Intel Update · 2026-05-23
Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the intel update for May 17th through the 23rd, 2026. It's been a very busy week as usual, so let's get right to it. This week, the flash points from last week continue to build on all fronts. Here at home, domestic crime and general public foolishness has frequently transitioned into a state of civil unrest in some areas, such as the more visible cases in New Jersey. Similarly, riot season is in full bloom this year within the homeland with many major US cities being host to pop-up parties or other similar rioting just for the sake of rioting. Around our hemisphere, the potential for some kind of entanglement in Cuba continues as the rhetoric has been dialed up on that front with American military forces being staged within the Caribbean once again. Overseas, our friends in the United Kingdom have had a rough week when it comes to the details coming out regarding the Henry Doak murder trial, which appears to be another watershed moment for the UK and their two-tier policing system. Around the world, industrial accidents continue to strike petroleum refineries as the global energy crisis continues with no end in sight. In the Middle East, tensions are growing once again as rhetoric from Washington indicates that the United States is interested in reuniting the war once again in an attempt to break Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, in Africa, an Ebola outbreak has been announced in the Congo and hantavirus cases continue to be reported around the world as the previous cruise ship situation has not yet been resolved. All in all, a very busy week once again. A lot of things up in the air and not a whole lot of resolution on many fronts. Moving to strategic movement for this week, there are two main theaters of war that are worth keeping an eye on. Firstly is of course the Middle East where American resupply operations have been conducted as best they can during the ceasefire. All assets and resources are already on station in the Middle East with the exception of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, which is still in the Atlantic somewhere. Depending on when she departed and how fast she is going, it could take a while before she's on station. I know a lot of people are speculating that the war in Iran is scheduled to to again to weekend because there have been some very interesting cases where President Trump has canceled a few functions and rushed back to the White House to be in Washington, you know, just in case national security needs take precedence, which most people seem to think is code word for yeah, we're going to strike Iran again. And especially considering President Trump also said that we are going to strike Iran this weekend. He said that a few days ago. So, this may indeed happen either tonight before this brief comes out or Sunday night or Monday night, who knows? It could happen any day now or it could never happen. We just don't know, so a lot of this is going to be guesswork. But if they are going to reignite the war, they're going to be launching it again without the Eisenhower being on station to protect Israel with missile defenses, which is probably going to be her primary mission if she was supposed to replace the Ford. The scheduling and mission set for a lot of these carrier strike groups is thrown all out of whack because this war has required three carrier strike groups when normally we have only one in the Middle East. So, saying exactly which ones are replacing who is sometimes quite challenging and we don't exactly know what the mission is going to be. If the Ike is replacing the Ford, then she's probably going to be on station in the Mediterranean Sea in the Eastern Med just off the coast of Israel. But if she's supposed to transit Suez and go south into the Red Sea, then that might take a couple extra days. There has been some concern with potential attacks or terrorism or something like that within the Suez Canal because it is again a choke point and a carrier is pretty much a sitting duck when transiting the canal, which is why the Bush carrier strike group when she arrived on station, she actually went around the long way around the continent of Africa. So, the Eisenhower, if she is indeed intended for CENTCOM and she is indeed headed for the Med, she's probably going to stay in the Med. But again, this is really conjecture and just kind of guesswork, but it's still quite handy to know where a lot of strategic assets are located. And right now there are a lot of assets in the Middle East ready to continue the fight if that is the chosen course of action. A little bit closer to home, another potential conflict is brewing, Cuba. And we can see this with the strategic movement once once So, 2 days ago the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Caribbean, taking up station somewhere off the coast of Cuba. This is why it's worth being aware of what high-level strategic military movements are being made, because if we remember, the US parked an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela about 4 months before that operation came to a head. I'm sure many of you were quite annoyed with me for many months talking about how there's an aircraft carrier down there off the coast of Venezuela, but that annoyance actually paid off because we actually did end up launching a little miniature war. Thankfully, it did not come to a full-blown war, and it was really more just a pre-planned raid, but still, that aircraft carrier was an indication. So, this is important in the context of Cuba because right now, basically no one thinks that military action is on the table. No one is seriously considering that the United States might actually engage in some kind of military operation in Cuba. That is not really on anybody's radar, even theoretically. Most consensus seems to conclude that all of this Cuba talk is just talk, and it's really just to satisfy one of President Trump's remaining support bases, the Cuban-American voting block. There is a substantial Cuban presence in Florida, so maybe this is more political rhetoric than anything else to secure votes. I don't know. However, moving an aircraft carrier is not something that is traditionally done on a whim, and based on his term so far, every single time President Trump has moved an aircraft carrier somewhere, he has used it. Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc. And since Cuba is 90 mi off the coast of Florida, there will be no observable staging of forces like we see around the world. For instance, we knew Venezuela and Iran were about to pop off almost down to the day because the whole world could clearly see the build-up at forward staging areas. However, in the case of Cuba, every potential target within Cuba is well within range of bases in southern Florida. The combat radius of the standard CH-47 Chinook is about 200 mi, and the MH-6 Little Bird is about 100 mi, so they may need to use the carrier to stage from for whatever they have planned if they have anything planned in Cuba, but at the very very wave top level if the US wanted to launch a some kind of operation in Cuba, there is little chance that we would know about it beforehand unlike the two previous wars we've started this year. So, on the more strategic level, we are working with a total of five active fronts around the world right now that the United States is involved in in some form or fashion and two additional potential fronts that might open up at some point. The United States is involved in the war in Ukraine, the Gulf War, and of course the war on narcotics trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The US is also somewhat involved in a loose collection of conflicts and civil wars underway in West Africa, and American air strikes in Somalia have been regular and routine for many years now. In addition to these active combat operations, two additional theaters are on the menu, Cuba and of course Taiwan at some point. There hasn't really been any update on either one of these. I'm just giving you the early indications and warnings to keep an eye on Cuba and Taiwan. There's very much debate about both of these locations and what might happen, and it's of course possible that neither of these make the transition to a more active front, but these are the conflicts that could potentially become hot later on. And speaking of the heat here in the homeland, riot season has begun to spread throughout many American cities and suburbs. This is no surprise to anyone who can read between the lines, but this week has witnessed a sharp increase in riots, street takeovers, and general foolishness being undertaken in the streets. Right up front, all of the incidents that have been observed in the headlines this week are not the result of anything specific. This is purely just due to cultural reasons. Most of the mainstream media are calling these incidents teen takeovers, but these are almost always attended by full-grown adults, and the media is just trying to find euphemisms to avoid pointing out the obvious. This week, there have been four high-profile takeover-style events which have occurred in areas not traditionally host to this type of activity. Places like Chicago, Detroit, and the like are generally witness to half a dozen street takeovers every single night, So, it's hard to keep track of them because they just happen so often in these cities, but this week more traditionally upper scale neighborhoods have observed the various exhibitions of churlish behavior such as in Long Branch, New Jersey and also in Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island. Two locations which were at one point staples of wholesome Americana, but lately the neighborhood has gone downhill for obvious reasons. As a result of this rash of takeover events, many towns throughout New England have quietly slipped into full-blown deployment mode with curfews popping up and being enforced with a heavy hand in an attempted to keep the situation from deteriorating into chaos. So, if you are in New England, particularly along the coast, be advised that you will probably see an extremely overwhelming police presence in most public venues, particularly at beaches, over the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of money in the tourism industry up there in the summertime and local towns know that all it takes is one viral video of dudes dancing on top of cars for people to avoid their town this summer. So, spicy times, keep your head on a swivel, be aware of when these crowds start showing up at places and just just be aware. Across the pond, things aren't much better and societal tensions continue to get worse by the day. Just as a bit of an administrative note, the situation has become too chaotic for me to track personally. It's just too big at this point. I try to cover the high-profile crimes and very big incidents that might result in spicy situations, but right now there is literally a groundbreaking major case nearly every single hour in the UK. There are assaults, murders, mutilations, and child trafficking incidents every single hour and I just cannot keep up with all of it. It has literally gotten that bad. Even this week, the murder trial of Henry Nowak is not even the biggest scandal to take place today. Last night, there was a mass stabbing involving six victims in London and there's also another mass rape trial which involves a group of Pakistani men getting very light sentences for the assault and abuse of children. There are around a dozen or so more incidents that I don't have time to get into including a knife-wielding man causing chaos inside a Morrison supermarket, a stabbing attack resulting from a gang initiation, and a handful of other crimes so bad that I can't even give you the approximate details in mixed company. So, suffice it to say it's mass hysteria. Well, maybe not that far, but still quite busy in the United Kingdom. There are many stabbing attacks every day. There are many assaults every single day and it's really hard to pinpoint down where these are taking place for one because a lot of the time, well, not a lot of the time, most of the time the British media has been ordered by the British government to censor this kind of thing. So, we're fighting a losing battle when it comes to the information space on a lot of these assaults and really, really horrific crimes because we just can't figure out that they occur until years later in some cases like the Henry Noak trial. In terms of preparing for what comes next, the United Kingdom is still in the early phases, but some elements might be transitioning to a more active approach to handling this sheer volume of horrific crime. Vigilantism is quite literally the only thing the British people have in some cases at this point, which is unfortunate to realize, but this is the reality of what happens next. In some cases, not all, but some, every option for a peaceful solution has been exhausted. And in some cases there really is no option left. This of course varies case by case, but many British people are finding that out and it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And more than that, the British government seems to be rather oblivious about what happens when the average Englishman gets backed into a corner. So, suffice it to say a mass uprising throughout the UK is very unlikely at the moment at least, but there are increasing numbers of fighting age males who are siding with their countrymen to make the attempt to take back their country from the foreign invaders that have been brought into the British homeland, especially the ones which are just absolutely inconceivably violent. Again, many of you have heard this before, so I won't dwell on it too much, but the situation is quite serious and we may start to see the the early indications of of more organized attempts to handle the situation. I'll just put it that way. So, it ain't over till it's over and as bleak as the situation looks for the Anglo population of Western Europe and by extension the United States as well, there are ways of handling these problems. And I'll just leave it at that for now and I'll continue monitoring the situation in the United Kingdom to see how our brothers across the sea can get by even when the situation gets tough. I'm confident they can handle it uh one way or the other, but it's going to be a long and hard road to get there. So, speaking of tough situations, the crisis in the Middle East continues to make life interesting for most of the planet as the energy crisis continues to grow by the day. Rumors have been flying out of Washington nearly every day this week regarding President Trump being inclined to restart the war, perhaps under a different name to avoid congressional approval, but nevertheless the war rhetoric has been ratcheted up once again. On the tactical front, if the conflict is to begin once more, the Iranians have been very clear about what their targets will be, which mostly comprises of desalination plants and oil refineries. The Iranians have also managed to resupply and build more drones and missiles during the ceasefire. This is all conjecture because there's no real way to know for sure, but some estimates are saying that the Iranians might have replaced a substantial number of missiles and drones to the point that they have largely recovered from whatever supply they depleted during the opening days of the war. Of course, the raw material production capacity, like their ability to make steel and aluminum, within Iran took a huge hit because the United States and Israel completely destroyed or severely damaged many, if not most, of the factories around the country. However, the most important industry for Iran right now is the defense industry and they have been working overtime since the bombs started falling to sprint towards replacing their stockpiles of missiles and drones. How many they have at this moment is anyone's guess, but going off of everything that's happened so far during this war, the United States has done nothing but underestimate the Iranians at literally every single step, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. So, as much as the Pentagon likes to look down on the Iranians, there is not one single aspect of how they have fought the war so far where the Iranians have underperformed. They have been punching above their weight to this entire time. The Iranians certainly and undoubtedly control the Strait of Hormuz, and they project enough influence over the Persian Gulf to keep everybody's head down indefinitely. So, even though technically the Iranians are under-matched in their fight against the United States, technically speaking, as long as the United States keeps fighting the war in the same way, the Iranians will continue to have, if not dominance, that might not be the right word, but they're going to have enough control over a small area to cause a lot of problems essentially indefinitely. But, once again, in time-honored tradition, we will have to see what happens. Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is an interesting position to take, but it's also what happens when American leadership is painted into a corner, which is exactly what's happened. And as far as the Israelis are concerned, this is exactly what they were going for. In the world of grand military strategy, many famous military leaders throughout history have been noted for leaving their options open until the very last minute, which allowed them to have flexibility for as long as possible. For better or for worse, this is the complete opposite of President Trump's personality, as he favors a completely different doctrine. He favors decisive and bold moves in nearly every aspect of his administration. Which is a respectable strategy in business, I guess, but when it comes to warfare, he was by far the most susceptible to this kind of trap. Even for people who wanted to engage in this war, even for the war hawks, even for the military strategists who have been looking to fight a war with their own for decades now, the way that this has come about has been less than ideal because it's left a lot of people with a lot less options than they thought they were going to have when such a war were to break out. During the opening salvos to this war, President Trump killed the Ayatollah, which limited his options right out of the gate. And this got messy very, very quickly. If he had not killed the Ayatollah and to most of the military leadership, I have no doubt that a peace deal would have already been signed. We would already be done with this war. But because the United States killed most of the moderates on the first day of the war, the hardliners are now holding out within Iran and taking the position of making this incredibly painful for the United States. So, the exact opposite of what President Trump has said is actually what happened. We did not kill the hardliners on that first day, and now we're dealing with a more amiable regime. Actually, it's quite the opposite. We killed the moderates first, and now the options are limited for getting out of this because the IRGC leadership has basically taken a position of bring it on. Anyone who has ever cracked a military history textbook could see this coming a mile away because this is essentially a very loose correlation with how World War I began. I'm not saying this is going to be a world war again, although you could argue that World War III has already begun in many other ways. But when it comes to the Iran situation itself, it's quite interesting because it turns out that one of the reasons why World War I began and transitioned from a series of smaller wars into one, you know, large conflagration throughout Europe and even Western Asia before transitioning around the world is that a lot of key leaders and key decisions were forced or were not made. For instance, we cite a lot of times the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as being one of the catalyst for the beginning of World War I. Well, why is that? Why was his assassination so important? Franz Ferdinand's assassination was so critical and so important because he was one of the last dissenting voices, one of the last big voices, that urged the Austria-Hungary Empire to not go to war with Serbia, when thus kick off the war. When he was assassinated, he could not oppose to the war anymore, and so it was on, essentially. This is the short version of it. Same thing happened in Turkey with Enver Pasha. Again, the critical people who were trying to force a war ended up forcing a war. So, we see the same kind of mentality today in Iran, and this has been a very strategic nightmare to manage because the senior political echelons of the United States have made decisions, they have done things, they've committed targeting actions on the battlefield, but also in the political realm that have resulted in having few options later on. So, right now, we're stuck. President Trump has neither a political solution nor a military solution, which is just what the Israelis wanted. And the few allies that we have left are pivoting to China or, in some cases, even Russia. All the while, our strategic petroleum reserve is being drained to sell to Europe to keep global fuel prices low. What's quite interesting about this conflict is that we don't have to wait 100 years to look back uh in retrospect and say, "Oh gosh, now we know what what what started the war." No, we actually know right now. Uh it's quite clear. So, we at least have that going for us. But, in terms of a solution, I really don't know what the US intends to do at this point. There are, indeed, about half a dozen different solutions that would 100% work to end the conflict, but the hard part is getting the ego and foreign influence out of the ear of military decision-makers long enough to actually let them see the light and end this on positive terms. Personally, I think that we're absolutely dealing with a Truman Show situation where President Trump is personally being sequestered from the truth of the military situation on the ground, which is why there's such a huge disconnect between reality and what the White House is saying these days. And breaking this spell is really the only barrier to getting sub $2 gas again, at least within a couple of years. This is most certainly not an apocalyptic all is lost situation. We can get out of this. There are solutions to end this. It just requires our political leadership to get us out of this. I did not declare war on Iran, so I cannot step forward and end the war, right? That's not how this works. Foreign conflicts, foreign wars are squarely in the realm of the executive branch and Congress, but Congress has, you know, shirked their duty on this. So, uh this is now the executive branch's job and because of that, we have to kind of rely on them. This is not something that we can do ourselves or even help with. So, we're kind of at the mercy of the White House when it comes to this war. And they've proven time and time again they're not interested in listening to us. So, that's what makes this hard. That's why we have to kind of prepare for things that are outside of our control. And if the United States goes back to war and the Iranians dutifully respond by blowing up even more petroleum infrastructure, we're probably going to hit that $200 per barrel milestone mostly for zero military gain. So, quite the cliffhanger we end on this week. The stakes are high and potential for another round of war is on the horizon once again. Not only are we not out of this conflict, but we are probably farther away from a peace deal today than we ever have been. This can, of course, be turned around on a single tweet, on a single email. That's all it takes to end this and then we can move on. But right now, we are still in a state of war and seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend, we have the 13 service members who lost their lives while fighting this war. Captain Cody Cork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole LaTour, Sergeant Decklin Cody, Major Jeffrey O'Brien, Chief Warrant Officer Three Robert Marzahn, Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, Technical Sergeant Tyler Simmons, Captain Curtis Angst, Captain Seth Kowal, Technical Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, Captain Ariana Savino, and Major John Kleiner. All of these service members were killed in action during the height of the conflict. I just wanted to take a moment to remember that this war has not just blown up pipelines in the Middle East and dropped a bunch of bombs on caves. It's also torn apart American families here at home. We should do well to remember that and hope and pray that these are the last lives lost and that a peaceful end to this nightmare can come about soon. The solutions are there. We can end this. We can walk away, admit our mistakes, and move forward. But until then, we can remember the lives lost and pray that there are no more. And with that, let's finish up today with the Intercepted Ghost Net reports. Surprisingly, this week's Thursday radio night check-in was absolutely packed with people, which was awesome to see. I guess the holiday weekend gave some people enough time to work on radio stuff, which is fantastic. I know I myself struggle a lot of time to finish up work early enough to hop on the net myself, but anyway, I saw a lot of new people testing things out, trying new antennas, new rigs, all kinds of stuff, and participating in the Ghost Net for the first time. So, that was really great. Learning new things, keeping skills sharp, and maintaining lines of communication when all other means fail is quite a useful skill to have. We want to be problem solvers, not problem creators, and trying to have more situational awareness even in a grid-down or a more censored location, this is going to be very helpful in the long run. So, that's all I have for today. Thanks for sticking with me, and as usual, all of my research notes and geospatial products can be found at the links below. And for those of you who are looking to be a little bit more prepared during this weekend of potential interesting times, you can download KMZ files of all of my mapping products so that you can have a better picture of your local area just in case you need it. So, for those of you nerds out there running A-Tac or CalTopo or some other kind of geospatial app, I've got plenty of KMZ files that you can load in for free as needed, so it's all there. All of this work could not be possible without those of you who support my endeavors on Patreon, so I cannot thank you guys enough, and I hope that the products that I'm building are useful, if not for now in some cases, then maybe for later on. We'll see. If nothing else, more tutorials are coming down the line, and I think that'll be pretty handy and maybe helpful for many others to have options and capabilities, especially while working through these strange and interesting times in which we live. So, thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.
Intel Update
Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for June 14th through the 20th, 2026. It's been quite a busy roller coaster of a week, so let's get right to it. Of course, the main focus this week has been the signing of the memorandum of understanding to start the process for ending the war in the Middle East. Are we getting back to normal? Is this insanity over? Well, not quite, because the subsequent and immediate escalation of the war in Lebanon, while the least surprising development in human history, still has complicated the situation and as of this morning, the fighting in Lebanon continues as the IDF remains on the offensive. Over in the first world, there have been several developments to be aware of throughout Europe and also here in the homeland. In the United Kingdom, barely an hour has passed without a ground-breaking and horrific story coming to light and in the United States, the domestic threats at the national level are elevated due to events in the Middle East, but we'll get to that in just a moment. In the United Kingdom this week, our friends across the pond have been dealing with quite a lot. In Northern Ireland, the unrest has continued with limited riots popping up randomly in Belfast over the past week. More peaceful protests have also taken place fairly regularly throughout the city, even though media coverage has been fairly minimal. Overall in the mainland proper, the bombshell news this week has been the release of the rape gang inquiry report, the privately funded effort to use parliamentary access to investigate the official documents on the rape gang crisis in the United Kingdom. If you are so inclined, you can read the report yourself. I will link to it below, but I will sharply warn you that it will probably be the worst thing you have ever read in your life, full stop. I myself have spent a couple of years coming through the Epstein files to find actionable intelligence and the absolute worst things in the Epstein file are not as bad as the least bad survivor testimony in this report. It is that bad. 250,000 British girls were raped and tortured over the past few decades with the assistance of government who not just covered it up, but actively directed and organized the rape gangs themselves. Since most of the victims had dozens, if not hundreds of perpetrators, we're looking at potentially millions of people that need to be handled. You can look at the appendix and look at the sourcing materials where all of these references are made and they are backed up with other sources. A lot of the testimony in the report is actually from people who are remaining hidden due to the British government prosecuting people who come forward as a victim. So you come forward as a victim, say "Hey, I'm a victim of a rape gang." And guess what? You get thrown in prison. So they're trying to cover it up because the people running the rape gangs are still in power. For us here in the US, if you have the stomach for it, the parts of the report that are not just a record of the atrocity are quite informative because a good chunk of the report details how and why this came to be, and the appendix is handy for name-dropping the entities that were involved in the scandal. Now, I would expect much more detail to come to light now that the true scale of this crisis is known. I would be willing to bet that a lot more people are going to come forward and a lot of whistleblowers are probably going to come forward as well who know exactly where the documents are stored. So there's probably going to be quite a few more reports written. And it's going to be important for us Americans to understand our connection to all of this as well. There is absolutely zero way that a scandal this big is just confined to the United Kingdom when the US and the UK are so heavily intertwined on pretty much everything including culture, banking, powerful people, all of that stuff. That is something to be aware of, right? We are very heavily intertwined with the UK and when they have something this damning coming out of their country, it does affect us as well because it's we're probably implicated in it somehow. In this case, most of the scandal in the UK is confined to mostly enclaves of multiple generations of migrants. And the report specifically states that up to 95% of the perpetrators were Pakistani. Here in the US, we have similar problems, albeit with our own national flavor. So over the next few weeks, it will be important to keep these issues at the forefront of memory because these kinds of issues are what undermines civilization itself. When we allow crimes of this scale into our society, it makes everything worse and erodes away at our very being. Witnessing how the British handle this over the next few years will be helpful for us because if we can't protect the innocent from foreign invaders from within our own borders, then what's the point of having a nation-state anyway? It may sound harsh, but deportation is really in the best interest of these people because everyone who reads this report will no longer be in favor of mass deportations, if you know what I mean. So, it would be wise for those engaging in this behavior to depart the United Kingdom and the United States while you still can. Here on the home front, there have been a few items of note this week, which I have not had much time to dig into. The most substantial of which is the alleged plot to target the UFC event on the White House lawn last weekend. According to the criminal complaint released by the DOJ, this was an effort by five men to use drones and explosives to target the UFC event at the White House, which would prompt an evacuation of the venue, and the would-be terrorists would conduct sniper attacks on the crowd leaving the White House grounds. These individuals were arrested before they were able to carry out their plans, and the FBI announced their great success early this week. Now, the headlines make this seem like a pretty substantial attack, but digging into the details as provided again by the DOJ, it becomes clear that these guys were not exactly playing with a full deck. For one, what happens every single time that an attack takes place at the White House? They lock down. Nobody in or out. This literally happens at least once a month, and these idiots apparently did not know about the very public security measures at the White House. If they had carried out their plan, nobody would be evacuated from the White House grounds, they would have all stayed inside, and the attack would never happened. This is very easy for anyone to see. There was literally a shooting at the White House like a couple weeks ago, and that's exactly what happened. So, I don't know why these idiots didn't know that, but anyway, just to cut right to the chase, ever since I saw the evidence photos of the gear that these guys were alleged to have staged for the attack, my gut assessment was that this was either a bunch of idiots, feds, or both. I mean, even Trantifa does not have so little self-respect that they would conduct a sniper attack with a bullpup shotgun. I mean, come on, guys. This entire plan was so hairbrained that it's honestly laughable. They had planned to conduct a sniper attack from what looks like the Jefferson Memorial, which is hilarious because you can't see the White House from that side of the Tidal Basin. And even so, the area that they had circled on their map was about a mile and a half from the White House. So, these guys were completely inept. But anyway, the grand question remains, how close did they get? After all, an idiot with a rifle can still cause a lot of trouble. So, even if they actually got to DC and found out that all of their plans would not work, they could still have shot somebody. The details that the DOJ released do not indicate whether or not these guys actually traveled to Washington. They were supposed to rendezvous in Fredericksburg, but it sounds like they never made it. It looks like all of them were scattered around the country and they were picked up by the local FBI field offices. So, I don't know if these guys actually planned to travel around at all. It could have been a case of five guys having this story of, "Oh man, I wish I could make it, but I can't." and canceling all on each other at the last minute. I don't know, but the plot was actually discovered because the mother of one of the suspects found out about the plot and turned her son in. So, all in all, I don't know about this one. It's not out of the question for this to be a legitimate attempt, and the evidence provided by the DOJ indicates that the would-be assassins did indeed try to plan the attack. They planned something, even if the average paintball game is much more well thought out. Maybe it was a real thing, maybe it was just an average Redditor on the internet being edgy. I don't know. More generally, though, right now is probably one of the most risky times for domestic terror attacks for one exclusive reason: the events in the Middle East. And let me explain by recapping what has happened so far over the past few days. As we all know, 2 days ago, the memorandum of understanding was signed by both Iran and the United States going into effect immediately to solidify the ceasefire as official, but also to set in motion the planning efforts to work out the details of a more permanent peace deal. The MOU has been published to much outrage all around because even though it's written rather vaguely, the vast majority of the points favor the Iranians very heavily. Immediately after this was signed, the Israelis expanded their bombing campaign in Lebanon, and several armored columns of the IDF have continued their advance along the eastern front to push north and west deeper into Lebanon. Hezbollah has, of course, responded in kind, mostly with anti-tank guided missile, or ATGM, attacks, which are their favored targeting method in this particular region, although FPV drone attacks are starting to become more popular, as well. Yesterday morning, the Qataris announced that they had succeeded in talking the Israelis and Hezbollah into a ceasefire that was to uh take place at 4:00 p.m. local time yesterday, but of course, the Israelis just ignored that and kept shooting. As a brief aside, this is why when we say it's an Israeli-style ceasefire, that's only partially a joke, right? They literally do not believe in the concept of a ceasefire. The Israeli Channel 12 news station literally said that a ceasefire does not mean to cease firing, it means just no major advances or offensive pushes. So, to the Israelis, it's really a foreign concept because they operate on a different set of norms and mores than the rest of the world. They treat themselves differently than everyone else, to include in warfare, especially in warfare. Anyway, cut to this morning uh when the large-scale bombing of Lebanon continued. Bombs have been going off for at least 24 hours now in Lebanon, and they've been uh they've been cratering quite a lot in southern Lebanon between the Litani River and all the way up to Beirut. I'm seeing some reports of munitions hitting uh maybe that far up in some of the suburbs, but still trying to pinpoint where all these bombs are landing, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty big bombing campaign. Now, of course, uh this morning, as I am recording this right now, I see on my screen that the Iranians have announced that they have closed the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States failing to constrain Israel, which is a direct violation of paragraph one of the MOU. Maybe there's a reason why Lebanon is literally the first thing in the MOU because it's the most important thing, and it's the thing that's going to get violated probably the soonest. Well, that's exactly what's happened. Again, this is a developing story right now, so the things are probably going to change by the time I edit this and get it out the door, but this appears to be what's happening right now. The strait may or may not be closed. It's going to probably take if the Israelis keep bombing and the Iranians want to close the strait because of that, it may take several hours, may take a full day for traffic to stop transiting through the strait. I don't think the Iranians are going to hit all the vessels that are currently in the strait right now. They may, I don't know, but right now there's a few dozen ships that are trying to move as fast as they can through the waterway. So, I don't know. They're trying to apply diplomatic pressure and we'll have to see how it works out tonight, but very busy day. Things are moving pretty fast, too fast for me to cover them and then have it out the door pretty quickly. So, that's the more tactical situation as it stands right now at this snapshot in time, but at the more strategic level, there are always more complicated details to be aware of. I myself have had a rather foreboding feeling about this whole thing as it comes to a close and this week has kind of reminded us of how high the stakes are in Washington when it comes to an agreement being signed. The day after a peace agreement is signed is sometimes more dangerous than the day after the war starts. There are a lot of very powerful people that are very, very upset that this MOU has been signed granting Iran so many leniencies. And due to the rather interesting position that the United States finds herself in, anytime big moves are being made with regards to the direction the nation is heading, very mysterious and very coincidental things tend to happen, especially if one particular entity is involved. In short, the war playing out in the shadows continues on and occasionally pops above the surface for the general public to observe. One of these little shadow war items, one of these things that has the fingerprint of fifth generation warfare all over it, came from a New York Times article that was released almost 2 weeks ago, which details the internal reaction within the White House to the growing Epstein scandal last year. I have been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and I wanted to mention this because I think it's related to what's going on right now on the diplomatic front in the Middle East and it might help us get an understanding of the seriousness of what's going on behind the scenes. Again, this is just a hunch. It's not a solid evidence of anything, but it's something to consider. The article itself was a part of a PR effort to promote the upcoming book of the authors detailing and chronicling President Trump's second term, and most of the article focused on the internal discussions within the administration to handle the Epstein issue. Not a rare form of content by any means, and when it was released, it didn't really get too much press coverage because it did not really contain that much new information. And the inside scoop style content detailing internal drama, it's not necessarily something that has implications for national security. However, the importance of this article is not what's in it, but how the information for it was obtained. Some of the quotations in the article seemed a little too specific for just someone having exceptionally good memory. The article described highly sensitive meetings in the darkest corners of the White House about the mismanagement of the Epstein scandal. Meetings so small and with everyone around the table being named that the sources of certain parts can be discerned rather easily. All of this appears to be a fanciful tale at face value, but now that this article has been circulating for a couple of weeks, it's become pretty obvious as in it's more likely than not that they actually have the audio tapes to back up the claims made in this report. Of course, until the raw tapes are leaked, if they are ever leaked, this just could be conjecture to drive book sales. We have to think of that first, right? But at this point it looks like this was a massive security breach that has largely been ignored. For example, the section detailing a meeting in which Dan Bongino resigned directly quotes the conversation in such excruciating detail that there is no way that a tape of this conversation doesn't exist. And since everyone in the room at the time is listed in the article, it doesn't take too much effort to determine who had bugged the meeting. One potential read of the report could be that this is just a political hit job enabled by exceptionally well-placed sources, and that this article is nothing more than that. After all, it's mainstream media, they do hit jobs all the time, they make up stuff all the time. It could just be made up. After all, The New York Times is one of the least trustworthy entities of modern memory. But if you skip right through the standard slop sections of the article and actually read between the lines of what message is being presented, the most dark and pessimistic view of this New York Times report is that it's a shot across the bow. Possibly a warning that other tapes exist on other topics. Following that line of thinking, exactly what's going on can't possibly be known, but the timing of all of this is suspect on its own. They sat on this reporting for over a year only to leak it right now, right at the same time, again, two weeks ago when the White House was internally thinking about signing a peace deal with the Iranians. So, right during a week, the the one time where the world is undergoing profound change, they would have had to have had documents circulating within the White House of this 14-point plan. They didn't just draft it 5 minutes before the meeting with the Iranians. This document has been in circulation probably for a while, maybe about 2 weeks, maybe exactly the same age as this article that was published by the New York Times. And now suddenly everything leaks around the same time. Very interesting timing that. And on the more technical side, I think the significance of the technical surveillance effort can't really be understated either. If a spy can gain an audio recording inside the situation room when the Vice President and other key leaders are there, and they can time that recording so perfectly that someone brings a printed report into the rooms so that the spy can gauge the reaction to that news hitting the the audience there, that is something that the highest levels of nation-state level espionage could not uncover with years of hard work and getting assets in the right place. Just think about this for a second. The Soviets spent the majority of the Cold War fighting tooth and nail to get this level of access. And many spies on both sides of the conflict were tried, convicted, and executed for such endeavors. Nowadays, the gravity of what was accomplished, this technical surveillance effort, is dismissed because talking head journalists who are being fed information have expressed shocking levels of naivety. I do not know why these journalists were so stupid, and somehow they did not understand that they were in very severe danger by publishing very sensitive information. I mean, clearly they did it, and it's going to be interesting to see how this works out, but it's very interesting the timing of all of this and the implications that are made. I don't necessarily believe a lot of the quotes in terms of how they're framed. Maybe there's context missing. I don't know. I'm not really concerned about the content of the article. I, of course, being interested in the things I'm interested in, was mostly focusing on the fact that they got recordings inside the situation room, and we just kind of glossed over that over the past 2 weeks. So, you've got somebody who's controlling journalists or feeding information to journalists proving to the White House that we can get to any of your secret conversations in the very deepest, darkest basements of the White House. Also, another piece of information might be sprinkled on top of all of this to to add a little bit more context. This entire week, most of the Israeli media has been absolutely livid about this MOU being signed. But, more specific than that, Miriam Adelson's newspaper, Israel Hayom, which is a publication that she publishes herself and often writes articles for, that newspaper has been publishing articles condemning the White House in the strongest possible terms for not continuing the war. Of course, understandably, every single Israeli news outlet from the political left, right, and center, these guys are going to be seething at the United States taking concrete steps to end the war. But, in this case, this is the personal family publication of President Trump's biggest donor. And now, around the same time, almost the exact same time, in fact, The New York Times releases this excerpt from an upcoming book that heavily implies that they have audio recordings of some of the most secret White House conversations that have ever taken place. And once again, looking at the very wave top level, what are these conversations about? They're not exactly detailing the President's favorite movie. They're not exactly detailing the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. This report precisely details the biggest [ __ ] in President Trump's armor, the Epstein files. How this situation will develop is anyone's guess, but right now the stakes are palpably high and the potential for very serious things to happen is extremely great. Very strong flashing neon sign messages are being sent to the White House from a certain demographic and that's pretty concerning. Though it might be out of the news cycle now, I'm sure the right people have a very long memory and have not forgotten the Golden Patriot incident, another major message sent to the White House. And I think that that message wasn't interpreted in the way that it was intended to be sent. So, I would expect that a lot of quiet security measures are going to be in place if they're not already in place or trying to be worked up by a lot of the old hands who know ball, as the kids say these days. The idiots at the FBI, yeah, they're useless, but I would venture a guess that a lot of the older guys at varying levels of bureaucracy know the risks and understand that right now, right when a peace deal has been signed and has angered a lot of people who have a lot of deep talents in the government, this is now a very dangerous time. And I'm very concerned about and security of everybody involved in all this because I I think that that's I just get a bad feeling about it. So, now that we've got the the stage set and with all that kind of insanity and very palpable risk kind of noted, okay, duly noted, why did the United States sign this really terrible deal right now? Because let's face it, whether you support the deal or not, pretty much everybody hates it. The war hawks don't like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran. The people who don't really care about it don't really like it because it grants a lot of stuff to Iran and we fought the war for basically nothing. The people who are maybe on the fence are looking and saying, "Wait a minute, we blew all this stuff up. My gas prices went up, my grocery bill went up and all of that was for nothing just for us to pay the Iranians reparations." So, basically no one is happy with the deal. Now, that doesn't mean that we should tear up the deal and throw it away. And why did the US, knowing this, why did the US sign this deal right now of all times? Well, there are a few different reasons. I'll just run through them really quickly. First of all is oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has run its course. Uh President Trump himself has said that the US was down to only about a few weeks of oil left before we had to do something, which aligns to somewhat with what everyone has been saying for a while. We drained a lot of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve just to keep prices down, and we still could not um keep up with the demand, right? And I think it's now safe to say that the alleged secret operation to get 100 million barrels of oil out of the Gulf, which we discussed last week, I think that was probably completely fake. As much as I would like to think that the US Navy has super secret ways of handling the situation and can pull off some pretty neat tricks, the US Navy's got some pretty cool stuff they can do. Uh I still think that this was a complete fabrication and that we only smuggled a handful of ships out at best during this entire war. Even if we were secretly paying the Iranians through a third-party mediate mediator to get oil out, it still wasn't enough. In any case, uh the White House has said we're out of petroleum. They said it. So, the MOU was signed to open the strait. It might be as simple as that. And this matters because of the timing for tankers. Uh once a tanker is fully filled up with crude oil in the Persian Gulf and it starts heading toward the United States, it's only going to be moving at about 10 to 12 mph, so it takes weeks, sometimes a couple of months to actually get here once the flow of maritime traffic restarts. And again, if weather is poor, uh it can it can add a month to the to the trip. It's hard to say. Since most of these ships have been sitting still in warm water for a while, they now have a big barnacle problem. And the world it does not have enough ports to fully service a lot of these ships, so they're going to be moving pretty slow. They're going to have a lot of drag in the water. So, again, getting this crude uh flow back to normal is going to take a long time. Another reason why we may have chose to end the war right now is due to the loss of strategic assets, mostly radar sites. For all of the damage that we caused in Iran and have tried to catalog over the past quarter of a year, the Iranians have absolutely wrecked our radar sites, and we can't exactly replace them. The United States uh dropping a bomb on the door of an underground mountain complex is not comparable to the Iranians dropping a drone on a billion-dollar radar system. So, remember those sites that they hit during the early stages of the war? Yeah, those weren't even for Iran. Those were for monitoring Russian ballistic missile launches. We lost enough strategic assets to the point that we did not have as many eyes and ears as we used to in the region on that half of the planet. So, that makes it kind of hard to wage a war and continue deeper offensive options well within Iran. So, I think we lost a lot on the technical side of things. Another reason is logistics. Being forward deployed for so long creates logistical challenges that are hard to encapsulate and they're really hard to plan for before a war. A carrier strike group that has been at sea for 6 months is going to have less capability than a carrier that just arrived on station. Now, normally this effect is negligible in terms of overall combat readiness, but we have to remember that this was an over-the-horizon war. The fighting had to be conducted from such extremely long range and the unknown secondary and tertiary effects of that probably caused a lot of complications. It's a lot harder to fight a war when you can't use most of your military bases that you had put throughout the region specifically for war. But by and large, the reason that the US signed this deal is simply due to us running out of options. We really did not have any choice. This is not something that is specific to our nation. This is something every nation is going to deal with that engages in warfare because as time goes on, the options for military success are much reduced. The longer a war drags on, the less likely you are to have a favorable outcome at the end of that war. This is true going all the way back to the Peloponnesian War, right? And in this case, the nature of the target itself was never really a viable military objective. We just we just did not have the technical ability to wage war in Iran. We weren't ready yet. Now, we could have been had we made decisions 20-30 years ago and we didn't have the G watt to shape a lot of our current doctrine, but, you know, wishing doesn't make it so. Yes, we blew up a lot of stuff. We took out their steel industry. We took out a lot of their factories, we took out a pretty much every military target that was above ground in terms of factories and production and all that kind of stuff. And that's no small feat except for the fact that we're now going to give them $300 to rebuild all that stuff. So, not only did we not have good effects on target, we did not drop bombs on buildings that ended up stopping the war, but we're also going to pay for all the damage that we caused. So, you can't even say at the end of this, well, okay, you know, we may be walking away from this and it may not be super strategic the great, but hey, at least we set back the Iranians a long way in terms of their production and their and their weapons. And they're not they're not going to be a threat for a very long time. No, you can't make that argument if you're giving them hundreds of billions of dollars because we're just going to rebuild their stuff bigger and better than it ever was. And we're doing that because we have to because we have no other option. So, again, very frustrating experience, I know. I know that a lot of people are kind of upset with the way that this turned out. I'm sorry that this is the way that it turned out. It is unfortunate. It gives me no pleasure in saying these things. It really doesn't because again, my country lost a war. And I don't really like that fact. It's not pleasant. Even though I did not support the war at all, I personally thought that I I really hoped that we would win it or at least not lose as much as we have. So, there's that just for the record. But that's kind of where we're at right now. And once again, the fat lady has not sung. The the MOU may be torn up by this afternoon by the time I'm done editing this, who knows. The things things are changing by the day. All I know is that right now it seems like the US has run out of options. The Iranians, how many options they have? I don't know. It's probably not unlimited but they have more options than we do. And they have more control over the situation than we do. And since that's the case, every day that goes by and the Israelis continue their situation in in Lebanon, that's just going to make it much more costly for the United States. So, the Israelis are directly hurting the United States with their war in Lebanon because now we're having to give up. We're having to increase the number of zeros on the checks we're giving to Iran. We're going to have to sweeten the pot to get them back to the table. And all of it is just because the Israelis want to make a point of how much they control us. So, yeah, not super great. So, all of that out of the way, and uh all of the past past and present kind of covered, let's move into the future and talk about what's going to happen next. Well, we can't ever really know, uh but there are a few things that could be on the menu over the next few months, weeks, whatever, which would be good to know about. The first one is, of course, Cuba. Uh obviously, the White House is going to need a pretty big win, uh but Cuba is probably going to be re-examined after July 4th, probably once the 60-day uh ceasefire agreement thing is over. Once the United States and Iran sign a full-blown peace deal, then I think we're going to start pivoting to Cuba. Because the White House is going to need a win, and to just purely basing this off of the gut assessment of the personalities involved in all of this, it would make perfect sense. Just as kind of a way of starting over and getting some kind of military victory, some kind of trophy. Now, what that might look like, I have no earthly idea. Cuba is not Venezuela, Cuba is not Iran. Cuba is not what I would call a great military power, either. It's not something that they're going to have a whole lot of say about, but if the US wanted to occupy Cuba or something like that, even more so than we already have with Gitmo, then we probably could do that. And it's going to be uh something to look out for in the future. The next one's China. China, uh dear friends, as you probably can imagine, has been very busy, and they have been taking a lot of notes. For one, they have been able to gain a lot of valuable combat data on the systems and weapons we use, and we used a lot of developmental technologies during this war in Iran. Just as an example, we dropped land mines uh in Iran that have only been ever seen in line drawings. And now the Iranians have given us photos of what they look like, so there's that, you know, weapons technology, dud missiles, uh all the Tomahawks that didn't go off. Yeah, those are going right to Beijing, probably, or Russia. Although Russia probably already has a lot of this stuff, but also on the information warfare side of things, we released dozens of video clips uh from the official CENTCOM account, which should probably have been censored for reasons, but in any case, the Chinese noticed and have probably gained a lot of combat data from the stuff we've actually released officially. I would also be willing to bet that a few of these shoot-down incidents that we have been made aware of during this war were probably carried out by Chinese MANPADS. Just my guess, no evidence on that at all, but that's probably happened or at least some of the missiles that the Iranians have fired are probably Chinese, too. That would be my guess. That would probably be a very sensible thing for the Chinese to do because where else are you going to be able to test your missile systems against a Patriot battery, right? Then in the Middle East. I'm sure the Chinese were all up in that, right? And trying to figure out what they could do. They probably fronted a lot of those missiles for the Iranians. But, apart from the military side of things, the economic response was actually much more interesting and I I'm going to have to dig more into this too because the main reason, not the only reason, but the main reason that oil did not hit two to $300 a barrel is because China cut their imports by over 40% and they started drawing from their own strategic reserves basically as soon as the war started. And personally, I want to know why. Maybe it's purely economic for them, but this decision has been puzzling me for a couple of months and now that we know with a little more clarity that they cut imports by a lot, I want to know why. They could have easily screwed us over, but they didn't. Well, they kind of did a little bit uh because their ships were able to get through sporadically throughout the war, but still, they could have made this a lot more painful for us and I suspect it's because we've told them that they can have Taiwan. I mentioned this back during President Trump's state visit, but at that point, China had already cut imports, so maybe there was something there, I don't know. Something for me to dig into later. Maybe there isn't really a deliberate answer. Maybe it's just Maybe it's complicated. I don't know, but still, kind of interesting. China is always making plans. Some nefarious, some not so nefarious, but they are certainly making strategic moves of their own to dominate their region. Another uh region to watch over the next few weeks is is to be Turkey. Many people seem to suspect that the Israelis and Americans will pivot to Turkey as Turkey is the next big power within the Israelis sphere of influence. I'm not so sure about the Israeli pivot to Turkey just yet because I don't think they're done with Iran yet. And since Iran has come out of this affair drastically more powerful than they were at the start, I don't think the Israelis are going to want to take on Iran and Turkey at the same time. Nevertheless, Israeli politicians have already pivoted toward Turkey. They're already starting to make uh speeches in the Knesset. So, we'll see what they say. Usually, Israelis are pretty pretty open about what they want to do. Uh we just don't tend to take them very seriously, but if you just listen to what the Israelis say in their own uh Knesset, you'll be quite radicalized, I think. Uh but anyway, so Turkey is on the menu and uh finally, another thing to watch out for is the military industrial complex. This is again something I don't need to state too much uh obviously, but domestically, the military industrial complex will be in overdrive to build and sell a complete overhaul of weapons, strategic defenses, base building materials. Everything is going to be on the menu for purchase. And right on the front page of the brochure is going to be a sales tagline that basically says, "You want to avoid getting your rear end kicked in Iran again? Buy our missiles." So, expect some seriously large budgets and continuing resolutions to fund defense-adjacent technologies, probably stuff like AI weapons development, experimental stuff, you name it, right? Bottom line, all of the lessons learned when it comes to munitions and targeting will be approved upon by increasing procurement. But all in all, just to wrap things up for today, it must be noted that this might not be over. It is possible, I don't know how likely it is, but I'll mention it anyway, it's possible that this is merely a brief pause and it's not the real end to the war. It's pretty clear that all sides, like I mentioned earlier, the far left, the far right, the Zionists, and the warhawks, and everybody else, all of the demographics involved look at this deal as it's been signed and say, "This is a bad deal." That is just undeniable. You can call it a surrender document if you want, or you can soften it however you wish, but the deal is certainly not balanced. It favors the Iranians by a wide margin. Now again, I argue that, well, yeah, that's unfortunate. It really is, but we didn't really have any other option. But, there are other thoughts. There are other ideas that this might actually just be a ruse, and that the United States is signing a bad deal intentionally because we have no intent of going by that deal later on. As it stands, the MOU is just that, a memorandum of understanding. It's not a treaty that has been ratified by Congress. So, just like the president signed it, he can equally rip it up, and there will be no legal consequence. I do have to be careful, though, because even though I am personally skeptical about this deal being signed as it has, there is also the motivation to keep the snowball rolling because of the sunk cost of the coming involved in the war. I mean, even for me, uh I have spent months of my life chronicling the war, finding every single bomb crater and missile strike that I can find, in addition to mapping out as much of Iran's military infrastructure as I could find. And now that the war is theoretically over, it was really all for nothing. Now, personally, this doesn't really bother me. It's just kind of the way the intel world works. 90% of what you do never ends up getting used or is a waste for later. That's okay, I'm used to that, no problem. I'm very, very happy that this situation, this war, is being resolved, but the past 6 months have definitely been a whirlwind, and I'll tell you, it doesn't feel super great to have the president himself say things that I personally took a lot of flak for at the time, during the heat of the fighting, when a course correction could have saved lives. The president is saying things that we were saying weeks and months ago, and he's saying it now, but when we were saying it, it could have saved lives if he had admitted to it. In the past 24 hours, President Trump said that it's okay for Iran to enrich uranium, and it's okay for them to have missiles because it's not fair for them to give up their missiles if everyone around them has missiles. J.D. Vance also said that the Israelis better be careful with their words because President Trump is the only head of state in the entire world that is sympathetic to their nation, which is a shocking bit of honesty that I was genuinely surprised to see because it prompts the question of, "Yeah, why is that? Why is it that the entire planet despises them? Could it be due to their actions, particularly their behavior during this conflict?" I don't know. I'm just finishing the question that the vice president himself prompted. Anyway, it would be very, very foolish to think that things have changed on this front because it's very clear that the elephant in the room is going to have to be addressed at some point. Maybe the best thing to come out of the war is that just highlighting who actually is running things. The good news is that the Iranians know how hard of a challenge this is. They are not stupid. They know who runs things here in the US, and they know that signing a document is not likely to change things on that front. So, my guess is that the Iranians will probably be willing to grant a lot of slack on the Lebanon issue for the time being, and they are probably going to play things cool with the Strait of Hormuz as well. I know, not a super popular assessment, I guess, but if they're smart, that's what they're going to do. Now, they have a lot of internal infighting, uh which is obviously uh a factor, but they are certainly not going to shut the strait down anytime they get a hangnail. The Iranians have been very, very calculating and deliberate this entire time, and there's no reason to believe that they won't continue to do so. Remember, they have a new Ayatollah and a relatively new president as well, both of whom are very new in their roles. So, they're playing things very carefully for now. However, the IRGC is simply not going to allow the situation to remain the same in Lebanon. There is an element within Iranian society that wants war. They've said, "Enough is enough," and they want to keep going. Lebanon makes it hard to stifle these elements within Iran, and maybe there's the maybe that's the reason for that. If it was Gaza or the West Bank, that's that's a little bit more complicated, and the Iranians would probably address those issues more indirectly than just launching missiles into Israel every every time some IDF soldier does something in Gaza. They're probably not going to do that. But, Lebanon is a full-blown nation-state that has a way longer history of independence, and they are being straight-up invaded. The Iranians are not going to tolerate a sovereign nation state being invaded in their region. They're just not, because it has the potential to affect them. The Israelis can always one day just decide to bomb targets in Iran, and the US will dutifully provide the subservient aerial refueling that we are legendary for. The IDF, by the way, does not actually have very much long-range aerial refueling capability. They only have uh older, I think, Boeing 707s that have been converted to be aerial refueling platforms. They have had the opportunity to invest in the KC-135 program, if I'm not mistaken, uh but they prefer the US Air Force to do it. Uh they prefer to make us do it for them when they carry out attacks in Iran. It's It's just kind of a domination thing uh that they like to do to us a lot of the time. Sort of like how Netanyahu, when he comes to Washington, he brings all of his laundry, like his entire family's laundry, to take advantage of the diplomatic laundry services in DC. You should look that up if you're interested about that. It's more of an insult to us uh than than anything, but that's kind of what they do. I would say they're not the only nation to do it, but I'm not aware of any other nation that they kind of treats us this way. But, anyway, when the Israelis get us to refuel them when they carry out attacks in Iran, that means we're now involved in the attack in Iran, and guess what? Now, we're back in it again. So, that's how the US will probably be dragged into this again as if the Israelis carry out long-range bombing attacks in Iran, we're going to have to refuel them to do so. They can probably carry out one or two smaller attacks with drop tanks. Again, the Israelis put two secret military bases, two secret airstrips in Iraq for this war. Uh I don't know if they're still there, but they just don't have that long-range targeting capability. They rely on us for that, and we never tell them no. So, when this eventually happens, the Iranians will know for sure that the US was involved in it. We can claim, "Oh, we didn't know the Israelis were going to do anything." Well, our refueling aircraft are off the ground, then they know the the Iranians know that we helped them do it. So, the Iranians are not stupid. If I can figure this out with Twitter, then they can figure this out with the nation state apparatus behind them. And the Iranians, they don't want to live in a status like that. They would prefer to settle a lot of this hostility right now, rather than peeling this band-aid off slowly over the next few years after they inevitably get hit again and again and again and again, every 6 months or so. So, the bottom line is that if the Israelis continue their war in Lebanon, there really is no hope for peace. And right now, there's really no hope for restraining the Israelis, even though it would be very easy to do so. And around and around and around we go. Not a super great way to wrap up the week, I guess, but there's on the one hand hope that we might get back to normal. The the strait maybe opened. Maybe we can get into the into the situation where we have cheap gas again and cheap grocery bills. It's looking hopeful. Uh this time last week, it was not looking hopeful. This time last month, it was definitely off the table. So, we are making progress. This is good. This is a good thing. It's just that these last-minute derailing things are just so completely typical. And nobody really wants to address the elephant room. So, this might be a point of contention that kind of drags out farther. I very highly doubt that the Iranians are going to go back to the full-blown war again unless the US does. I think everybody has a lot to say with this. They may They're probably going to close the strait, though. How that's going to work out, I don't know, because the Israelis are essentially uncontrollable. They're just kind of a rogue actor in all of this. And that's going to complicate things moving forward. So, that's really where we're at right now. And we're going to have to see how this plays out over the next few weeks. For now, that's all I have for today. So, I'll cut it here and we'll finish up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great work all around as usual. Lots of good reports. I had a pretty significant thunderstorm hit my location right at the moment that the net started. But even though my own antenna was being whipped around quite a bit, I was still able to engage and pick up quite a few offline news reports from around the country. Seeing as how things are going around the world with regards to news being either censored, outright nonexistent, or difficult to access due to data security concerns, efforts like this help us to have other options available just in case. I have also been experimenting a bit with Reticulum over the past few weeks, and I'm starting to get spun up on plugging all of this stuff together. For many of you who read my news reports throughout the week, how cool would it be to one day get these reports completely offline via radio, even if the entire internet and power grid were to go down? I think that would be pretty cool. Uh I've also been working on trying out the Nomad Net, which is kind of a system for hosting primitive web pages that can be accessed via radio if need be. I think that's pretty cool as well, and I look forward to experimenting with this stuff even more, and really improving our resiliency so that no matter what, we can always stay connected. So, that's all I have for today. More to come on a lot of this stuff later on once I get more experience with it myself, and hopefully things can calm down in the Middle East, and a point of stability can at least be reached for a while. Either way, we'll keep an eye on it, so thank you for all of your support. Thanks again to those of you on Patreon who keep the project cooking along, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.