//The Wire//2300Z December 9, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: CONFLICT CONTINUES IN ASIA. HIGH-PROFILE MIGRANT CRIMES INCREASE TENSIONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. ONE STUDENT KILLED IN STABBING AT NC HIGH SCHOOL. SHOOTING REPORTED AT KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY.//  -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Southeast Asia: The war between Thailand and Cambodia continues as before, with a few escalations of the conflict occurring overnight. Cambodia has continued rocket attacks, and Thailand has continued shelling random locations in the disputed border region. Thailand struck a few cultural sites and temples in Cambodia yesterday afternoon, with Thai forces also deploying some armored units to the Cambodian side of the border. Analyst Comment: At the moment this is a continuation of the same style of warfare that is often common throughout the third world; both sides conducting massive airstrikes and bombing campaigns, but very few casualties being the result. This is basically an international slap fight where the only real casualties are civilians, which have far outweighed the casualties sustained by combatants on either side so far. Despite the very low ratio of combat deaths to munitions dropped, the fighting this time around is more intense than when the conflict flared up a few months ago, so this conflict does have the potential to get more serious as time goes on. United Kingdom: Tensions remain palpably high following over a dozen high-profile migrant crimes coming to light over the past few days. In the Midlands, 2x Afghans were convicted of brutally assaulting a 15-year-old in a public park in an incident which the authorities have openly admitted to covering up due to civil unrest potential (the suspects' own defense attorney stated that if the video of their attack were to be made public, it would spark a riot). Separately, a different Afghan migrant (identified as Sultani Bakatash) assaulted two girls in Manchester a few days ago. Analyst Comment: Over the weekend, it was also discovered that the wife and children of the current leader of ISIS in Somalia lives in taxpayer-funded housing in Slough, which has inflamed tensions further. Abdul Qadir Mumin was known for encouraging terrorism throughout the U.K. before fleeing to Somalia around a decade ago, leaving his wife and children behind while he wages jihad with about a thousand fighters in Somalia. Mumin was (and still is) a highly-sought target, who the United States has conducted kinetic strikes on several times. Back in 2024, there was speculation that he was killed during a strike in Somalia, however this has been proven to be incorrect over time and his official status remains unknown. This is why there is outrage over this case; this guy is not an ordinary street fighter...he's the actual leader of the ISIS branch for Somalia. The family members that remain in taxpayer-funded housing actually knew of his terrorism-encouraging speeches (he was legendary for these talks before he fled the country). He escaped to Somalia, but his family stayed behind in the UK to receive benefits. -HomeFront- Georgia: State Rep. Sharon Henderson was arrested and indicted on charges of fraud pertaining to her activities during the COVID era. Rep. Henderson is accused of falsifying her employment status so as to obtain special benefits that were made available to those who were forced out of a job due to COVID. In order to get these benefits, she allegedly claimed to be a schoolteacher after actually leaving the job to campaign for the seat that she currently occupies. North Carolina: This afternoon a stabbing was reported at North Forsyth High School, which prompted a lockdown of the local area. Concerning casualties, one student was killed in the attack. Analyst Comment: At the time of this report, this is a developing story so the details will change. Right now it looks like this might have been a personal dispute and/or gang activity. Though very unconfirmed at this time, some photos have circulated local social media, which are screenshots of a video depicting the incident. The photos indicate this murder took place as a result of a fight between students. Illinois: This morning, an ICE raid was reported in Elgin, which rapidly deteriorated into a state of chaos. ICE personnel were targeting a High Value Individual (HVI) by the name of Jesus Acosta Gutierrez, a local TdA affiliate. During the raid, a large crowd formed and caused a riot during the arrest. Analyst Comment: The suspect was eventually captured, however this was one of the more kinetic arrests in the area. The key takeaway from this incident is that, per local reports, activists were on-scene to the site of the raid *before* ICE agents had even arrived themselves. This confirms that the DHS continues to have intelligence leaks which impact operations. This is not the first time this has happened in this specific area due to extremely lax Operational Security (OPSEC) by some of the people who have knowledge of impending operations. Local police officers have also been given the stand-down order (which has become common in most states ICE has conducted operations in so far). Kentucky: This afternoon a shooting was reported at Kentucky State University. 3x people were wounded during the attack, with one possible fatality being reported as well. The shooter was detained at the scene and has not yet been identified. Analyst Comment: This incident was first described as an Active Shooter situation, however as the situation developed this appears to be more of a general crime incident and not a deliberate/targeted mass shooting attempt. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comment: As it is relevant to the stories that have been popping up in the UK (and the US) over the past few weeks, a very specific bit of backpocket knowledge is helpful for rounding out the context of what's going on. In many cases, the individuals who are committing these horrific crimes are self-described "teenagers", when in reality they are fully-grown adult men. Age discrepancies are no excuse to commit horrific crimes, however in most justice systems around the world juveniles get a lighter sentence. And since the migrants have no identity documents to prove their age, the British government simply takes them at their word, and so a very obviously 30-year-old man becomes a 17-year-old so as to avoid a harsher sentence. This mentality is also used to sometimes gain access to children in the first place. Often times this is the scenario: We hear about a "high school student" being arrested for some horrific crime. The mugshot comes out, and the internet collectively thinks "that guy is a little old to be in high school". In most cases, this is a correct assessment; the initial birth certificate documents that migrants claim to have are incredibly easy to fake. This is an extremely common tactic that is used around the western world, from H1B's in the US to migrants from northern Africa making their way into the United Kingdom, there are now a whole lot of mugshots that allegedly depict a "juvenile", when in reality it's just an adult man who is lying because the procedures to verify one's identity are completely nonexistent when it comes to mass migration. In the context of the Midlands attack, one of the Afghans convicted of the crime plead guilty one single day before he turned 17, and thus will escape both adult charges and deportation. Despite the prevalence of this tactic being used, it is incredibly easy to prove either way. The exact age of a suspect can easily and quickly be identified with a simple x-ray of the hand and wrist. The Tanner-Whitehouse 2 (TW2) method is a non-invasive way for a radiologist to determine with shocking accuracy the exact age of a child, based on the development of bones in the hand. By the time a person is a fully-grown adult (i.e. not a juvenile) the bones are fully formed and thus very apparent on the x-ray. This method won't work that well for someone trying to slide in under the line by pretending to be 17-years-and-364-days-old to avoid adult charges, but it certainly will work to pick out the 40-year-old man from a high school classroom. Despite how well this works for this task, this method is not really used in the criminal justice field except in extreme cases where the suspect is very obviously lying (as opposed to more believable lies which if noticed, are usually conveniently ignored). Even in the best cases, it's circumstantial so this Bone Analysis is not usually conducted at all. All in all, this might help explain why some rather interesting mugshots keep popping up in both the United Kingdom, and the United States. 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 Intel update for April 26th through May 2nd, 2026. So, let's get right to it. Around the world, the various conflicts we have been keeping an eye on over the past few weeks have continued on with a few new conflicts popping off this week. In the Middle East, the very tenuous ceasefire continues between the United States and Iran as the White House has dug in for the long haul when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and no resolution appears imminent. This conflict hindering fuel and fertilizer shipments to much of the world has started to impact other conflicts as well, such as the civil war that has been ongoing in Myanmar or Burma for many years. This energy crisis has exacerbated all of the tensions that normally exist throughout Southeast Asia, and even between China and Japan, tensions are growing as the Far East is also realizing that a global realignment of the world's energy systems is probably unavoidable at this point. Over in Africa, a civil war is brewing in Mali as various groups of Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents have taken over much of the country. Russian forces and mercenaries have been very active in Mali over the past few days attempting to push back the advancing fighters from the major villages and cities, but it's been a tough fight due to the widespread nature of the fighting. The two main groups which are fighting the Russians and the somewhat inept Malian armed forces are JNIM or Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin, as well as the FLA or Azawad Liberation Front. Both groups, which are comparatively new as in they've come about in the past 10 years or so, have been operating freely in the open deserts and smaller villages for several years, but a few days ago they decided that a general uprising was in order, and many different groups have conducted attacks in the capital city of Bamako, as well as Kidal in the northeast of the country, with light skirmishes being reported in many of the smaller towns along the Niger River such as Timbuktu and Gao. Fighting is still intense in some areas, and the Russians have been carrying out artillery and drone strikes for about a week now, so the situation is quite kinetic all around. The biggest impact that this will have for the United States is fairly minimal, but having a black hole power vacuum anywhere in Africa always results in very bad groups popping up and a whole lot of terrorism. Depending on how this unrest develops and how this particular war shakes out, we may see another humanitarian crisis and mass waves of refugees making their way to Europe and or the United States. So, that's always a concern whenever a civil war pops off in Africa, but this is an issue for later on. Right now, it's just something to be aware of so that if and when it spreads to other nations like Burkina Faso and Niger, we'll already be spun up on the trouble that is brewing. Here at home, the flavor this week has been violence, protests, and immigration concerns. I know we're all shocked, shocked I say, at the round of shootings and murders that have transpired this week, but all of these attacks are already constant reminder to be careful and pay attention to threats as they pop up. Yesterday's stabbing at a high school in Tacoma turned out to be exactly what everyone thought, a fight between students which turned into a mass stabbing, so not really a terrorism kind of thing. Also, several raids have been conducted at the various Somali daycares in Minneapolis roughly 4 months after the height of those scandals. Nearly all of these daycares and fraud centers kind of shut down on their own a few months ago once the heat got turned up and their operations got exposed by Nick Shirley and others. But, the raids were carried out nonetheless, and we'll see what comes of these alleged investigations. There have also been a series of rather grizzly murders and horrific crimes that have taken place around the nation this week. General crime season is upon us once again, and I'm plotting all of the bad stuff on my maps so that anyone so interested can be aware of what's going on, but I also don't want to just eat up your time today by describing dozens of brutal murders and abuse cases that now fill the news cycle permanently. It's good to be aware, but it's not good to constantly soak this stuff in all the time because there's no shortage of things to blackpill about, and that's not really productive. Just know that it's summertime, and inner-city crime from the youths is once again at a height, so it's a good idea to stay strapped in the cities if you can. In Washington this week, we also had the third or fourth presidential assassination attempted depending on how you want to count the various attempts so far. The rather infamous Hinckley Hilton in Washington, D.C. was hosted to yet another assassination attempt on President Trump, Vice President Vance, most of the cabinet, and senior congressional leadership. Looking at the actual floor plan of the hotel, it's quite clear that the suspect got incredibly close to one of the doorways into the International Ballroom where the VIPs were located, and there will be endless debate and scrutiny on the U.S. Secret Service response to this attack, which we can get to in due time. Right now, though, since time is of the essence, I would personally be concerned with the level of protection provided by the U.S. Secret Service. Fool me once, right? One nearly successful attempt is a fluke, two is a concern, and three is a pattern. Well, we can't get fooled again, and it's very clear that the concerns of the U.S. Secret Service being able to do their one and only job are not unjustified. Otherwise, around the nation, the May Day protests concluded largely without much notice, though in a few far-left strongholds like New York and Washington, D.C., the protests were more decently sized both in terms of attendance and the average attendee. Interestingly enough, a lot of the more organized groups that typically attend the more communist holidays are actually quite divided by the events in the Middle East, so there are often a lot of internal disputes based on people picking sides in that war. So, it turns out that at least some of the unrest was actually between protesters who supported one thing but not the other thing, and well, we know how that goes. Also, just as a reminder, there's still a guy up on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. It's a one-man protest. He's set a tent up up there on top of one of the arches on the bridge, and it looks like everyone's kind of forgotten that he's there. So, I don't know if they're going to go up there and get him down or just let him kind of come down on his own once he runs out of food or something. I don't know. No one's really paying attention to it, so they might just let it go for now. I don't know. We'll have to see, but it's kind of interesting that a lot of these protests just took place, and since most of the country seems to have protest fatigue, I don't know how much people were paying attention to a lot of these protests. Protests became kind of a daily thing. It's uh a lot of people are kind of burned out on it, it seems. At least the general population is kind of carrying on as normal. But, that's pretty much the homeland for this week. Over in the United Kingdom this week, terrorism concerns remain elevated as the long-term effects of mass migration have resulted in substantial terrorism concerns as enough of a foothold has been achieved by insurgent groups that the more violent groups have freedom of maneuver throughout much of the nation. We've known about this for a very long time, and everyone is well aware of what's happening around the nation, and this is absolutely a case of some people importing the Third World into Britain so as to dilute the ethnic population. And now that they've done that, the people that orchestrated this plan don't like the fact that the people they imported wholesale are actually quite violent toward the same people who imported them. Unfortunately, this is another lightning rod topic that is not really suited to get into detail in this format. If you understand what's going on, I don't need to elaborate, and if you don't understand what's going on, the elaborating is not going to help. So, it's best to just know that this is a complicated issue, and there's really no pleasant way to describe what's going on, but this week has been rather tenuous due to the terror attacks which have been daily occurrences for a long time. The attack in Golders Green this week has served as the catalyst to jolt the British government into doing something, which at the moment is mostly taking the form of increased counterterrorism patrols and presence at public venues, in addition to raising the national terrorism level. Just for context, the national terrorism level in the United Kingdom is much like the United States in that it is not retroactive, but proactive, meaning that this level is not increased because an attack happened, but because an attack is expected to happen. Of course, this is kind of a special case because of the attack in Golders Green. They may have decided to retroactively raise the terrorism level to show that they're doing something, but because this is a proactive assessment, right? Because this is now a a signaling that an attack is quote highly likely within the next few months, many people are asking, "Wait a minute, so you mean this is not over yet?" This has been kind of a point of confusion and contention among British politicians and authorities who are trying to kind of smooth over the situation because we've got both a retroactive community policing kind of problem in Golders Green going on, but we also have future threats which are starting to pop up. So, it's kind of hard to balance this. Are we are we being retroactive or are we being proactive? It's hard to say what what the British authorities are trying to do at the moment. There have been a few raids taking place over the past few days, but they're not really related to very much of anything, such as the Web House in Crewe, which was raided a few days ago. This was and I suppose continues to be the base of operations for what can only be described as a quasi-Islamic-based cult called the Ahmadiyya Religion of Peace and Light. This relatively new religious movement had set up shop in an abandoned orphanage, the Web House in Crewe, and a few days ago this compound was raided by hundreds of police officers, possibly due to this facility being well-known, and in the context of terrorism concerns, this facility was an easy target for raids because it had been known as an epicenter of human trafficking and actual slavery. People were being kept at this facility and forced to work against their will. So, this new religion kind of aspect to it is also really more of an offshoot of Shia Islam, but it's also been disavowed by most of the Shia mosques in the area who are saying, "Yeah, these guys are not us," which made this facility perfect for a raid because it also meant that the majority Muslim areas around the facility wouldn't be too upset because most of the Muslim population viewed these guys as a cult. So, this facility getting rolled up checked a lot of boxes by allowing the police to actually arrest a terrorist for once, but also not upset the Sunni population by raiding a legitimate mosque or something like that. And as of yesterday, forensic teams were observed digging inside the compound, which is never really a good sign, especially in the context of what was allegedly going on at this location. So, we'll have to see what comes of this specific investigation, and most importantly, the community reaction to it, as well as the national outcome of what all of this terrorism stuff is about. A lot of questions are being asked which don't have very easy or convenient or even pleasant answers. I am not British, so I don't know if the terrorism concern is legitimately higher than it has been in the past few months and years, or if this is a knee-jerk reaction to some of the more high-profile attacks that have taken place over the past couple of days. I just don't know. We'll We're going to have to see. It's probably quite debatable, but either way, the situation domestically in the UK is not doing super well at the moment. So, moving to the Middle East for this week, there has been mostly no change from last week. However, just because it's all quiet on the Middle Eastern front doesn't mean that trouble isn't brewing, and it most certainly is. When it comes to the global energy crisis, the situation is getting more serious with each passing day. The Strait of Hormuz remains fully closed to Western-aligned vessels with only local traffic and some Chinese ships successfully transiting the choke point with permission and coordination with the Iranians. The American blockade continues as before with the US Navy interdicting several sanctioned vessels over the past week. Some of these vessels have just been boarded and searched for contraband, and other vessels have actually been commandeered due to having a falsified registration or otherwise were a part of the shadow fleet of cargo vessels that were moving sanctioned cargo around the world. Of note, TankerTrackers, the main company that monitors commercial shipping around the world, has confirmed through their own research that the American blockade is somewhat porous, and at least a small number of sanctioned vessels have transited through the American blockade, even though the terms of the blockade as described by the United States would indicate that some of the vessels should have been stopped. There's been no official explanation for this, and we're also way down into the weeds by examining each and every hull that is moving through the region at this point, but that's still kind of an interesting development worth making note of, I think. Additionally, the Iranians are skirting the blockade in other more indirect ways. For instance, some locals are reporting a sharp increase in cargo trucks transiting the various roadways into Pakistan. So, the Iranians appear to be driving cargo by land across the land border with Pakistan, then loading that cargo into Pakistani ships departing from Pakistani ports. So, that has been a really slick way to get around the American blockade, but again, volume is probably the biggest issue there. Also, we must remember that there are petroleum and gas pipelines going into Pakistan from Iran, as we can see if I turn on the pipeline layer on the map. Of course, the volume through these is fairly minimal and not as much as their main oil terminal on Kharg Island, but this does go to show that the obsession with Kharg Island isn't really capturing the full picture, because the Iranians can always export some oil through Pakistan, and thus keep some of their income. Some vessels have also been observed hugging the coastline and trying to use Pakistani territorial waters to bypass the American blockade, which hasn't really worked out, because they still have to transit the entire Indian Ocean, where the US is interdicting ships, but it's been interesting to watch a few ships try this trick. One other detail to remember is that technically, Iran shares a border with Russia, though through the Caspian Sea. So, it's not exactly a land border, but Russian ships can always transport cargo between Russia and Iran via this waterway. During the early days of the war, the Israelis knew this and bombed many of the major port facilities on the Caspian Sea coastline, but it's been several weeks, and it's not like they can bomb the entire inland ocean, so the Iranians will always be able to get some spicy cargo into their country if they so desire. On the diplomatic front, things are not going well. The United States has issued so many ultimatums and extensions to those ultimatums that it's been hard to keep track of, but for the most part, the situation remains stagnant, and we're officially at the "They have our phone number" stage of diplomatic talks between the US and Iran. Due to this tactical limbo situation, many companies are scrambling to make alternative arrangements while the ceasefire is still in place, which has most notably been observed in the aviation community. This morning, the UAE announced the full resumption of all civil aviation within their nation, so flights are starting to return to normal, or at least the new normal that has settled in across the region. Down at the more tactical level, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and has continued to dig in and make repairs during the ceasefire period. The IRGC and the fast boat navy, as we'll call them, remains largely intact and has been conducting various combat patrols up and down the Iranian coastline, but especially within the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial shipping through the strait has remained minimal, and many commercial shipping groups are still trying to figure out what to do, because they still have ships that are trapped within the Persian Gulf, or otherwise, their income loss is just too great with this waterway closed. Many shipping companies are also looking to the future when or if the situation gets resolved. Even if the strait opens up tomorrow, fully and completely, for real this time, insurance rates are certainly not going back to the level that they were at before the war. The Iranians have proven to the corporate world that the risks to transiting this waterway are extreme, and the United States has proven that we do not have the capability to alleviate that risk. Timeline-wise, there's really no way to know how long this is going to last. Even if the strait were to open up right now, there will be mass famine throughout much of the world, simply because the fertilizer shipments are too late. It's just too late for some of that. In the first world, impacts are already being felt, even though the seriousness of the situation is not really being reflected in the markets. On Wall Street, the points are made up and the rules don't matter, so that's kind of where we're at at this point. The futures markets are eventually going to have to acknowledge reality, but right now, that's still not happening. So, on the economic front, things are just kind of stagnant. Right now, the ceasefire is holding, but both sides are making preparations for future combat actions, so we're not exactly out of the woods just yet. Considering that a huge portion of the military decision-making strategy is often displayed by Fox News, it's helpful to know what they are saying, and I've unfortunately delved into that this week, and most of the pundits and warhawks which have made appearances on Fox have been pushing the president, as in, they have his phone number and they are actively giving the president counsel. They've been pushing him to conduct one last big strike mission to blow up the civilian infrastructure within Iran, and then we roll up the operation and leave. I don't have the time or energy to get into this can of worms, but that's the rhetoric that is being pushed. Moving forward into the next few weeks, the potential courses of action that I see are mostly twofold. One, that we resume bombing again, with the warhawks winning the day and the "Just one more bombing run" idea getting us sucked back into the war, because that last bombing sort is an awful lot like a last cigarette. There's never really just one last mission, ever. Or, the other course of action is that the United States carries on pretty much like we're doing right now, the strait remaining closed, and the Korean War approach that I mentioned last week coming more into effect, meaning that we don't really have a resumption of hostilities, but we also don't resolve the impacts of what's already happened, either. If things stay as they stand right now, this would be a strategic loss for the United States. People are going to argue about that. I mean, you can argue whether this is a Pyrrhic victory or if this is just a straight-up loss, but if things stay as they are right now, this would be a straight-up loss for the United States, for sure. But again, things can change, who knows? For now, it's really hard to determine what the White House is going to do. They could resume bombing again tonight if they wanted to, or we could drag this out for a few decades and never really get to a solution. Europe is going to be crippled first when it comes to the fuel crisis, and Southeast Asia will starve to death because they can't get enough fertilizer to grow food. And based on the character that we've seen so far, that's honestly the most likely outcome for at least right now. All bets are off, though, if we start bombing again, so we'll just have to wait and see how it all works out. And on that note, that's really all I have for today, so let's roll into the Intercepted Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another great net. I've been really trying to work on the Android version of JSA call. Some people have reported some bugs here and there. Again, it's it just came out. It's it's a new thing, so my guess is that it'll get better with due time, and they've been pumping out a lot of updates over the past few weeks, so hopefully this will start getting a lot better and a lot more feasible, because I tell you, it's really nice to be able to just plug your phone into your radio and not have to worry with a laptop running Windows or Linux or anything like that, so. Either way, it's really good to see alternative means of exchanging information working out in the real world. We are certainly not out of the woods of these censorship eras, just that the things we're being censored about nowadays are a lot different from the past, maybe, but we still have censorship concerns, that's for sure, and strengthening these alternative ways of exchanging information is going to be vastly more important as time goes on. Tough times make tough people, and we can all do with a little bit of toughening up these days, I think, so let's keep at it and let's do the best we can. So, thank you all for sticking with me today. Thank you for all of your support, 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 May 24th through the 30th of 2026. This week seems to have flown right by as many different events have come to a head over the past few days. Around the world, all of the current wars continue pretty much the same as before. In Europe, the war in Ukraine has intensified once again as the yearly summer fighting season has resulted in major offensive and counteroffensive actions being conducted by both sides. Most of the war remains fairly stagnant in terms of the front lines actually moving, but major offensives are being conducted far behind the lines in both Russia and in Ukraine via drones and missiles. And the Ukrainian attacks in particular are striking a lot of Russian oil infrastructure, which is affecting the global oil market. As a result, the war in Ukraine has served to put the squeeze on Europe even more than the war in the Middle East already has as Ukrainian forces continue to strike targets that indirectly make Europe's fuel supply even more expensive. Similarly, the Middle East remains in a state of stagnation or stalemate, however you want to put it, with a few engagements being reported this week, both in the Strait of Hormuz, within the Persian Gulf War, but also within Lebanon and Gaza as the Israelis continue offensive actions along multiple fronts. The Israelis are expanding their operations uh to conduct their land invasion into Lebanon, but they're also looking to annex more of Gaza than they already have with Israeli politicians stating that they plan to annex roughly 70% of Gaza. So whether that will actually happen is debatable, but nevertheless, the situation in the Middle East remains tense on many different fronts. Most importantly for us, the global oil inventories have begun to approach minimum operation levels in some parts of the globe this week, mostly in Asia as the shock to the global oil supply continues to be affected more seriously. Closer to home, kinetic strikes continue on fast boats in the Eastern Pacific as the United States begins to accelerate the counter narcotics mission down south. But there are very few details on this. So there's not much to note other than that the strikes happened generally in the Eastern Pacific. Within the homeland itself, civil conflict in the form of street takeovers and routine crime continues as before with no real change from last week. The situation is still insane. These street takeovers are still occurring in dozens of cities around the country pretty much every day. So it's hard to keep track of all of these. But the deteriorating situation in Newark, New Jersey has once again emboldened the anti-ISE demonstrations and served as a good barometer for other unrest which might develop if so desired. So very much a busy week all around. On the strategic movement front, the major military movements for this week have remained much the same as before. No big changes from last week with the little caveat that Cuba is still a central focus. This week, US Southern Command announced that a meeting had taken place at the perimeter fence of Guantanamo Bay between General Donovan and a collection of cheery fellows from various levels of Cuban senior military leadership. Not a whole lot of smiles down in Gitmo, which is probably appropriate, but this meeting does highlight tensions in the region because it's not something that is normally conducted. These meetings like this are pretty rare, and this one's not really clear as to what it was all about. Per their post on social media, the reason for the meeting was very vague and only mentioned stuff like operational security and general perimeter security. Who knows what the real reason for the meeting was all about. Maybe it was just a PR event, more about conveying the seriousness of the situation. It's really impossible to know for sure, but the end result is keeping Cuba at the forefront of the news cycle and reminding us that American aspirations in Cuba are still being formulated, whatever they are. As of right now, there's not really a clear explanation of why the United States is interested in Cuba. Of course, there is the general strategic implications of having a hostile nation, or rather a nation which is more amenable to your adversaries, Russia and China. That makes a lot of sense. The Chinese have a lot of radio listening post down in Cuba. So, it would make sense for the United States to be interested in that sort of behavior and getting them to uh push the Chinese out of Cuba would probably be in our strategic interest as a nation or really any nation would have these strategic interests. But the United States has not made that argument. So I don't want to speak for the White House and make arguments that they have not made. And so far they have not articulated exactly why the United States is interested in Cuba. What what's the point? What do we want from Cuba? That has not really been disclosed other than the general uh consensus of well, they're just bad guys. Okay. Well, that's not really an explanation for anything, so we're just going to have to wait and see. But at the moment, the aspirations for Cuba, either control of it or some kind of influence operation or puppet state, I don't really know. I don't know what the point of this is, but that has never stopped us in the past. So, we'll keep an eye on it. Make sure that uh we prepare for any kind of impact from another war breaking out in terms of the economic situation. I don't know. It's too early to say if this is going to make that cross from diplomacy to actual warfare. these days, those uh two sides of the coin tend to blend together quite well. So, we'll just have to wait and see. But anyway, Cuba is still on the menu, and we'll have to wait and see how it all works out. Within the homeland United States this week, the theme has of course been an increase in horrific crime, man-made horrors beyond comprehension, and far-left riots in New Jersey. So, pretty much situation normal at this point. In New Jersey, the riots at the Delaney Hall detention facility have continued and remained fairly kinetic each night. Over the past few days, a full-blown encampment has been set up on site to help the riers with logistics and to provide them with material aid. This was a substantial effort with an entire party tent for like weddings and such being set up on site along with other tents and really your standard Antifa style autonomous zone kind of arrangement. I don't know if that's what they were calling it on site, but that's kind of what they were building over the past week or so. However, last night substantial reinforcements arrived. The New Jersey State Police have been activated and are on site to assist with security of the main compound and also to keep riers from breaching the perimeter. The state police also ordered these encampments to be removed. Uh so the state police is in invested in trying to get that area cleaned up. And as of this morning, the riers essentially just left a bunch of trash behind. Now, the situation is most certainly not over yet. The riots are certainly not over and protesters remain on site pretty much persistently. With the fences being put up overnight, the chance of the compound being overrun is much reduced. But these logistical efforts propping up immediately are an indicator that money is behind these efforts. If we were to zoom out the map just a little bit, we can see that the New York, New Jersey area is absolutely packed with safe houses used by illegal immigrants. And all of these yellow diamond symbols depict an NGO or an agency that is dedicated to helping illegal immigrants evade capture and commit crimes. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, that's a lot of different safe houses of people that are openly committing crimes." Well, yeah, welcome to my world. I've got thousands of these on the maps, and I'm not even uh speculating here. I'm just using what these people put on their own websites. So, if you were to tap one of these icons on my maps and just put the address, the street address that I have listed for that facility into Google, you'll find out exactly what's at that facility. I can't put the name of the facility down. Uh but they can't uh copyright strike me with a mailing address because you can't copyright mailing addresses. So that's how I have to get around that for now. But by and large, all of these yellow diamonds on the map marked safe, that is the uh mill 2525 symbology symbol for a safe house. That's what I've used to settle in on all of these places where illegal immigrants are being staged and taken care of and provided aid and stuff like that. But anyway, I wanted to focus on Delaney because this is kind of an interesting one. This has been the site where a lot of politicians and congressmen and general big figures come to make speeches and rile the crowd up because it's really close to New York. So, of course, everybody's going to go there in grandstand, which is why this uh protesting started off to begin with. I believe it originally started with an alleged hunger strike at the facility among the uh inmates, detainees, whatever you want to call them, uh waiting deportation, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because these illegals are not held here that long. Uh but maybe they are now. I don't know. Either way, it transcended into just kind of a big mess over the past uh week or so. And due to the close proximity to other things, again, why intelligence preparation of the battle space is quite important. If we see that they are within driving distance of a few dozen different uh milliondoll law firms and groups that are willing to provide them with free legal support and any kind of uh support they want. Well, now you see why this is kind of a big deal. You add in the fact that the White House is really really not interested in cracking down anymore after the whole Minneapolis fiasco and you get kind of a recipe for destruction. So hopefully now that the state police are on scene and kind of involved in this, this will simmer down quite a bit at this one facility. But again, there are many other places within driving distance. There are at least a dozen different federal buildings that these uh people can go cause problems at throughout the greater New York, New Jersey area, and there's not a whole lot that anybody can do about it but play whack-a-ole and just I mean you can't secure them all and these people have the numbers to uh dial up tensions to 11 if they so choose. So suffice it to say that this area has a lot of big money and the federal administration is really really desperate to avoid another Minneapolis. Once again, people get all been out of shape about how the immigration issue is on display in the street. Uh, but it's, you know, it's mostly boomers, neocons, normies, and people who don't understand how important crowd control really is. They may not understand looking at a crowd, reading the crowd, understanding what these people are doing, how they're dressed, what kind of insignia they're wearing. They they don't view the world through the lens of counterterrorism. So, they look at this and they just say, "Well, why are the police being mean?" Well, okay. They're they're trying to prevent somebody from getting killed here. And unfortunately, crowd control is a rather blunt instrument sometimes. So, the average normie Fox News watcher out there might not like it when Abua gets a little tearyeyed from the tear gas. But if it saves her from getting shot in the face because she threw a brick at a cop, then you know that maybe maybe there's a a place for crowd control. So either way, it's a delicate balance. Minneapolis showed that the federal government is not interested in maintaining their side of that balance, and Newark has confirmed it as well by being slow to react, by not using tear gas, by not using less lethal crowd control measures. And this is why we now have a thing to talk about. Right. Again, I don't want to focus on this too much, but when it comes to these counter ice things, this is a major concern. It is a much bigger concern than what's going on in Iran. It's a much bigger concern than paying almost $5 for gas, if we're being perfectly honest here. And so far, the immigration issue, specifically being heavy-handed at some of these riots, this is one of the only subjects where the White House actually cares about public perception and opinion, and they care about the public perception and opinion of their own political enemies, which is just an odd thing. But this is also why this minor policing issue has spiralled into a full-blown situation here. So once again, I don't want to make a molehill into a mountain over this sort of thing. This is one facility. This is in New Jersey because of course it is. And it looks like it's starting to simmer down now. At least the fences will make it a little bit harder for them to damage stuff. So there's that. But I haven't talked about immigration stuff in a while. And it's worth keeping these things on the back burner because as important as it is to understand what's going on around the world, it's even more important to understand what's going on here at home. So far, I do not know of a single agency, group, charity, whatever that has actually been shut down for encouraging these riots and for funding them. So, all it takes is the will and you know, just not seeing it. So, enough of that. Let's move to the Middle East for this week. And like a broken record, the situation remains about as tense as before. And let's start by working chronologically uh by walking through what chaos has unfolded in the region this week. Please forgive me if the details and timelines are a little bit off this week. The strangle hold on information has become much more substantial since the ceasefire went into effect. And it's harder to verify the timeline of events, but the general situation is that the war became kinetic again a few days ago, at least in a limited scope. Shortly after the announcements of an all but finalized peace deal last Friday that we discussed in last last weekend's brief, the United States carried out bombings within Iran on Monday, Memorial Day. During this series of strikes, the United States claimed to have taken out a few fastboats along with a SAM site and Bondara Boss. Sentcom did not acknowledge this series of strikes on their social media page. They have stopped providing press releases on engagements and no video was provided. The only reason that we know that it was the United States who conducted these strikes is because Sentcom spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins has been verbally confirming these strikes with reporters in mainstream media interviews. So after the American strikes on May 2526, the Iranians waited a day then launched their sort of proportionate response counterattack, whatever you want to call it, they launched their own attack again. This attack took the form of one ballistic missile targeting Ali Salam air base in Kuwait along with a handful of drones targeting Kuwait as well. At the time, the battle damage caused by this strike was completely censored and impossible to find out. However, as of last night, we now know that as many as five service members and a few contractors were wounded during this attack. So, casualties are still rolling in even from just one missile strike. Remember how I said that Sentcom is no longer posting their engagements on social media, or at least they're not posting all of them. They're just posting some of them. Well, this was quite handy because Sentcom did post about this Iranian counterattack on their page while pretending that the United States did not launch the first strike. They call this an egregious ceasefire violation and an unjustified Iranian aggression. But in reality, it was the United States which broke the ceasefire first by conducting the Memorial Day strikes. Interestingly enough, in this same exact post, Sentcom directly stated that Kuwaiti forces had successfully intercepted this ballistic missile, which might be a technically factual statement if we stretch the meaning of the word intercepted. However, it's also misleading because the missile actually hit the base anyway, wounding five people and damaging two MQ9 drones. So, it sounds like it hit an aircraft hanger. To me, this sounds like a cover for a failed interception. But that's my own personal opinion. I think they're just lying. I think the the missile actually did hit the base. But anyway, I just found this whole exchange completely baffling because believe it or not, propaganda works. In this case, all that needs to be done is to not disclose the fact that the US conducted strikes in Iran. And when the Iranians counteratt attacked, it'll be like the first time, which is exactly what happened. The US attacks on Memorial Day 1st. The Iranians counterattack on May 28th. And on that same night, the United States counter counterattacked the Iranians claiming to strike a drone that was about to be launched along with a few other undisclosed targets in Bond Abbas. Probably. This brings us to yesterday when President Trump posted this message on his social media platform, which contains a lot of information. President Trump outlined the rough criteria for what the United States would accept as part of a peace deal. But on the more tactical level, he also stated that the US would lift the American side of the blockade. Throughout the day yesterday, nothing much happened on this. And right now, it's hard to determine if this is the truth because no ships are transiting the strait due to what happened next. Yesterday evening, as everyone was trying to figure out what is going on, the UK MTO came in from the top rope with a pile drive to the peace process. For those who are just joining us now, the UK MTO or the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center is the leading authority for most maritime security issues in the Middle East. They cover other areas too, but the Middle East is their main focus. And they are like a British fusion cell run by the Royal Navy that works directly with US Navscent to help civilian ships know what security threats are present around the world. So, think of them like a British government agency that's like mostly civilian run, but they're still like directly tied into the government. They're not like a third party private company. So last night they published two advisory notes, both of which are incredibly interesting. The first one was an announcement that is comparatively rare and is not exactly good news. This was a notice of military operations being conducted north of the Musandam peninsula of Oman, which is this area of Oman, the peninsula that juts out north into the straight of Hormuz. So the UK MTO is saying that the US is going to be conducting military operations north of that. Well, that's in the middle of the street of Hormuz. Specifically, this notice warns of additional Iranian mine laying activity, and that US forces are on high alert. The notice also mentions that Iran continues to attempt to impede mine clearance efforts, which is the first public acknowledgement that the Iranian mines are indeed a threat, and that the United States can't exactly get in there to clear them. The notice goes on to mention that, quote, "Any vessel that does not comply with the direction of US forces may be determined to be an imminent threat and subject to proportionate measures of self-defense in accordance with international law." This sentence alone gives us a lot of information. Uh, for one, this further solidifies developments that took place last week, namely that the US is now conducting air strikes on Iranian vessels based on self-defense criteria. For the three of you who remember my anatomy of an air strike video from a while back, you may know that this is an indication that the US has completely revamped the concepts of kinetic targeting and the lines between deliberate targeting and dynamic targeting are not so clear anymore. Anyway, the US has now decided to allow target engagement authorities or TIAS, TEAS, at lower and lower levels of command to conduct self-defense strikes, which would normally be considered offensive strikes under all prior targeting doctrine as outlined by Sentcom's targeting guidance, JP360, and and a bunch of other long-standing guidance. This document from the UK MTO puts this in writing and is intended to warn the maritime shipping community that the United States will be conducting kinetic strikes in the strait very soon. The second document provided by the UK MTO is a warning that the blockade of Iranian ports is still in effect which takes the wind out of the sales regarding the lifting of the American blockade. So according to US Navent as in United States Naval Forces Central Command, the blockade is still in effect and this notice was published many hours after President Trump's announcement on social media. So somebody is lying about the blockade being lifted. In fact, these two notices are major indications and warnings of the war kicking off again soon and a primary focus is being placed on the straightup Hormuz. This notice directly states that the US Navy cannot guarantee the safety of neutral or merchant shipping, which seems pretty clear to me. And I don't think that any merchant shipping, at least any Western shipping, is going to go through the straight anytime soon unless they pay the Iranian toll. And if they pay the Iranian toll, then the US might pick them up, too. Because funny enough, as I'm recording this right now, I just see a notice come in from Sentcom stating that they disabled a non-compliant vessel in the Gulf of Oman to prevent blockade violation. So, I don't even know what's going on anymore. President Trump says the blockade's lifted. Uh, this looked pretty clear to me. Maybe I'm just stupid or something. I just can't read very well. And now Scom is saying, "Well, we're shooting at vessels which violate the blockade." So, I don't get it. Um, or maybe I do get it. Maybe I do understand it quite well. Uh because this type of well, we're going to let you go, but then when you get there, we're going to bomb you kind of mentality is really prevalent. I'm sure many of you have picked up on where this idea is coming from because there's somebody else in the world who tends to do this sort of thing. We're definitely not going to shoot. You can definitely go through this area. Oh, we bombed you. Okay. Yeah, now we see where this is coming from, right? At least that's my own general theory and I'll leave it at that. But anyway, I'll let that go for now. Uh maybe one day people will start reading between the lines and understand what's really going on here. But if maritime shipping needed any more reason to stay out of the straight this morning something else happened. Observers in Oman spotted a floating object that they assessed to be a naval mine which they say is currently floating to the west of the inshore traffic zone which is the new name that has been given uh to the alternative traffic separation scheme going through Omani waters. So there's a mine floating out there uh somewhere. what they think is a mine. Who who knows what it could actually be, but that's what they said. So, as of this morning, that's pretty much how things stand. We are on day 91 of the war, 3 months in, and the potential for peace remains very much off the menu for the time being. I would venture a guess to say that the hesitance to enter the straight of Hormuz from a western aligned vessel is roughly the same as it was during the height of the shooting. Otherwise, vessels are taking the Iranian route. They're paying the toll and they're just going on their merry way. I don't know if these vessels are being intercepted by the US Navy eventually at some point or what's going on, but right now the most hardest hit, the most affected vessels in the Persian Gulf that are stranded for 3 months now, a full quarter of the year are Western aligned vessels, American vessels, and tanker ships that are not aligned with the Iranians. Of course, things could change rather quickly. Uh, like I've said for months now and many others have said for months, the cleanest ending for this war, well certainly the quickest, but also the cleanest ending for the war is literally for the US to just walk away, declare victory, and privately cut a deal with the Iranians to give them whatever they want to open the straight again. So, we always have to consider the fact that that might happen. It could happen. We could just see a Trump social post one day and the Iranians confirm it that says the war is over. The straight's open, and we're all going to go home, right? That could happen. Those types of posts have been made several times before and they weren't true in the past, but it could happen. I don't want to neglect the fact that one day this could just be over. Personally, I don't think that's what's going to happen at all. I think that this war is going to drag on for a while longer, especially when we have a couple more months of strategic petroleum reserve left in the tank and the markets, the oil markets continue to be completely divorced from reality. some more mainstream sources are starting to catch on to what has been obvious for about 3 months now, which is that oil prices are not reflective of the situation at hand and that the bigger concern is the petroleum supply itself. As bad as prices are right now at the gas pump, it turns out that taking 20 million barrels per day out of the worldwide supply chain will eventually result in actual shortages of petroleum products. Uh the week before last, the United States has drained the strategic petroleum reserve at a higher rate than at any point in history. At least that's the claim that's going around. I don't know if the numbers actually match up, but it certainly seems to based on the charts. Gas is almost $5 per gallon in many places around the country, and this is actually artificially low. Like I said last week, gas prices should be much higher than they actually are right now. And one of the reasons that this has not happened is the wholesale draining of our strategic petroleum reserve. in addition to other nations doing the same from their end and a global tightening of the belt when it comes to petroleum products. So all in all, supply chain issues are seriously on the menu the longer this goes on. As we've known from the very start, time is a finite resource, and as of last night, there are even talks of extending the ceasefire by another 60 days. If that is the intent, we might be in a bit of a pickle because if we continue to drain these strategic reserves at the current rate of rise, we might not have that much time left before supply shortages begin and gas pumps in the US start running dry. Of course, this is not a major concern right now, even though it should be. But the Feds keep kicking that can down the road, and there's not a whole lot of uh expediency toward figuring this solution out. We're 91 days into this and there's not really a whole lot of interest in uh finding a solution anytime soon. It's like, well, let's schedule the meeting for two weeks from now. Well, okay. Uh but that's two weeks of very little oil making its way out of the region. So, not a super great look when the summertime travel season is just beginning right about now. And most Americans are going to be uh shaking their head at the gas pump unless something is done to fix this situation. And as of last night, it looks like many, many indicators are stacking up that point to the United States seeking more of a military solution rather than being interested in some sort of negotiation. But once again, a lot of this is going to be speculation. It'll be over when it's over, but right now it's not over. We just have to take it one day at a time and see what we can do on our end to be more prepared no matter what happens. So that's all I've got for today and let's wrap up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great net again all around this week and I think a lot of people are participating because weather is great this time of year. So I picked up way more people than I normally do from my own radio station. This week I heard quite a lot of people testing relaying messages around the world, testing other modes and frequencies. Some people trying to hit Australia, which is always really cool. I haven't hit Australia yet. That's pretty that would be pretty cool to uh do. It's pretty hard to hit Australia here from the east coast, but but otherwise, I saw a lot of people checking in to see who's up on the network and exchanging information completely off the grid. Radio networks like this one and others are really helpful when the power goes out, when the grid is completely down, and uh you have to operate completely offline, and maybe even in an environment where there's a lot of jamming. Resilient and capable communications are really helpful to have, especially when things are not going super well. So, that's all I've got for today. Thanks to all of you who support the work here on Patreon and thanks to all of you for sticking around as the summertime rolls in and everything gets more complicated. I have made some progress on the more educational material side of the house this week and I hope to have more at tech tutorials and more more well-rounded informational content out soon to help us navigate these strange and interesting times. There's never enough time in the day and I know that we're all trying to do our best. So, we'll continue on and try to stay one step ahead of the chaos as best we can. The goal of the Ghost Net and most of this other stuff too is to be an asset to the community even when times get tough and everything is collapsing around us. Hopefully things don't ever get that serious, but having these capabilities will be very handy and allow us to have the confidence to face whatever hardship comes next. So, let's get after it and I'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 March 29th through April 4th, 2026. Happy Easter one and all for those who celebrated this week, and I hope everyone is able to find a little bit of peace this weekend, because around the world the flavor continues to be war and the follow-on effects of it. It's already become a very crazy year, so let's get right to it. The global impact of the two wars in the Middle East continues to be felt as the second and third-order effects are starting to become more serious. On the diplomatic front this week, things are getting pretty complicated as most of our European allies have either refused to take part in the American foray in Iran, or they have otherwise denied the use of their airspace or staging bases for continuing the war. This has complicated the situation quite a bit and made things a little bit more challenging on the American front as the United States has had to figure out logistical means of continuing the fight. On the economic front, supply chain disruptions are underway as raw materials are either unable to transit the Strait of Hormuz or the production facilities themselves throughout the Middle East have sustained damage during the war. So, continuing the theme from last week, the Strait of Hormuz being restricted is really only just half of the problem. The other half of the problem is that fertilizer, aluminum, and helium production facilities have been hit with ballistic missiles and are therefore severely damaged. This has resulted in about 46% of the world's supply of fertilizer being cut off right during the peak planting season for most crops around the world. Agricultural news is not exactly the most exciting thing these days, however, this is going to be a major, major problem in the next few months, especially through out Southeast Asia and the rest of the Third World if shipments of fertilizer are not resumed. A bit closer to home this week, terrorism concerns remain paramount here in the United States. Obviously, for the past month or so, we've all been kind of more focused on things popping off in the Middle East, or at least I've been more focused on that due to the seriousness of that situation, but here at home concerns are probably even more important for us in the homeland, things that are going to affect us more on a day-to-day basis. This week within the United States, most of the news has been centered around general crime as the warmer weather is usually correlated with an increase in crime season. Mass shootings, which are mostly of the gang shooting variety, crime sprees, and the general states of standard unrest are pretty common nationwide, which has become fairly standard this time of year. One detail that would be wise to monitor over the next few weeks is the sharp decline in immigration enforcement operations, as well as fraud investigations. Again, just a couple of months ago, we were really on the edge of our seats wondering if Minneapolis was going to be a major problem for the nation, and all of that civil unrest stopped when the federal government stopped the aggressive counter-illegal immigration efforts. I hate to say it, ladies and gentlemen, but the mass deportations are over. Minneapolis was the peak, and we can argue about how effective all of this was, for sure, but we're basically done with the high-profile ICE surges. President Trump himself has made it exceptionally clear that his priority is to reduce focus on illegal immigrant workers, and also reduce ICE operations to return to more of the low-level, low-intensity raids and efforts like this. And now that the war in the Middle East is on, the focus on fraud has been reduced as well. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is basically non-existent at this point, and the focus on scandals such as the Somali fraud situation, is basically just a local law enforcement issue right now. Vice President Vance has been placed in charge of the anti-fraud initiatives, but he has been very quiet on social media over the past few weeks since the war began, which is understandable, I guess, but it's hard to determine how serious of an initiative this is. So, even though the kinetic activity in the US has been comparatively light as we are focused on other stuff, we will certainly have to be on our toes over the next few weeks, as always, because we can't really know how world events are going to impact the homeland. Moving to the Middle East for this week, we can see that the conflict continues to expand, and at this point, more or less the entire globe is involved to to degree. Maybe not directly, but indirectly for sure. Within the Middle East itself, no one is safe as missiles and drones are continuing to target most of the region. Iranian attacks have not decreased at all. They have actually increased substantially this week, at least according to the various ministries of defense for the Gulf states. Just taking the UAE as an example, this week they reported intercepting 108 missiles and 269 drones, which is a sharp increase from last week, which reported only 57 missiles and 124 drones. So, roughly double the number of drones and missiles uh being used for attacks in the Middle East in just one country. So, remember, this is just the interceptions that are being reported. The UAE does not report the missiles and drones that make it through their air defenses to actually impact their targets. So, we're definitely dealing with incomplete information, but even just taking what they have intercepted as a benchmark, Iranian missile and drone attacks on the UAE have doubled from last week. Concerning the American military presence in the region, Iranian targeting efforts have also increased substantially. Many of the missiles and drones that have been reported by the UAE, for example, came from the Iranians targeting Al Dhafra Air Base, which has been getting pounded every single day. Similarly, Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia has been yet another Air Base heavily targeted by Iranian attacks, most notably this week by taking out the E-3 Sentry parked on a taxiway at this installation. Following that attack, American forces are still using this Air Base and are still using the same parking areas, even knowing that the Iranians can hit this location rather easily. In Bahrain, what is now the former headquarters for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Manama has been more or less completely destroyed. In the early days of the war, right after the missiles started flying, it became very clear that this naval base was a main target for the Iranians. So, the US military dispersed their personnel to civilian hotels around the city, which did work to reduce casualties, but once those hotels started getting hit a few weeks ago, the Navy started pulling everybody out of the city. So, over the past week or so, the decision was made to relocate the last remaining service members and their families who were told to grab only what they could carry in a go bag and get on a plane, which indicates the urgency at which this movement was carried out. As of this morning, the withdrawal has completed and the command of Fifth Fleet's headquarters has been relocated from Bahrain to Norfolk, Virginia. Other bases around the region have been getting hit hard as well in a similar manner as on the first day of the war when the Iranians were just hitting everything in range. Due to American HIMARS missile strikes being launched from Kuwait, bases throughout the country have been hit very hard. Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, and Ali Al Salem Air Base have been struck daily this week, which is significant because all three of these bases are not really that fortified. I didn't want to point this out earlier for obvious reasons, but it's kind of a moot point now as the Iranians have figured this out. These bases are traditionally not considered to be front-line bases, so there aren't really many defenses at these locations and terrain-wise, it's just open desert. There really normally aren't any efforts to dig in here. These are, or at least were, staging bases for movement around the region. For example, Ali Al Salem Air Base has an ice cream shop and Arifjan has a Pizza Hut and a Burger King last I remember. I think a KFC as well. Concerning fortifications, after the invasion of Iraq, not much was done to harden any of the bases in Kuwait and nearly all of them just rely on the simple T-walls for fortifications. No HESCO barriers, nothing underground, basically it's just what you see is what you get. Again, I wasn't going to mention this initially, but the Iranians have figured it out and various former CENTCOM officials themselves have gone on TV and spilled the beans on how little these bases are actually protected, so I guess it's kind of a wash at this point. The Iranians already know. But anyway, these bases are not really combat bases and what's even worse, the Iranians have somehow figured out that the United States did not fortify these bases at all before the war either because the United States did not think that the Iranians would strike our bases in the region. This is directly what President Trump himself said. He directly stated that he didn't think that they would hit our bases. And if that was not clear and confirmed enough for you, the Pentagon has posted emergency solicitations for pre-fab concrete bunkers for immediate delivery within just a few days. So now we're backtracking and actually trying to get our guys some protection over there because they're not getting it where they're at. So concerning the situation in the Middle East, it's not good in terms of our bases there. We have bases that are normally filled with fobbits such as myself, which normally would be basically a garrison environment. Now these bases are being hit daily. Bases which used to be in the rear are now front-line fighting positions. It must be quite a unique phenomenon and I I don't think anybody who's ever been stationed in Kuwait during the GWOT era has ever thought about digging a fighting hole to sleep in at night because there are literally massage parlors and green bean coffee shops on these bases. But now they're going to hit with missiles and now they're having to sandbag their positions, right? They're on the front line and there's really not much that can be done to fortify these positions quickly enough to defend against a ballistic missile strike. As much as OPSEC is definitely a concern, there's always going to be some private schmuckatelli who gets on TikTok and posts a video of the missile hitting his base. So yeah, it's not good. They've been pretty good about OPSEC so far, but we can definitely see that there's not a whole lot you can do if you get hit or you know, your if your ticket's about to be punched by an Iranian missile, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Bunker or not, concrete or not. But either way, it's become quite clear that our bases are not super great right now and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. But these are just our static positions. Again, we also have other positions as well around the region and of course we have the air war which continues on as before. This week the war has gotten quite tense as we've had several American aircraft shot down either over the over Iran itself or over the Strait of Hormuz or somewhere throughout the region, right? I don't want to comment on that too much at the moment because rescue operations are ongoing and we don't want to impact that negatively in any form or fashion. So, we're just going to have to wait and let them do their job and get those guys out of harm's way as best they can. But, just suffice it to say for now that the situation is is rather rather tense. So, all of that being considered and recognizing that this week has pointed out that this is in fact a pretty hard fight here. This is a hot shooting war. This is not an insurgency. This is not a counterinsurgency. This is a shooting war here. All of that in consideration, what comes next? What grand strategy are we working with here? And considering the events of this week, how is this war likely to develop over the next week both in terms of the war on the ground and the impacts to the homeland even? Well, to get to these impacts, we have to backtrack a little bit and understand a little bit of warfare doctrine that I failed to cover last week. If we want to understand how this is going to impact our ability to live our lives in the homeland, we have to keep our eye on what the general plan is. Our lives within the homeland are going to be changed based on the plan ahead. We are in this 9/11 era of generational change. You're living in it right now. And so far, no strategic plan has been conveyed at all. And here's exactly what I mean by that. Cracking open a bit of warfare doctrine, we can see that there are three levels of warfare. Many of you have probably seen this before, but for those of you who are not aware, we have strategic, operational, and tactical levels of pretty much everything from planning to communications and even goals and objectives that we might want to meet. Some people might consider a fourth level grand strategy at the a way at the top which provides the overall strategic vision for the war. But, generally speaking, if you crack open any warfare publication, you're going to see probably this chart: strategic, operational, and tactical. Now, I know that this might also be a little bit hard to understand without an example. So, let's use the Vietnam War as a sample for what we're talking about here. Starting at the very top, we have grand strategy. As our friend Carl von Clausewitz once said, "War is a continuation of politics by other means." Well, at this level, at the grand strategy level, we're starting to blend this political strategy and this military strategy together. This is at the stage where a politician says, "This is the grand strategy that I want to implement and we're looking for a military solution for this problem." So, using the Vietnam example, we might say that the grand strategy of the Vietnam War or sending troops into Vietnam is that we will reduce the USSR's power and influence around the world. Again, this is a grand strategy idea. So, we're going to reduce the Soviet Union's power around the world. Again, we're being very, very wave top at this level. Getting into the pyramid itself with a strategic example, to achieve this grand strategy, the military strategy here is that we will reduce the overall communist influence within Southeast Asia. For those of you who are Vietnam history buffs, you might recognize this as containment theory. But again, we're at the very wave top strategic level where we're starting to get a little bit more specific with what our goals are. Moving down the chart, we get into operational. This is where we get that word operations from, right? So, now we're talking what military operations are we going to conduct in order to meet this objective. And in this case, we might say something along the lines of we're going to destroy the enemy's ability to move freely within North Vietnam. Again, this is a military objective, cause and effect. We have a mission and we have a desired end state for that mission. And finally, at the very bottom, where most of us tend to think most of the time because we tend to not be a military strategist in our everyday life, something that we might say on the tactical level of warfare is, "Hey, we're going to go drop bombs on that enemy encampment over there or we're going to carry out this bombing campaign on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to ensure that the North Vietnamese cannot carry out resupply operations during the monsoon season." That's what we might say on the tactical level. And once again, with all of this in mind, let's take a look at what the United States has said our strategic goals actually are. The first goal is to obliterate Iran's missiles and production capacity. The second goal is to annihilate its navy. Number three is to sever its support for terrorist proxies. And number four is to ensure that it never acquires a nuclear weapon. This is what the United States has said our strategic goals are in this fight, and if we look at this in terms of what everyone would consider to be warfare doctrine, the levels of warfare, strategic, operational, and tactical, we can see that not a lot of these are actually strategic goals at all. These are more tactical level things. And maybe we can see why nearly every single military strategist offering commentary on the war has stated that the United States has not actually stated what the grand strategy or the overall strategy actually is. We have only been given tactical level goals by the Pentagon and the White House. We're going to blow up your bridges, we're going to blow up your civilian power plants, we're going to blow up your missile sites and things like that. That's all tactical level stuff. So, that's what the United States is trying to do. These are the four bullet points that they keep putting out there in terms of saying what their grand strategy is. Now, let's take a look at the other side for a moment. Let's see what Iran's strategic goals are. What are the Iranians trying to do? Well, mostly overall, their grand strategy is simply to survive. Again, they are the defender. The defender always has the advantage over the attacker. And in this case, their goal is simply to survive. More specifically, their goal is to keep the regime in power, right? That's how they're going to survive this war. And to do that, to keep that regime in power, and to supplement their national defense, they're going to have to maintain missile and drone production. Yeah, even though we're bombing them, they're going to have to keep up their supply of drones at some point. In addition to these like hard requirements for them to sustain their their operations for any length of time, they're also going to have to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz to some degree, or at least maintain a lot of influence over it. They may eventually capitulate, or they may eventually strike a deal with the United States and open up the Strait of Hormuz to the United States and Israel once again, but what they really need to do is keep the fear in the global markets that they can blow up any ship that goes through the strait if they so choose, right? So, in terms of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, they don't necessarily have to physically go out there and, you know, halt who goes there, anybody who tries to go through it. They just have to make everybody scared that they might start shooting ships again. That would be enough to control the Strait of Hormuz for them, at least. And finally, they also have to maintain freedom of maneuver within their own territory. That's just kind of a boilerplate expectation of any nation-state that hopes to survive a conflict. They have to maintain movement within their own country. So, finally, we come to the ultimate question. Are we winning? Well, again, we cannot really say with any certainty because the United States has not actually conveyed any strategic goals. Everything on the list is on a tactical level, except for maybe objective three, the severing support for international terrorist proxies. That could be more of an operational thing. You could probably argue that, but everything else is just a target list of things to bomb, and that's not a strategic plan. A list of targets to bomb in H- in HPTL, a high-priority target list, or a high-payoff target list, that is not a strategic plan. That is a means to achieve that strategic plan. You can only assess whether or not a nation is winning a war based on whether or not they are meeting their strategic objectives, and we have no strategic objectives to assess. So, it's kind of a moot point. But, nevertheless, we have to analyze what we've been given. So, let's rephrase the question to align with more doctrine that's harder to refute. Is the United States meeting her declared military objectives? Well, let's bring up the chart and find out. So, first up, the United States has not obliterated the Iranians' missile and drone supply. I really do, in fact, hate to be that guy, but if we're going to be trying to be as correct as possible here, we have to use doctrinal terms, and obliterate is not one of those. Normally, what we have to use is one of what we call the five D's: deny, disrupt, degrade, destroy, and/or deceive. So, if we were to rephrase the White House's question, I don't know exactly what they mean. Do they mean to destroy the Iranians' ballistic missile supply? If that's their goal, then the answer is no, you're not going to do that. You're not going to destroy all of the Iranians ballistic missile and drone uh stockpile. It's just not going to happen. But, if the White House means to obliterate as in disrupt, yeah, they could disrupt. They We've already done that for sure. If we blow up a single drone, that's a drone they can't launch, right? And we've done a lot of that. We've blown up a lot of bases that they use to uh make these drones as well. So, disrupt, degrade, sure. Deny them the ability to launch missiles? Yeah, maybe we can even impact that. But, destroy? I don't know. Uh and I guess it really gets into semantics land of what do they mean by that word obliterate? But, anyway, since we have to live in a world where we have to go off of something, we have to make decisions and make assessments, and we have to form opinions based off of incomplete information, we have to just admit that the United States is not reducing the number of missile and drone attacks that are striking our bases in the Middle East. We're not doing that. So, if that is the standard by which this first bullet point is being met or is intended to be met, the answer is no. We are not meeting this objective. So, what about the next one? Uh annihilate the Iranian Navy. Again, we're not using doctrinal terms here. This is more emotional language. Annihilate, what does annihilate mean? I don't know. And also, we have to be specific. The Iranian Navy, which Navy? Because there are two of them. There is the IRIN, the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, which is more of their conventional surface fleet of frigates and corvettes, things like that. And then, they also have their IRGCN, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, which is their fast boat Navy, their uh what we might call a brown water Navy, but they are the actually the more formidable force when it comes to the Iranians. Again, the Iranians have a very different uh military structure than most Western nations would have. And when we say annihilate the Iranian Navy, we have to be really specific because, and again, this is debatable. I'm sorry for all the squids out there who might get a little upset about this, but destroying the IRIN, all of the corvettes and the frigates and sinking them with your submarines and things like that. That's not the impressive part. Sure, this is combat effective. It is. However, the surface fleet of the Iranians was never really the biggest threat. Sinking a lot of older frigates is not as as significant in terms of maintaining control of the Strait of Hormuz as sinking a lot of their smaller fast boats that they have in caves and things like that. So, has the United States Navy destroyed the IRIN? The answer to that is probably yes. However, were those naval forces intended to be used in warfare? No, because most of them were sunk pierside. So, even the Iranians were not planning to use them against the United States and the Iranians knew we were coming. So, if you're asking yourself, "Well, why did the the Iranian Navy not put to sea when they knew we were going to attack?" Well, mostly because they wanted to front-load the their effort into the IRGC-N, which is the bigger navy. And as far as I know, the White House and the Pentagon have completely ignored the fact that the IRGC-N exists and is not really being targeted. So, for any journalists out there who wants a free news story, just look up the difference between the IRIN and the IRGC-N and then ask the Pentagon, "Hey, you know, we know that you guys have been advertising really heavily that you're you've sunk a bunch of Iranian ships, but what about the IRGC-N? What about those fast boats? Have you been able to effectively get good effects on target with those guys?" Because so far they're acting like the Iranian Navy is one succinct thing when in essence they're not. They're two completely different navies, two completely different command structures, and two completely different rules of engagement and authority and all that stuff. So, when we talk about annihilating the Iranian Navy, we have to be very specific again, and this is why I have to give this one a partial. This is a partial success because yes, we have destroyed a good chunk of the IRIN. So, yeah, the Iranian surface fleet, the traditional navy that they have, yeah, those guys are combat ineffective. So, that is a success. However, what is the bigger threat right now to shipping? The IRGC-N. That has always been the biggest threat and the United States sinking the lesser threat does not really help us get an idea of what the bigger threat actually is. So, I have to give this one a partial. Next one up, next goal is severing support for terrorist proxies. Well, this one has not happened at all as the Iranian proxies in Iraq and in Lebanon are mobilizing and they're conducting targeting of their own right now. So, this goal is a this this goal right now is a hard no. We're nowhere near reaching this goal at the moment. And finally, we arrive at our main goal or at least the goal that has really just been most of the focus for most of the talking points and speeches on the war, which is the goal of not allowing the Iranians to achieve a nuclear weapon. Now, this one's a hot button topic, I know. This one many of you are going to debate, I know and this is going to be a pretty nasty knife fight in the comment section, I know. But, let's come at it from as objective of a of a position as we possibly can. So, if you were in the camp of the Iranians did not have a nuclear weapon and they were not really trying that hard to get one, then you will say that technically, yes, this goal is successful. We have achieved the goal of no Iranian nukes because the Iranians were never trying to get one in the first place. So, mission accomplished. However, if you disagree with that and you think that the Iranians were trying to get a nuclear weapon, first of all, it's going to be rather hard to square the circle of Operation Midnight Hammer because I myself got berated by a lot of you out there for daring to suggest that Operation Midnight Hammer might not have been a success despite the White House leading, literally, they literally led with the high with the headline of Iran's nuclear facilities have been obliterated and suggestions otherwise are fake news. People like me read that and said, "Okay, all right, fair enough, but, you know, um whatever, I guess." But, you're going to have to pick which one is true because you can't have Operation Midnight Hammer being true and this war being true at the same time. It's it's hard to square that circle, I'll say. You can probably, you know, lawyer your way around it, but for the most part, you've got to figure out which one you're going to try to support here. If you want to know what I personally think, I think that the Iranians were trying to straddle the fence. I think that they were trying to enrich to a certain point, to a certain percentage, whatever that percentage is, you can debate, but then they were going to stop short of actually building a gun-type nuclear device. This was so that they could be dangerous enough to be a strategic deterrent to avoid Gaddafi's mistake, right? But not so dangerous that they're going to warrant a full-blown international, you know, ISAF corporation, you know, co-cooperative effort like we gave Saddam. So, they were trying to prevent Saddam's mistake, too, right? This is not a particularly groundbreaking theory, right? This is This is actually been the boilerplate textbook explanation for the Iranian nuclear program for pretty much everybody, every agency, for the vast majority of time, right up until midnight hammer last year. But, again, this is all very debatable. Form your own opinion, I don't care. But, what I think that pretty much all of us would agree with right now, after the war has begun, is that the Iranians are certainly going to get a nuclear weapon now, or at least they're going to try. They would be complete idiots to not get a nuclear weapon at this point. And honestly, they don't actually have to make one themselves. There have been rumors flying around for many, many years that Pakistan would be willing to give them enough enriched uranium to make a gun-type device. Maybe not an implosion device, okay? But probably a gun-type device, or maybe even a fully built weapon to test or something with Pakistani advisers on scene, who knows? So, getting back to our handy chart here, you know, are we meeting the goal of ensuring that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon? Again, it is subjective, but I would argue not only no, are we not doing that, but we are guaranteeing that they are going to build one now. So, that's it for the American objectives and the American goals in this war so far. This is what we are saying our goals are, We're not meeting those objectives, anywhere near those objectives just yet. So, on the other hand, let's bring up the Iranian chart. Let's crush through this one right quick. The Iranians' goal of surviving, yeah, they've survived. Keeping the regime in power, yep, they've maintained that goal, yeah. Killing their leadership, the killing the Ayatollah, we have not removed the position of Ayatollah, we have just made a new one. So, the regime and the system of governance, the their political system is still in place, so they have achieved that goal. Their goal of maintaining missile and drone production, maybe. I'm going to say maybe on that one because we have destroyed a lot of their factories and drone production facilities. However, I'm not sure if anybody else caught this, but the other day Marco Rubio alluded to the Iranians being able to still build and produce new drones. So, maybe I'm reading too much into that, I don't know, but I think the Iranians are still able to build these things to some degree. It's not like they're dealing with a static supply, right? are not working through just a stockpile of drones in crates that they have way back in the back of a dark cave. No, they're able to produce drones to some degree still. But, I don't have any data on how much of or what type they're able to produce. I don't think I mean, it can't be that much. Surely, if they had the ability to build 100% of their drone supply underground, why would they have above ground factories at all, right? So, surely we're doing something by blowing up most of their country, but I don't know what it is and it's going to be debatable. It's not going to be at the open source anyway, so I'm going to give this one a maybe for now. And finally, the last two, control the Strait of Hormuz, yeah, the Iranians absolutely indisputably control the Strait of Hormuz. The US Navy is not able to get within 100 miles of the Strait. And of course, maintain freedom of maneuver within their own terrain, yeah, absolutely, they control their own territory, at least for now until we put boots on the ground, if that is the chosen course of action. So, that's where things stand right now. The United States is struggling to meet her own stated military objectives while the Iranians are able to undeniably meet most of theirs. It's unfortunate. I don't like saying this because I am American and I hope that we win just on principle, I suppose, because you going to you have to root for the nation that you're in. However, we have to be clear about this. And we have to be realistic if we're having any any chance of success. So, one thing that I would also like to mention is the gigantic elephant on the slide here, uh which has been down in the corner this entire time, which is uh the list of Israeli goals for the war. Again, the United States is not in this war by ourselves, are we? So, we don't have to worry about the American strategic goals or the Iranian strategic goals alone. There's another player that's involved in this. Remember, multiple White House officials and even Trump himself admitted that this war was only carried out because of the Israelis. You don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with me. But, no matter how much they try to walk it back, that's what they said. And in this case, uh what is undeniable is that the Israelis have different goals than the United States, as any foreign nation would be expected to have, right? There may be overlap on some things, which we can argue about, I'm sure, but by and large, separate nation-states have differing goals. They just do. When Russia went to war in Ukraine, Belarus was right there, weren't they? Belarus was right there. Lukashenka was right there. But, Belarus and Russia, despite being on the same side during the Ukrainian war, they also have different military objectives. They just do because they're different countries. If they were the same exact country, they would have the same exact objectives, but they're not. And the same thing is uh the case with the United States and Israel. And I think that many people, please don't shoot me for thinking this, but I think that most people right now are starting to realize that the United States and Israel have vastly differing objectives. Maybe we can get into this a little bit later on if I can figure out how to talk about this without assuming too much danger on my part. But, for right now, I just want to make it abundantly clear that when it comes to the strategic goals of the war, there are three main entities here that have a lot to say in how the war goes. So, with all of this being said, what do we do? What are we going to do now? The United States has not met her goals for the war. So, how might we meet these objectives? Well, throughout the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of wargaming myself to try to figure out what the United States might actually do. After all, things don't seem to be going super well in the war and they raised the enlistment age. So, I'm technically eligible again and if things go sideways in this war and I myself get drafted, I'm going to be rather upset that I didn't think these things out beforehand. Anyway, that's a long way down the road, I think, for for sure. But anyway, there are three main plans that I can think of, which according to very leaky media are actively being considered. Once again, I want to remind you that I am not supporting any of these. I'm just trying to analyze what I think that might be done. So, the first one, course of action one, COA1, is a direct assault on the islands. Again, this is something not particularly surprising. The United States has been floating this for a while. A lot of strategists and military generals have floated the ideas of maybe taking some of the islands, Qeshm Island, Khark Island, Larak Island, the Strait of Hormuz, maybe Hormuz Island itself, who knows. Maybe Abu Musa is another target as well they might go for. Either way, island assault, right? Island hopping throughout the Strait of Hormuz with the eventual goal of trying to seize some terrain in the strait and maybe somehow stop the Iranian missiles that are being launched at commercial shipping through the strait. It could also be more of a confidence thing as well because personally I I don't think that anybody would ever realize that taking an island in the strait is going to do very much because the missiles and the drones, the anti-ship cruise missiles and the drones that are used to target the merchant shipping, they're being launched from the mountains about 15 miles back from the coast. So, you're going to have to go kind of a long way in uh to to actually open up the Strait of Hormuz. But anyway, that's COA 1, direct assault on the islands. COA 2 is a little bit more sane, uh but also harder to do. And this is a new concept that the Marines came up with, a comparatively new concept. It's It started being put into the fleet back in I think 2017, 2018, but it has been theorized for a very long time before that. And this is the idea of the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, or EABO, or EAB, depending on how you want to say it. EABO is a new concept, again, from the Marine Corps, which was developed for the Pacific. This is uh the one of the core components of their island hopping theory for a potential conflict with China. And the goal of EABO uh kind of stuff is to have distributed bases set up. So, learning from what's going on in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where our bases like, you know, Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, Camp Al Asad, Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, these these bases which are just big bases with a big fence They're getting hit pretty hard, aren't they? Because the enemy can find out where they are. Well, the core tenant of EABO is to distribute that stuff. Spread out, disperse. That is the goal of EABO. And since we have good comms and we have pretty uh variable logistics, we can set up little miniature bases that are not necessarily one specific location. We could spread that stuff out over a long period or or or a wide space. In the Pacific, the goal of this is to say, drop a couple of platoons of infantry on an island and they hold that for a period of time, and the next island over can hold their logistics, and the next island over can hold their uh forward arming and refueling point, the FARP. And next, another little island can be the airstrip, and they can just spread out so that a Chinese cruise missile can't come in and ruin their day so easily. Well, considering that this is a new idea, this has just entered the fleet in in terms of doctrine for the MAGTF, the Marines might be uh chomping at the bit to put this into action because I'm looking at this through the lens of the MAGTF and I'm looking at this through the lens of the MEU and I think that the Marines think they can do it and I think that's what they're probably trying to plan for. Use the EABO concept to establish command and control throughout the region so that they don't necessarily have to have one base in one place. This would be smart. This is what I would do. Uh kind of what the Iranians actually did. The Iranians already did this over in Syria. For those who don't know, during the bulk of the GWOT, most of Syria was used basically as a playground for the Iranians and they ran supplies, they had little fobs of their own and all conveniently they were all along the border. There were a lot of little fobs, little bases, little supply shacks, right? Just just inside Iran that were they would use to send missiles into Afghanistan, missiles and rockets and things like that. Rockets really. They knew that we couldn't touch them, they knew that we couldn't bomb them so that's what they did. Same thing in, you know, Cambodia and Laos during Vietnam. The Viet Cong did the same thing. Well, why can't we just reverse uno card these bad boys and do it to them, too? Set up a few EABO um hubs, I guess as you should say it. Set up a few EABOs throughout Iraq and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and all these other places, right? And start just carrying out an insurgent style attack against the Iranians. This is not a grand a secret here that I'm revealing. This is actually literally in the textbook. So, if you want to go grab yourself a smart book, one of the MAGTF smart binders, you'll see that this is a bulk of that publication and I think that's probably what the Marines are pitching to the White House right now. It's probably one of the one of the lead COAs. Now, here's the thing. One of the critical aspects of the EABO is the fact that you could do this while within range of the enemy WEZ, you know, the weapons engagement zone. So, basically you're talking about setting up a an infrastructure of military posts, bases and ecosystems when the enemy can hit you at any point. That's why this is such a delicate process here and this is why this is such an important thing the Marines have been trying to hammer out. It's not really been combat tested. So, let's think about that. It's not really been combat tested. This is still more or less general theory than uh any kind of practicality thing, but it's it's doctrine now. It's in the book. There's books written on it. So, the EABO is kind of an it's it's technically more of a newer thing, but it has been talked about for a while. So, the Marines, I know out there have been we've been talking about this for 10 15 years, but really it's just been kind of cemented in doctrine over the past I don't know five or so years, maybe. And I think that they may think they could drop a few EABOs throughout the region, take a few islands in the strait, uh and this would this would uh work with the next uh rather unfortunate COA, which is COA 3. Uh so, I'll move to that one now, which is what a lot of the mainstream media's going with, and uh this is the hairbrained theory, uh which is the idea of pushing in a helicopter assault force or a half into somewhere like Natanz or Fordow or maybe uh some of the more remote areas of eastern Iran and start coming out at them from the eastern side of the country. Now, I I should not have to uh point out how serious of an idea this is, but let's just take the events of the past 24 hours as kind of a bit of a case study sample to figure out what what how bad of an idea this this potentially is. So, regarding the combat search and rescue operations that are uh kind of ongoing in the western part of Iran, think about it like this. Uh we sent two Pave Hawks and a C-130 or MC-130, whatever, uh into western Iran. Standard C's are a package with a very special dudes who are the absolute tip of the spear, the absolute best of the best. These guys are the best at what they do, and we sent these guys into Iran, and two of their Pave Hawks got shot up to the point of where they sustained quite a bit of damage. So, at least that's what mainstream media's reporting. Is that true? I don't know, but the idea remains. We sent a bunch of special forces into western Iran on a standard rescue mission, and they got shot up pretty bad. And they're continuing to get shot up pretty bad. So, I don't think we have uh too much success uh in in store if we end up sending a bunch of conventional army airborne air assault UH-60s into Iran somehow. Now, for those of you who don't necessarily have a military background, and you're not exactly a uh an expert on things like the concept of the air assault or airborne operations, let me just convey to you that anybody out there who's got a copy of the 101st Airborne Division's gold book, their uh air assault manual, if you've got a hard copy of that in your house somewhere or on your bookshelf, chances are your eyes right now are the size of dinner plates as I explain that they're trying to launch or they're trying to set the narrative for a half into Iran. Now, of course, it is possible. Anything's possible, right? We can put anybody anywhere. The question is, how long can we keep them there, and can we keep them there without killing everyone involved? And so far, uh unfortunately, we have to kind of take what Fox News is pushing as some sort of indicator of policy because that's how it's worked out so far, and it does seem like they may uh have on the table some kind of half raid somewhere in the country, maybe not into mainland Iran, maybe into an island. I don't know. Either way, these are the three COAs that I'm seeing floating out there in the ether sphere, which are seriously being considered. So, once again, just for the record, I want to be on the record stating that I don't think that these courses of action, these plans that are currently being floated out in the open at least, I don't think any of these are viable military objectives. I don't think any of these are good idea, and I hope we don't do it, but I think that the reason that I'm talking about this is because I I can see through the doctrine that they may try this. The EABO concept would work in a partner nation. That's one of the keys to the EABO working. You can't just put an EABO behind enemy lines in Iran itself, but they may try. Again, the helicopter assault force, traditionally we do not conduct half raids when the enemy force maintains over the horizon targeting capability and the landing zones are going to be saturated with targeting. We don't typically do half raids in that environment, right? There has to be some level of permissiveness for a conventional helicopter assault force raid to actually work. Or we have to limit or reduce the enemy capacity or capability at those landing sites and I don't think we can do it. Or rather, we can do it. We can put guys anywhere on the ground in Iran. We can put them probably on the ground right outside the Ayatollah's new apartment, but getting them back out again, that's the hard part, isn't it? Now, I must also state that I do have other plans that I have identified and I'm working through just purely based on my own scouring of the maps. I've been conducting terrain analysis. I have really just put the magnifying glass to every place in Iran as best I can and just for my own research in conjunction with what targets are being struck or more accurately not being struck, there are a few other places they could go. So, for the moment, I don't want to give the Iranians any ideas. Again, this would not be a super great idea to put this out in the open. So, I'm going to keep my thoughts to myself on that for now, but there are a few other options out there. They have equal chance of success with this, which is minimal. This is a high risk, minimal success, high risk, low reward mission set and that's just the way that it's going to be until you can reduce the ability for the Iranians to stop their missile and drone attacks and so far we're not even close to doing that, at least based on what we've seen so far. So, while the drones and the missiles are still flying, we still have these concerns and it's just not going to be feasible to put boots on ground, but again, they may try anyway and definitely keep everybody in your prayers if that's the case. But in a more grand sense, coming back again, wrapping this up in terms of grand strategy, all of these plans are possible. They're all possible. They're just not feasible and none of these plans that are being floated right now would actually assist in achieving the goals that have been stated, at least not without a military mobilization, the likes of which the United States has never seen before. Imagine the invasion of Iraq like times five. Like they're going to have to draft people. You want to go scoop the last Iranian Shaheed drone out of a cave? You're going to have to mobilize a million people, and I just don't think they're going to do that right now. It's preposterous. Maybe if things drag on for a little while longer, I don't know, but at the risk of using, you know, unnecessarily do humanizing language, it's kind of like, you know, an antiseptic, right? You can have some bleach hit a, you know, hit a cleaning service with 99.99% effectiveness, but that last .01%, you know, that's going to be some pretty nasty stuff, right? So, you know, again, I don't like using language like that, but it's best I can think of. And right now, the Iranians, yeah, you could knock out 90%, you could knock out 95% of their missile production and drone capacity, but all the Iranians have to do, the Iranians just have to hit one merchant vessel in the Strait That's all they got to do, and that's enough for Lloyd's of London to cancel insurance policies. That's all they got to do. They just got to hit one target a day, and so far they've been hitting hundreds of targets a day since this war began, and now it's starting to ramp up in effectiveness now that I suspect, again, speculation, but I suspect the Iranians are getting a lot of intelligence, a lot more intelligence than the Russians and the Chinese. It's impossible to know this for sure, but their missile attacks are increasing in both number and in their effectiveness. So, again, coming back to what the United States might do, you know, these plans, yeah, they're in the textbook, to be sure, but none of these plans are viable military objectives without a lot of pre-shaping fires that have not yet been conducted. We would need to build staging areas before we could get within helicopter range of any significant Iranian target, because again, our staging areas right now, which is basically every single base in Kuwait, is a staging area, that's what it was intended for, and that's what those bases are meant for. They're getting hit. So, you can't start putting tens of thousands of troops on the ground in these places, establishing a beachhead near the coastline, launching waves of helicopters from either Kuwait or Aldhafra. This is just not going to be feasible while the Iranians still possess a significant over-the-horizon targeting capability. It's just not going to be feasible. This is why it's it's so unfeasible that this is why most people don't seem to think that any of this will ever come to pass. This is why I used such serious language last week because conducting some sort of raid within Ir

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 10th of 2016 2026. Things are getting crazier by the day, and we're going to be a little bit more spicy today with the topics we have to cover, so let's get right to it. This week, the more serious consequences are starting to emerge as we arrive at today 77 of the war in the Persian Gulf. Shortages of petroleum products and distillates are beginning, and multiple companies are issuing warnings of impending supply chain outages. Throughout Europe, the migration crisis has come to a head once again with high-profile murders and new migration centers being implanted throughout the continent to the sharp disapproval of native populations. Right now, as I'm recording this, throughout the United Kingdom, large-scale protests and counter-protests are underway throughout the nation as the United Kingdom demonstrations bring large crowds to London. Within our own hemisphere, Cuba is on the menu once again, and high-profile diplomatic endeavors have taken place this week just off the coast of Florida. And within the homeland itself, the governance situation is not going super well, and disapproval is high on a variety of issues. All the while, violence from the usual suspects continues to be the norm around the country. Moving to strategic movement for this week, most major deployments continue from last week, with the biggest change being that the Ford Carrier Strike Group has arrived home in Virginia from her long deployment. Just as a bit of context for how long the Ford has actually been at sea, I'll have to check the actual numbers, but I think she's been at sea for well over 300 days, which is the longest deployment that any American aircraft carrier has seen since Vietnam. So, she was definitely stressed beyond her max, and she suffered a lot of catastrophic damage from the toilet situation in Venezuela to the laundry fire situation in the Middle East, the Ford has had one very arduous deployment. So far, the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group is slated to replace her in the Middle East. I don't know if they've departed port yet and formed up or not. It is interesting, though, that the Ford did not wait for the Ike to get on station. Usually, they conduct handover in region, but I guess the Ford said, "We've had enough," so they came on back early a little bit, or rather late, because this was a long deployment. But But any case, the Eisenhower is uh to take up station somewhere in CENTCOM. However they want to work that out is up to them. But either way, there will be a total of three aircraft carriers in the region once again in a week or so. Bottom line, there has been no cessation of American assets in the Middle East at the present time. Everything has been in a state of resupply, reconfigure, all that kind of stuff. And everything is still in place and ready to resume fighting if that is the chosen option moving forward. Around the homeland this week, there are several items of note to be aware of from a risk management perspective. A lot of the time we may be tempted to ignore a security concern because we don't want to get called names or get slapped with a label or some kind of ist or ism or whatever. And since nobody else wants to talk about this stuff in public, I will because it has very real security implications. You know when I caveat stuff like that, we have to read between the lines quite a bit. And this week there have been many potential flash points that may or may not escalate into something more serious over the next few weeks. But nobody in the counterterrorism or security space wants to talk about it. For one, we have the Chud the Builder scandal, which took place in Tennessee a few days ago. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, fear not. I'm also late to the party, but Chud the Builder is the screen name for Dalton Eatherly, who is a social media influencer, content streamer sort of figure who is infamous for conducting what is being described as like rage bait style content, street interviews, confrontations, uh stuff like that. A lot of his content is either political or mostly racial in nature or focused on that issue. So, a few days ago he was involved in a defensive shooting outside the Clarksville Courthouse in Tennessee after a black man attacked him, resulting in Eatherly shooting the individual. And let me just say, details on the whole incident are really sketchy. I don't think that any content was being made at the time, so I don't think this was one of those confrontations gone wrong kind of situations, but again, I don't know. Right up front, nobody wants to say whether this was a good shoot or not because of the kind of content that this individual makes, I guess. I don't really know. I don't really watch live stream stuff myself. So, I'm kind of in the normie camp myself with this, I guess, but I haven't seen the evidence, but I can guess because of what happened afterwards. So, the judge set the bail really high despite the fact that Eagley did not kill the guy and the courthouse surveillance tape of the incident has not been released. There was also a police officer right there during the entire incident and his body cam is apparently not available or something like that. I don't know. So, regardless of anyone's feelings on Eagley personally or on the style of content he creates, this is now a huge racial thing that's kind of in society now. So, and I think that the multiple videos of the incident not being leaked yet is quite telling because, well, we all know how this goes, right? It's also a free speech sort of thing now. Uh there's that angle to it as well because this is now an issue to answer the question of whether or not insulting speech justifies a physical attack. That's the question that's being asked. So, the risk assessment part of this trial is to decide whether or not minorities have the right to attack someone because they thought they overheard a racial slur. That's really what we're dealing with here. Nobody wants to say it. Again, people get offended by everything nowadays. Even conservatives get really offended about stuff like this, but that's kind of the issue that's on the table and the court's going to have to decide that and I don't think it's looking super great, but again, this just happened a couple of days ago. The complicating factors are his own social media posts, which are going to make it very, very easy for the prosecution to put him away or secure a conviction. So, in effect, if you want to think of it simply, this is like a very high stakes version of the Shiloh Hendrix case. The issue here is that we're not entirely certain that this guy, Chud the Builder, did anything wrong. He might have just been randomly attacked. We just don't know. He also could have instigated the thing. Again, we don't know. There's 15 different video angles of this and nobody seems to have any of them, and the the one video that has leaked is extremely blurry. It's like a Bigfoot video, right? So, I think we know how this is going to work out, but the bottom line that I wanted to mention this today is because it's setting conditions. So, this is going to set conditions for a lot of rhetoric, a lot of tensions, a lot of other problems that are going to compound this summer. This is also just the first landmine that we have to know about today because in a similar vein, there are two other big trials on the menu for the next few weeks. In North Carolina, the De Carlos Brown Jr. situation remains unresolved for the time being after Brown has been found incompetent to stand trial for the murder of Irena Zaretska. No hate crime charges have been filed, and Brown has been determined to be incompetent to stand trial on the charges that do remain. So, it's not really clear as to what's going to happen to him. There are still a few competency hearings, and the next one I think is on June 9th, but it's not really clear how this is going to work out because the defense is literally trying to get him released from custody into psychiatric care. I don't know if that's going to happen, but this is the uncomfortable truth that we seem to be living in right now in the United States, and from a risk management perspective, people might scowl and click their teeth, but the fact of the matter is that if you're a minority in this country, you can kill a white guy or a white girl on a train, a judge labels you incompetent to stand trial, and then you just get out. That seems to be a very common thing from murder one all the way up at the Irena Zaretska level all the way down to smaller crimes. So, this whole trend of oh, they're too mentally unwell to go through a trial, well, let's just let them out. You know, that's the alternative solution that's selected, and I think they're trying to go for it. I think they're trying to go for it with this situation in Charlotte. I think they're going to do it. I don't know if they're going to succeed, but I think they're trying for it, and if that occurs, if De Carlos Brown gets off for the murder of Irena Zaretska because he's too mentally ill to stand trial, I think that's going to be kind of like an O.J. Simpson situation times a million. So, once again, is another political topic that nobody wants to talk about, but look man, I I got to warn you guys if your city is going to be burning down here, and I think that that might actually happen if some of these trials end up with a lot of these criminals walking even after conducting very brutal murders. And I say that not because the victims in this case are going to riot or anything like that, but because when these criminals get off, when they're let off by a judge or, you know, something you know, you you basically get away with murder, other murders are going to happen because now they know that murder is legal as long as you say you're crazy first. That's the kind of situation we find ourselves in, and we're just kind of tiptoeing around it, you know? Uh and sometimes we just got to got to say it like it is, and this is the way that it is, especially with the situation in Texas. In a couple of weeks, the Carmelo Anthony trial is set to begin, and this one is also not looking good, either. So, this is the trial for the murder of Austin Metcalfe, who was murdered by Carmelo Anthony, who stabbed him in the heart during a track meet at Memorial High School in April of last year. Note that I did not say allegedly murdered, because Anthony has confessed to the crime. He himself specifically said, and I quote, "I'm not alleged, I did it." Even though his lawyers have claimed self-defense on his part, so this is now a self-defense trial to begin in a couple of weeks. And we'll see how it goes, because once again, this is a huge racial thing at this point, with Anthony's family setting up a massive GoFundMe campaign for him, the killer. A lot of very high-profile and prominent attorneys and social media figures in the black community have rallied behind Anthony, saying that that this was a good thing, and supporting him for killing this kid at the track meet. So, I've covered all of this abhorrent behavior before, trying to be as neutral as possible, but this was a very public event. It's captured on video. There's a thousand witnesses to this crime, and the killer confessed to it right then and there. Again, seems fairly open and shut, you know, at face value on a societal level. Again, that's what trials are for, to, you know, iron out things that are not so open and shut, but still, this one's pretty pretty clear as to what's really the driving factor behind this. So, that's on the menu to be aware of over the next few weeks because this has really stirred up a lot of racial hatred all around, and of course, that drives up risk. Since we're basically jumping on top of landmine topics today, I also wanted to mention that many states have revamped their food stamp programs over the past 2 months to delist a lot of foods and products from what is eligible to purchase by EBT cards. Now, this is another hot-button issue, and I'm not bringing this up to examine the entire program itself. The whole, um, idea of welfare in the United States, that's a big issue. I'm specifically talking about one component of it because this could be a factor moving into the summertime. So, we've got the perfect storm for what I'd call cultural violence, uh, because a lot of people are being told that they can't buy certain foods with their EBT cards, which is a problem for a major fraud scheme that many people might not be aware of, which is the selling of plates on Facebook. Many of you may have seen this parenthetically or seen people talk about this. This has been going on for quite literally decades. Uh, it's not all fraudulent, but a lot of it is because this is a major way of laundering EBT money. The scam works by someone going to the grocery store and buying a lot of food with their EBT card, and they take it home, they package it up, and they resell it for a profit. Once again, the scale at which this is occurring is staggering. One woman in Michigan was arrested on fraud charges a few months ago because she was using her EBT card to literally buy supplies for her professional brick-and-mortar bakery. She was running an entire storefront where the stock and supply for her business was paid for by EBT. It's pretty easy to be a small business owner when you have exactly zero overhead and free supplies being provided by the taxpayer. And now that a lot of goods have been delisted from EBT in the first place, this is now a major income source that has taken a huge hit over the past few months. So, in isolation, this doesn't really matter a lot, right? But you couple this with gasoline prices getting super high and you've got the perfect storm for crime because a lot of this income is fixed, but gas prices take money out of the pockets of Americans universally. But at the state level, you might say, "Okay, you're getting a thousand dollars worth of EBT per month and because you're delisting a lot of products, now you're saying that that person can only launder half of that, so $500. And now you're spending double the money that you normally would on gas to ride around town." So, again, gas prices complicate everything. Same with drug dealers and human traffickers, high gas prices are serving as an unofficial tax on everybody. And now that we have not one but three high-profile, highly racially motivated criminal trials on the menu, things are not looking super great on the civil unrest front and the natives are a bit restless, if you get my meaning. Once again, I want to add another closing caveat. There's always going to be this angle to push a lot more of the societal division and a lot of this is being done intentionally, I think. I think that the the the tensions are intentionally being stoked by a lot of people, parties, media figures, stuff like that. So, I don't want to don't want to make this out to be like a complete apocalyptic Armageddon here for the summertime, but I'm saying that the conditions are starting to line up for that eventuality. Some of it's organic, though. Some of it's just tensions that have been there for a very long time. Some of it is probably being stoked. I don't know. All I can say is that the dominoes are stacking up. Will the Will those dominoes fall over? I don't know. I can just tell you that the dominoes are stacked up, right? So, it's up for you to decide what to think about this sort of stuff from a planning perspective. So, So, bottom line, everyone's asking, "Does this mean we're going to have another summer of Floyd again or another summer of love?" I don't know. I don't think so unless something major happens. It's more likely that a lot of these gas prices are just going to drive people crazy and you're going to have a lot more low-level crime, organized stuff like the whole BLM riots of the past few years. That's going to take a lot more organizational effort and that's That's not materialized just yet. But, for those of you guys who have to rely on public transit or you have to walk, you know, to work through a city and it's not a super great area, uh keep your head on a swivel. Just be careful. All right? So, you know, situation normal. Just be careful. So, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Talked about this too much already, but this does lead into another growing concern that is becoming more realistic with every passing day, which are the supply chain disruptions that are coming about from the war in the Middle East cutting off a good chunk of the global energy supply. This week, several companies and automotive groups have warned that they are having to cut back on oil changes because there is a growing shortage of certain weights of motor oil. Some companies are dealing with a 40 to 50% drop in the availability of some petroleum products, which is staggering. It is far too early to panic, but it would not be a bad idea to start thinking about what your needs might be if this conflict continues for much longer, which I think it will. You all know how panic buying sets in super quickly and in this case, once the word gets out to the normies, it's going to be on like Donkey Kong, possibly quite literally, and store shelves are very likely to be wiped out by people who think that they need to buy 10 years worth of oil changes all at once. So, that's going to be fun to deal with over the next few weeks, but the petroleum sector is is slow to change and shortages take a very long time to materialize because we're dealing with a slow drip problem set. 20% of the world's energy supply being offline due to the war is a big deal, but it's also not 100%. So, that means that there's a bit of elasticity to the markets, and the biggest impact that the war is having right now is high prices for everything. But, motor oil and other distillates coming into short supply is definitely a canary in the coal mine for more serious logistical problems later on. Right now, it's still in the early stages, though. Another canary in the coal mine to be aware of on the forefront over the next few weeks is Cuba. Since the war in the Middle East slipped into more of a long-term problem, increased rhetoric has been issued by the White House regarding American aspirations for Cuba. In short, a lot of talk was circulating, mostly originating from remarks made by President Trump himself, indicating that the US might seek to conduct some sort of military operation in Cuba to obtain control over the nation in a similar manner as to how the operation in Venezuela worked out. Maybe not the operation itself, but the follow-on effect, as in Venezuela becoming a puppet state for the United States. Well, the United States wants the same thing for Cuba. Weeks ago, this was just talk, and nobody really took it seriously, kind of like the Greenland aspirations. Um, and right now, it still looks fairly unlikely, but less unlikely than before. American delegations of diplomats have visited Cuba to conduct talks, and the American blockade of Cuba is a very strong move to tighten the screws on the Cubans. Once again, the United States has completely, full stop, shut off all the energy supply to Cuba. That is not an embargo, that is a straight-up blockade. If you want to be doctrinally correct, you can crack open your textbook and say that this is an act of war, but we don't really care about terms and words and things anymore, so I guess that doesn't really matter. Either way, the Cubans are hurting right now. Most of that is being done by their own government over the past few years, but a lot of that is now starting to be more directly uh, result of American action. So, the Leeden Doctrine is most certainly at play with Cuba, which is the idea that every 10 years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world we mean business. At least that's the quote, which is the origin of the doctrine. So, whether you agree with it or not, this is most certainly a good chunk of President Trump's mentality towards foreign policy, especially when it comes to smaller nations. It's what we did in Venezuela. It's what we're trying to do in Cuba. It'll have to look a lot differently, but in any case, just want to set the groundwork for me dropping a lot of red diamonds on Cuba in the next few weeks because as we all know, Sun Tzu always said that when you're in a war with multiple nations on multiple fronts, it always helps to open up another front. And that definitely seems like our plan. So, we'll definitely see how it goes, but I'm going to start preparing for that like I said a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to actually do it for real this time. Going to start preparing for Cuba just in case the United States seems to be interested in that sort of thing. So, moving overseas to the United Kingdom, tensions remain rather high due to the revelation of a rather grizzly murder that took place a couple of years ago coming to light this week. So, what happened back in 2023 and why is this case both so interesting and also so incredibly tragic? In December of 2023, Henry Noack was stabbed by Vikram DeGua on the street in Southampton. At first glance, this appeared to be a rather routine uh, stabbing attack with neither the victim nor the perpetrator knowing or really interacting with with each other before the incident. Noack, being stabbed with a ceremonial Sikh dagger, was severely wounded and called for police while trying to escape. DeGua continued to pursue the victim. He followed him down the street, stabbing him multiple times, and eventually when police arrived, DeGua, the stabber, told police that the victim had made a racial comment toward him. The responding officers promptly arrested Noak, who was still bleeding rather profusely from the stabbing and placed him in handcuffs. Over a period of several minutes, Noak bled out on the street. The entire attack was captured on video on the victim's phone, which had been found in Deeg's pocket as he robbed the victim after stabbing him. Due to the nature of the British legal system, in nearly all high-profile cases, the fact that a crime occurred in the first place is obscured so the general public is not aware of crimes when they take place, and in this case, the crime occurred 3 years ago, but the details are just being known now. The reason for talking about this incident now, years after the fact, is twofold. For one, if we don't talk about it now, then we never will, and this could be another Southport moment, and more unrest is possible due to the horrific details of the crime. Secondly, this crime is bringing about very specific cultural considerations that are tough to talk about, but must be noted purely from a threat analysis perspective. This information is useful for you if you live in the United Kingdom, but it also will benefit you if you live in Canada or the United States. So, the Sikh community has a very particular reputation around the Western world, as the Sikh culture is not just a religious sect or movement, but there is also a very strong nationalist movement which seeks to use violence to achieve their goals, or at least it has since the 1980s. Within India itself, many major terror attacks have been conducted by the Sikh community, and many notable Sikh political leaders have actually been exiled from India, having been convicted of terrorism at some point during the Khalistan uprising incidents back in the 1980s. These guys did pretty much everything. They brought down civilian airliners with explosives, small arms attacks, hostage stuff, all kinds of violent attacks throughout India, mostly in their own region they were trying to seek autonomy within. So, this is kind of like India's version of the PLF. If you guys remember that from the 1960s and 1970s, all that violence and the airline hijackings and bombings and all kinds of stuff like that that was occurring in Europe and the Middle East. Well, India was dealing with that within India itself from the Sikh community. Cut to today and many of this organizational leadership has actually ended up settling down in the Western world such as in Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which are nations that require this back pocket knowledge to be conveyed in hushed tones because it's in effect illegal to know this information in public. It is unfortunate to talk about because it's a very complicated issue and because you're dealing with this sort of religious aspect to it. You don't want to re- you know, insult somebody's religion, right? That really gets you nowhere, but this information is critical for one's survival because as angry as Britons are about this case, the Sikh community is starting to rally around their own flag. Tensions have been growing among the Sikh community throughout Europe for a while and the details of this case are likely to cause further confrontations and incidents. Also, the officers which helped to murder Noac, if you want to phrase it like that, which I certainly would, it's possible these guys are still on the police force and therefore public interest remains in figuring out if the officers who handcuffed a man and let him bleed out to death were of the same national origin and culture as the attacker because if that's the case and it may be, I don't know, it's speculation, but if that's the case, if there's a link there, yeah, this could get even more ugly than it already is. Unfortunately, these cultural aspects are a major part of the case because in the United Kingdom, Sikhs have been granted a religious exemption for the ban on carrying knives and Kirpan, the murderer in this case, was open carrying an 8-in ceremonial knife at the time at which he used to conduct the murder. So, while everyone else in the United Kingdom has to go to extreme lengths to comply with UK knife law, the Sikhs have been granted permission under a religious exemption that allows them to carry long daggers known as kirpans. That alone would be a very, very hot button topic in British society and even in like Canadian society where the same kind of crackdown on, you know, weapons and stuff like that is a big concern there, too. The other issue, and I think the main issue, is why does this religious exemption exist? Again, this is one of the articles of the Sikh faith because all Sikhs are required to carry a blade on their person. And in their religion, this dagger is exclusively intended to be used as a weapon. To put this in context, imagine if Pope Leo said that all Catholics had to carry around a Beretta and shoot anyone who is perceived to be in violation of the Vatican's policies. To us, the first part sounds kind of entertaining, but the second part, the idea of carrying around a weapon for the exclusive purposes of hurting people for religious reasons, that's absolutely insane. We don't do that here in Western society, but within the Sikh faith, which is heavily centered around violence, and since the 1980s, they have linked their cultural aspirations with their religious aspirations, to them this is normal. So, if you Google this, they try to say that it's for self-defense and that the five K's of Sikhism are all about defending the weak or something like that. But, if you scratch away the paint, you see that this is really just a bit of word play because they have the concept of Dharam Yudh, which loosely translates to holy war or war for justice. This concept within Sikhism is the reason for why India has had a problem with counterterrorism in Punjabi territory. And if you read a lot of internal Indian politics, I know nobody really wants to do that, but it's very interesting from a counterterrorism perspective. If you read a lot of their internal news about internal counterterrorism and and policing stuff, they're having a really big problem with this, and they've had a big problem with this over the years because the Sikhs use this belief system to justify terrorism as part of the Khalistan independence movement. So, in the West, this {quote} defending the weak and self-defense aspect of their faith, these guys are not the Mandalorian, okay? These guys are not just trying to immortalize like the second amendment in their faith. This is really just a cover that allows them to carry knives and be ready at all times to carry out attacks against anyone who they subjectively perceive to be against them. So again, anytime we talk about defense and self-defense, it gets kind of cagey because everybody has a bunch of different views on that sort of topic, which is understandable. However, we have to look at this through the context of this specific region on earth and the belief system that came from this region, which again is not it's not universal to all Indian people. It is not It is not Hinduism. This is Sikhism. This is a different thing. And again, even in the United States, this is a big deal because many of you may have been familiar with Sikh culture through our kind of problems we've been having with trucking. So trucking in the United States, Indian dude, you know, runs off the road, kills somebody. There have been a few high-profile crimes like that occur over the past couple of years, which have gotten a lot of attention on the Sikh community and occasionally, as in nearly 100% of the time, what you will do is look at the cab, look at the the photos from the actual crime scene itself, and you'll see the same guy on all the trucks. So again, I went down this rabbit hole a while ago. So just to digress for a bit because this kind of matters in the context of talking about Sikhism. If you see this on the highway, this is what this is. A lot of times you'll see this on a lot of more Sikh truck drivers. They have these decals all over their trucks of this guy this guy with a turban carrying an AK-47. So what is this about? This is a decal. These are images of a guy called Sidhu Moose Wala. He is as a Sikh rapper who was killed in a gunfight a few years ago, and since then he's become kind of a musical or artistic expression of Sikh nationality, ethno-nationalism, that sort of thing. So, that's what this is all about. If you're kind of confused as to why you're seeing do pictures of do the same guy with an AK on the side of a trailer or a truck, you know, a big rig going down the highway, this is probably what you're dealing with. So, think like the Punjabi version of like the Crips and the Bloods kind of arrangement. This is what's going on within India politics. Again, nobody cares. Nobody should have to care about internal Indian politics in a small region in Central India. But, because this culture is literally in governance in a lot of the world now, it's worth being aware of. I've been looking at this for a while now, and again, I have to put the boilerplate statement on there. I don't know if everybody's like this. This could just be a cultural thing. It's kind of foreign to the United States, but it's here now, and you know, it's here to Western Europe. The United Kingdom is, of course, having to deal with it more strongly than the than the United States does. The context from which we're talking about this. And again, I can't say that all Sikhs of, you know, all 20 million Sikhs or however many there are, I don't know if everyone in this culture is on board with this kind of ethno-religious nationalism violence kind of mentality. I don't I don't know if everyone's on board with that. I'm sure there are probably varying degrees of it. However, when it comes to the United Kingdom knife laws and the kid that got stabbed to death on the street, I cannot speak to anything but the data. And the raw fact is that in the United Kingdom, 100% of Sikhs have been granted an exemption to carry weapons in the UK, and 100% of Sikhs are required to do so by their religion. It's not a personal, it's not an insult, it's just a fact that this particular belief system is completely alien to the West. And by their own admission, they do not assimilate, nor are they compatible with Western culture. Because if they were compatible and they wanted to assimilate, they would not get laws changed to accommodate them, and those laws would not involve them being able to carry a weapon everywhere they're going to go so they can kill their political enemies if they so choose. You can bring this into the self-defense space if you wish. I'm not taking it there. I'm just saying that the Sikhs somehow have the right to carry weapons, daggers, machetes on the streets without any question whatsoever. And if you question that, you're going to get arrested. And the ethnic Britons have they they can't even get a Swiss Army knife, right? That's the reasoning before the censorship in this case. It has everything to do with the knife itself, the religious aspect to it, the culture behind all of this, the political stuff, the decals on the trucks. It's all one big mess. This was not a random stabbing attack. It was a Sikh using his kirpan as intended. These weapons are carried by Sikhs for them to kill people with it. So we have hostile intent and hostile action. And they have been allowed to do so via the religious exemption in the UK. Coming back to the actual case itself, which is why I've spent so much time on this today, is there's another factor to this as well, which is honestly the least surprising detail of the case, which is that Diguva is not the only person on trial. His mother took the bloody knife and hid it in the family home, aiding Diguva in covering up the crime. So she's on trial as well for aiding and abetting the murder. Several other family members on that night were also arrested and initially charged, but these charges were dropped over the past 2 years. So you've got people who probably knew about the crime, were trying to cover it up, but they couldn't stick them with anything and they're just walking around. This involvement with the Sikh community closing ranks to protect one of their own, this is likely to exacerbate tribal violence on the streets of Britain for the foreseeable future because right now the Punjabi communities of London are trying to figure out how to keep that kirpan exemption. And as a result, even more adversarial perspectives are likely to emerge. I would expect many Sikhs to start carrying larger kirpans in public throughout the United Kingdom to dominate and flex on the laws being tailored specifically to them. That's just kind of their style. And once again, I'm not trying to dunk on anybody's religion. I really don't want to do that because again, it gets you nowhere. But if your gurus require you to carry a long knife and that you are to use that long knife to carry out a holy war and I also cannot carry a knife myself to defend myself from you, we're going to have a problem. And that problem has manifested in this case for the British people. I know ethnic Britons, everyone who lives in the UK who listens to me are probably fuming about that because you may not know this as an American, but in the UK, intent is a huge part of British knife law. If you're carrying a plastic fork in your pocket and you tell a police officer that you intended to carry that plastic fork to defend yourself with, you go straight to jail because it's extremely, extremely, extremely illegal to carry anything expressly for the purposes of self-defense. If you have a potato in your pocket and you say that's for self-defense, straight to jail. Do not collect $200. You are toasted. But if you're a Sikh and you say that my religion says that I have to carry this machete so that if I think a holy war is justified, I can murder people, the British police will arrest anyone who disagrees with you. That's the That's the level of of seriousness we're dealing with here. So, this case completely revolves around cultural and religious lines and also line of action on the part of the police. And all of this is why this case was buried for as long as possible, years in fact. So, now that the truth is out, tensions will remain palpable while Deegol's trial continues, which is why it's worth getting to the bottom of this cultural issue. Once we go down into the weeds, we can see that there are really four completely separate issues which have a high potential of driving unrest and violence moving forward. For one, we've got the Sikhs being allowed to carry weapons, but ethnic British citizens not being allowed to do the same. So, there's thing one. Secondly, the British police instinctively sided with a murderer who was covered in blood and arrested the 18-year-old kid who was actively bleeding to death. That's your second issue. Thirdly, the reason for why the Sikhs even carry the blade in the first place is very concerning because there's a lot of history and cultural violence behind it. And fourthly, the British government covered all of this up for years. So, once again, many different aspects four flashpoints to emerge, all of which are really tough concerns to even talk about in the first place. So, enough of Punjabi land. I know everyone's tired of of it, but I wanted to get that out there because this is kind of a complex uh canary in the coal mine, I should say, for a lot of the issues going on in the United States as well. So, worth talking about in a long-form format anyway. So, finally, I wanted to wrap up today with a few notes from the recent presidential state visit to to China. As with all diplomatic visits, 99% of this trip was useless banter and tourism, but that last 1% can get pretty interesting. First of all, the objective of the trip itself is not entirely clear. The State Department can church it up with flowery language all they want, but it's not really clear as to why the president and a huge delegation would take a trip abroad while their nation is at war. To me, that alone is pretty interesting because it implies there is a reason as to why a trip to China is more important than the war that we're actively fighting, but anyway, whatever that reason is, I don't know, but it's still interesting. Secondly, by far the most interesting part of the trip came from an offhand remark made by President Trump on board Air Force One as they were heading back to the US Thursday night. I will play the clip just in its entirety because it touches on the Taiwan issue, and this is probably one of the more interesting parts of the diplomatic endeavor, so here's the clip. Would the US defend Taiwan if it came to it? I don't want to say that. I'm not going to say that. There's There's one person that knows that. You know who it is? Me. I'm the only person. That question was asked to me today by President Xi. I said, "I don't talk about that." He asked you today. He asked you if you would send troops, if you would defend He asked me if I'd defend them. I said, "I don't talk about that." He told him that. I know it's a little hard to hear. I'm sorry about that. The audio was not great when it was being recorded, but the gist of the conversation kind of came out. Now, obviously, we cannot put a whole lot of weight on one short clip. That's really a bad idea when it comes to President Trump because he himself is not exactly a man who has hard and fast positions on anything. But, in this clip, a couple of things happened. For one, President Trump stating that he will not reveal as to if the US will defend Taiwan. That's completely normal. In fact, this is a continuation of the very long train of China policy, which back during the Kissinger era was referred to as strategic ambiguity. Meaning that the United States would not reveal whether or not we will militarily back Taiwan. So, we're going to leave that as a question for China to figure out. Will they, won't they? Will they defend? Will they Will they will not defend? If we If the Chinese do this, will the United States do that? Again, strategic ambiguity. No real hard red lines in the sand or in the island chain, so to speak. Anything to deal with Taiwan in the diplomatic spaces has been handled incredibly delicately over the years. And, like him or not, it is undeniable that President Trump often, and rather ironically, acts like a bull in a china shop on pretty much everything he does, for better or for worse. And so, he let slip that there would be a war if China invaded Taiwan. Whether he means that or not, I don't know. It could be a lie. It could be a genuine thing. I don't know. He changes his mind a lot and doesn't really speak plainly on stuff like this, which is fair enough, I guess, but it's still interesting. However, the most interesting part about this short exchange on Air Force One is that President Trump said that Xi asked him the same question directly. And kind of hilariously, you can even see the journalist who asked him the question kind of taken aback by this because if this is true, and I want to stress that this is a big if, this is very surprising. The Chinese, just as a matter of cultural and diplomatic policy, they absolutely never ask direct questions like this, let alone President Xi. So, if this actually happened, we might be closer to Taiwan kicking off than we might think. Granted, this is a huge debate right now, so some say the timeline is for 2027 invasion, others say that China is never actually going to invade. Uh they're actually not going to use military force at all, but rather take over diplomatically, and all of the military force that we're seeing them use is actually for other aspirations throughout the maybe second and third island chains. Hope not on that front, but I, you know, that that's the argument anyway. I don't know what to think personally on that front. It's all in the international space, and it's kind of hard to figure out who's going to do what because there's so many factors to consider, but the bottom line is that the Far East is not looking to stay in their period of peace and tranquility for too much longer. And President Xi directly asking Trump to his face, "Hey, are you guys going to get involved in Taiwan if we go take it?" If he's asking that directly, mhm, that's not a very good sign. But again, we're placing a lot of weight on a very short exchange and personal testimony from one person, not something that we can make a whole lot of decisions off of, but again, indications and warnings are stacking up. So, knowing how the American involvement in Iran has worked out, the Chinese have been taking a lot of notes on that endeavor. They have been very, very interested in how our war has gone out gone on in the Middle East, and this uh situation becoming a little bit of a fiasco here has maybe emboldened them to think that they might have a chance against the United States in the Pacific now since we've depleted our stockpiles for the moment. Their whole defense policy is hundreds of thousands of anti-ship cruise missiles and they already know that the Iranians who only launched a few hundred missiles at us, you know, all total throughout this conflict directly at our ships. China with hundreds of thousands of munitions is that's pretty significant and they know that they probably have the upper hand at least to when it comes to Taiwan. So, so they might attack before we can rebuild our own military stockpiles because they know without a doubt that we cannot defend Taiwan. Taiwan is off the table. It just is. You may not like it. I don't like it, but it is. Uh based on how the war in Iran has gone. But, on the other hand, the Chinese are also looking at how the most technologically advanced military in the world is having a really tough time winning a war against a vastly inferior foe or at least a foe that is vastly inferior on paper. And that imbalance is taking place mostly due to terrain. If Iran looked like Iraq, we would have won the war 5 minutes into it, right? But, it's not. Iran is nothing in the world but hundreds of trillions of tons of granite. So, maybe the Chinese are second-guessing the success that their own operations might have in Taiwan. Other than these very tiny aspects of the trip, not much else came out of the state visit from what I can see. No real commitments to anything were achieved on either side, just very coy statements from the Chinese as you would expect. I'd expect nothing less. And right now, the trip mostly appears to be a giant pile of nothing other than buying a bit of time to focus on things other than the current war that the US is fighting in the Middle East. So, that's where we stand for today. Flashpoints all around both overseas, in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and also here at home with a lot of domestic unpleasantness being plopped on our plates this week. And our friendly redcoats across the seas having to deal with a lot of complicated issues as well. Thankfully, all of this uh rather unfortunate topics that we have to cover sometimes, these have given us some idea of what to prepare for and how important it is to remain situationally aware and keep your head on a swivel. High gas prices make people do crazy stuff all around and right now it is a very high risk time for any of the dozen or so bubbling tensions to reach another flash point. We don't have to do them in gloom, don't ever do that, don't ever black pill, no black pilling allowed, but we have to be aware, we have to be attentive, we have to talk about unfortunate things sometimes even if it's a little embarrassing or culturally inappropriate or we have to talk about it just purely because you need the information to be able to survive walking down the street sometimes. So with that, let's roll it up for today and talk about the Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, this radio net that we use to exchange information around the world is very, very helpful sometimes. And it was a good net all around from everyone. Now that the summertime weather has arrived for most of us, a lot more people are joining the party, which is always good to see. The more mundane weekly testing and practice sessions are not always super high speed. They're just not. But in our case, this isn't just practice, this is also practical utility, right? So we can find some interesting information that many of us might not have heard before, which is always good to see. It's already been a pretty crazy year and with hurricane and wildfire season upon us once again, it's a good time to dust off the comms gear and make sure everything works. Even if you are not into the world of HF radio or Meshtastic, if you don't want to get into anything like that, if it's too much of an investment, there's always free or low-budget ways to get into this stuff, but even then the the educational barrier is pretty high. Working on that, going to bring that barrier down. There's a lot of other dudes out there doing good stuff to make sure that radio is more accessible to more people. Even so, you can always make sure that your own radios work, make sure that you have good communications plan put together, even if you don't have radios at all. Just make sure that if you haven't heard from somebody in a while, make sure you have a plan for that. Just so that you have a way to know how how get in touch with friends and family just in case regular lines of communication fail. Cyber attack season is also here and constant. That's a yearly thing. It's always going around, but these things always tend to come around when there's times of international tension and conflicts and stuff like that. And you never really know when a server is going to go down somewhere just due to some random hacking group getting a hold of things. So, again, just being prepared, doing the bare minimum to make sure that you know what to do and you have some kind of plan ahead of time. That's going to help out quite a lot. That's all I have for today, everyone. I know things are getting a little heavy out there in the world, but it's going to be okay. We're we're going to take things one day at a time and do the best we can. That's all we can do, anyway. So, thanks for sticking with me and all of my research and geospatial data is all available, all for free at the links below along with all of my source material that I use throughout the week. I'm still working on the A-TAC series. It's It's a lot of work a lot of work to get this stuff done, but I'm going to try to power through a lot of this more A-TAC and communications kind of doctrine and tutorials and educational stuff this summer time and we'll see how it works out. I hope it I hope it helps a lot. So, if you're interested in using A-TAC or communications or stuff, check out the playlist on my YouTube channel and you will be able to find all of the prior content I've made on that in addition to the new stuff that I'm trying to make. So, thanks again, everyone, and I'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 December 14th through the 20th, 2025. As usual at this point, the insanity continues and we have a lot to cover this week. So, let's hop to it. Overall, like last week, this week has been busier than usual with multiple terror attacks taking place around the world. First up, we have the Brown University shooting here in the homeland, as well as several arrests of terror cells such as the Turtle Island Liberation Front planning to conduct attacks. Down in Australia, we have the Bondi Beach mass shooting and also the follow-up terror attack that was halted a few days after that initial incident, which we'll get to in a moment. And finally, yesterday, we had a mass stabbing attack in Taiwan. A comparatively rare form of terror attack in Taipei, but still one that caused a few casualties nonetheless. Considering the elevated terrorism threat risk globally, many nations have canceled their New Year celebrations out of fear of things like vehicle ramming attacks and the inability to maintain security for large crowds. It's not entirely clear as to what these threats are. Most nations aren't really citing a specific threat. So, this could be a case of major cities just not wanting to hold celebrations and so they're using terrorism as an excuse. Or it could be that there are so many insurgent groups implanted throughout the Western world that the risks of vehicle ramming attacks are simply too high. Now that it's become clear that mass migration is directly and clearly linked to an increase of violence, it's likely that certain politicians don't want an attack to happen in their city, which would rile up the populace even more against mass migration. So that's the kind of unfortunate flavor this week. Attacks past, present, and future. And before we get into some of this stuff a little bit more in depth, let's talk about strategic movement for this week. Not much to report on the Caribbean front. Things are mostly the same as before. The Uima is still in port in the US Virgin Islands where she is conducting a port call. She's been there for a while now, I think. Otherwise, there have been a few minor positioning updates. A few ships moving around here and there, but nothing major. The Ford is still cutting circles in the ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico as of this morning, so no major updates there. Perhaps the biggest update has been the increase in strategic aviation in the Caribbean. There has been an observable increase in intelligence aircraft conducting flights off the coast of Venezuela. So, that very much needed intelligence preparation of the battle space is being conducted on a national scale down there. They're probably collecting imagery of the coastline, but more likely they're probably collecting sigant on whatever forces Maduro can muster. They're not exactly hiding uh their presence. They're obviously leaving their transponders turned on so that the whole world can see exactly where their spy aircraft are flying. So, other than that, no major change. Uh tensions remain high and most people watching this kind of expect war to break out any day or week now, especially since Venezuela has allegedly starting escorting tankers through the blockade. Now, on that front, again, no major news. Uh, Venezuela hasn't actually tried to escort a sanctioned vessel out of their waters yet. Most of the rhetoric pertaining to Venezuela escorting ships, you know, in their territorial waters has pertained to nonsanctioned vessels. So, they're kind of escorting the vessels that don't actually need an escort. But there will inevitably be a point at which Venezuela decides to run the gauntlet. So, that's going to be a pretty big international flash point that could uh kick things off from there. So, maybe the US wants that to happen to provide justification to invade Venezuela. I don't know. But that's kind of the next point of friction that's likely to come about in the next couple of weeks. Moving to the United States, this week has been very kinetic and multiple incidents have taken place that are worthy of consideration. First up, we have the Brown University shooting and the murder of the MIT professor, which are two incidents that the authorities state are related incidents, so we'll dig into that in just a bit. Otherwise, the FBI has now finally become involved in the horrific acid attack that took place in Savannah, Georgia almost 2 weeks ago, which is why I've left this one on the slide for now. And out west, four wouldbe terrorists were arrested as they were planning to conduct attacks in Los Angeles during New Year's celebrations, which is probably why many nations around the world have exercised caution during New Year's events and canceled fireworks and stuff like that. There are quite a few different groups in the United States and internationally, which are uh trying to increase the rhetoric when it comes to New Year's targeting for some reason, mostly because New Year's celebrations usually involve large crowds, but it's also not a really big political holiday or a big religious holiday. So for the different types of terrorists which just cause to seek mass mayhem and not necessarily want to conduct terrorism for a political goal, uh New Year's is a pretty good holiday for them to choose, uh which is why a lot of New Year's attacks tend to happen. But there are some very interesting considerations when we talk about that terrorism label, which we'll get to in just a minute, because it's kind of interesting to examine these threats as they come about and why they come about. That's the more important part which helps us identify when and where future attacks may take place or at least where the risk is a little bit more elevated. Now breaking out into the regions for this week, I wanted to briefly mention the Epstein file release which took place last night. This was a very uh hotly contested document release that was very much hyped up. So I wanted to mention that it did occur. However, roughly 90% of the documents look exactly like this completely uh redacted from the top of the page all the way to the bottom. So, I don't think very many people were expecting much, but I know this was kind of in the news and Congress even passed a special law. The uh Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the removal of redactions from documents like this. And the DOJ just released black pages like they always tend to do with this sort of stuff. So, from what I can tell so far, there really aren't any new revelations when it comes to the actual text. I expect a bit more information and a bit more context on exactly what was released over the next few days as people kind of get into it and start examining some of these documents, but for the most part, it's just complete redactions uh from top to bottom. So, again, not entirely unexpected, but I did want to mention it because it was it was kind of being talked up all this week. So, moving down to Georgia, I wanted to offer a brief update on the acid attack that took place near Foresight Park in Savannah a couple of weeks ago. So, the FBI uh yesterday announced that they are actually seeking all of the doorbell cameras and any security camera footage that anyone might have who live in this giant rectangle in downtown Savannah. So, if you live in downtown Savannah inside this rectangle, the FBI would like any kind of security camera footage that you have that features the suspect in that case. Now, of course, the big elephant in the room is that this took the FBI nine full days to actually start the investigation. Now, we can argue about this case all day long. However, one specific argument that I saw uh online this week pertaining to this exact case really motivated me to kind of clear the air on the topic and clarify uh the nature of counterterrorism doctrine in general. So, one of the arguments that I have seen is that the reason that the FBI took so long to start investigating this specific gruesome crime is because this is a local law enforcement issue. Right? That's the argument that's being stated is that well this was really the job of the Savannah Police Department. The FBI doesn't normally investigate crimes involving a single person and it doesn't meet the criteria for the feds getting involved and so on. However, this is incorrect. This is not how uh the world of counterterrorism works. And here's why. Let's first examine the nature of terrorism in general. We throw around this word terrorism a lot and we don't really kind of get to the meat of the matter of what is actually classified as a terror attack. So, let's go ahead and go to the FBI's website. They're the ones who make the doctrine, right? And here are the definitions. So, the FBI has two definitions for terrorism. International terrorism and domestic terrorism. Now, the international one is quite an easy definition to wrap our minds around. It is a lot more clear-cut because international terrorism as per the FBI is defined as violent criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by or associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations. state sponsored, meaning that you're a part of an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization. Again, this is why this uh rhetoric has been in the news lately of designating TDA, Trendy Aragua, as a foreign terrorist organization and so on and so forth, right? These labels mean things in the international arena. Well, maybe not in terms of international relations, but for the United States, if you are a part of an FTO, well, you're going to get slotted right into the FBI's investigative process automatically. you don't necessarily have to do anything. Just by being affiliated with some of these groups, you are now, by the FBI's definition, a terrorist. The other definition, which is the one that we're going to focus on today, is a lot more loosey goosey. I'll say domestic terrorism, as per the FBI, is defined as violent criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. Now again, this may come as no surprise to many of you out there. However, this definition will more or less cover every single thing that happens under the sun. So, this is a very broad definition and the FBI is known to quite liberally apply this definition to lots of different things that they want to classify as terrorism. However, the last part of that sentence is what matters. at political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. That part of the sentence, if we crack open a few older counterterrorism manuals, those five categories are the traditionally accepted motivations for carrying out a terror attack. It's not exactly perfect, but it's it kind of gets us across the line with regards to most kinds of terror attacks. Once again, this is highly subjective. This is like the ultimate game of semantics as to what is defined as terrorism, right? If you read two different textbooks, you may come out with two different views of what a terrorist attack actually is. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of variation here. So, please don't get hung up on the exact words in this this definition because it's going to vary quite a bit depending on which textbook you read, depending on which uh professors you had teaching you counterterrorism topics. It's going to vary on what you would consider to be a terrorist attack. I will say though, however, that if we go back to say the early Giwat era where the word terrorism started being used a lot more often by governments and agencies and things like that, what was the definition back then? Well, honestly, it it's not it wasn't very much different than what it is today. However, what they tried to make it seem like is that well, it's in the name. What is terrorism? It's in the name. It's an it's an attack that is intended to cause fear. That's not really true. In most cases, terrorist attacks are not meant to get you to do something differently. They're really just attacks that are coming from a certain range of ideiations. In this case, political, religious, social, racial, or environmental. It's not about causing fear so much as it is carrying out an attack for a certain reason, one of these five reasons. I know it may not make a whole lot of sense, or maybe it does make a lot of sense in retrospect, but this is something that we have to understand. And this is why I wanted to talk about what is terrorism because this applies to the Savannah case. So going back to our initial question, right, the thing that got me interested is people saying, "Well, this guy was just one guy. He attacked one person. He threw acid on this woman. It was horrible, but it was kind of an isolated attack. So not really terrorism, right? Wrong. The reason why he did this is what dictates it being a terror attack. He did not throw acid on this woman to steal her wallet. Right? That's not what happened. If that were the case, you would have an argument, right? You would have an argument to say, "Well, he just used a very brutal attack as part of a mugging and this was a financially motivated attack and thus not terrorism." But that's not what happened. He randomly threw acid on this lady and calmly walked away. This is why the feds should have been involved in this case early on because we don't know what the person's ideiation is. We don't know what the person's ideology is. We don't know why they conducted the attack in many cases until we catch them, right? So, it's better to air on the side of caution and assume that this guy conducted this attack for terroristic reasons. And then once the guy's in jail, once the suspect is captured and they are no longer a threat to the public, we can conduct a further investigation to determine what charges would be appropriate for this particular crime. Right? It sounds very simple, but once you start laying it out, you realize what's going on here. So, so again coming back to this specific attack in Savannah here. Did this guy throw acid on this woman just because he's crazy and mentally ill? Or did he throw acid on this woman because she was a white woman? If it is the latter, then that would mean that this is meeting the definition of a terror attack and the feds are now the lead investigative authority. Or at least that's the way it should work, right? We don't know why he did this attack. So, it would be best to assume that he did this because he saw a white woman in the park, threw acid on her because she he didn't like the way she looked, and we can go from there. Now, is this definitive proof? No. That's just a theory. However, remember, investigations are not courtrooms, right? The investigative process is not a jury. We can think whatever we want to during an investigation. That's what investigations are all about. In terms of investigations, we don't really have to have a reason to do anything at all except for things like probable cause. and throwing acid on a woman randomly is definitely a probable cause to, you know, search the individual or something like that. That's what we tend to think of in terms of probable cause. But if I've got a whiteboard in my office, I can say, "Yeah, this guy probably targeted this woman because he saw a white woman in a park and he didn't like that and he targeted her because of that." Because th those types of attacks are becoming very common around the United States. I don't need to prove anything to a jury to put that on my whiteboard, right? Once the guy is caught and you can start working through the judicial process and prosecutorial charges and things like that, that's for later on. But I'm talking about right now, this guy's not caught yet. So, this is why investigative tools have to be unlocked early on. It would have made sense for the Savannah PD to say, "Look, we can't handle this. FBI, can you come involved because it sure looks like another black guy just randomly attacked a white girl in a park. You guys take it and run from there." But that's not what happened. So, this is a good reminder of understanding how the motivations for something really do factor into that terrorism label. And that terrorism label matters because of the tools and assets that are going to be available for the investigative process. The FBI and the feds in general are not going to spin up a bunch of resources, right, when it's just a regular street crime. The issue here is is that terrorism tends to be policed very differently than every other crime in the United States because it has a potential to affect other people. Of course, we can argue about semantics all day long, but a say a serial check casher, right? somebody who's committing check fraud like every other day, right? That type of person is going to be policed a lot differently than somebody who's a serial stabber, right? Somebody who's committing check fraud every single day is a lot different type of person than is going out there and stabbing people every day. The urgency by which we police the stabbing person is going to be a lot more important than say going after the financial crimes. So this is why that terrorism label matters so much and why we have to be aware of this because of things like the Providence shooting and also some of the other terrorist attacks that have occurred or taken place around the around the country. Right? So let's go ahead and jump to the Providence shooting for a minute and and talk about this absolute disaster. So the general overview of the story is very hard to summarize actually because the details don't really make a whole lot of sense. So please forgive me for this extremely wavetop overview of what went on. So the general story for how this was carried out is that this individual, Clauddio Neves Valente, decided to commit a mass shooting at his old school, Brown University. He went to the university and decided to loiter around the north side of campus for a few hours before eventually making contact with a student, a former student who was actually secretly living in the basement of the Baris and Holly Engineering building some hours before the shooting took place. From there, some sort of scuffle or altercation or argument ensued between the two and the two parted ways. The homeless student kind of left the area or went back to whatever they were doing. It's not clear. And the shooter hung around the general area. What happens between the this point in the story and the shooting is unclear, but eventually some hours later, Valente allegedly entered a classroom in the Aaris and Holly Engineering building and conducted the shooting. Who he was targeting, we don't know. Why he was targeting, we don't know. None of the witnesses have been interviewed. We just don't know anything more than that. But once the shooting was complete, he eressed from the building uh at a rather slow pace. Uh he managed to just kind of walk around the campus on the north side. And from there, at some point after that shooting, he got into his rental car, which was parked nearby the uh engineering building, and he drove all the way to Boston. Once he was in Boston, uh he transited to the outskirts of Boston where he found his uh old colleague, a professor at MIT now, and shot him in his home, murdered him right then and there. And once that murder was complete, Valente drove all the way to a storage unit, a a mini storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. From there, he is alleged to have taken his own life inside a storage unit there. And this is where his remains were found a couple of days ago. That is the official story as it stands right now. Many details, including especially the timeline of all of this, is very sketchy and has changed by the hour. So, please forgive me if by the time this comes out, something else has changed. Suffice it to say, this is probably one of the most sketchy shootings that has taken place in the US over the past year or so. And I say that rather hesitantly because I know that throughout internet land at large, there's this growing trend of people wanting to be contrarian just for the sake of it or wanting to say that, yeah, something's fishy here. there's some conspiracy on this that or the other just for the sake of like engagement farming or you know stirring up content generation ideas or whatever. I know that it's really popular to do that these days but in this case man this whole case stinks. It is really really sketchy all of it. And honestly I don't even know where to begin. I had originally written out like several pages worth of like all the little details that I picked out that are uh really just kind of not making any sense. But I'm just going to kind of leave it short for today because probably the most egregious thing that I can find so far is the fact that as this investigation was ongoing and as all of these little blunders were occurring from the FBI kicking snow to having like their junior guys out there and failing to secure crime scenes, failure to secure evidence, failure to interview even a single witness to the crime, right? All of these blunders started adding up. But what really got me was congressmen and political officials getting on TV and saying, "Shut up. Don't talk about this. Don't question anything." And what do you think that makes me do? It makes me question things. Especially considering the fact that this investigation was blundered so much that a man lost his life when I think it was probably quite preventable. At the same exact moment that the FBI and the Providence Police Department were getting on TV and telling us that there's no further threat to the community, the killer was in his car on his way to murder somebody else. Okay, that is disgraceful and there's no amount of well investigations are hard that you can hide behind to save yourself from that sort of thing. They have to own up to that. And what really got me paying attention with that is they they did what what I call the beltway demeanor. This is a thing that happens in the world of intelligence, but it's really just kind of a Washington DC thing. And uh what it is is this this demeanor, this um perspective of just condescension just out of nowhere, right? Like how dare you suggest that XYZ is probably a more likely theory. Like why don't you let the experts handle it? you know, the the uh classic, well, we just need to have a conversation about this and we need to discuss this and we need to manage this situation using the most uh boilerplate HR language we can sort of surmise. Personally, I'm more attuned to this, I think, because I got this throughout most of my career. And this is really one of the main reasons why I stopped doing this this kind of work professionally because it's a very interesting form of condescension mixed with a little bit of gaslighting. Like almost like you're somehow inferior for thinking that there may be a further threat to the community. That's what they did. That's the mentality that they had. It's like gaslighting mixed with condescension. Like, oh, you're just super stressed. You need to you need to take a break. uh because you know there's no threat to the community. You know, you're you're crazy for even thinking that. Don't worry about it. We've got it covered. And then meanwhile, there's somebody who's actually got a gun and he's going to kill somebody else while they're actually saying this during the live press conference. Like it's it it's so hard to describe. I'm not doing a super great job of it, but you know it when you see it. It's this this condescension mixed with like elitism. So elitism uh condescension and gaslighting all rolled into one. When you start to see that sort of thing in a press conference, when there's an ongoing criminal investigation, watch out because they're hiding something. And then when they add in this like twinge of almost like pity, like they're like they pity you. They're they're pitying you for thinking that there might be a further threat, like you're inexperienced or something like that, you know, that that really starts to starts to add up a lot of indicators that some sort of deception is going on here. And in this case, it turned out to be correct because what happened? We find out a couple of days later that exactly what the authorities told us was explicitly not happening actually happened. Somebody else got killed. So yeah, that's something that I hope to maybe think about a little harder and kind of encapsulate a little bit better to to to describe it a little bit more accurately because it is a very unique phenomenon and for me who you know I worked in Intel professionally for about 10 years or so. Whenever I would see that, I would know somebody's lying about something. But it most people, it would just go right over their heads. Like the junior guys who hadn't been in been in it long enough to know, they wouldn't be able to determine like, ah, okay, they're trying to skew something here. It's it's almost like um the difference between somebody telling a white lie and then like a professional, you know, um pathological liar. There's a big difference between the two, right? It's the same kind of idea. It's like condescension, elitism, gaslighting, but on steroids. And it's a very very unique perspective that you see some of these people uh use when they're making statements about something is a very big indicator for deception. And in this case we the deception was quite clear. The killer was indeed a further threat to the community and he actually ended up doing the worst case scenario. Ended up killing again. So not only did they fail at stopping a mass shooter, but they failed at apprehending a mass shooter and they failed at stopping a mass shooter from committing another shooting. Right? At least that's by their own story. Now, all of that being said, there is also, I have to mention, a quite high likelihood that the details of how all of this unfolded are simply not true. The timelines are not matching up. By their own admission, they're saying their timelines are not matching up. So, it's very hard to trust anyone as part of the official investigation with this because, well, by their own admission, they're saying their stories are not adding up, right? There's a lot of details that just don't add up. And it's not made any better when you've got the Providence police chief getting on TV struggling to speak English somehow after living in Rhode Island for 41 years. This guy still can't speak English very well. And he's answering extremely pertinent questions in Spanish without translating it for the rest of us. So, I've got to go into Google Translate to see what a police chief just said about a mass shooting in the United States of America. That's a that's a pretty big problem. But also, the attorney general was sitting there, you know, urging the public that they were being foolish. She's being foolish for thinking that there's a further threat to the community when there actually was a further threat to the community. Yeah, this is not a good case. The outcome of this is not good. Uh not only do we not have any sort of justice for the victims of this case, but also we can't really be sure that the incident has reached a point of conclusion now, can we? The official story is that these two cases are linked. The the official story is that this one man, Clauddio Nevice Valente, had some kind of personal grievance which caused him to conduct a mass shooting at Brown University, his old school, and also uh to take out one of his former colleagues that apparently he didn't like or something like that. So officially, that is the link between the two. Again, coming back to our definitions of terrorism, this appears to be or at least what the authorities are stating this to be is a personal dispute. As in he did not conduct this attack for ideological reasons. It was a social reason. it was a personal uh mental health reason or something like that. Now, even using the FBI's own very broad and vague definition of terrorism, we're still in kind of a gray area here, too. Because normally, generally speaking, I mean, there are outliers, but generally speaking, if a person has a dispute with someone else, they're not going to conduct a mass shooting, they're going to take their anger out on the person that they don't like, right? Or the person that they wanted to to remove from society, right? If they have a personal grievance with somebody, they're not going to conduct a mass shooting. Likewise, if they have if they want to conduct a mass shooting, the type of person who's going to be in the frame of mind to conduct a mass shooting generally isn't going to want to settle scores either. I mean, it's either one or the other. So, this if this is what actually happened, and I'm not saying it's not what happened. I'm just saying that if it is what happened, if the official story is true, this is a novel case. This is a very novel case, and I think that we're going to need more time. We're going to need more information. The Providence Police Department is going to have to interview witnesses and um I'm going to be looking into this a little bit further. So, it's odd. I also think it's odd. That's why I wanted to talk about it. So, moving out west, another very strange one, but also not really surprising. Strange, but not surprising. That's probably the West Coast in general these days. This took the form of four members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front being rolled up for attempting to create IEDs to detonate throughout Los Angeles this New Year's Eve. Once again, this series of arrests is what has prompted a lot of international uh responses in the form of cancelling fireworks and crowds and things like this. This is interesting because these four individuals were not the only people in the Turtle Island Liberation Front. This is a larger movement uh which is well, let me see, how should I describe this group? The Turtle Island Liberation Front is more like an offshoot of Antifa. They're all kind of in the same realm. See, one thing you have to understand about the far-left groups is that they love their labels, right? So, they love their names. They love their splinter groups because everybody has to have a title, right? Everybody has to have some kind of authority. That's what this is really uh one of the big uh traits of some of these far-left groups is that they're they're nested within groups within groups within groups. And in this case, these people are part of a smaller Splinter Cell within the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which is affiliated with Antifa and other far-left groups. It's a nightmare of names and acronyms. So, just suffice it to say that these four people are not the entire group. These are just four people who were rolled up uh for blowing up or trying to create IEDs to blow up stuff in Los Angeles. So that's how they were rolled up. They were creating IEDs out in the desert. They had been under surveillance for some time because of course they were. I mean, look at their mug shots. You can tell these guys would of course be on a government watch list rather quickly. And why is this, you might ask? Well, because they weren't exactly hiding uh their behavior. These people use their real names on social media. They published very violent rhetoric openly, not even in closed groups, just openly on Facebook, right? Where this stuff can flourish. So while the FBI is patting themselves on the back for rolling these people up, this is a case that Mr. Magcoo could crack, right? So even the most incompetent uh person could see that these people were a clear and present danger to society. Why? Because that's what they said about them their own selves. So as you might expect, most of the ideology on these people's web pages is very contradictory. So Turtle Island, just for instance, is a reference to what they claim Native Americans referred to America as. which is not really historically true. That's something that was really just kind of created recently, but you know, revisionist history is kind of the way that it works with a lot of these groups. But either way, the Turtle Island reference is more of a uh Native American kind of thing. And pardon me for saying so, but these four mug shots don't exactly look like Native Americans. But anyway, you've got that uh sort of thing going on. The whole like, you know, you're on stolen land kind of ideology. So, there's that. Plus, most of the rhetoric that they have on their web pages is um pro Palestine, but also like pro whatever acronym you want to say for gay issues nowadays. So, again, very contradictory ideology, but a lot of their stuff is uh very sympathetic towards uh Hamas in general. So, you know, there's that that'll get you on a watch list pretty quickly uh anywhere in the world these days. But the interesting part of this whole story, the reason why going on this rant is worthwhile is because these people are not the only people in their group. And the FBI is patting themselves on the back after they arrest the weirdest looking people in the group when there are other groups out there. They could have arrested like 500 people that are part of these groups or at least questioned a lot of these people. You hop in these Facebook groups with these people. They're not even Facebook groups. They're just Facebook pages. and you look at the people and look at the people making comments and it's like, all right, you got the four weirdest looking people in the group, but you still got a hundred other insurgents out there who openly state they're trying to conduct IED attacks. So once again, pardon me for not exactly trusting the FBI to stop terrorist attacks this New Year's Eve, but I guess we'll have to see. I mean, head on a swivel, right? That's the that's the moral of the story these days. Keep your head on a swivel. That is for sure. So, and speaking of keeping your head on a swivel, let's move over to Taiwan and talk about the Taipei terror attack that took place the other day. This is, of course, the unfortunate stabbing attack that took place at the Jean Jehan subway station in downtown Taipei. Now, this attack meets the criteria for being classified as a complex coordinated attack or CCA. We used to call these complex attacks or just complex terrorist attacks. What makes this a complex attack or the modern term complex coordinated attack or CCA? Well, there are usually two criteria. either multiple people involved in the attack or multiple weapons systems involved in the attack. And in this case, it was a lone attacker. However, he did switch weapons and he did target multiple venues. So, that does make it a complex coordinated attack, which is a little bit more than just your uh average garden variety terrorist attack these days. The general overview of how the attack began is very interesting because it shows a very high level of planning for how the attack was to be carried out. So, the attacker began at the main subway station to the south uh in which he threw a few smoke grenades inside the subway station. Now, at the time, this was treated as a prank and nobody really knew what was going on. So, they evacuated the station because it's a big station. It's the main train. It's the main subway station for Taipei. And uh in the process, they kind of started figuring out what was going on. Well, by then, the asalent had moved on to the other attack site. But at this first attack site before he moved on, he apparently had made contact with a citizen who was trying to stop him. And this citizen attempted to stop the attacker at this first site. But again, this all happened within the span of just a few minutes. So it took some time before people figured out exactly what was going on. The truth of the matter is that the individual, the attacker in this case, threw smoke grenades at the main subway station as a diversion. And when those smoke grenades were going off, he transited north to the Jean Shan subway station to conduct his actual stabbing attack. Now, we don't know if he took the subway to that station or if he went uh on surface roads on foot. Either way, what he was planning to do is have a diversion at the main subway station and or potentially detonate some IEDs there. So, uh like I said, reports are conflicting, but it looks like he actually had IEDs staged at the main subway station as well. So again, Taiwanese authorities are not exactly being forthcoming about this one, but from what we can piece together, it looks like he wanted to ignite a bag full of Molotovs at the main subway station in addition to using smoke devices at that main subway station attack site. And from there, he he transited north to the Zan station where he conducted the stabbing phase of his attack. Again, using even more smoke obscurance to cause mass pandemonium. So this guy was on a roll. he was really trying to cause a bunch of mayhem. But it turns out that unfortunately these types of attacks are just so rare in Taipei that not a whole lot of people even noticed. And we can see this in the video of the attack. I'm sure many of you have have have seen this and uh commented on it. I'm not going to show the full clip because it does show the attack uh taking place, but when this guy is in the middle of the street in downtown Taipei at a heavy intersection, right, he starts throwing smoke grenades and takes out this huge, you know, Bowie knife, right? or like miniature machete. Most of the people around him just can't can't believe their eyes. They're just frozen or they they're not even paying attention, right? So, this is um something that is it's unfortunate. Uh I don't necessarily know that you can really blame anybody. Uh because these kinds of attacks are extremely rare in Taipei. I think the last attack like this was over 10 years ago in Taipei. They just don't have this sort this thing sort of thing just doesn't happen in Asia that often. So, I guess the lesson learned here is, you know, head on a swivel. You know, you may be standing on the street one day and you may see a terrorist attack getting ready to to take place. And I can tell you, I I know it is going to be very hard to come to the conclusion or come to the assessment while standing on a street corner that you're witnessing a terrorist attack. It is a very hard thing to wrap your mind around. You've got to run through a whole lot of thoughts really quickly to come to this kind of conclusion. But this is something that you have to kind of be aware of because these kinds of things is definitely a case of you never think it can happen to you, right? And when we have a whole society who thinks that well it could never happen to me. Well, what do we call that in the in the sciences? We call that the bystander effect, right? And unfortunately, not to point fingers or or, you know, blame anybody with this, the bystander effect was definitely in in play here. Now once the once the attacker conducted the stabbing attack after the first few people were stabbed you know all bets were off right people realized oh my gosh this guy's attacking people now so from there you know the response was quite proper we don't really know what the police response was though all we know is that somehow he got up into a high-rise building and jumped. Uh that's that's all we know. Uh there's really nothing much more than that. Uh we don't have any conclusion. We don't know why he did this. There's no manifesto been released to my knowledge, at least not yet. And that's basically it. Uh so, you know, one of those things where we're just going to have to wait and see what the details are of this because this again, this kind of thing doesn't happen in Taiwan very often. So, again, please keep your head on a swivel. And of course, another segue into keeping your head on a swivel is the Bondi Beach terror attack that took place last Sunday. Again, a mass shooting striking a nation that is not really known for mass shootings. Uh this is something to be aware of. So the official story is that this attack was carried out by two people, not three that we first uh first surmised or first assessed based on the video. It was actually a father-son team who decided to carry out a uh jihadist style attack at a public venue, Bondi Beach Park in Sydney. There's a lot of information warfare going on about this one, so I'm trying not to to say anything inaccurate here, but it looks like they were probably targeting uh either a Hanukkah event at that was being held at the park or because it was a nice uh Sunday, they could have just been targeting everybody there. I don't know. The official uh Australian government story is that they were specifically targeting the Hanukkah event that was there. I cannot verify that. But again, this goes back to that terrorism doctrine that I mentioned earlier. We have to understand what was the motivation for this. Did these attackers attack this venue because it was hosting a Jewish event, the the Hanukkah event. Did they specifically choose that target because of that or did they just show up to any crowded venue? Right? Because there were a lot of people there and it's a Bondi Beach Park is a very popular park on the weekends. So the answer to that question is going to provide indications and warnings of future attacks. That's why even though it may be politically incorrect, we have to get to the truth. And in this case, I just I just don't know. And this distinction matters. We need to get to the truth right now. This is a time-sensitive issue because this story is not over yet. A couple of days after this main shooting took place, seven militants were arrested by counterterrorism police in two separate vehicles in Liverpool, just on the outskirts of Sydney. And per the authorities, they were arrested because they were transiting to Bondi Beach to conduct another terror attack at that same location and or in a general in the general vicinity of Bondi Beach. Now, as if the alarm bells were not ringing in your head loud enough already, it turns out the next day after these guys were detained, most of which, by the way, were on terrorist watch list per the government sources. They the the government says that they were on terrorist watch list. They were known terrorists. They were let go. All seven of these militants who are described as militants by the government, they are described as terrorists by the government have been released. So, not to cause a mass panic or anything, but the situation is a little bit risky in Sydney right now. So, yeah. Uh I mean, I'm sorry. I don't really have much more for you on that. I'm I'm struggling to contain my incredility here because I mean you've got a very very bad mass shooting taking place at Bondi Beach and that's bad enough, right? That's that's that's horrible enough. And then on top of that, you've got your counterterrorism agencies telling you, "Hey, we rolled up two two vehicles here. They're full of uh military age males. We've got seven MAMS in lockup. We are holding them on suspicion of terrorism because we had this intelligence which has not been made public. Of course, it's not going to be made public. Uh but we're holding them because they're terrorists. Here, uh you guys do something with them. And then they let them out, you know. Um now, the the obvious rebuttal to all of this uh insanity is that, okay, well, maybe they let him maybe they let him go to uh see where they're going to go, right? To to follow them and and spy on him more. To that, I would say uh the world is not an episode of Jack Ryan as much as we may want it to be. Generally speaking, if you were to leaf through really any counterterrorism book, pamphlet, uh, Wikipedia entry even, you would find that once a terrorist cell has made the, uh, decision to commit to the attack, you should probably intervene at that point. They already had them under surveillance and not just uh, just general surveillance like all of us on the world are subject to. Now, they had a team following them. That's how they were able to actually detain two separate vehicles at the same exact time. These guys were not just getting passive surveillance. They were getting active surveillance. And why did they intervene? They intervened because they thought they had guns in the car and they were going to Bondi Beach right then, right there. And they were going to uh conduct a mass shooting. That's why they intervened because they had pretty good intelligence. Some analysts somewhere, probably a whole team of analysts said, "Hey, look, we got to get them now. We're watching them. We think they're going to conduct a terror attack, but you got to get them right now." That's why they did that. And it turns out they hadn't picked their guns up yet because that's how terrorists work. They don't tend to roll around with a trunk full of AKs. This ain't Baghdad anymore. These people are going to probably go to a safe house in Sydney, pick up their rifles from wherever they had them stashed, and then conduct the attack. They jumped the gun a little early and there we go. Now we've uh blown blown cover. So either way, uh I hate to be again alarmist. So, I hate to sound alarmist in any form or fashion, but look guys, at a certain point, we got to be serious here and uh this is a pretty serious threat and I just hope that uh authorities in Sydney can can definitely keep an eye on these guys and anybody else who they may be talking to so that we can prevent a another tragedy from occurring. So, so yeah, sorry to be such a downer this week. I just realized that this is probably one of the more serious intel updates that we've had in a while because of just the the threats remaining palpably high. I don't mean for it to be, but you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat things either. So, sometimes it is quite serious. We'll do the best that we can. There's no need to doom and gloom about it. Don't do that. No black pilling. We don't do that, right? We can definitely do the best we can, keep our head on a swivel, and uh not let this stuff get to us too much. So, even though it may not seem like we're ending on a high note, we really are because we have the chance to actually do some good. though I think that's a very positive outcome. Even though we have very palpable and very clear present and future risks right on the horizon, we now know about it. We know enough information to make decisions based off of it and we have a chance to do the right thing at the right time. And I think that's the best that we can hope for. So that's all I have for today. Let's go ahead and roll things up with the intercepted ghost net reports. This week was a little bit sparse because I chose a different SDR. So, the SDR that I normally listen to was uh down for maintenance. So, I chose one right smack dab in the middle of the country and it turns out I didn't hear very much uh because there was a lot of static and there were a lot of people using uh other modes. But, I did want to put this screenshot in there uh for those who are just kind of tangentially interested in this ghost net radio plan. Uh when it comes to jamming and things like that, it's actually far more resilient than even I thought it would be. Uh because as you can see here, all of these uh vertical lines on the waterfall here, this blue image, uh you can see that the yellow bits on that uh image were coming through just fine. So somebody was transmitting while somebody else was transmitting. Normally that washes you out. It it's like trying to speak over someone who has a megaphone, right? It's hard to do. That's what jamming is. Is just talking louder than the next guy. And it turns out that sometimes in radio, we accidentally jam ourselves or we jam each other by talking over each other. And the JS8 call program that we use for the ghost net turns out is quite resilient for even stuff like that. So somebody who is speaking over someone else turns out we can still hear that little voice too which makes it very resilient for things like intentional jamming. So I thought that was kind of an interesting note. It's not perfect. You know nothing is jamming proof but it is quite resilient even when uh even when there's a lot of people talking at once. So I thought that was pretty neat. So I wanted to share that. But that's all I have for today. Uh, thank you guys for sticking with me. Sometimes it's a it's a tough day and I think this has been kind of a long week for everybody, but the good news is is that this is the last Intel update before Christmas. I hope all of you are just as excited as I am. Uh, I have not decided on what my holiday schedule is going to be. I'm probably going to take Christmas day and the 26th off, but I haven't decided yet. So, of course, I will be monitoring the situation uh no matter what happens. And I may or may not push out a wire here and there. Uh we're going to see. I'm going to try to, you know, stick to my regular routine schedule as best I can, but hopefully nothing happens that would require me to push out a priority wire, but just in case if something happens, I will push out a priority just for you guys uh who want to be aware of what's going on around the world. So, thank you guys for all of your support. I really do thank all of you uh for your support this year. It really has meant a lot. I never really would have imagined being able to do all of this stuff uh without you guys supporting me. So, I thank you all for that very, very much. It really does mean the world. So, thank you, thank you,

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 3rd through the 9th of 2026. So, let's get right to it. At the more strategic level this week, the insanity continues with events in the Middle East mostly remaining in a state of chaos. At home, multiple domestic issues have been brewing for a while as both the summertime crime and immigration issues remain impacting for many Americans, which has been exacerbated by both the reforms within EBT benefits around the country coming into effect over the past few weeks, but also the international fuel crisis, which is beginning to hit some parts of the globe rather seriously at this point. For us Americans, our canary in the coal mine for the fuel crisis is Europe, and I'm afraid our friends across the pond are feeling the effects of roughly 20% of the global energy supply remaining mostly offline. All of these issues are exacerbating all of the pre-existing conflicts that are going on around the world, and I've made an actual slide this time for tracking some of the conflicts that I'm keeping an eye on that are going on around the world at the moment. Just so that we don't forget that there are a lot of different conflicts that are currently being fought around the world. First off, we have the situation in Venezuela, which has reached a point of sort of stability, although it's still kind of dubious as to what's actually going on. We snatched Maduro, and then that's all we heard from it. There really hasn't been any update on the status of the governance of Venezuela. There have been a few people step up to kind of take control, but this has really become more of a vassal state situation for the United States to export Venezuelan oil. This is what the United States has openly stated, so I don't know how this is working out domestically within Venezuela, but I guess we'll have to see how it works out. I just wanted to remind everyone that Venezuela still is a thing. They still exist, they're still around, and that's still a planning factor for things moving forward, especially with the chaos in the oil markets. Similarly, in the same area, but kind of a different conflict, are the narco strikes, which continue to take place in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. I suspect, again, I don't know, but I suspect off the coast of Ecuador or Colombia. Once again, US Southcom continues to post videos every day of themselves hitting narco boats and fast boats trafficking drugs, and there's really not been a whole lot of explanation as to what's going on here because again, a lot of the justification for the targeting for narcotics vessels in the Caribbean Sea is that Maduro was the technical leader of the cartel of the Sun and because of that, these are combatants now. That was kind of a loose justification at the time, but most people are not going to lose any sleep over drug dealer boats getting, you know, hit with Hellfire missiles. So, it just kind of went from there, but now that Maduro is gone, the strikes continue, right? So, they're not striking things in the Caribbean Sea, they're striking things in the Eastern Pacific. This is kind of an interesting campaign. It's a long-term bombing campaign that is going on that not a lot of people know about. So, that's worthy of consideration. Same thing in Somalia. We are indeed conducting air strikes in Somalia on a fairly regular basis and have been doing so for many years now. So, just want to remind everybody, yeah, that's going on. We're bombing Somalia. It's not very much, but it's still going on. So, you have to kind of account for it. As to why we're doing this, I don't really know. The AFRICOM uh PR pages have mostly just said this is due to, you know, trying to crack down on insurgents who may be eventually potentially supporting the Houthis at some point. I don't know. It's kind of a loose explanation. We may just be bombing stuff just to bomb stuff, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering that there's an active shooting war going on in Mali right now with a civil war underway there. So, that's something to keep an eye on. Africa is definitely pretty hot these days. It's probably not going to matter too much for the United States like I mentioned before, but American tax dollars are going to be funding something one way or the other. So, something to be aware of. Similarly, in the Middle East, we of course have the war in Iran, which we'll of course talk about in great depth, but we also have a war in Lebanon. A lot of people have forgotten about the war in Lebanon is continuing to go on. The ceasefire there in Lebanon kind of just went away. I don't know if it ever really went into effect, but the Israelis are continuing to push into Lebanon to secure their buffer zone or maybe it's more accurately described as living space. I don't know. But, that's that war is continuing on for sure. There was a strike the other day in Beirut. The large-scale bombing of Beirut has largely ceased or largely kind of tamped down a little bit, but they are conducting precision strikes in Beirut, allegedly precision strikes, right? That's definitely going on. And also, of course, we have the war in Ukraine. So, we still have a land war in Europe going on. It has reached a point of stability, I think. It's hard to say with these sorts of things. The war in Ukraine tends to tends to change its nature once a year or so or once every 6 months, depending on how the war has gone so far. And right now, there's currently a ceasefire going on for the uh Victory in Europe uh Day, VE Day. Russia and Ukraine have called a bit of a truce for a couple of days here uh to just, you know, celebrate that holiday, and then they're going to get back to it, but hopefully we'll get close to a peace deal. Again, there has been uh quite a bit of talk with regards to securing a peace deal over the years. We've gotten really close to seeing the end of this war a few times uh right before veering away. So, that can always happen. It's not over until the fat lady sings, and the war in Ukraine is certainly not over just yet. Similarly, in Iran, the war in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf War, whatever you want to call it, is still going on and has mostly transitioned into what I think should probably be called the Hormuz Crisis, because that's basically where a lot of this hostility is uh remaining for now. The larger war, the bombing campaign within Iran, has largely come to a point of pause due to this ceasefire. However, things in the Strait of Hormuz, uh the only thing that really matters in this entire conflict at this point, are still very much uh at a point of contention. So, that's kind of going on. And then also, in Southeast Asia, briefly wanted to mention the Burmese Civil War is still going on. It's been going on for many, many years. It's been a lot of interesting uh combat data coming out of that for those of you who like to study uh the the way of modern war, uh the Burmese Civil War or the Myanmar Conflict or Myanmar Crisis, however you want to phrase it, that is a factor as well, because Southeast Asia is looking at a large-scale famine situation because of the Hormuz Crisis. So, fertilizer can't make it out of the Middle East to Southeast Asia for the rice planting seasons, and that's a bit of a problem. And there's already a hot shooting war in Burma, which the United States, by the way, is supporting like we are supporting the rebels in Myanmar. Publicly, we're not supporting them with military aid, but we are providing them with non-military aid and material and stuff like that. So, again, something the United States is involved in. It's probably not that big of a deal outside the area, and it's not something that's going to spill into a wider region. I mean, it's South these Asia, so it always could, but it's probably not likely. What's more likely is that is that this is going to be a complicating factor as food shortages and food insecurity becomes a thing over the next couple of years due to the planting seasons being thrown off due to the Hormuz crisis. So, again, everything is a domino. Things are coming into fruition that we probably did not expect or, you know, the second and third order effects are starting to rear their ugly head, and they're probably likely to do so over the next few months as well. Hard to predict, but we'll do the best we can with it. Taking a look at the strategic movement for this week, a lot of the assets that are staged around the world are do reflect a lot of these conflicts. So, the biggest change is the departure of the Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Middle East this week. The Ford is going home to conclude her very, very long deployment to the region, and I think she's planned to undergo long-term repairs from the fire that she suffered a few weeks ago. There is no replacement for the Ford right now because the Lincoln and the Bush are operating together as part of the unified command effort that is the American blockade in the Gulf of Oman. Maintaining this blockade is a gargantuan effort, which requires a lot of resources, and since the hostilities are mostly confined to the Gulf of Oman right now, the US forces in the region are concentrated in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, as well as in the Indian Ocean, which is mostly serving as one big interdiction zone for Iranian ships that either run the blockade or otherwise are strategic targets or stateless vessels. So, that's the force allocation that I'm tracking around the world for this week. A lot of hardware, a lot of steel is in the water, and and it doesn't look like there's going to be any change on that anytime soon. So, before we get into the homeland concerns for this week, let me briefly take a moment and recap the tactical situation on the ground in the Middle East, just because a lot has happened and things are starting to become more active after a couple of weeks of ceasefire. There has been a lot of shooting in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 48 hours with skirmishes being reported between Iran and the UAE, as well as between American forces and Iranian gunboats. There's not a whole lot of information on any of these sporadic engagements, but I am working on plotting these as best that I can. Just know that out at sea, it's impossible to know for sure where anything is hit, because unless we see a boat sinking in real time, there's just there's not really a good point of reference for stuff like this. So, it's a lot more challenging uh when there's uh combat on the high seas as opposed to on the land where we could get a satellite image to confirm stuff uh and local eyewitnesses are actually physically there to record this stuff. So, it's been really complicated to plot stuff this week. I'm still waiting on some clean satellite imagery to figure out what actually was struck in uh the UAE and also on Qeshm Island. These things are not exactly uh easy at this point because the stranglehold on information is definitely tightening around the region. On the more diplomatic side of things, two major initiatives have come to a head. Project Freedom from the United States and the Persian Gulf Strait Authority from the Iranians. Details on both are pretty sketchy and hard to verify, but Project Freedom was the short-lived effort to force open the Strait of Hormuz and essentially provide top cover and missile defense for merchant vessels to get out of the Persian Gulf. This effort lasted about 24 hours because the Iranians had struck three of the first five ships that attempted to make a run for it. At least that's the number by my account. It could be more, it could be less. I don't know the exact hour that Project Freedom officially began. Either way, this project is over or at least halted for the foreseeable future, which might be for a variety of reasons. Mainstream media is saying that the US stopped uh Project Freedom because the Saudis and the Emiratis banned the use of their airspace for this operation because they saw it as a sharp escalation that would only result in retaliatory efforts targeting them. I can't confirm beyond all doubt that's what happened because a lot of this is just conjecture and, you know, rumor and stuff like that. But, either way, what's clear is that Project Freedom is over or at least paused for now. In response to this effort, in response to the Project Freedom scuffle, the Iranians formalized what they are calling the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is basically just a web portal and an email system that ships can use to apply for permission to transit the strait. How this is going to work out is anyone's guess, but the general consensus is that the GCC states are probably not going to accept the Iranians controlling the strait because it was an international waterway before the war. However, again, easier said than done, right? And removing Persian control from this waterway is proving to be way more complicated than anyone in the US government seems to know. So, for now, the situation is kind of a hot shooting stalemate. It's hard to describe. The Iranians control the strait or at least influence it enough to prevent free travel through it. Mines are still a problem. The minefield's still there, and the US Navy can't begin to clear them in earnest until the situation is over. And the merchant traffic through the strait is not looking good and has trickled down to basically nothing. Only local ships and a handful of Chinese and shadow fleet tankers have transited in and out of the Gulf. So, traffic is not anywhere near normal. Quite a tough spot we seem to find ourselves in in the Middle East, but on the home front, things are becoming a little bit more serious as well. On the home front for this week, right now, the biggest factor for the United States is the fuel crisis. Specifically, not just the high prices, but also sheer availability, which might become a problem at some point. For those of you who are looking to plan ahead, and if you're looking for an indicator to start thinking about fuel and preparedness terms, now is the time to start thinking about that. This is a pretty big topic, and it would take far too long to flesh out all of this. But, the short version of what to pay attention to is that there's no real way to know how high gas prices will get before the availability itself is cut off. And there are competing ideas on this from a preparedness perspective. I don't know which one's right. I'll just explain the general idea here. Right now, there are a lot of people who are talking about oil rising to $200 or even $300 per barrel because those are the numbers that President Trump himself said would be acceptable. He clearly stated that even if oil got to $200 a barrel, the current war would be worth it. Now, what might this mean in terms of gas prices? Well, most people expect this to be about 7 to $9 per gallon for regular unleaded. Of course, this figure is going to vary by state quite a bit, but $7 is a general figure that is cited by most journalists. However, this figure is based on an economic model and not really a national defense model. Again, there's competing ideas here. So, economists will tell you the math because they have the spreadsheets. So, if you ask an economist, "Hey, how much could gas prices become if the Strait of Hormuz were to be closed forever?" And they'll dutifully give you a figure. I mean, it's you're going to some high, you know, astronomical number or something like that. But if you ask me that question, I'll tell you that question is kind of a farce because if it's planned to be closed forever, we're going to use strategic resources on Iran, and this is going to be all kind of a moot point. Just to cut right to the point to pay attention to, do not assume that gas prices will just keep getting more and more expensive forever. For as long as this lasts, there is a zero barrier, right? At some point, we're going to be using strategic measures, and gasoline itself will be measured mostly by availability and not its market price. This point is indefinable and unknown because there's just there's just too many factors to know how this is all going to work out, but what is certain is that gasoline is not going to get to 20 or $30 per gallon because long before it gets to that point of scarcity, price alone is not going to be the most important factor, and we'll probably just have a large-scale war before that. Personally, again, I don't know which theory is correct. I just know that a lot of people hop on the news. All the talking heads get on there and say, "Okay, oil is going to be $150 a a if this happens. Oil is going to be $200 a barrel if this happens. And if it goes on for this long, it'll be at $300 a barrel at this date or something like that if something doesn't change. And I think that that is probably not the best way to think about it because long before that, we're going to have issues with availability. And the reason for that is because in terms of what's going on in the Middle East, there are more factors than just the White House and Iran and the Israelis. It's not just about turning the tap on or off. There are complications within the oil production cycle as well. For instance, oil is not just like a spigot that you can turn on and off. There is a ramp up and a ramp down process that takes time. And maintenance is a problem, too. If an oil rig is shut down for too long, things get clogged up from methane hydrates or something, and everything corrodes. It's not something that you can just turn back on in many cases. And when it is turned back on, it might not produce as much oil as before due to these problems. Just to add a little bit of context on this for what a lot of the talking heads are saying, there's an interesting relationship between pumping oil out of the ground, refining it, and then storing it. For instance, Kuwait. Kuwait has produced exactly zero barrels of oil for export for the month of April. So, they're exporting not a single barrel from their from their country during the month of April. But, they're still pumping it out of the ground, and they're filling up their storage slowly. Why are they doing this? Why are they still pumping oil out of the ground to fill up with their storage, you know, fill up their storage tanks, when they know that they can't get a tanker out through the Gulf? Well, it's because you can't exactly turn that stuff off. If you shut down the pumps hard, you know, shut them off completely, then the whole system gets out of whack. So, basically, you have to just turn that turn that production down to a minimum. What that number is is going to vary by refinery, right? You can't really know. If the storage starts filling up, then they then they have to shut that stuff hard down, and it's going to become even longer of a process to start their infrastructure back up again. Before the war, Kuwait was producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day on average. So, you go from 2.5 million barrels to zero barrels exported. That means that either you've cut production all the way down and you're just trickling the oil out of the ground to keep the keep the pipes warm, so to speak. But, it's got to go somewhere. It's got to go into the storage, otherwise very bad things happen with regards to the machinery and maintenance and stuff like that. So, getting back to that 2.5 million barrel per day production level might take a lot longer than we might think, especially if production has been halted or reduced sharply for such a long period of time. OPEC in general, the GCC states, are well known for ramping up and ramping down production for both economic and political purposes. So, there is a little bit of elasticity there, or a lot of elasticity there, in terms of how much they produce versus how much they export. So, there's a lot of flexibility in the system. So, this effect may be negligible. I don't know. But, if we just take the UAE into account, another factor which must be considered is the straight-up destruction of refineries. I've said this many times before, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, but several Arab nations have stated that many of their facilities have been damaged to the tune of billions of dollars. And what's more, a lot of these facilities will take years to repair enough to get back to full capacity. So, once again, it's not just an issue of the strait itself being closed and exporting being a problem. It's also on the production side of the house. There are production problems as well. It's going to take many, many, many years to get back to the level, if we are ever to get back to the level of oil production that existed on February 27th of this year. In one day, it all came crashing down, and I don't know how this is going to work out in the future. And, as luck would have it, the destruction or damage of facilities in the Middle East is not the only factor to consider because a lot of refineries have been destroyed or damaged around the world either by industrial accidents or due to armed conflict. Like I mentioned last week, the war in Ukraine starting to involve the targeting of Russian oil refineries is something that is easily forgotten because it's a different war, and it's targeting Russian oil probably won't affect Europe as much because years of sanctions have largely stifled the market for Russian oil in the Western world. But Russia sells a lot of oil to China and China also gets their oil from the Middle East. So China is going to be heavily affected if this continues on because they're getting the double whammy of Russian production being affected. We don't know how much it's affected, but it can't be zero, right? Having 18 or 20 of your refineries being hit by drones and taken offline for a while, that's not nothing. It's got to have some level of impact. But their other main suppliers are also being hindered in the Middle East. So China is definitely paying attention to what's going on. And if everybody who says, "Oh well, it's worth it if we're affecting China." Well, the United States is going to be affected, too. Maybe more so in some areas because the United States, by comparison, is also being heavily impacted because we also import a lot of oil from the Middle East for domestic production and refinement. The US does produce a lot of oil, but it's a different product altogether. This is a gross oversimplification, but the US mostly produces a lot of light sweet crude, which we export around the world. The actual refineries in the US are built to handle the heavy crude from the Middle East. Even though the US does export a lot of oil, a lot of what we need for domestic production actually comes from the Middle East. Thus, our current high gas prices. Why are we exporting so much petroleum if our gas prices are so high? Shouldn't we just keep that here? Well, yeah, probably, but we can't refine it here. So we sell what we can and we buy what we can. And we refine what we can here at home. And what we need to refine here at home is the Middle Eastern oil. That's one of the reasons for the craziness. I've gotten a lot of messages and emails from people asking like, "Why are we sending our oil overseas if we need it here at home?" Well, it's because we can't refine it here. So we sell it to the customer who can. Again, this is a gross oversimplification, but that's kind of the general gist of the how complicated things are at the moment. In the context of refineries around the world being impacted, we're also not immune to problems with domestic production on our end. Just taking a look at the map, we can see the recent problems at domestic US refineries over the past couple of weeks. There have been several fires and maintenance problems that have impacted production, which is undeniable. What is definitely harder to get a bead on is whether or not these incidents are the result of malign action. On the one hand, it's quite the coincidence that the Middle East is cut off, Russian refiners are being taken offline due to the war, and now refineries all around the world from India to China are catching fire. On the other hand, this is exactly what I would expect because when one major refinery is taken offline, all of the others have to take up that slack. And how do they take up that slack? They run to the red line, don't they? Many refiners are being pushed to their limits and beyond in the US right now, and a lot of mothballed units are being brought online again because the US is desperate to produce and refine as much petroleum as possible. So, it's a tough spot because everything's being run at the red line, and things break all the time. Personally, I'd wager that we will continue to see a sharp increase in legitimate and verifiable industrial accidents at refineries in the US over the next few months. So, that's going to be something to be aware of and keep an eye out for as the situation in the Middle East remains in a state of, well, I guess stagnation is still the best word to describe it. Taking all of the words and statements by officials out of the equation and just ignoring all of the talk and rhetoric, the events will speak for themselves. The strait is still closed to Western tanker traffic. The US Navy has not yet been able to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait, therefore supply is down. Demand in the US remains the same and is going to go up as the summertime arrives. And because of that imbalance, prices climb higher, and the official policy of the White House, as it stands, is that $200 a barrel is an acceptable price to pay. Of course, that may change if we ever get close to that. It may just be words right now, but President Trump has given us a number that he says is acceptable. And so, we have something concrete to plan on, for better or for worse. Might not happen tomorrow or ever, but starting to think about the practical ways to insulate against these problems would be a good idea. I was just trying to think the other day, what would I do if gas got up to $9 a gallon? Like, how would I be able to maintain operational readiness if that's the case? Well, it's complicated because it's not just about price, but planning for long-term disruptions would be wise at this point, and I myself am digging down right now to start organizing my mapping products to help wherever possible. There's no need to panic, there's no need to start stock piling fuel at the moment, although I mean, you certainly could if you wanted to, but regardless of what happens in the Middle East, the energy crisis in the homeland is already beginning to happen, and the question is how serious it's going to be. Hopefully, it won't be too bad, but we'll do the best we can no matter what. And with that, that's all I have for today, but I did want to close today by reminding us all that no matter what happens in the Middle East, we still have a lot of problems here in the homeland that are more serious and more impacting to us on a daily basis. One of the biggest problems that has shifted out of the news cycle is the issue of both illegal immigration and the sharp increase in crime around the country. Many of you know that earlier this year I wanted to create a segment just for reminding us of all of the important incidents that took place, but have just become memory hold and forgotten about. And today, I wanted to highlight just one case among many, which is the case of Marco Villanueva Gonzalez. Back in 2018, this individual killed Jordan Huguely by driving 86 mph in a 35 mph zone in Midvale, Utah. This led to a crash which killed Huguely, and at the time Gonzalez was arrested. As he was a juvenile at the time, he was sentenced to only 6 months probation by Judge Tupac Renteria. And from there, he was just basically let go. Jumping forward to last year, since Gonzalez is an illegal immigrant, he was picked up by ICE in Salt Lake City on drug charges and held in ICE detention. This arrest was publicized by the ICE social media page at the time, and everyone just forgot about it and assumed that he got deported. That assumption was incorrect because somewhere along the way ICE let him go. What he has been doing between May of 2025 and now is not known, but it turns out that it is not good because he was just arrested again. On May 4th, he was released from the Salt Lake County Jail to ICE. So, he's back in ICE custody and completely off the grid. We don't know if he's been deported for real this time or if he's been released back into society again. It is hard to make general assumptions based on a case study, but accountability at ICE when it comes to actually deporting criminals has been lacking over the past few months after attention has shifted away from this issue. I don't know how many deportations are happening because ICE stopped publishing the numbers, but I can prove beyond all doubt that at least one person who was in their custody somehow not just evaded deportation, but remained in the United States committing crimes. And I wanted to mention this because it is so incredibly easy for us to forget that there are victims here. A father lost his son by an illegal who suffered no meaningful consequences for his actions. Not only did Gonzalez not show any remorse for his actions, but he continued to be a menace to society for years because Tupac Linteria gave him a slap on the wrist and ICE failed to deport him despite parading around his arrest as a PR victory. All the while a father has been trying to get the tiniest gram of justice for his son. ICE now has the chance to do the absolute minimum and finally deport this individual and it would be a very good idea for them to do so because at this point with tens of thousands of victims like this being murdered every single year, deportation is the moderate, loving, and kind option and the option that allows this individual to evade justice to be honest. But in polite society, this is the option that we have at the moment for handling these types of people and this delicate balance might not be in place forever. So, we'll keep Jordan and his family in our prayers and do what we can to not forget these cases even though the latest shiny object might distract our attention. It's a hard thing to keep a good foundational perspective on events these days because we're constantly dragged from one headline to the next, but we have to remember what the end goal is, which is to do good things, help stop the civilization decline, reverse the bad things, and hold bad people accountable, and do so from a place of honor and magnanimity. We are not going to get out of this mess without everyone putting in their part and going above and beyond to improve the world around them. Many times we don't have a direct way to do this, but we can help in indirect ways at minimum. Picking up trash, keeping yourself clean and physically fit, and learning a lot of new skills that might be helpful are all things that we can do on the individual level. We do not have a chance at tackling these big things until we can do the little things right. For me, one of those little things is building maps and awareness and also working on communication stuff. I know it's boring, but think about how you would have known any of the information I've covered today if a platform goes down. Sure, you might hear it from somebody else or in some alternative way, but I think that strengthening our lines of communication are a basic requirement for moving forward at a time when everything from censorship to technical outages are becoming more of a headache. And that makes for a good transition into the Ghost Net reports for this week. As many of you know, the Ghost Net is a radio net which hopes to provide some level of both emergency preparedness and also everyday use. Back in the day, we used to get the news over the radio, which is a shocking concept now, but this is our attempt to rekindle old-school reliable ways to exchange information around the world no matter what happens. And this week, the net was fantastic once again with many people sharing a lot of information about events and incidents in their local areas around the world. I myself have been trying out the Android version of JS8Call, which is the software package that we use to control our radios, and it seems to be working out quite well. I've heard some reports from people saying that the Android version doesn't decode as well as the desktop version, but I can't really tell a difference on my end. I will say though that it is harder to send longer messages, at least on the version that I have, I can't send more than just one standard block of messages on JS8Call on Android, but the app is continually being updated, so hopefully this will be a good analog to replace a lot of the capability we have from our laptops on our phones at some point. Right now, I've been testing this with my own field radio setup, and I've been trying to streamline the experience as best I can. More to come on that later, but for everyone who might be hearing of the Ghost Net for the first time, you can check out the handbook I've written on it, as well as the entire playlist on the project that's on my YouTube page. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. As always, all of my research can be found on my Obsidian page, and my mapping data can either be found at the links below or on my GitHub page, where I provide updated KMZs for my work as I make updates, which is pretty much every day. So, thanks again, everyone, and I'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 July 27th through August 2nd, 2025. It has unfortunately been a rather brutal week around the United States when it comes to general crime. So today I'm only going to be able to scratch the surface. I am still trying to get caught up with regards to a lot of the kinetic activities and events that have been going on around the country and around the world. But from a very wavetop level, we can cover some of the more high-profile incidents that have occurred around the United States. most of which pertains to a few cases of very brutal but also very random crimes. Of course, with the general caveat that it's really hard to determine if if there really is an increase in crime or not, but random violence appears to be uh on the rise at least. The other big news this week has pertains to the developments in Washington, mostly regarding the Epstein scandal and how that story continues to become worse somehow every day. It is a very fatiguing topic. I I know uh but we have to keep this in our mind mostly so that it's not forgotten but also due to the national security risks. So moving over to Europe, the big concerns this week have been largely the fallout from the online safety act and the spread of privacy reduction efforts throughout the continent really at this point. And fortunately some good news for once in Southeast Asia. The war between Cambodia and Thailand is mostly over. The issue is most certainly not settled. Uh both Cambodia and Thailand still hate each other fairly effectively. But the air strikes and the shelling of each other has uh largely subsided for now. We'll have to see if it holds. Uh probably won't hold, but maybe we can get a few more months of peace before things uh flare back up again. So, that's the general overview for this week. Let's talk strategic movement. And there has been quite significant strategic movement over the past few days. We've got multiple carrier strike groups that are underway right now. Most of them are either conducting training or uh swapping out. So the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the Teddy Roosevelt are out in the Pacific right now. The Gerald Ford is in the Med or at least was seen off the coast of Italy a few days ago. The Nimttz remains in the Indian Ocean and the Washington carrier strike group was noted off the coast of Indonesia a few days ago. I also briefly wanted to mention because I think it does qualify as a strategic movement sort of thing, the comments that President Trump made last night in which he stated that he has ordered the deployment of two quote unquote to nuclear submarines to an ambiguous location. I'm assuming probably the Norwegian Sea or the Arctic. This is mostly a posturing move in response to uh both Russia's recent statements or statements by Dmitri Medvidev that have been a little bit inflammatory, more inflammatory than usual and also the general sentiment of the United States trying to pressure Russia into a peace deal with Ukraine. So this is one of those cold war things. It's not really concerning in the slightest to be honest. I don't know what he means when he says nuclear submarines. All American submarines are nuclear. So, I don't know if he means nuclear capable like a, you know, SSBN, a boomer submarine, or if he's talking about a nuclearpowered submarine, like an attack sub. I don't know. It it doesn't really matter. It's just kind of one of those things that the mainstream media has picked up and people are kind of freaking out about it. This is not concerning in the slightest. Uh, really, this is kind of a normal thing. I would be very shocked to learn that we don't have submarines off of, you know, Russia's coast at all times, especially the mouth of the White Sea. Uh that's pretty much a standard deployment area and has been so since I don't know the 80s. But you know, anytime the president says the word nuclear and talks about nuclear submarines, this kind of gets a little bit more inflammatory than normal and people kind of get all spun up over stuff like this. So I don't know, Russia will probably do something in in retaliation. They normally what they like to do during the summertime especially is they'll send an Aula down. They'll send one of their attack subs and just kind of, you know, hang out off the east coast of the United States. They like to do this around American holidays especially just to kind of well one to let us know that you know they're watching but also to ruin our holiday plans uh to you know recall people to base to you know go out and monitor some kind of submarine or mo mostly aircraft. They tend to do that quite a lot. They'll do a long range aviation mission and they'll fly some of their bombers usually off our west coast. Um it doesn't normally get much press. The United States will talk about an interception and things like that. So that's my personal guess as to what they're going to probably do. They may wait till the next holiday. They may do it now. Who knows? It's just one of those cold war things. It's not really concerning. When when nations stop doing these kinds of things is probably more concerning. Either way, doesn't really matter. I just thought I'd mention it because this is probably going to be in the news cycle for the next few days. So, moving on to just a quick map update. I'm I'm still trying to get caught up with all of the mapping projects that I have. the kinetic activity tracker, the common intelligence picture, all these uh different layers and map map products that I that I make. I've still got a lot of data to input on the map, but what I'm working on now is kind of a work in progress is I'm going through because I found a few good sources. I'm going through and mapping all of the sites in the United Kingdom, uh which have been uh helping out, uh with regards to human trafficking and helping uh migrants get a more solidified foothold in the United Kingdom. I was working on our own American border crisis stuff, but I've started to add this to the map as well simply because of the online safety act and now that the Great British Firewall is in effect and the British people are now having a hard time accessing information. I wanted to get this at least in my own data sets. So, this is really just what I've been able to do so far. This is just a snapshot of of some of the sites that are hosting illegal immigration into the United Kingdom. Or I guess it shouldn't be really called illegal immigration in the United Kingdom because they've made it legal. So I guess we'll just call it what it is on the map, which is human trafficking. So So this data set will incorporate all of the sites in the United Kingdom that are kind of doing the same thing as as what's going on here in the United States, but more deliberately in the UK because they have really industrialized it a little bit more than than we have in many areas. So, please bear with me as I build out this data set. This is just a sample. This is just the Manchester, Liverpool area, and I'm just getting started. So, it's going to take me a few more days to kind of finish this out. So, stay tuned for updates on that. And of course, all of these data layers, maps, online maps, KMZs, all that stuff. You can find that in the description box below. So, moving through the United States, speaking of immigration issues, an incident occurred in Maine this week, which didn't really get much press, which is the arrest of a man by ICE for immigration violations. He was a visa overstay from Jamaica. But once they did a little bit more investigation, they found out this guy is actually a police officer. The town of Old Orchard Beach uh decided to hire this individual as a police officer even though he was a visa overstay from Jamaica. So, it's kind of interesting because it's Maine and a lot of people uh seem to be quite shocked when they learn that illegal aliens can in fact be police officers in many states. They've made that legal over the past year. Kind of interesting. It'll be even more interesting to find out what the feds are going to do about this because it's not like they're able to hide which police officers they have on their force, you know, so ICE can very easily find out which police officers are illegal aliens. And uh yeah, I don't know if they have any interest in in going after some of these police departments or whatnot, but I guess it'll be interesting to see. And speaking of crime, there have been several very brutal attacks that have occurred throughout the southeast region this week. In Georgia, there was an attempted murder at the Low Gap campground. Details are still very sketchy on this situation, but this was a wilderness area campground in which a man and his daughter were attacked by a group of people. The man was hit over the head with a glass bottle which knocked him out and gave him a very severe series of lacerations. The man's daughter, who was a 20-year-old woman, was able to fend off her attackers by stabbing one or several of them. I haven't been able to verify that or not, but yeah, fairly brutal attack uh in basically the middle of nowhere. Same story in Arkansas. a double homicide occurred at the Devil's Den State Park. This story continues to develop and I'm sure there will be a lot more uh more recent information by the time this brief comes out on this case, but this truly does look like one of those random uh psychopaths in the woods hunting people kind of thing. And unfortunately, both of these cases, both the assault in Georgia and the Arkansas murders, both of them really do highlight the risks that are now present, and I don't know if they've always been present, but they're certainly present now with regards to remote areas. We can bring up any level of statistics that show the level of violence and crime that occurs in, you know, state parks versus cities and, you know, inner city areas. We can analyze it very heavily when it comes to the statistics. But just from a gut assessment perspective, you've got to remember that if you're out in the middle of nowhere and your average 911 call time, if you can even get cell service, your average respon response time is going to be probably half a day. You've got to take that into account and and and prepare and plan accordingly. getting severe lacerations to an artery is a lot different in, you know, a city where 911 or authorities may even be witnessing the attack. It's a lot different uh when you've got that happen in a very populated area versus in the middle of nowhere, right? That's why, and I I don't know if the statistics back this up, but it seems like when you have crimes that occur in the middle of nowhere, state parks, wilderness areas, things like that, these are crimes that tend to take place over a long period of time. It's not just a oneanddone. somebody sucker punches somebody and then runs away. No, these crimes take a very long period of time uh to come to completion such as the case in Arkansas which that that appears to be a you know very long event unfortunately. So that's something to keep in mind from a riskmanagement perspective. Most people either directly or indirectly subconsciously understand the concept of the idea that when seconds count help is hours away. Like that's just kind of the American attitude at this point. I think maybe not for everybody, but for a lot of people, but these types of very gruesome crimes still keep happening and it's something to definitely be aware of. Sometimes people forget, sometimes people uh think that because of a certain political event or development that they're safe now, and that's just that's definitely not the case, regardless of who's who's in charge, right? Also, in the southeast region, I did want to mention the arson attack that occurred in Virginia. Just as a point of clarification, because I realize a lot of people had uh confusions about this when they saw the news story, in a lot of small towns around the United States, I'm not sure how it is in in bigger cities, but in smaller towns, it's very common for county commissioners and for city council members to have day jobs. So, they don't do that full-time. And that's what happened here. So, this person was a city councilman, but he wasn't attacked at the city council uh chambers or the city hall or anything like that. He was attacked at his day job, which was at a magazine company. So, he worked for a publishing uh company that owned a few different uh magazines and publications for the local area. So, anyway, the guy who had agreements with him for some personal reason, at least that's what the locals are saying. It was a personal thing. It wasn't a political thing, but but anyway, asalent barges into this guy's office, dumps 5 gallons of gasoline on the floor, and uh the city councilman obviously runs away from the area uh covered in gasoline. And the the attacker had a scuffle with him out in the street uh right right on the sidewalk there, outside this building. and ended up setting him on fire. So, that's pretty much all that we know about the situation as far as I can tell. But obviously, this level of very brutal crime is uh something that you don't see too often in a small town like this. So, indications and warnings, I guess, of uh general sentiment throughout the United States maybe, or at least uh in some areas, which definitely seems to be a trend. Now moving over to the west coast, another unfortunate trend is the deliberate and kinetic targeting and persecution of Christians in Seattle. So this has rapidly become a problem uh that has now escalated to murder. Now I'll state right up front that the backstory for this uh situation in Seattle would take hours to explain, but the short version of the story is that pretty much anything to do with Christianity is very much demonized in Seattle. Uh Seattle is very anti-Christian from the city uh city officials to the police. It's it's very much an anti-Christian place, right? Uh and there are enclaves around the around the city where it's just a dystopia. There's no other way to to describe it. Ever since Antifa was able to gain a foothold throughout the city during the the CHAZ era, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, things have just kind of not gotten any better. and the Pursuit Northwest Church, they have become kind of well known for being more outspoken against things like transgenderism and against abortions and things like that. And of course, being anti- those things in Seattle, the the sort of mecca for that kind of behavior, you're going to get a lot of haters and that's kind of been the way that things go. However, now this has progressed to murder. So there was an event, a church event, I think it was a barbecue or something that was being held at one of the facilities there just to the north of the University of Washington and there was a deliberate ambush. So someone was sitting in a car parallel parked on the street and that opened fire uh on Christians who were trying to walk down the street to go to the church event. So this was most certainly an ambush of uh Christians trying to attend a church event. even the Seattle Police Department, uh, which has been very anti-Christian this entire time, uh, even they had to admit that this was going on. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's not a good situation and, uh, there there doesn't really appear to be any end in sight when it comes to the actual, you know, beating and now killing of Christians in Seattle. There's been no federal interest in investigating any of this stuff. So, yeah, that's the situation as it stands. Uh, I am doing my own investigation uh, into a lot of this, so sorry to not have too much detail. uh to sink our teeth into at the moment. A lot of this is firsthand research on my own part and the bottom line is that it's very risky. Uh this church will continue to be targeted and since there has been a successful murder at this church, there will be more. I guarantee it. Uh the Seattle Police Department is not interested in protecting this church. It is a very high-risk environment. Uh just looking and doing a very rudimentary clicking around a Google Earth train analysis of what's going on here. This is a very high-risisk situation. uh and I very much hope and pray that people can stay safe in this region. But from a threat analysis perspective, this is a very very very dangerous situation. So prepare accordingly. Definitely be aware of this and most certainly be aware of this if you are also in a different city that has uh that is very much hosted to far-left extremist militant, especially armed militant activity. This has become a huge thing throughout the Northeast and even the Midwest. And the targeting of churches is is something that the United States, the feds are not interested in. They just do not care. Uh they care more about, you know, mean things being said at universities than actual people being killed in the street uh openly and in broad daylight kind of thing. So, I don't want to harp on this too much. Actually, you know what? That's a lie. I do want to harp on this quite a lot. I want to shout about this until I'm blue in the face because personally, this whole thing makes me quite angry in many different ways. And I think that personally, we should make criminals afraid again. Yeah, I know. I know we can have a longer discussion on what that actually means and what that looks like in practice over time. But you know what? If we cannot muster up just half an ounce of righteous anger just purely for motivational reasons to get ourselves and others serious about stopping violent criminals, what are we doing here? So, that's kind of where I'm at personally with regards to the the products that I'm working on and my uh kind of mentality moving forward. I've had enough. I had enough years ago and uh we're going to start doing what we can to to kind of push back on this because societal change is the first step and societal atmospherics are the first step, right? I don't know what it looks like in practice, but you know what? I know that the first step is for people to say enough. And we're going to have to have many little cases of that all around the United States. You know, enough. No, we are not accepting people just kicking in doors in Florida uh for no reason because they say it's a quote unquote prank. No, we're not doing that anymore. Christians having to arm themselves for battle like they're going to walk through the green zone in Baghdad just so they can go to church on Sunday. Yeah. No, we're not going to accept that any longer. I'm going to do what I can to uh figure out some solutions moving forward. But for right now, the best thing that I can do is encourage everyone to just get fed up with this. We should not have to live like this and we're going to uh figure out ways of of making sure that we're going to change society for the better because this is unacceptable. It has been unacceptable since before I even started this whole project. But the average American experience in this country has become increasingly more unacceptable regardless of who's in power. And we're going to do what we can to change that. So, first step is knowledge, understanding the threat, understanding the risks, and being prepared for that. That's a crucial first step. And uh we'll figure out the steps two through a million u in due time. But we've got to start somewhere. And I know we've already started this. People have been working on this forever, but I've honestly recently just hit a recent bout of I'm fed up with this. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to uh reignite my own efforts to do what I can at least in the in the information space so that people are at bare minimum aware and then then maybe they can use some of my products to help them out. So, but anyway, enough on that. We'll do the best we can. It's not a hopeless situation at all. We definitely have the ability to affect change and uh change for the better and we'll do what we can, especially considering what's about to come down the pipeline which is uh appeared in Western Europe and that is censorship or the lack of privacy or both. uh it's two separate issues that are really kind of morphing into one. So, like I've been writing about for a few days now, the uh online safety act in the United Kingdom is starting to grow in scope and size. There's been a lot of talk back and forth, not a lot of solid information either way. Uh but there's been talk of banning VPNs or restricting them or regulating them in some way. There's been talk of other kinds of censorship efforts. and of course other nations throughout Western Europe immediately picked up on the idea of the OSA and uh they're trying to implement the same thing in their countries because anytime a uh means of controlling the population comes out and other nations see it uh it immediately spreads like wildfire. So Western Europe's kind of on fire with regards to privacy and data concerns and it all just kind of appeared out of nowhere, right? It's just it just appeared out of nowhere that we're now back to 2019 2020 levels of internet censorship, right? kind of interesting how that just appears out of nowhere. And just to take the tiniest peak uh down a very deep rabbit hole to maybe explain or I don't know add a little bit more context is the canary in the coal mine that is the video game community. I know that this is something that's not in my wheelhouse at all, but I do want to mention it because I think it's interesting. For those who are unaware, and as strange as it may be, it turns out that over the past few years, video game culture, the video game community has really been instrumental in being the canary in the coal mine for world events, which is interesting. We've got everything from Gamergate to the whole GameStop financial thing. Um, you don't tend to think about it, but the world of video games is a very, very expensive enterprise. It's uh what it's one of the ways that we can sort of understand what a lot of younger people are thinking these days through video games, through how things do financially, what games are popular, things like that. Uh there's a lot more to it than that, especially when it comes to like the culture and uh the development with a lot of these companies. It's mostly centered around the the financial companies that are involved in making video games and things like that. And I wanted to mention this in the context of the UK online safety act because I think the two are related and I think they're going to be merging together. So a few days ago there was a fairly big scandal when one of the main uh merchants for video games, the Valve Corporation, which owns Steam, the platform where most I would say most at least definitely most PC games are being bought and sold. You know, we're talking very large corporation here. uh they suddenly delisted a lot of adult games, a lot of um you know not safe for work video games. Now my personal feelings on that kind of filth and degeneracy aside, what happened next was quite interesting. So people noticed a lot of these games disappeared from the marketplace, right, from the store. So they asked questions like what happened here? And Valve, the owner of the store, said it was Mastercard. Mastercard says, uh even though these games are perfectly legal to own, they're not like illegal content. Mastercard says, "We don't like that for our advertisers. So, you must delist all these games from your store." So, this little spat got absolutely zero traction uh when it came out because honestly, we're talking about a very small population that's affected uh by this sort of thing. And because we're talking about largely degenerate kinds of content, nobody really cared, right? You know, nobody normal cared at least. But, interestingly enough, in the context of the online safety act, we have been given a very clear lens through which to view the master plan that's going forward. So, I would be willing to bet that the Online Safety Act, because that act is trying to market and bill itself as being a well, let's protect the children from from adult content online sort of thing, but it was immediately used to crack down on on political disscent because that's the flavor that they're trying to to go for with this. My bet is that there's now going to be a financial aspect to this as well as pointed out by many articles that were written a couple of days ago which talk about Visa and Mastercard being the enforcement arms for the online safety act more or less in effect not not officially but you see how this is now a financial thing. So, this is why this is kind of interesting because uh something that personally most people I don't think would care about. Some little really niche problem within the video game community kind of gave us a very inside view as to what the next totalitarian step was going to be. And in this case, it appears to be finance. That appears to be the next line of effort. So, all right, you got to show your passport to view Wikipedia. But if we determine that you looked at the wrong thing on Wikipedia, there's your bank account locked, right? Or even better than that, if you're an author who writes an article that has say something against the British government in it and you're trying to get paid for making that article, well, Visa and Mastercard shut down the transaction. See? So, we see how this is kind of a very, very easy connect the dots puzzle, right? You go from one to two to three very quickly and very easily. And the video game community, the scandals with Steam that nobody cared about, gave us a pretty good inside view to that before the plan came to light. So, I thought that was kind of interesting. It's maybe not directly related, but it just it does go to show how you have to kind of think outside the box when it comes to a lot of this stuff. For instance, children getting around the online safety act. Uh they figured out that there's like five or six video games uh that will allow you to, you know, manipulate the character in such a way like in the settings menus or uh in some kind of photo mode or whatever uh to where you can very easily bypass all of the face checks and ID scans and things like that. So, that's pretty interesting. Uh, I think that ignoring what's going on in the video game realm is probably not a wise idea when it comes to censorship because they've proven time and time again that, you know, things that happen in this realm, even though, you know, most people might now want to care about it, uh, things that happen in this realm are very interesting for providing indications and warnings for things like government totalitarianism. So anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting and a good way to kind of wrap things up because it seems like we're returning to form in many ways with regards to very brutal crimes uh picking up uh seemingly out of nowhere, censorship efforts coming out of nowhere and very much a two-tiered policing system being implemented here in the United States as well. So most certainly something to keep us on our toes for the next few years. And with that, that's pretty much all I have for today. So let's roll through the intercepted ghost reports for this week. And hopefully hopefully may maybe we're uh seeing the importance of uh of radio and uh maybe not the exact tools that we have but the general idea of being able to communicate with one another in such a way that it's very very hard to shut down. Right? Because this week we can see at least someone was talking about the uh immigrant who was uh rolled up in Maine for uh being a visa overstay. If you were to talk about a similar situation like that in the United Kingdom, your account would probably be locked or you wouldn't be able to talk about that sort of thing. But with radio, you can. So, it's not completely censorship resistant. It's not completely censorship proof, but it's a lot harder to jam a radio signal than it is to call up Twitter and say, "Delete your account." Right? That's it's a lot easier when you're on the internet. But if you're off the internet, if you're just using radio stuff, it's pretty hard to censor. So, so anyway, hopefully we can improve this uh over time and make it better and learn how to do it and continue to do good things and share good information. So, so thank you again to all of you who contribute to make the ghost net a good thing and we'll keep on keeping on with it for the time being. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you again for watching. Here are the sources as usual and thanks for bearing with me as we talk through some of these more nuanced and kind of hard to describe issues sometimes. So, the world's changing uh sometimes for the better, sometimes for uh not so good. But either way, change is the constant, right? And I think it's going to be up to us to make sure that that change is constantly in a good direction. So, we're definitely going to try to do that as best we can. So, thank you again for watching. Thank you for all of your support. And we will see you next time. And as always, find in the shade.

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for December 7th through the 13th, 2025. And things are just as crazy as always. So, let's get right to it. Overall, the past few weeks have been more kinetic than usual for this time of year in a few different ways. First up, here in the homeland, violent attacks continue as before, and most of these attacks have not garnered much media attention despite how serious they are. Overseas, vandalism incidents and desecration acts continue at churches and Christmas markets around Europe, so that's definitely been a concern. In the political realm, there have also been a few coup attempts over the past few days to be aware of. A rogue colonel in the nation of Benon attempted to overthrow the government only to fall to the classic blunder of forgetting this step where he actually overthrows the government. So, that attempt kind of fizzled out a bit. In Bulgaria, a more successful change of power took place the day before yesterday as the prime minister resigned amid the Zoomer uprising taking place throughout the nation. Mass protests and demonstrations of mostly younger people have been ongoing for months regarding the topic of corruption as the Bulgarian government is legendary for being openly corrupt to an extreme degree. This is kind of the culture of Bulgarian government to be honest and it's been that way for many decades. So these protests came to a head the other day when parliament was finally pressured into conducting a vote of confidence and right before the vote the prime minister resigned capitulating to the desire to hold new elections and generally reform government in some way mostly just to be less corrupt. Right? That's kind of what the demonstrations are all about. So far the Bulgarians don't really seem to actually have a plan for what comes next because it seems like nobody really expected the mass demonstrations and protests to actually work. So, it's going to take some time before uh we figure out how this all shakes out. But either way, things are changing in Bulgaria. On the topic of warfare, the conflict in Southeast Asia is back on again as Cambodia and Thailand recommence hostilities toward one another once more. Details are incredibly suspect regarding what actually reignited this war again because both sides are legendary for openly lying about pretty much everything. But it looks like Thailand is the one who started hostilities, at least when it comes to dropping actual munitions. Although Thai sources claimed that they started the fight because Cambodia moved some troops into the sort of neutral zone, kind of demilitarized zone along the border region that both sides have been fighting about for a few decades now. Some sources claim this isn't true. Uh that Thailand just started the war unprovoked. I very highly doubt that. Both sides whenever they do anything, usually it's because they're both uh moving towards a general state of unrest with each other. So, usually when it comes to Thailand and Cambodia, both sides are at fault in some way. It's really hard to say, though, uh, in this case, so don't really want to pick sides as to who's to to blame for starting the fight. It's a very complicated fight, and most of the fighting has taken the form of the classic third world warfare tactics, mostly in terms of extremely intense bombing and rocket attacks, which result in almost zero casualties. Of course, there are casualties, and almost all of them are civilian. uh because both sides are basically shooting at each other from so far away that even though dozens of battles are being reported each day, there have only been a handful of casualties on each side so far. So yeah, same as usual. Uh of note, considering that the US made a big deal about securing a peace agreement and ending the fighting from a few months ago, President Trump has weighed in once again and stated that phone calls have been conducted between Cambodia, Thailand, and the United States, and that a ceasefire has been agreed upon. So according to the White House, the whole thing is over. We're done. They've gone back to their ceasefire agreement. However, this morning, Thailand came out and said that this was blatantly not true. No agreement has been reached and heavy fighting continues as before. So again, what the truth is is anyone's guess at this point, but the fighting does seem to continue despite American efforts to get both sides to honor the previous peace agreement. And finally, down south, the potential war continues to loom like it has for the past few months now. However, recent statements and actions by the White House have pointed to the war being closer than ever before. So, let's take a look at the strategic movement for this week because once again, all eyes are on Venezuela for a few reasons. This week, the main topic has been the American seizure of the merchant tanker Skipper, the Venezuelan tanker that was part of the shadow fleet of vessels smuggling oil around the world, mostly to the Iranians, but the Russians are also involved as well. This vessel seizure is not really out of the ordinary. It's it's happened before, but it's also the first major step towards a conflict. as this confirms that a state of soft blockade exists with Venezuela. And it's not just the fast boats that are on the menu when it comes to either interdiction operations or targeting operations either. And if the United States is interested in continuing this soft blockade of Venezuela, there are certainly plenty of other vessels to grab. As of this morning, and really any given day, there are roughly a few dozen tankers transferring oil from Venezuela just anchored right off the coast and not really trying to hide their presence or where they're going. So, speaking of future targeting efforts, we do have to mention the increasing rhetoric from the White House this week, which has mostly taken the form of President Trump stating that land-based strikes within Venezuela and potentially other nations are coming soon. He has said this multiple times at this point. I think it's quite clear that this is going to happen, like it's not an if but when sort of situation. Now, on the other hand, it's not exactly a good idea to hang on President Trump's every word for stuff like this. But when the president says we're going to bomb a country that we've never bombed before and potentially other countries as well, whatever that means, right? I'm thinking probably Colombia, Bolivia, places like that. If we're going to kick this pig, then we've got to make decisions based off of that information because he's openly telling us what we're going to do. So, you know, pardon me for, you know, kind of making decisions based off of that. Like many other people have said before, pretty much all of the indicators displayed so far point to the US conducting some sort of operation in Venezuela purely for regime change. And really the only variable is the timing of of when all of this is going to pop off. I will also mention it. I'm not going to get into detail, but I'll mention it because other people have mentioned it first and the cat's kind of out of the bag, but there are other resources moving into the region that have been seen moving from around the world. So, there are some combat search and rescue units that have been observed transitioning to the general theater. I'll phrase it like that and just kind of leave that detail there and you guys can maybe fill in the blanks on your own. But suffice it to say that's a pretty big indicator uh for a conflict kicking off is when CESAR assets start moving into the region. But once again, the Venezuelans already kind of know this. They are looking at things as well. They're not particularly bright when it comes to hiding their own operations, but the US, you know, it's kind of hard to move these assets around without anybody noticing. And once the internet notices, it's kind of forever. So, uh, the US is having certainly a hard time moving things around. Rest assured, when the actual fighting starts, you're not going to see anything on an ADSB tracker. You're not going to see anything on an Osent page that says, you know, uh, this aircraft has flown into Venezuela. It's going to all be dark. It's going to be secret. So, so once again, we'll find out that Venezuela has been invaded or struck when we see videos from the Venezuelans on the ground of something blowing up. So, we're not going to get really any indicator that this is going to get kicked off because, oh, this plane took off or this plane moved over here. No, it's not going to happen like that. It's going to be completely secret. Transponders are going to be turned off. We're never going to know until it happens, right? That's just how military operations work. So, until we get some handheld, cell phone, uh, you know, flip phone shaky cam grainy footage from a Venezuelan on the ground of something blowing up, we're not going to know what happened, right? And we're just going to have to hold fast until that happens. So, that's it for Venezuela. Moving to the homeland for this week, there have been quite a few serious incidents to be made aware of, several of which have received very little media attention for obvious reasons. First up is the stabbing attack at the flagship Macy's store, which took place the other day. It was also another horrific acid attack down in Georgia, which resulted in very severe wounds for the victim. A stabbing was carried out at a high school in North Carolina, which isn't out of the ordinary, but we'll get into the misinformation that has spread from that one in a moment. Similarly, the Charlotte light rail stabbing from last week has taken a bit of an unfortunate turn as the hero from that story turned out to be a violent criminal as well. And finally, something that I did not mention in the wire this week was the arson and vehicle ramming attack that took place at a swanky winery in the Bay Area of California. Turns out an Indian millionaire went insane and tried to burn down the building during a wine tasting event a few days ago. After the other guests tried to stop him from setting the place on fire, he started attacking everyone before fleeing the scene in his Tesla, which he used to ram his way out of the venue before crashing some distance away. As to why he conducted this attack, nobody seems to know what went on here. Uh could be that he was simply drunk and became belligerent. It's a pretty common thing that happens at these sorts of parties, but there are some other theories circulating that maybe there was more of a financial aspect to all of this. I don't know. There there aren't a whole lot of details on this, but I wanted to mention it because we don't often see millionaires conducting arson attacks at supernized venues. Breaking out into the regions for this week. I wanted to start with Washington DC because we actually have some very good news this week. Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf is doing much better during his recovery process after he was shot uh during that terrorist attack in DC a few weeks ago. In the update provided by his family and the hospital, he is now breathing on his own and he can even stand up uh which is fantastic to hear. So, good progress is being made and I'm sure prayers are very much encouraged all around. Moving up to New York, the stabbing attack conducted at Macy's the other day did not receive a whole lot of media attention, so I wanted to mention it again because it gives us a lot of information for our own riskmanagement thought processes. Details on the incident are hard to come by, but the general story is that the victim entered the restroom on the seventh floor of Macy's to change her infant's diaper as the family was out shopping during the holiday season. At that point, the attacker identified as Carrie Erin was also located in the restroom and randomly started stabbing the victim in the back. Um, from there, a state of pandemonium broke out and the victim's husband entered the restroom to engage the attacker. At this point, the stories diverge somewhat. Some sources still say that the attacker was kind of pinned down and held there uh until authorities arrived. Others state that she was able to actually escape and get away before being detained by security. So, those details have yet to be ironed out right now. But regarding the motive for the attack, right now it looks like they're going for an insanity defense. Uh, all of the mainstream media articles that have mentioned this case have stated that the attacker was released from a psych ward on the morning of the attack and that the voices in her head told her to do it because of course they did. Uh, personally, I'm not convinced that's what happened. And I think that I think we need a lot more information. Obviously, since it was in a restroom, there's not going to be any kind of security camera footage of the attack. But maybe, I don't know, maybe outside the restroom, maybe there might be some security camera footage that can help us kind of glean some information on what's actually going on with this one. Uh, it's hard to say just based off the information that we have been given so far. More generally, it is very true that a huge chunk of society has very crippling mental health problems nowadays. But something about this one makes me think that there's something else a foot here. Maybe there's some other detail that we we don't understand. And I don't know, either way, I'll keep my eye on it and see what comes out when the court documents drop in a few weeks. But more broadly, this attack does highlight the importance of readiness, right? Like we were talking about last week, you know, on the one hand, we we really shouldn't have to live our lives in a constant state of concern that we might be stabbed randomly at any moment. Like that's a that's a really unfortunate way to live. But it does not hurt to be a little bit more aware of one's surroundings, even when in environments and situations where we're not typically expecting an attack. In this case, I can't blame the victim at all. Nor can I say she did anything wrong. I mean, this was truly a random attempted murder that just came completely out of nowhere. So, from a planning perspective, this is one of those things that you can't really plan for at all. And when it comes to managing the risk of something like this, really, the only thing that can be done is one to be prepared to fight and to carry medical supplies to mitigate the aftermath of a stabbing like this. So, generally, we try to be a little bit more proactive, right, to stop attacks before they occur. But in situations like this where somebody just randomly goes insane in most cases the most that you can do is just be reactionary. But yeah, that's it's just a rough situation all around. But that's why we prepare, right? We want to mitigate the things that we can't explicitly prepare for sometimes. So that's probably the key takeaway from this incident. Moving over to the Midwestern region out in Illinois this week, a bit of controversy has erupted following an ICE raid that took place on the outskirts of Chicago a few days ago. This was a fairly standard ICE raid targeting a low-level TDA commander or shot caller for the area. But the reason for the controversy is that this raid was leaked ahead of time. So when ICE agents showed up to arrest this guy, somehow demonstrators knew that ICE was going to be in the general area. They didn't know that that this guy was specifically sought, but they knew what block that ICE was going to. So they were already there when ICE agents tried to uh conduct the raid. So this kind of pointed out that these demonstrators were a lot quicker on the scene than they normally are. They were a lot more organized than they normally were. So they kind of tipped their hand a little bit and revealed that they had prior knowledge of this uh raid being planned. So yesterday Tom Hman stated that they think that these leaks are coming from within the FBI. This not only confirms the fact that there are leaks. Uh this has been a thing that has been growing uh over the past few weeks. ICE shows up to an area and suspiciously everybody already knows where they're going to be, right? So, that's kind of a pretty big indicator of leaks uh being quite rampant. But now officially Tom Hman has pointed the finger at the FBI, which honestly sounds about right. But either way, this inter agency fighting has become a lot more public over the past few days, which is it's kind of complicated this whole immigration situation somewhat. But again, not surprising in the slightest considering how the FBI uh runs things, but still something to be aware of. Moving down to North Carolina, there are two incidents of note that have been subject to extreme media manipulation this week. First up is an update to the Blue Lion stabbing incident in Charlotte from a couple of weeks ago. So right after this stabbing attack came to light and the names of the individuals involved became publicized. The main victim in this case, a guy who was stabbed quite severely, Kenyan Dobby, he was lauded as a hero for stopping the attack because, you know, he intervened, stopped the the illegal immigrant from Honduras from bothering and harassing people on the train there and in the process got stabbed himself. So So as you might expect, the local media put him up on a pedestal and tried to say he's a hero, good Samaritan, all that kind of stuff. But it turns out the situation is a little bit more complicated because after he conducted these media interviews and his face was on television, he was promptly arrested as soon as he was cleared from the hospital because he had active warrants out for his arrest. And they weren't just any warrants. Uh he was actually wanted on many counts for beating his pregnant girlfriend so severely that she was put in the ICU with skull fractures. So this one's a little bit of a wash, it seems. But the other incident that occurred this week, which was worthy of of coverage because of the media manipulation on it, is the stabbing attack that took place at Foresight High School, which was a pretty standard high school uh bathroom stabbing. These things have become quite common in many areas. In some places, it's just a daily occurrence. But this one was kind of interesting because in this case, the attacker was identified as Cameron Graham, and he attempted to stab another student to death over a marijuana or THC vape pin in a restroom at the school. So again, very common uh kind of dispute in public schools these days. But in the ensuing Frey, the attacker himself was stabbed by his own knife and he bled out in the bathrooms. So this is important to remember because all of the media reports have tried to paint this guy as the victim. They've actually used that word quite a bit, victim, right? When in reality, he accidentally stabbed himself while he was trying to murder somebody else. this whole argument of, "Oh, he was such a sweet but troubled boy that the media is trying to portray. Yeah, that's that's just not true, right? That that act is not going to cut it. You don't get to call yourself a victim if you try to murder somebody and you are so stupid that you end up stabbing yourself." In classic fashion, the media is also using very, very young school photos of the attacker, trying to make him seem like he's just just this innocent victim in all of this, when in reality, he was the aggressor. So when you Google this guy's name and you look at all the local news media reports, remember he started it. He tried to stab somebody to death and he ended up getting killed in the process. So something else to be aware of is that local authorities have decided to not file any charges in this case because obviously the kid he was tried to murder, turn the knife back around on him. And there the local uh local authorities are just basically calling this one uh even I suppose. But that doesn't seem to matter too much because the family of the attacker, right? The family of the attacker has announced that they're going to be suing the other kids involved in the fight because of course they are. So fairly standard, right? Their kid tries to murder somebody in the bathroom, but gets killed in the process and they're launching a lawsuit over that. So this is completely unsurprising. We all know how this goes, but it's just something to be aware of. So moving down to Georgia for just a brief moment. I wanted to touch on the acid attack that took place in Foresight Park in Savannah a couple of days ago. At the moment, I don't have hardly any information on this at all, so I expect to have a lot more details on Monday. But right now, the short overview of the story is that a woman was walking down the street after work trying to go home for the day. Random black guy comes up behind her and pours acid on her. She gets very horrifically burned over a good chunk of her uh head and torso area. And the black guy gets away. local authorities put out a very blurry and lowresolution photograph of the suspect or who they think the suspect is, but in classic fashion, that's basically all they've put out. So, the authorities are not exactly interested in finding this guy, it seems. Uh, which is pretty standard for Georgia. We all know how it goes. It's infuriating. I get it. But, this is just a continuation of the the same kinds of attacks that have been taking place over the past few, honestly, decades. But, but anyway, the guy is still on the loose. Hopefully, maybe we can pressure the Savannah police authorities to release some more information about this guy. Maybe get a slightly higher resolution photo of him. He was clearly captured on security cameras. He was clearly walking down the street uh in the security camera. So, he presumably walked into another camera that maybe got him a little bit more clearly. I don't know. He's wearing a Bugs Bunny hoodie is what it looks like. And it's a very uh poor quality photo. So, that's something to go off of, right? it would be very easy to spot somebody like that walking from one uh camera footprint to another field of view. So either way, hopefully we can get some more clarity on this because this kind of thing is just unacceptable and we've got to be we've got to be a little bit more vigilant with stuff like this. So I expect to have more information on Monday. Hopefully we can catch this guy and uh stop these kinds of attacks from happening. But it's going to take one at a time, right? Because this is a very gargantuan task for many different reasons. And speaking of other significant efforts, let's move over to Western Europe for today and to talk about the various vandalism incidents that continue to be reported at Christmas events and markets around Europe. I have put all of these on the the tracking maps. So, for those of you who want to use my ArcGIS maps, of course, the links are in the video description of every video. I update these maps. It's a gargantuan effort, but I do it because I think it's important. And uh this this time of year, unfortunately, we have a lot of attacks that take place at Christmas type events or churches in general. So in the United Kingdom, a World War I memorial tree, which was uh decorated for Christmas, was cut down with a chainsaw. And as of this morning, I saw that at least one suspect has been arrested in that case. And one other suspect, so a total of two people are being investigated for this crime. So the names and the photos of these suspects have not been released, which is highly interesting. Usually in the UK when they don't release the name or the photo of the suspect that's been arrested, we tend to have a pretty good idea of who did it. Um, but either way, we're just going to have to wait and see. But either way, they've stated that the suspect is a 26-year-old male uh who is suspected of cutting down that tree. So, once again, we'll follow up once we have a picture of the guy, but may or may not happen anytime soon. We'll have to see. Over in Germany, there have been several incidents this week. Uh, a living nativity scene was desecrated and two donkeys uh named Max and Lily were abused by their attackers in Airb. Max and Lily are doing okay now. They've been removed back to their farm uh to recover from the attack. But this was a pretty kinetic event because uh the attackers not only did they destroy parts of the nativity and hurt the animals, but they also broke into the church uh just a short distance to the north of the Christmas market and they caused a bunch of damage there as well and desecrated the place and just caused general mayhem. Right. No description of the attackers, but again, I think it's probably the usual suspects at this point. With regards to these two cases, both the the United Kingdom Christmas tree cutting and the airbach attack in Germany. In both of these cases, the vandalism, the desecration acts, uh these were not just random events. The attackers did not just show up, cause damage, and leave. They were actually on scene for quite a while and had been causing problems throughout the day of the attacks. So, from a threat detection perspective, these could have been stopped ahead of time. Like, it was very easy to stop these sorts of things. the attacker showed up, started acting foolishly, started tampering with things and messing around with stuff and nobody called them on it. So, they escalated it, right? That's exactly what happened in both of these cases. So, it would have been very easy to arrest these guys beforehand and, you know, stop these actions from taking place. And interestingly, no surveillance footage has been provided of any of these attacks, even though they took place like right in the most heavily populated parts of a town square. So, very, very interesting. Very, very interesting indeed. more generally throughout Europe at large, if we're not talking specific acts of vandalism and specific attacks and property damage, there have been a lot of uh pro Palestine events. So, the pro Palestine activists, they're not really doing themselves any favors this season uh because they've taken to targeting Christianity first and foremost, but we all know how that goes, I guess. Uh so, Christmas markets in Brussels have been hit with graffiti and mass protests have been conducted pretty much all over the continent. uh mostly in Austria was probably the biggest one because Austria has a very very legendary uh Christmas market in Vienna. Very big arrangement there in Vienna. They love Christmas markets there. And uh on the day of the opening of that, the Palestinians decided to protest it. So kind of interesting. I think they're tipping their hand a little bit with that uh to show that it's not really so much about the Palestinian movement as it is about uh Islamic domination of a Christmas event because even in Palestine, even in Gaza, there are a lot of Christmas celebrations because there's a pretty good uh sizable Christian community there. So, so interesting that these things are happening in Europe. But either way, there's no real way to sugarcoat this sort of thing. It's going to continue to happen throughout the Christmas season. And really, this is just this is not really a political thing so much as it is a a domination thing. It's uh really an attempt to dominate and harass Christians during their main holiday season uh throughout Europe. And that's just kind of the way that it is. Again, not surprising in the slightest. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time now. So, we're just kind of acknowledging that these things are occurring. It's also not something that we can do a whole lot about right now. But it does remind us to be vigilant, be aware, be prepared, do the best you can and be as safe as you can when you're out conducting festivity operations and holiday cheer shaping initiatives. It'll be okay. They're not going to win in the end. But until then, keep your head on a swivel and be as prepared as you can because you never know when you're going to be called on to be the first responder to something. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's roll it up with the intercepted ghost net reports for this week. I don't know if it's more people uh engaging in the net itself or if it's more people transmitting more often than nor than they normally do, but a lot of traffic this week, which is great to see. I even saw a few people sending long form reports on turbo mode, which the range isn't as great with turbo mode on JS8 call, but it means that you can send sometimes pages of text, right? It's it's still going to take a long time, but I saw a lot of people sending longer form reports than normal for this uh for this sort of thing. Normally messages are pretty short. Maybe a paragraph at at tops, you know, usually maybe a sentence or two per transmission, but people experimenting around trying to see if they can send some longer form reports, which is pretty cool to see. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Uh, thank you guys for sticking with me. Really do appreciate it. Thank you again to those of you on Patreon. I really could not do any of this without you guys' support. You guys know how the internet's doing these days. The algorithms are going crazy. Everything's going crazy. But I really do appreciate the support anyway because uh throughout this crazy world, I think that we have a lot of opportunities to do some good stuff. So, we'll continue to do that as best we can and we'll see you next week. So, thanks again for watching and don't forget, fight in the shade.

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