare or medicaid funding if you work at an institution that gets that you have to get a job because of that i'm not quite sure how solid that logic is but it's i mean i think that's what they're trying to say again there's an entire field of law dedicated to just just kind of interpreting what the supreme court says because they never really do anything specific they always do broad brush broad brush stuff and lower courts have to interpret supreme court rulings so i have no doubt that this will occur specifically because a lot of health care workers are very upset about this as one might imagine because essentially the supreme court is saying in a de facto way is that depending on your job you have no rights to what to what you want to put in your own body if you work in a certain job you don't have that right to choose and that's kind of a dangerous precedent now again how other courts interpret this i don't know i don't have the bandwidth to kind of figure this stuff out i'm definitely no no expert on the law or or even a novice in the law i'm a complete neophyte when it comes to this kind of stuff but i can tell you that this is going to cause a lot of problems within the healthcare community because hospitals are going to crack down on this and healthcare workers are going to have very little leg to stand on so when it comes to an intel perspective this means that we're going to start seeing certain hospitals in certain areas usually probably major cities are going to have a lot of healthcare workers just leave and say it's not worth fighting this fight anymore so you're going to have a lot of service interruptions as a result of this now on the other side of that when it comes to the private private company stuff we're starting to see a lot of companies uh specifically companies that are sort of in the the the federal sphere like defense contractors and things like that saying okay the supreme court says that the federal government doesn't have to mandate it but they didn't say anything about us mandating it so we're going to mandate it still as a company and you know there you go it's like well what do you you know what do you do what do you do about that and then again also we have press releases from from the white house saying yeah i don't worry about the supreme court's ruling we're just go ahead with the mandates like i don't know i really don't know what to think about the rule of law these days i don't know if if any of it any shred of it exists left anymore so either way something also along the the avenues of the white house is the concrete wall that the white house has put up so again not really a whole lot of intel value here other than this just kind of happened so it's just like like a news note but i do think that when it comes to what the interpretations of why they would have put the wall up uh yeah why would the white house put a concrete wall up well it's because they're scared so they think there's a vulnerability there and they want to patch that vulnerability why did the vulnerability did the vulnerability was it always there or was it is it a new vulnerability i don't know there's a lot of protests coming up uh in at the end of the month here so maybe that has something to do with it i don't know i'm more inclined to think that it's just the increasing of the military-industrial complex uh and the fortification of our public infrastructure when it comes to you know the political elites that's what i really think it is moving on kind of moving back to the jab stuff uh we're starting to see an interesting trend come out of california and as we all know if it happens in california and it's kind of totalitarian sounding it's going to make its way to other places too is it's very interesting a lot of places in california are saying that essentially if you are jabbed and you still get the medical condition right if you're you're fully jabbed you've got however many um doses we're on now if you get that and you're all current on that and you still get get sick you can come back to work but if you are unjabbed um and you know you're healthy you don't have any kind of sickness um clean out your desk essentially so it's one of those things that kind of proves that this has nothing to do with any kind of you know medical science or anything like that it's really just affecting the the economics as a way to conduct economic warfare and starve out political enemies and stuff like that so again something to keep your eye on because every time i look at something and i say man that's that's kind of totalitarian i bet you it'll it'll make its way around the united states pretty soon so we'll we'll be on the lookout for that and then moving down to number four there uh congress uh actually had a report released uh this was um uh this is actually also been making its rounds on the kind of alternate news sites is that a lot of congress people actually beat the market when it comes to trading so essentially what people are saying is that there's a there's an average for what the market does and generally speaking of course again not a financial expert whatsoever here generally speaking if you do better than what the uh markets average is um that looks a little bad looks highly suspect it almost looks like you knew or had some kind of insider trading stuff going on there and a lot of congress people were up were were apparently you know doing that kind of stuff so a lot of congress people both republicans and democrats alike it's very very much equally split somehow miraculously made a lot of money when the market was doing very poorly so again this is kind of just like more homework for later but if you want to check that out i think it's kind of interesting but again not really a whole lot of intel value there except for you know i guess you know check out your politician to see where they rank on the list and then moving down to number five again this is one a a can of worms that i can't really get into much because it would just take too much time and that is has been the testimony regarding the fbi and the j6 congressional hearings uh really i think the most interesting part that has come out of that so far i personally haven't been following that very much because i think it's all just political theater but interestingly enough the fbi has pleaded the fifth uh the fifth amendment they've invoked their fifth amendment rights as an organization regarding their involvement in uh the jace january 6th whatever you want to call it i think that's interesting because uh there it's just it seems like how um it seems like the fbi probably had a larger role than what they're uh what they're letting on and i would be very interested to see what comes out of this months down the line but again right now it's all speculation none of this is really any has any concrete stuff so uh it's really hard to to say what the fbi did or what they had going on but i think that we can all kind of i think it's a softball assessment to say yeah the fbi was probably planning a lot of this so very interesting stuff indeed and continuing on there to number seven uh the biden regime recently as in the past couple weeks has given the taliban government uh of afghanistan 308 million dollars this is actually brings their total up to 782 million dollars since the fall of afghanistan so again it's very interesting to see where the where the biden regime chooses to spend their money they're obviously saying that it's for humanitarian reasons to prevent mass starvation but again as we all know time and time again it you know watch the movie blackhawk down and you know how giving money to a warlord works out uh we've seen a very large contingent of training operations being conducted by the taliban in afghanistan lots of different military academies that they have set up since the fall of afghanistan lots of special forces units being stood up the taliban is most certainly not just a group of dirt farmers anymore and they're taking advantage of all of the resources that we left behind and continue to give them in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars moving on to number eight there massachusetts has uh launched a digital passport for the you-know-what um and i think this is interesting this one caught my eye because it it states that from what i can tell it looks like most of the digital passport efforts are essentially just a digitization of a scan of an actual card right an actual like paper card and that's really all it is for the most part you see a lot of apps in the app store for things like that and it's really just a a a website that brings up the pdf that you've scanned in before however the massachusetts one i need to do some more digging on this because i'm not entirely certain it sounds to me like there's a lot of medical provider support for this as in there might be again don't quote me on this because i'm not quite sure because all of the mainstream news articles i've read on this which by the way is the only sources you can find on this a lot of these mainstream articles are very vague as to where they're getting the information but the reason that it kind of brings us up is a lot of people have found that their records aren't showing up and it's just kind of a sucky app and it doesn't work that well which is no surprise considering it's a government-built app right but the interesting part is that a lot of people are citing that hey you know they should have been able to pull this from my doctor like why is this not working and that kind of makes somebody like me think hmm does this mean that medical providers are cooperating with this and providing hipaa protected documents to an app that you know people might not know about i don't know we'll have to look into it more but i just wanted to kind of give you the heads up and again number nine there really no intel value for this i just thought it was interesting that nancy pelosi's son has been tied to a quite large criminal syndicate you can look into this stuff just you know search for nancy pelosi's son you can actually google it and actually it comes up in google shockingly enough uh but the interesting part about it is that uh it seems like there might be some stuff with nancy in there too i don't know i don't really care when it comes to politicians honestly i just thought it was interesting so if you guys find interesting there you go all right so moving quickly through our national guard slides here in the northeast region we have quite a few updates actually this is the most significant updates for the country i have been for massachusetts and maryland so again if you recall a few months ago or yeah several weeks ago now massachusetts actually declared you know mission accomplished right and they sent everybody home well now they're activating 500 personnel yet again to help with area hospitals for this whatever wave we're on now um of this of this stuff right so again we're not seeing hospitals being overwhelmed we're not finding any evidence of that whatsoever really anywhere in the country to be honest but there we go again 500 personnel in massachusetts have been activated at least according to the governor's office again you know one of the main reasons that we're providing this information is to kind of highlight the normalization of deploying significant numbers of troops on u.s soil for seemingly no reason whatsoever so again if you're in massachusetts just know that a lot of your hospitals are going to have a lot of service members you know working there doing various tasks and stuff like that maryland is a slightly different story i need to do a lot more research on this again not enough hours in the day right but the maryland deployment seems to be a lot more significant i don't have numbers at this time but it seems like it's quite a large deployment we're also seeing a slight change in the wording of the mission and i don't know if this is because of maryland's governor just not um speaking so eloquently when it comes to the mission during press releases or if this is something more nefarious i don't know what the deal is but it seems like the soldiers that are deployed in the state of maryland will have a more active role than just helping out at a hospital it seems like um you know we're getting reports of you know door-to-door efforts potentially we're seeing reports of you know jab stations being set up and all kinds of medical temporary medical facilities going up again i don't really know what the deal is i guess we'll have to wait and see what actually shakes out but it seems like the the maryland deployment is a lot more a lot more hands-on uh the governor himself has stated that a lot of national guard are going to be called upon to physically go out to places like nursing homes and uh offer medication and things like that so we'll keep an eye on it we'll let you know when we have more information i wish i had more right now but that's all we've got down southeast really no change whatsoever several states have activated their national guards for various things but really the numbers are pretty much the same same with the midwest no change there and for the southwest there have been a few incidences with the soldiers in texas so again we're starting to see if you guys recall the incidents with oregon with a lot of national guard service members and senior military claiming that the the the political leadership of oregon was simply deploying the national guard just as a political means and we're starting to see inklings of that right now um actually that's putting it lightly we're seeing a lot we're seeing a lot of complaints from um very junior soldiers as well as commanders and we're seeing a lot of people complaining that this is just kind of a bs mission at this point that greg abbott is keeping people down at the border in very squalid and horrifying conditions just to serve as like a political you know finger right to the biden regime so i guess we'll have to see how this works out but we're getting report after report after report uh from soldiers down there stating that they're basically living in uh worse than incarceration conditions um and we've seen a lot of photos and it's yeah it looks it looks pretty bad so you know again greg have its own numbers state that we're talking roughly 10 000 army national guard slash state guard slash department of public safety guys in this theater of operations for operation lone star and it looks like this is doing a lot more harm than good especially when we start starting to see more incidences between the soldiers and the civilian populace or the cartel down there this just uh we're starting to see a lot more incidents regarding that then moving out west uh speaking of oregon uh like i mentioned oregon has a history of their political leadership abusing the army national guard and air national guard assets of the state for political reasons or at least so the service members have been complaining well apparently they haven't learned their lesson because there is a new push in oregon to deploy soldiers yet again uh to state area hospitals so this actually occurred over the you know past couple of weeks between the last brief and now we have in oregon over 1200 soldiers and airmen deployed around the state to various hospitals and stuff like that and um yeah i guess we'll have to see if if they're treated any better this time but yeah it certainly seems like it's more political than not so again that's our national guard outlook or rather wrap up for this brief moving on to the k-12 public school slides uh there is one update that that i haven't changed on the slide yet but i wanted to speak to and that is virginia so for those of you who don't know virginia got a new governor and on the very first day has signed a lot of executive orders banning mask mandates uh launching inve the new attorney general uh there in virginia is launching a lot of investigations regarding the mistreatment of of thing of children and things like that so i haven't actually looked at what has been done so i didn't want to change the slide just yet so i don't know if how this is going to work out because as we know right this slide is misleading in in and of itself because a lot of states don't have legislation that either bans or mandates masks being worn in public schools but schools do like for instance texas is kind of one of those states where for a time period there remember a couple months ago texas had a a ban on mass mandates and yet like 90 percent of all the school districts in texas were mandating masks so it's like what what what's going on here um you know south carolina's still kind of in that situation and virginia might be in that situation now so we've got to drill down and do more uh work to figure out what's going on in virginia there likewise with the the actual jab mandates no real change there we're starting to see a lot more resistance in california as one might expect so that state might actually be turning a different color here very soon but i guess we'll have to see and then finally for the kind of overall resistance tracker sort of thing that we've got going on here is uh the only thing i changed is virginia i changed that to green just because of again all of the efforts that have been undertaken by the recent state political leadership of virginia to reverse a lot of the stuff that the previous administration did so this might be all a farce i don't know we'll have to see how this stuff works out in the end but right now um you know the commander in chief of the virginia national guard is is doing some pretty decent stuff to reverse a lot of this stuff now again we'll have to see how this works out but as far as on paper goes it seems like virginia's moving in the right direction then moving on to mandate failures i haven't actually changed this slide but there is one update that i forgot to add to it and that is general electric so this is a big one general electric has um in the wake of the supreme court's decision to go against biden's mandates general electric has come to come out and said yeah we're not gonna mandate this stuff anymore and this is interesting you can kind of see which companies you know basically had the metaphorical gun to their head when it came to the mandates because general electric clearly had a workforce that was very resistant to it you know general electric is one of the largest employers in the country and so as one might expect you know in the field of general electric they're not going to be super happy about you know medical mandates and stuff but general electric being a federal contractor and having again a very good chunk of their uh profits coming from the federal government they're you know in a you know between a rock and a hard place and of course you know they chose the side of the government which is telling enough but i also think it's interesting that as soon as the supreme court came out and said anything against the biden regime general electric ran away from the federal government as fast as possible at least when it comes to these mandates you can see some other companies too and see what they want to do the companies that went out and instantly dropped their mandates due to the supreme court's decision those are interesting to look into a little bit more and i also think that the companies that uh haven't issued a statement or they haven't changed or they've doubled down on their mandate since the supreme court uh came out with their decision that's that's also telling as well and moving into international issues i really only have just a handful of stuff because like like i mentioned the past few weeks have just been filled with ukraine stuff um but uh one of the bigger ones is scotland so scotland has um been revoking medical treatment for expectant mothers if they are not jabbed and that has been something that has been rolling through the news outlets in the uk for a while now i'm going to be very interested to see how that works out because it seems like it seems like the united kingdom is kind of backing down from their stuff uh you know old boris uh he's he's gotten himself into a lot of trouble lately uh with what with um being uh confirmed to be at parties and hosting parties right when uh he was you know giving testimony before parliament uh regarding how dangerous and bad and you know winter of severe death and illness or whatever whatever he's been saying to the british population uh so yeah he's uh really having a hard time uh maintaining a a sort of straight face when it comes to all this stuff because it's really kind of obvious that it's just about totalitarianism at this point so we'll see how long this lasts the uk has had some a lot of resistance lately so again we'll see how scotland is able to pull that one out and then moving on speaking of medical resistance italy has also been very very vocal at least the italian people have been very very vocal and uh physical regarding their resistance to medical mandates as have been a lot of places around europe so again we're seeing some places double down like france has doubled down with with their medical tyranny but other countries um have have been quietly like backing off because they they see the power of the people i guess but um and then jumping back to europe for a second like i mentioned totalitarianism huge huge thing in europe these days uh specifically in germany and austria which have become really the poster child for how to violently crack down and hurt as many civilians as you possibly can if you're a government force so the german police and the austrian police have been observed to commit many many crimes against their people uh at least from what we can see just to you know force their tyranny on on people and uh people are uh people are not happy about that now as someone who has um uh spent some time in germany i've studied germany quite a lot i speak german it's uh not surprising whatsoever to see the stuff that is happening uh in germany right now their history um even though from an american perspective we like to make jokes about it right uh it's really it's really a cultural thing at this point i think and it's going to be very interesting to see what kind of resistance efforts come out of germany and austria as well two countries which honestly are very very different when it comes to the cultures of them but their governments as of late have been very very similar uh in the totalitarianism regard but again interesting interesting stuff to look up and then finally north korea our our fun little buddy out of the northern peninsula there has been up to no good with launching lots and lots of projectiles into the sea of japan um as of late so again i think that north korea is kind of a an international case study in just weird stuff right i don't think that you can look at north korea and and think that that's any kind of doctrine it's very it's a very special case study so when north korea launches missiles and things like that everybody looks and goes oh my god you know north korea is you know you know whatever well you know north korea is kind of a case study honestly their their their population is starving to death their political leadership is like the most comical bond villains you could possibly imagine and their technological capabilities while impressive in the regard that they can take old soviet equipment and duplicate it is not really something i would consider a major threat now that being said someone clearly thinks otherwise in the faa because a couple weeks ago there was a a national or i should say it wasn't a national it was just for the west coast grounds stop from the faa which was confusing for a lot of people and again i should point out this is very speculative because right at the time of a north korean missile launch is when the national grounds stop was initiated and a lot of people have been kind of confused by this they were everyone was confused at the time listening to police scanners of local areas and airports trying to figure out what's going on why the faa issue a ground stop has there been some kind of attack or something like that nobody could figure it out well a few hours later we find out north korea had launched a missile right during that kind of time frame so i don't know if this was some kind of emergency u.s military response that we they kind of let the cat out of the bag on or because they thought that maybe based on the trajectory of the missile that it might come close to u.s i don't know north korea is going to be very hard pressed to get a missile that far and even then we're going to have so much warning it's it's crazy um so i don't really consider north korea a direct threat to the united states and most analysts would agree it's you know north korea is definitely a threat to places like japan but you know as far as a north korean nuke landing in my backyard i'm not exactly holding my breath on that one but it's interesting to see the u.s response nonetheless if that in fact was a response and finally before i ended i wanted to talk about russia and ukraine for a bit because uh that has really been on my brain for the past few months now and especially i haven't been able i haven't really been thinking about much else other than ukraine lately as of the past couple of weeks and that's because we've seen a lot of very scary stuff happen let me put it to you this way as an analyst you try to you go through and a lot of times try to think of well what would world war three look like or what would something what would a gl mass global conflict look like what would be the early indications and warnings of such such an event like what would be the worst case scenario of stuff like that and um every analyst does this regardless of whether or not they want to admit it or not everybody has an end of the world plan or thinks about it at least because that's just kind of the you know nature of the job i guess but for me and for the rest of the team here we've seen some really scary stuff and i'm going to start off with the biggest one which is the norwegian communications cable being cut let me just say this is a this is a big freaking deal so for those of you that don't understand most of the communications on planet earth if you're wanting to get we're talking the internet military communications every basically every byte of information that that is um transits around the world has to go through communications cables right maybe not so much in the united states like you can probably send an email from california from a computer in california to a computer in new york and it never transit on a submarine cable a submarine cable meaning it's a cable that's under water like an undersea cable but for the most part these communications cables are the lifeblood of the human race essentially if you want information it's going to come from an underwater cable usually only just a few cables honestly so for instance the united kingdom is kind of freaking out right now because they're an island nation and they've only got a few cables going from the united kingdom across the english channel into europe and just a few days ago or i think a couple weeks ago now norway revealed that one of their submarine cables one of their undersea cables between the mainland and the svalbard archipelago which housed a satellite communications station had been cut um and that it and that not only had it been cut but it was like obviously cut in such a way that it was obviously a a man-made thing the ends of the cable were were many many meters apart it was most certainly not a geologic event because again cables on the literally laying on the sea floor they're heavily armored they're usually got you know many many inches of steel armor wrapped around them because geologic events occur underwater earthquakes and underwater like landslides and things like that can cut cables pretty easily and that happens fairly often um it happened a few years ago as a pretty big incident with the united states if i recall i had one of our cables cut that way and it was it was totally a natural event but this one was is definitely a uh is definitely a man-made thing so so the norwegians say and the reason for bringing this up is that russia over the since the cold war since the end of the cold war has pumped trillions and trillions of dollars into their undersea they call it oceanographic research uh branch of their navy so um we all know how the us navy works right or roughly speaking we have us navy sailors on u.s navy ships and we sometimes have you know merchant marines on naval ships and we have naval support ships like like hospital ships and oilers and things like that well the russians have an entire directorate that's basically like a naval version of the cia and their sole goal is to do secret squirrel stuff on the sea floor now we can get into this a lot further recently uh this has been a very hard topic to talk about or actually sorry in the past this has been a very hard topic to talk about only recently has this been talked about openly before but again this is very much a topic for another time the larger point here is that i personally can't think of any time when the russians would have actually cut a cable they've tapped a few cables they've tried to tap a few cables to tap into them literally like sending little mini submarines down with little arms on them that grab these cables and drill into them to kind of collect intelligence from them they've done that before but i've and they've practiced cutting cables uh because the reason this is all important is that one of the main kind of triggers for world war three or a very global conflict with russia being a major belligerent of that conflict is for russia to cut undersea cables essentially that's how you're going to know that world war iii has started when the internet just dies you have no communications whatsoever because you know 30 or 40 different undersea cables are all cut all at once that's kind of you know worst case world war three scenario um and one of these cables has been cut um very deliberately and this is something that is i'm sure this woke up a lot of dudes in the middle of the night and put them on planes because this is again i cannot state how how big of a deal this is now as far as any other cables i'm sure that other countries navies are inspecting uh their cables at the moment but again this takes months to do and this honestly since it was so deliberate this might have been one of those warnings like you know again to the western world hey don't mess with us in ukraine or else we're going to cut you know all of your cables next time because if you remember russia doesn't need communications cables they're the largest country on earth they you know have land-based systems whereas europe is very much you know has a lot of maritime space that that it occupies and that kind of ties into what i was mentioning earlier about the united states uh the vulnerabilities to the united states is that like hey if russia cut this cable let's just say they're the ones who did it and if they did it to serve as a warning to europe to stay out of its way with ukraine then you know i i can't imagine them not doing some kind of cyber stuff here in the united states so again that's why all of this stuff is kind of important to keep an eye on not just because this you know might spin out of control but also because we have direct impacts to the united states as well also briefly want to mention kazakhstan kazakhstan that that by the time that we had gotten slides together to talk about it it was already over essentially there was a coup that occurred in kazakhstan to kind of overthrow their dictator government and that coup was put down conveniently because russia sent a lot of airborne troops in at the request of the kazakhstan government to kind of help put that down and this matters for the airborne operations in ukraine because now those soldiers are currently free to invade ukraine or provide support for that and then finally with ukraine again i'm going to have a separate brief on this but the one thing that i did want to touch on is the possibility of a false flag attack now this is an important thing to note that i've been looking at a lot of russian media and uh russian sources along with american sources and they both say the same thing both sides both the western world and russia have have accused each other of planning false flag attacks to justify uh some kind of incursion polite word for invasion over the next 24-48 hours now as far as the united states planning a false flag attack to justify the united states backing up ukraine i think that's kind of a laughable concept the united states has done everything they possibly can to openly state that we're not going to support ukraine that is very much something that we have done i think that it's laughable for us to assume that we're going to do anything more than sends us some special forces maybe some equipment maybe um that even then the united kingdom is having to pick up the slack and send a lot of atgms to ukraine right now so again the united states is very much not interested in defending or helping defend ukraine which for whatever reason you know you can argue you can make arguments of of like hey we have this historical agreement that uh we you know said hey we we bought all of ukraine's or or forced ukraine to de-arm at the um with the agreement in mind that we would come to ukraine's aid uh militarily should they should russia get squirrely and you know the time has come ukraine did their part they disarmed themselves which i'm sure they're regretting now and the united states has not held up our end of the bargain but again i guess we can debate that another day when it comes to the actual false flag attacks reasoning uh i think russia has far more motive obviously they have more motive to conduct a false flag attack uh to justify their incursion slash invasion into the rest of ukraine because as we remember uh the question is not is russia going to invade ukraine because russia has already invaded ukraine eight percent of the ukrainian land mass is now part of the russian federation russia invaded ukraine in 2014 and that's just been the way it is since then the question is how much are they going to invade this time they're they going to launch another push to take even more of ukraine a lot of people are saying that these false flag attacks on both sides of the aisle are going to be kind of the go no go criteria for uh this invasion meaning that if russia can't pull off this this false flag attack they're going to wait until next year because the spring thaw is going to make it very difficult to maneuver in the ukrainian countryside once once everything starts getting muddy again and that would give ukraine the advantage i think me personally i don't think i think that was a valid argument a while back i don't think so now because i think that russia has stacked up they've invested too much too many resources now for them to for them to back down so i guess we'll have to see how it shakes out though but another thing that i wanted to mention is the not petya cyber attack now this was a cyber attack that got zero uh coverage in the u.s press but got a lot in the european press because of the uh petya cyber attacks from before so this is again a russian-based cyber cyber group launched a series of devastating cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in ukraine over the past couple of days now these attacks are very interesting because unlike the petya cyber attacks these are not or they were not intended to be ransomware they were intended to look like ransomware so that a person would think oh okay they're just trying to steal money from us while at the same time the the cyber attack was actually destroying stuff so this is one of those hard wartime like cyber attacks like our full you know cyber warfare stuff of destroying systems with no intention of getting money out of it whatsoever so that's interesting and yet yet another indicator that russia they mean business this time so again like i mentioned we're going to have a whole separate thing on ukraine here in just a bit for those of you who want to follow that conflict like i mentioned to the to the folks on patreon earlier uh we're kind of treating this like in afghanistan 2.0 with regards to the fact that there are americans in ukraine that probably would want to get out of ukraine if it were to be invaded by an invading force which is notorious for taking no prisoners so again if you think afghanistan was bad man just just wait because the ukrainian conflict has been very bad so far and we're just getting started so again as to the grand question that everyone's asking will russia do it i don't know nobody knows anybody who tries to tell you they know is lying to you or they're just guessing right now it's a 50 50 shot but i would i would argue that um or i would rather say that we're spending a lot of time making maps downloading imagery putting either products uh stuff like that because it's uh it's looking like it's an impossible uh impossible action for russia to step down at this point from this so it looks like it's it's not an if but when um and we you know again we might be fools and we might uh all look at this differently but hey it's better to prepare and have wasted a little effort making a map than it would be to uh to watch this on cnn so we'll keep moving forward and we'll uh catch you on the next brief um thank you again to everyone who has supported us it really helps keep the lights on here uh with regards to what we're able to do and capa

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the briefing for wednesday november 3rd 2021 and it is being recorded on the 2nd of november the day prior as usual so first off a brief disclaimer sorry if the audio is not great on this particular episode i know we're not really known for great audio here but the local government in our filming location is doing some kind of god-awful project and they are making all kinds of racket with about as many machines as you could possibly imagine so while the local government continues to destroy my little local area here i'm going to try to muddle through this brief as best i can so sorry if the audio is a little bit weird starting off with the weather we can see that winter has arrived in some parts of the country and as usual we've got a lot of weather advisories which we'll see on the next slide but really the only thing to note for now is uh that we are in a red loom cycle so lunar elimination is going to be at 7.2 percent so really dark nights and as you can see i've threw the moonrise and moon set times on there as well because that's kind of super important to deal with illumination right so the moon can be as bright as it wants to be but if it's below the horizon it doesn't really matter right so as we can see the moon set time is at 607 pm and the lunar elimination is again at 7.2 percent and like i mentioned as far as advisories we've got a lot of advisories going on through oklahoma and kansas and some spotty stuff out on the west coast as usual but that's that's typical for this time of year no dams for this cycle not really a whole lot going on nothing major to a report there are a few but it's mostly stuff like space launches and things that you know are pretty typical nothing like that jumped out at me is worth briefing and as far as civil unrest goes uh we there are some updates but i'll have to talk about the civil unrest situation as we kind of go along through the brief really the biggest thing to note is new york city again the medical mandates are are wreaking havoc on the local first responders and and policing organizations in new york city but again we'll talk about that further and also i threw this little box on there because i'm seeing a lot of talk about it uh there's a nationwide public service walkout i've seen a lot of posters going around i don't know about anybody else but it seems like there have been a lot a lot of just random posters going around advertising these kinds of walkouts all with different dates so i've seen some that say uh november 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th nights on up you know through throughout the whole month and really there's there's no real like organization like there's they're not tied to an organization they're not uh nobody has their like name on it so you can't like contact an organization to find out more it's just these random posters so i don't know what's going on you know it could be some kind of conspiracy who knows i just wanted to point out that there are a lot that seem to be circulating now that the public service industry uh has started to get these mandates and uh it's become kind of popular for the uh public service industries to resist that but again we'll talk more about that in just a minute and moving into logistics so i know that it's kind of a fighting a losing battle to kind of track all these logistical problems in the country but uh just want to run through some of the ones we talked about last time school bus shortage of course continuing in ohio massachusetts has gotten a lot worse of course we also have the water shortage out west which has become a problem although that will probably alleviate itself like i keep mentioning with the precipitation this winter we have the microchip shortage that's impacting auto manufacturers most auto manufacturers are either canceling outright uh this year's model of car or they are not able to provide them uh whatsoever so huge problem that will can that will continue to be a problem for the next at least two years that's what most people are predicting also texas is liquor shortage seems to still be in play although i'm really not sure as to the extent of it it seems like it's a pretty severe problem but again you're not really going to be able to logistically check out every liquor store in texas it's kind of a hard thing to do but new for this cycle we have michigan so michigan is reporting they have problems with snow plow and salt truck drivers they're having a driver shortage of those vehicles so again the trucking shortage that we've been talking about for months now has uh is it's upon us again with the winter season because you have to have uh certain drivers that are trained to drive snow plows and salt trucks so again that's going to be a huge problem for the northern states so far i've only seen problems in michigan but i am sure that other states like wisconsin minnesota you know in new york maine all those you know places like that they get really a heavy snowfall and and really use a lot of their snow plows in the winter time are going to have some some pretty big problems with uh workers not being there to plow the roads also this cycle we have in montana uh that we've seen several local news agencies reporting uh tire shortages so as people move into the winter time they try to get new tires and it's uh there's a tire shortage apparently so a lot of a lot of tire shops and mechanics are actually reporting that they have a several month wait time for new tires so i'm sure this is not just a problem with montana but a problem nationwide because a lot of our tires are imported a lot are made here but a lot of them are imported as well and if the demand spikes in any one area you're going to have a shortage no matter what so that's going to be a huge problem as we move into the winter and also california so california this this story is kind of a kind of a disclaimer for it is the only source i've been able to find for it is a mainstream media source so take it for what it's worth but california reportedly allegedly has a glass shortage at least in the san francisco area now the article itself was kind of hilarious because clearly the person who wrote it wanted to talk about the glass shortage and and how like logistics are a problem but what they ended up doing was admitting that so many people are having their cars broken into in san francisco that there's now a shortage of replacement car windows so i thought that was kind of hilarious that they ended up wanting to talk about one issue but ended up kind of highlighting another problem which is crime so that's interesting to note and then finally a brief note i have here is to talk about is that there appears to be a shortage of diesel exhaust fluids so for those of you that don't know uh this is something that the uh federal administration kind of came up with uh again to kind of um prevent emissions really it's just kind of a it's it's an issue all on its own uh people that are in the trucking industry and the diesel vehicle game uh know a lot more about this uh so you can research it on your own uh just kind of the travesty that is this thing called diesel exhaust fluid or diesel emissions fluid depending on which which acronym we want to go with but def shortages appear to be quite rampant in some areas and they are required to even start up a lot of diesel vehicles so a lot of diesel manufacturers are required to purposefully impact their vehicles and make it so the vehicle won't even turn on unless you have a full tank of diesel exhaust fluid so something to keep in mind i'm sure that the trucking industry already knows about this a lot you know a lot more than we do but i just wanted to point it out for those of you who who don't uh don't drive diesel vehicles and before we jump into the critical updates and significant governmental action slide there's something that i wanted to talk about very briefly uh because this is kind of a big deal at this point and that is the actual mandates themselves so we throw around this this word mandate and i don't think a lot of people understand what's going on so i myself certainly don't understand what's going on to a certain degree but i think i've got kind of a general understanding of what's going on and i wanted to point out there's a very clear distinction with what this this mandate stuff is so a lot of people are talking about this particular mandate right the one they hear that they hear it on all the mainstream media about how every private company with 100 or more employees must get uh every employee to get the jab right or or else they're going to be fined or something right some ambiguous threat against them right well this this uh mandate is actually this is this is just a press release there is no actual there's nothing in writing right now either from osha or from anybody else from there's no executive order that talks about every private companies with 100 or more employees there is nothing in writing with this that we could find so yeah that's that's kind of the thing there now here's the deal a lot of conservative news media sites and i say conservative because it's really only them talking about this is they will say that oh there are no mandates whatsoever there's nothing that's just a press release well that's not actually true there is a mandate and that is the federal contractor mandate now this is this one is actually in writing you can look it up yourself it is executive order one four zero four three and it actually has an enforcement arm the inside that executive order uh that's the safer federal workforce task force that's the enforcement arm for this executive order now what that means i don't know i don't think that it has any actual enforcement capability whatsoever but you can read the eo yourself and it quite clearly states that federal contractors must be jabbed this is the one that's in writing this one is an executive order again it is not an actual law in fact you will see this phrase quote as required by law at pretty on pretty much every line of this executive order so again it's ambiguous but there is a document a piece of paper that states that there is a mandate in place and that is executive order 14043. now what does this actually mean well you have to remember federal contractors means any company that holds federal contracts now again this is very ambiguous you can read the executive order yourself and talk about okay well what does this really apply to federal contractors or not nobody really knows right we need somebody needs to interpret this executive order because it's very ambiguous so you could argue that executive order 14043 technically doesn't talk about federal contractors being mandated um but yeah i would say that it's it's pretty it's pretty clear the executive order read it yourself it's it's pretty uh pretty clear um at least to me and as far as what a court would say now we have to remember what does federal contractor mean well that means all of these people right all of these industries that hold federal contracts and as you can see it's kind of a lot of industries that's why if you were to see airlines right like all the the airline pilots being mandated to get the jab well that's because the airline companies hold contracts with the federal government which is then tied to eo140 you see how that works so that's that's why it's not the airlines are not being mandated because they're a private company and the you know the 100 or more employees right that they're not being mandated because of that they're being mandated because the executive order because they are a federal contractor so again this is not a perfect explanation but hopefully this kind of shows like where the lines how how people are the drawing these logistical lines back to some kind of piece of paper right that says that these mandates do exist so again it's very complicated and one can argue that this isn't even real because none of this is actual law right and again however you have to put that caveat on it none of this is law maybe we don't really know right this incident is really causing us to try to work out what the idea of of a law actually is and a lot of times this is bringing up questions so i just wrote down three questions that i kind of had with regards to what this stuff is and the first one is if a president makes a verbal statement i.e a press release is that an executive order historically no you have to write it down you have to sign it you have to record it with a federal register right but this is exactly what's happening in a lot of cases a lot of companies are looking at the biden regime's 100 person you know or else mandate and saying okay well that's our out now now now we have an excuse to implement our own policies even though there's nothing in writing right and then you have some other companies that are like well yeah we have more than 100 employees but the reason that we have to ban or or mandate this stuff is not because of the 100 person mandate but because we're a federal contractor right so we've got this weird interesting dynamic going on right a lot of companies want to have that out they they they're very eager to use the just following orders excuse they want to have somebody else take the fall for their own company mandates and for a lot of companies a press release you know by the regime that's enough for them to say okay that's an executive order biden saying something behind it you know reading something off a teleprompter that's an executive command so now we have to go with it now again what does all this mean well a court's got a rule on it right so again very tough legal questions that are being asked that honestly in years past all this stuff would have been thrown out because you know the court would not have gone this far but these days look at what's going on and that leads us to the second question if the supreme court does not take up a case does that grant de facto approval again historically and if you look back at this stuff that's that's happened in our history no of course not the supreme court not willing to take up a case does not mean that that case gets approval right but in a lot of cases this is exactly what's happening or at least it appears to be so we're in this wishy-washy area where we're really not sure nobody is nobody's saying not to do something but nobody's also saying to do it as well so it's again really ambiguous really confusing and i think this really leads to the third question which is a very large question that i myself and none of the other staff here even hope to have an answer for but that question is if something is clearly written in the constitution but no court will uphold the constitution even if we somehow manage to reverse the wave of authoritarianism that we are experiencing will our constitution still be able to stand in other words if our constitution allowed this to happen in the first place if it allowed the exact thing it was written to prevent such as tyranny and totalitarianism will it even have any value when the authoritarian regime collapses and man that that's a question that i don't have the answer to i don't think anybody has the answer to but it's something that we're definitely thinking about and it really does kind of matter when we talk about these kinds of mandates and stuff so i wanted to talk about this really briefly right up front to kind of set the tone for these next few slides so moving into critical infrastructure updates again the really the one that this happened a few days ago but the abiding regime has begun fining lingering containers uh per container per day for every container that's that's stuck waiting in line so this is kind of again this is like trying to buy your way out of debt it doesn't really work like that the biden regime is if not directly responsible a huge heavy invisible hand that is causing these uh logistical backups particularly the ones in the ports uh the port congestion right if the body regime is not directly responsible for they're like responsible for 80 percent of that problem and due to the problem they caused they are now going to slap a fine on top of that which again exacerbates a problem so it's like guys you created the problem and now you're finding people for the problem that you created you know it's it's it's backwards and i think that again nothing that this regime does would really surprise me however i do find it interesting that they clearly somebody in the white house thinks that this might be somewhat of an interesting solution and i think that that kind of shows how little thought is actually going into the economy up there in washington because it this this solution would have been laughed at like it would have been openly mocked in any sort of committee in congress and openly mocked by both parties ridiculously um by just a few years ago but now it's like oh it's a good solution well how in what universe would that ever be a solution find the people that that are that are stuck waiting in line and you're the one who put them in the line like you know it doesn't really make any sense right and then secondly moving on switching topics considerably the nra was hit with a ransomware attack no surprise there ransomware attacks have become kind of a staple again we've talked a lot about ransomware attacks in the past there's really not more to add on this considering i haven't seen very much from the nra um don't tend to follow the nra so much you know for obvious reasons but you know i just wanted to point out that they did get hacked and most likely private information was compromised uh and then thirdly like i mentioned these mandate walkouts are becoming a huge deal um particularly in new york new york has gotten the most press uh because the nypd the new york fire department those guys have they've had a lot of walkouts a lot of people call in sick all kinds of things like that and it's going to be a very interesting time for particularly new york but really any major city because as we learned once something hits the press and it has happening in one city it tends to happen in other cities so we'll see how many other major cities are going to be faced with the same thing chicago is also being impacted by these mandate walkouts as we as we learned last week they're even threatening to use the national guard to come in but there's more to more to the story than that as we'll talk about here in just a second and then likewise number four there this is kind of a funny one the airline pilot walkouts continue to occur american airlines is the latest company uh that has been kind of hit with these uh rogue pilots uh actually somebody recorded um i can't play it here obviously due to youtube's policies but somebody recorded audio and uh they've been people have been listening to pilots transmitting uh the phrase lgb right on uh the guard frequency so on the on the aircraft emergency frequency of 121.5 people have been observed or pilots have been uh heard uh saying that phrase uh right as they sign off um and walk out so i thought that was kind of hilarious that that it's it's now it's now a huge thing in the airline community and then likewise the american trucking association they've kind of come out of the woodwork and and said that they've indicated that they're they're willing to uh consider dropping federal contracts rather than impose mandates now again the american trucking association has not said this that's what they're going to do they've come out and they're kind of like dipping their toe into the water and kind of fielding that as a topic of conversation in the media they've come out and said that hey several of our you know our members are talking about dropping these federal contracts and just kind of dealing with the the financial loss of that rather than impose these mandates and have all of our employees and our drivers walk off the job so again very interesting stuff very interesting times we see uh moving forward but we'll talk more about this stuff in just a minute so let's move right into significant governmental actions and the first one of which is osha so osha has been in the press kind of a lot lately but this is one that we pulled directly from their website they actually have a frequently asked questions page when it comes to these mandates and this is a screenshot of course censored for youtube but this is a screenshot of their web page and as you can see they are quote osha does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving the blank blank right but and it also does not wish to de-incentivize employers blank efforts as a result osha will not enforce 29 cfr 1904's recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from the blank blank at least through may of next year so that's interesting osha is now openly concealing adverse reactions to the the the blank right so i think that's kind of interesting there there it's it's it's you cannot be any more open than this why would they want why would they try to do this unless they're trying to cover something up so i thought that was kind of interesting uh to highlight that osha is definitely doing this and it's very interesting very interesting times ahead right and like i mentioned uh or sort of alluded to before the biden regime is kind of there like i mentioned last briefing they are uh they're getting what they wish for and i don't think they want it um because they're starting to backpedal a little bit right the regime is like signal that they're extending the deadlines that really didn't exist in the first place they're you know they're quietly removing deadlines they're just kind of like softly backing away from this because they dug themselves into such a hole and they've been doubling down this entire time that they're kind of softly backing away however at the same time they're also doubling down so in some areas they're backing off like with the airlines they're they're kind of backing off from that but they're also doubling down in other areas but it's really such a hard thing to explain because the coercion is no longer working anymore we're starting to see the the power of coercing people into getting the jab that that is is waning quite significantly so they're going to have to resort to force if they want to get this stuff through and in a lot of areas they can't the us government does not have the ability to force a lot of this stuff even if they wanted to they they don't have the numbers of people on their side to to force really anything honestly but they can get some of the top uh top people so they're going now with more serious threats more serious uh fines and things like that but again we'll talk more about that in just a minute and then moving on to number three there number three is the uh not family friendly uh news item for today i say news item because there's really not much intel value there it just kind of points out um the a lot of the uh the stuff that's going on in the public school system which we'll talk about there on point six so i don't want to get too deep into the weeds with this i just wanted to point it out that it happened and that this quote that's on screen actually was said by a former president of the united states in with in response to this situation um yeah i i i really hesitate to even bring it up but because it doesn't really have any intel value that really honestly but it is something that is it's it's an issue and a lot of people who have kids in public school i think probably would would like to know that this occurred so you can read more uh more on this situation that occurred in virginia or really on the edge of virginia and dc it's been all over a lot of the news sites so yeah you can dig more into that i i don't really know how much of this is true uh the story itself um but i just wanted to point out that hey hey this occurs this is one of those like hey hey go research it more type things also number four there again another one of those hey go research this more thing rutgers university we've got uh professors now openly calling for quote taking out uh people of a certain racial demographic and that's uh that's not good obviously so as we can see the rhetoric is allowed to continue anymore man like i don't know about anybody else but even just a few years ago like uh i remember when if anybody made a vaguely threatening like youtube comment they got you know reported to you know the police or something like that and and they had to answer questions like you post something threatening on a facebook page in some group and you get a knock on your door but you know these professors in a lot of universities are allowed to openly talk about this rhetoric and again we've we've talked about the power of rhetoric a lot before in previous podcasts and things like that so yeah definitely something to look into because dehumanization is definitely a huge talking point for a lot of people these days so just wanted to point that out then again uh number five there at t um you know they're they're going down the road of uh uh the you know promoting crt very interesting that a lot of companies are going down that road i can't foresee why other than just you know woke-ism is is rampant and then number six there again um for lack of a better i'm just going to call this public school degeneracy because we've had a lot of it we've had a lot of incidents in public schools lately again people who have kids in public schools know this of course a lot a lot better than we do but like it's become a pretty big issue like in hazard kentucky there you know having high school students engage in you know cross-dressing and exotic dancing for school administrators during a homecoming event i can't think in what world that would be appropriate or or even something that does not result in the police showing up and handcuffs going on some school administrators instantly but again since it happened in the school system like we excuse it right so i guess that's kind of the way that goes for now but again a lot of these points you know points three four five and six really don't have a whole lot of particular intel value is as far as koas and you know courses of action going forward but it's just like hey look man our education system is is is beyond failing at this point and we need to start figuring out what we need to do with regards to you know how to move forward in this troubling time of public school education right so i did just want to put those points on there because i think it's worth talking about even though i myself don't have any any hope of a solution for it just yet but again like i mentioned last time just because we don't have a solution for something does not mean that we can ignore the problem so we're not ignoring the problem wanted to put it up there and show everybody what's going on so let's go back into talking about these mandates for a bit so so hopefully like the past couple of slides have shown the impact of a company canceling their federal contracts and of course not having as much funding to move forward because of that that can still have quite an impact and let's talk about the actual impact that it can have for instance firearms manufacturers they're the ones who literally have military weapons contracts like i mean there you go and then also you've got other things too like as we all know from the past few months sig that the sig p320 has had some significant problems with their massive government contract and who's going to fix those problems you know it's going to have to be sig again a private company so-called private company right again similar situation with ammunition manufacturers if they decide to not make ammunition or if they get shut down by the federal government because they didn't go along with a mandate where's the dod going to get that ammunition that they need right again a very important impact auto companies again who builds the vehicles used by for federal agencies you know it's not exactly the federal government doing this it's got to be a private company making these same thing with the tires tire manufacturers even the tires made for the president's limousine the beast are made by a private company goodyear so again you know if the government wants to wants to play this game i don't think they want the result right tech companies again can he can the average person the average prepared citizen survive without the internet or with any kind of technical system maybe maybe not i would argue probably no i would say most most citizens probably can't survive without the internet but can the u.s government survive without the internet absolutely not there is no way they can survive without the internet uh whatsoever so that's how they maintain their control of everything so again huge impact food service industry you might not think of that as being quite significant but again who feeds the troops on us bases you know it's usually some kind of contracting company if the defact workers suddenly don't show up to work well where troops going to eat you know you know again the fast food restaurants on all military bases they're run they have their federal contract they're like actual fast food you know private companies right you know also who runs literally who runs a congressional uh cafeteria canteen whatever whatever you want to call it like literally where do congressmen go to lunch you know or their at least their aides and their staff workers well you know it's certainly a private company who has a contract with the federal government another one landscaping companies you might not think of landscaping companies as being a critical industry but who maintains airstrips you know the who mows the the grass in between taxiways and things like that again it might not be such an issue for for things like paved runways and things like that but what about smaller airstrips right what about the the training zones like paratrooper drop zones and things like that staging areas training areas on military bases a lot of times those have to be conducted in fields or in large open spaces that have to be mowed and if they're not mowed you know can training be conducted well i'm sure it can but again it just provides another problem that the government has to deal with another more severe severe one is security zones and fields of observation you know the landscaping in a lot of federal agencies is kept at a very specific level because it has to abide by things like uh security camera fields of vision and things like that even things like the temporary helipad for marine one like who mows the lawn at the white house you know i'm pretty sure it's not a military service member it's got to be some kind of federal contractor that has you know of course a very high clearance but still like it's going to be some dude on a lawn mower right construction companies similar situation who fixes the toilets in the white house like maintenance and construction is a huge thing in in a lot of places and i say you know the white house specifically because there's this kind of atmosphere that the the the the elites of the country and the white house and congress can isolate themselves right they can put up fences around themselves and isolate themselves from the american people so that when the american people try to question them or call them on their actions they physically can't get close enough to actually do anything right well guess what who put up that fence i'm pretty sure it wasn't members of congress sitting out there with you know uh hammers and wrenches and things putting up these fences it was a contracting company well what if that company said that they're not going to put the fence up well who they got to get another company well what if that company doesn't say they're going to put the fence up do you see that the power uh the word no has when it comes to federal contracting is very significant same thing with airlines airlines are in a unique situation but in which they are very heavily regulated by of course the faa however and of course you know the president and most other politicians have their own private transportation that's that's all you know you know cared for and things like that but here's the deal what about the tens of thousands of other people that are needed to enforce whatever the potus and senior politicians mandate you see like you can't afford to put all of their underlings on a private jet it just doesn't work like that and if the airlines are down you know how is that going to work out for them same thing for public utilities right you know the white house in congress of course they have backups for generators and things like that to make sure the power never goes out but here's the deal what about the literally thousands of other staff offices and other agencies in just around the washington area that are needed for the government to function right they think they can isolate themselves but clearly they can't and finally rail like we talk about the trucking shortages and things like that man like okay the trucking shortage is bad enough you know truck drivers saying you know no and not no but hell no and they're walking off the job because of a medical mandate or something like that that's bad enough as is that can a country right there but here's the thing what about rail like last time i checked you know most if not all armored vehicles are transported around the country by rail so it's it's a it's almost like a national defense issue at this point you can't move your tanks around because there's no locomotive conductors to actually drive the train right and then also things like coal oil natural gas yeah sure a lot of these go by you know pipeline and things like that but a lot of it doesn't a lot of a lot of oil in this country is transported by rail and the same thing with natural gas and stuff like that so again it all comes back to the theme of the the biden regime or or whatever regime that you want to call it they are they're they're doing these mandate things they're they're backing off in some areas because they realize they're up against a brick wall but they're doubling down in other areas um with the threats and things like that um but it's clear that i i don't think that they're going to that i don't think they want what i don't think they they don't want what they think they want and it's clear that a lot of the uh a lot of the country can seriously stop this if they wanted to just by simply saying no to federal contracts so it's going to be interesting to see how this all works out and it's definitely going to be something to keep an eye on because and that's why preparedness is such an issue because you want to be more prepared than the government is right if if the go if if the government says you know your local electricity your local power generation co-op if if it mandates those workers to get you know the jab and those workers walk out and there's nobody to fix you know uh power down power lines we are coming into the winter season where you know power lines go down all the time but if they don't have workers to do that you need to be able to function in an environment without electricity without heating things like that again something that most americans can't do but also it's a time where i would think that mo more americans than ever before are capable of of uh playing this game of chicken and that's really what it is so i guess we'll have to see how this game of chicken goes on because it looks like it's going to turn out in the favor of the american people i don't want to be too too optimistic but but man even just the the small example of industries that i have on the slide here this is like one of a hundred i could think of you know slides on this topic just looking at these industries man you can a government like this very very easily and this slide shows that you can see how every company that has a federal contract actually has the upper hand these companies can hurt the government more than the government can hurt them and the best part about all of this is that it won't really affect the citizenry that much um if an office supply distributed let's just say an office to an office supply distributor were to cancel their contract with the federal government to provide you know like pens and and copier paper right that would impact the government but that company can still sell their products to the citizenry right now sure at some point there will be something that uh if the federal contract was canceled it would also affect the citizenry i'm thinking things like national defense stuff but but right now the disconnect between government and the people right is so great and the bureaucracy is so bloated that you could probably cancel 90 of all federal contracts and the citizenry would not be affected hardly at all and it gets even better actually because a lot of these companies are being forced into canceling their contracts by their workers a you know a company has a company has a couple of choices either enforce the mandates or not enforce the mandates and if they enforce the mandates a significant portion of their workforce will leave as evidenced by the recent wave of walkouts maybe not enough to matter in a lot of cases but as we are clearly seeing enough people are rising up to hurt the company's bottom line surprising i know i would not have expected this level of resistance at this stage but anyway so a company can either enforce the mandates and have their workforce walk out which will result in them not being able to fulfill the federal contract anyway or they could cancel the federal contract keep their workforce and bid for new contracts with like state level government or even just a civilian market this of course is an oversimplification of the issue and a lot of other things can happen like like with southwest airlines they backtracked on enforcing their mandate but they are still keeping their government contracts so the ball is in the federal government's court they could the government could crack down and say that southwest is in violation of the executive order they could do that and cancel the contract or find southwest or whatever but clearly the government needs southwest airlines more than southwest airlines needs the government couple this with every airline not forgetting how poorly they were treated when it came to the government bailouts last year and the biden regime starting to realize that they are that they've royally screwed up and they are now being forced to backtrack in some industries like the airlines well from this we can see that the resistance is working in a lot of areas so i guess more to come on that front but this grand game of chicken that that's going on is is very interesting to watch and um it's definitely a definitely a good idea to prepare for the the the eventuality that some company or some contracting company will just say nope and not providing the services to the government if that if ends up affecting you in some way that would be a good idea to be aware of and quickly wrapping up today's brief let's talk about the military deployments that have been going on around the country so uh up in the northeast region really not a whole lot of updates massachusetts is still doing their thing new york is still doing their thing no real major update there same in the southeast no major update we're seeing his forces move around a little bit so hopefully we will be able to get some updated numbers um but for right now there's really nothing more i've got on this one this is really the only update i've got for this slide is um that the illinois deployment is most likely not going to happen thank goodness right as i mentioned last last time the illinois governor threatened to deploy the national guard in a domestic policing occupation force in the event that the chicago police department they had they had a lot of officers walk off the job due to the mandates however right now it looks like that deployment is is kind of on hold and probably not going to occur just yet because a judge just recently put a hold on chicago's police jab mandate so a judge said that the mayor the governor whoever cannot mandate chicago police officers to get the mandate uh just yet so uh that's that's something that's you know it's good news for you know obviously anybody in the area but uh yeah something to keep an eye on i just wanted to point that out that you know it looks like that situation is going to simmer down but i just wanted to leave it on the slide to kind of talk about it for just a little bit and then moving into the southwest again no real major updates here other than we're seeing a lot more troops be deployed i don't have good numbers i know that we've had the same numbers on the slide for gosh a couple weeks now and there's really no update from meyer and although we do know that more troops are moving into the area we'll get back to you and provide a better uh situational understanding of what's going on at the border but again border situation heating up uh in in just in general and then of course out west really no major change there are organs drawing down montana and wyoming i still have some troops stationed at local area hospitals doing all kinds of menial taskings and things like that and then for the school attendance mask mandate it's really no major update here so i'm just going to skip past it also no update to the jab mandates though again i know i keep pointing out but i just wanted to highlight again that we are seeing even more resistance in california from parents who don't want uh don't want this to go forward and then overall the medical resistance tracker really no change from last brief it's just kind of kind of status quo right because there haven't been really anything in writing now i'm sure this slide will change quite significantly because we're seeing a little bit of chatter in kind of the social media sphere that the biden regime is going to come out with some new mandates for private businesses within the next few days or weeks we there's literally nothing on on uh that we can do about it until they do something so we'll see how that plays out um again i it's one of those weird situations where you've got the biden regime kind of backing down from the airlines because they realize how important the airlines are and the fact that they can't really enforce the the mandates on the airlines however you might have them also double down and come out with mandates for private companies that they just kind of hope will stick right that's kind of the biden's approach uh the binding regime's approach to a lot of this stuff is just see what sticks uh when it comes to the mandate so i guess we'll we'll see how that goes and finishing things up on the international relations front i went ahead and uh removed the animations from this slide just to see what it would look like may go back to it maybe not who knows but as far as international issues goes russia there are quite high tensions between the united states and russia right now it's really nothing nothing too severe but relations between russia and the united states are are worsening with various diplomats being recalled from each other's country and things like that so really not a great time uh for the the international diplomacy between the united states and russia and this is due to a variety of factors everything from uh the strategic arms limitations talks and the you know nuclear test ban treaty stuff they were talking about a few months ago that really nobody cared about um and all kinds of stuff were to do with china and the eu and brexit it's it's little things that kind of add up all over the place and of course the united states relations with pretty much every nation on earth are are pretty severe right now like the united states uh relations between the us and the united kingdom man they're really poor right now same thing with australia you know iran pretty much any country you can think of the united states has really poor relations with right now unfortunately a lot of these countries that we have poor relations with are our allies like you know or close to our allies like france right so not a good situation for the united states right now um but also you know russia is uh they're doing russian things right so moving on to australia and new zealand is kind of a two for one there australia and new zealand have have really jumped and jumped headlong into full-on totalitarianism at this point like not even from an american's perspective because honestly even before all of this stuff happened like before you know the the pandemic stuff you know an average american might look at australia's laws or new zealand's laws and they might say you know what that's a little bit draconian right um but just taking that and taking that out of the equation right looking at the pers looking from the perspective of australia and new zealand's you know unique history as in australian or new zealander things are getting kind of insane at this point like that the new zealand government is openly creating a caste system of jabbed and unjabbed uh with resources going to the jabbed and the unjabbed basically being shunned from society and they're publicly admitting to this like it's crazy and australia really honestly in australia the situation is kind of unique because all the stuff that we're seeing all the bad stuff we're coming seeing coming out of australia is mostly just the states of victoria and new south wales now i'm sure this is occurring in other states as well but um australia as a whole right especially victoria new south wales are really not far behind from new zealand's kind of man crazy stuff going on also like i mentioned china there's a lot more talk about china's hypersonic nukes they've done a lot of new testing of new systems allegedly that are probably not new so again we've got a separate video on that but yeah china is still still a pretty big factor and it's very interesting that the united states has a lot of domestic issues at the same time that china is definitely a rising power in the strategic defense game and finally germany is uh forming a new government angela merkel's party loss merkel is out and uh they are going to be forming a new transit transitionary government uh to take over and we'll see how that goes because uh uh the the merkel's parties had kind of a hard time of the past few years but they've also held power for a very long time so uh the times they are changing and i guess we'll see how that works out for the stability of europe and really the you know the eu as a whole i guess so that's really all i have for today again thank you all for your support um it really does help us move forward into a lot of more of our uh more educational videos that we've got coming up so hopefully i will have those out pretty soon but again thank you to everyone who supports us and here are your sources for today there's slide one slide two slide three and slide four so as always all of these slides will be available in pdf form on our odyssey page right alongside this video so if you don't like youtube if you don't like what youtube is doing all of our videos is the very second they go live on youtube they uh pop up on odyssey as well so if you prefer to watch on odyssey go for it we just you know we get a much larger reach on youtube so unfortunately we have to kind of sit here for the time being but we also publish things on odyssey as well so just wanted to point that out so thank you again everyone for watching and this has been kind of a really fast paced a lot of stuff going on in this briefing today but hopefully it was helpful and i guess we'll see you next time so as always fight in the shade

…for the CIA and MI6 and the Western powers to physically dig a tunnel from West Germany to East Germany in which they would from underground tap into Soviet Communications cables through George Blake the Soviets…

…security functions their goal their mission was to in the event of a soviet takeover of um west germany they would be able to stay behind let the soviet union and the soviet troops steamrolled through…