Intel Update — March 28 — Casino of War

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Underground. This is the Intel update for March 22nd through the 28th, 2026. Well, we are officially 1 month into the Gulf War, and not only is no end in sight, but this week has been host to major escalations on most theaters of the war. Today, I'm going to cover a lot of the topics that I have not had time to cover throughout the week, and more generally reflect on the strategic nature of the war. So, a fair warning, we'll be digging into a lot of discussion and debatable opinion today, which I hope will be helpful in getting to the truth of what is actually happening. We can bean count impact craters, and we can watch oil refineries burn, but to actually get to the meat of how this war is shaping the world, we have to dig up a lot of uncomfortable topics sometimes. So, we'll get to that in just a bit. But, starting at the very top, the 60,000-ft view, there are many hotspots for conflict around the world, and we are seeing a lot of smaller conflicts breaking out that seem unrelated at face value, but are very significant conflicts nonetheless. The war in the Middle East is, of course, largely centered in Iran. However, this conflict has spread to be a more regional war at this point as Iranian counterattacks are taking place throughout the entire region. Despite what the White House says, drone and missile attacks are continuing, and the Iranian ballistic missile attacks have been extremely devastating for Israel over the past few days due to the early warning radar sites that were destroyed on the first few days of the war. Separately from the Gulf War, the Israelis are fighting a ground invasion of Lebanon, which has made significant advances at significant cost. This conflict has been a little bit more difficult to track, so we'll have to get back to that next week. I'm still compiling a lot of the data for for the Lebanese war, but suffice it to say, that's a pretty hot shooting war as well, and I think this one's going to go on for a while, too. Bridging the divide between the West and the East, Turkey is becoming more involved in either of the two wars. I'm not quite sure. If that's confusing, I understand. What I'm referring to is the targeting of a tanker vessel in Turkish waters a few days ago. Initially, this attack was assessed to be related to the war in Ukraine because this tanker was carrying Russian oil. However, many people have also made the claim that this vessel was actually targeted either by Iran or by Israel as part of the Gulf War. At the moment, I cannot say what the actual truth is. It makes more sense for it to be Ukraine simply due to geography, but at this point, nothing is off the table, and the Israelis have openly signaled that for them, Turkey is next, so they may also be seeking to bring in Turkey into this little excursion in the Middle East. Still too soon to tell, though, so we'll have to get back to that once we get more information. This leads us to Europe, where other conflicts around the world also saw a resurgence this week, such as the war in Ukraine, which brought about an intensification of targeting efforts throughout the continent as the Ukrainians targeted oil terminals in St. Petersburg. Again, drone warfare is making the world a very, very small place, and to be located thousands of miles away from the front lines is no longer a guarantee of safety in today's modern world. Also far away from the front lines, the global impacts of this conflict, especially the war conflict in Ukraine and also the conflict in Iran, are impacting the entire planet at this point as the world tries to start functioning in a manner where global markets are being impacted. Famine potential in Southeast Asia is growing as fertilizer shipments have effectively been cut off, but even taking global maritime choke points out of the equation, we have to remember the transportation is not the only problem here. Much of the fertilizer market revolves around urea, which is created during the distillation of liquefied natural gas. And since many LNG facilities, such as in Qatar, have been totally destroyed to the point that it will take years to repair them, even if the Strait of Hormuz were freely available to travel through, the petroleum, fertilizer, plastics, and gas markets are going to take years to return to normal simply from the production side of the house based on stuff that's already been destroyed. So, again, these are two separate issues. We don't just have the problems with the Strait of Hormuz and getting cargo in and out of the Persian Gulf. That is a problem. Traffic has not resumed to normal levels just yet, and the Iranians definitely control the strait. But, apart from the transportation issues, we also have problems on the production side of the house because a lot of the refineries and facilities and factories, which produce these materials, the raw materials, they've been targeted and they've been destroyed or degraded heavily to the point where it's going to take months to repair them, if not years. So, again, stepping back, these are the hotspots that are worthy of note this week. The war in the Persian Gulf is devastating the region. There's a separate war going on in Lebanon, and of course, the Ukraine war is uh starting to heat back up again, at least in terms of H asymmetric warfare tactics, and all of the above are expanding substantially and escalating every day with no end in sight. So, this is most certainly a very, very busy time. On the home front, we have also had several items of note to take place this week. Out west, several different wildfires have swept through the state of Nebraska, which has reminded us that wildfire season is most certainly well underway. The Moral Fire and the Cottonwood Fire were initially more devastating with the Moral Fire being the largest wildfire in state history. Now, two more fires, the Minor Fire and Ashby Fire, are currently being worked in the central regions of the state. These wildfires in Nebraska have devastated the agricultural community, and a lot of this area is big cattle country. Ranchers from neighboring states have been trucking in hay and feed to donate to farmers in need with many other recovery efforts being underway. So, again, from the very wave top level, this is a good example of how important and challenging it is to balance out all of the concerns of the modern day. Yes, it is important to know about what's going on in the Middle East, but at the same time, a wildfire in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska removes the food sources for cattle, production cycles are thrown off, and suddenly you've got expensive beef or even beef shortages. Now, in this case, I'm not really sure how much the Nebraska fires will affect the food supply. I don't think it'll be that devastating, but these things are always hard to determine. Many people may not notice anything at all, but it's still a good example of logistical frailty that helps us understand which situations to monitor. Around the country, more direct threats have come to light regarding shadow warfare tactics that are being undertaken nationwide. This week, the hot topic on that front has been the indictment of two Chinese nationals who are alleged to be responsible for the attempted IED attack at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida a couple of weeks ago. I don't want to comment too much on this case just yet because there are a lot of contradictory details that don't quite make sense, so please forgive me. I need to do a little bit more research. But right now, this looks like this is probably the classic Chinese sabotage act undertaken during a time of war purely for the purposes of causing chaos within the American homeland. Remember, everybody is expecting Iranian sleeper cells to be activated in the United States right now, but the Chinese also know this as well. So, when we see an IED at the front gate of the headquarters of CENTCOM, we might be inclined to think the Iranians did it, when in reality, it was really a false flag carried out by the Chinese. Or at least, that's what it seems like at the moment. We can never really be too sure about these things. I just wanted to mention this one because it is most certainly false flag season right now, and the whole world knows this, too. So, while we argue on the internet about those pesky and elusive Iranian sleeper cells, what is undeniable and far more likely, in my opinion, are the risks associated with any number of unnamed groups and nation-states alike that greatly profit when chaos is sown in the American homeland. This will be something to watch out for over the next few weeks, and it would be a good idea to pump the brakes on immediately assessing blame for whatever attacks take place over the next few days, weeks, months. So, that's it for the homeland this week. I know, not a whole lot. Please forgive me. I was going to have another investigation that I had hoped to wrap up or at least get to a point to where I can share my findings this week, but I think I'm going to need some more time on that. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of fifth-generation warfare stuff going on in the homeland that I am most certainly aware of and watching. I just need more information before I can start drawing links and performing link analysis and going through all these structured analytical techniques to try to figure out exactly what's going on or draw some kind of causation, right? I love a good internet skitzo theory just as much as the next guy. However, if we're wanting to actually have some tangible effects on targets, so to speak, it's going to take a little bit more time for me to bring a lot of this investigative stuff to light. So, I'll dig into the MacDill stuff a little bit more with the Chinese IEDs. These things are occurring. I just need some more time to kind of scoop them up together in a in a succinct product. So, moving to the Middle East, how goes the war this week? Overall, I want to stress two words above all else, diminishing returns. It is true that the United States is continuing to bomb targets throughout Iran. However, evidence is mounting that they are running out of the easy targets to strike. This is most sharply evidenced by this short video clip of strikes that was posted by CENTCOM the other day. Now, when I first saw this clip, I did a Looney Tunes-esque double take because in less than half a second, so much information was conveyed. This video shows air strikes of at least two construction vehicles, one front-end loader and what looks like a bulldozer. And these short clips are very, very telling. Now, just right off the bat, you can argue about whether or not these are valid military targets all you want. From my experience as an analyst working in a targeting shop conducting strikes just like this, at least during my time, these would not have been considered a valid military target. But again, that's also subject to what the target engagement authority, or TEA, will authorize. So, the legality of it, that's kind of dubious at best. But more broadly, this video clip is, to use quite an ironic term, a shibboleth. This is a tell. This is an indicator that something's not quite right here. Just to let everyone in on a little bit of targeting culture, whenever a targeting shop starts striking bulldozers, they are running out of targets. And the PAO who was given these clips did not know that little bit of targeting culture. Again, when I was working in a targeting unit for some stuff in Syria a few years ago, I would get phone calls from the Marines at an adjacent targeting cell at a at a neighboring base making fun of us. Like, we would get mocked because one of our generals got a wild idea and authorized a strike on a bulldozer. And you know what? My shop deserved all of that teasing because that's how big of a cultural deal this is within the world of targeting. It's just embarrassing. Like, you couldn't find a better target? That's all you could find is some guy's bulldozer? And in the real world, it really does get played up kind of like that scene from Generation Kill where Captain America shoots up that guy's uh with the AK and his guys say, "W- What are you doing?" And he ends up saying something like, "Denying the enemy transportation." or something like that. It's the same idea, right? You could probably pencil whip it and justify it, which is what they're doing CENTCOM's doing in these clips. You could definitely pencil whip it and justify it under a target engagement authority. But again, professional to professional, it's embarrassing. I would not want my name on a targeting package that that had like a bulldozer on it. It's embarrassing. So, hopefully that bit of insider knowledge helps a bit with context and maybe maybe it helps understand how the war is going. Of course, we don't want to, you know, lean on one extremely short video clip compiled by a PAO as, you know, confirmation of anything. It's more of just an indicator, really. And at this point, if the figures are correct and the Pentagon has indeed run 10,000 sorties so far during this war, I understand that they're probably having a hard time finding valid military targets. Like I and many others have been saying since the first few days of the war, all the dumb ones were killed during the first few days. And now that time has elapsed, the targets that remain will be vastly harder to find, fix, and finish, as the Pentagon likes to remind everyone with a phrase that a super motarded lance corporal might write down in the margin of his write-in-the-rain notebook. But that's what they're doing, literally repeating the most ineffective measures of the GWOT. And the Pentagon is unaware that the relationship between bombs dropped and targeting effectiveness is an inverse equation here. The number of bombs dropped does not equal winning the war. And that's exactly what the Pentagon is telling the public, and it's probably what they're telling the president, too. "Mr. President, Mr. President, look how many bombs we dropped today. Isn't that totally rad and cool?" They're dangling the plastic keys in front of every decision maker, and it's working because there are no low-level analysts in the room telling the president that the targets they're bombing now are becoming less and less effective as time goes on. It's not disparaging against the targeting process. This is just how targeting works. Guess what? Put on your big boy pants. Targeting's hard. Finding the enemy is hard, and they're trying to say that just because they dropped some bombs on some guys, you know, goat shack, that we're actually reducing the Iranian military capability. However, let's make no mistake though in thinking that American bombing isn't doing anything at all. That's not true. We have devastated a substantial part of their economy, and it will take a century, probably, to recover from what devastation we have wrought throughout Persia. But when it comes to the real threats, the missiles and the drones, are we able to target the Iranians effectively enough to stop these types of attacks? Can we bomb the Iranians enough to stop the drone attacks and open the strait? The answer is undeniably no, or at least history does not indicate so. Going all the way back to Vietnam, Operation Linebacker 2, we have never really been able to launch a large-scale bombing campaign that bombs the enemy into complete and total submission without a ground force being part of that element as well. There is only so much that you can do from the air, and President Trump can get on TV all he wants and say that we've taken out all of their missiles, but the dozen or so warheads that land in Tel Aviv every single day and night are proof that this is just not the reality of what's happening on the ground. On the diplomatic front, things are tenuous at best, and now that the war is officially 1 month old, let's take a break for a moment and really reassess what is happening at the strategic level. We can take a look at the more tactical level stuff throughout the week, but today we're really trying to get a good beat on what's actually going on strategically, and this week it's been really crazy. President Trump initially stated that Iran had a 48-hour ultimatum to open the strait, otherwise we would bomb their energy production facilities. But the next day he extended this deadline by 5 days to yesterday, Friday. Well, this deadline came and went, and President Trump extended the deadline again by another 10 days. All the while this was going on, the Israelis were striking multiple Iranian nuclear facilities, steel factories, and other targets throughout the country. So, the war between Israel and Iran is definitely still going on, definitely still quite hot. And Netanyahu himself stated that a ceasefire between Iran and the United States does not apply to Israel, so they're going to keep attacking, which is just incredible. That like that's that's that's just something else. But what this mostly does for us is eliminate the chance for peace. And through our own actions, we have made it very hard to achieve any sort of deal without giving up a lot of stuff. Eventually, all wars come to an end, do they not? And you can have peace two ways. You can have peace through a negotiated settlement, or you could have peace by killing everyone on one side of the conflict. Considering the long train of human events, we very rarely end up killing every single person on one side of the war, so there's usually going to be a negotiated settlement. Again, unconditional surrenders, even though the US is openly stated that's what we're going for, unconditional surrender is very rare throughout history. Most of the time there's going to be some kind of negotiated settlement. And when if you know you're going to negotiate your way out of a war, shooting yourself in the foot and giving up a lot of your negotiating power is probably not a good idea. But we did exactly that. Remember, we started this war by using tactics that humanity has normally seen at the end of a war. So, we used late war tactics right at the start. We killed a religious leader and his wife and children during his religious holiday as part of the opening salvos of the war. Militarily speaking, I speculate that some people were able to convince the president the decision to take out the Ayatollah was a low-risk operation. They probably didn't tell him that killing a head of state would have consequences. They probably did not think this through, and even if they did think this through, they didn't really care. They gave him the play school, you know, plastic keys jingling in front of your face kind of answers to things, and we saw this confirmed more or less with the infamous lay down your arms speech that President Trump gave on the day of the strikes. Which in retrospect, now that we can look back on that event, we can look back on that speech, we can see just how utterly insane that was. That >> [laughter] >> That was so utterly ridiculous that they thought that was actually going to work. But anyway, again, you know, hindsight is 20/20, I guess. But even when we were watching these events happen in real time, even even then we knew this was a bad idea. We knew that this was not going to work. So, it's not like we had to wait a whole month of, you know, this this conflict dragging out to know that bad decisions were being made. No, we could see the bad decisions were being made before the decisions were made. Starting a sneak attack during peace negotiations is a low blow that makes it very, very hard to extract ourselves from because now we're trapped. And nobody told Trump that taking out the Ayatollah was a trap. Our diplomats, think about this, our representatives to the world openly brag about pretending to seek a diplomatic solution, but in secret they were really just stringing the Iranians along because they had no intent of seeking a deal. They just wanted war. It is very unpleasant to note these things. This is for sure. Like I don't take any joy in reporting this. But I myself I'm trying to think about what challenges I would have back in my old life as an NCO, right? And adopting that frame of mind, I would be furious that the Pentagon is behaving the way that they are because when you start off a conflict like this in this particular manner, it makes it incredibly hard to fight on the ground. For all of the NCOs and junior officers out there that are having to manage their guys during a time like this, I know that you guys are having a hard time. I really do. I do not relish the thought of having a bunch of PFCs or lance corporals under my wing who are watching what their secretary of war is saying and having to walk back his statements. It's probably quite tough to do that. As a military leader of any pay grade, it is your duty to be magnanimous in victory. Like that's what gets beat into your head and was certainly a very big part of the GWOT. You do your job with honor, integrity, and professionalism. We know that the war is not necessarily being fought on American terms or even for the right reasons in the first place. We know this and we can't ignore it. But you take the part of the war that's right in front of you, and you do the best you can with it. That's what anybody is going to do. You do not seek out atrocity, and you do the best you can to preserve your own honor day to day. You do not double tap rescuers trying to pull people from the rubble. If we are fighting a war based on bloodlust, we have lost the plot, and I am very concerned that a lot of high-ranking military officials have done just that. And my heart goes out to the low-level dudes out there who are just trying to keep their guys on the narrow path and out of trouble. I really do think and pray for you guys every single day because much of our military leadership are acting like psychopaths at this point and behaving in ways that are below the station that they hold. All warfare is based on deception, but treachery is not a virtue. We must remember that, even though our government has forgotten it. We do not worship death on the battlefield. A lance corporal making a crude remark about some drone footage is a lot different than the secretary of war doing it. We do what we have to do, but we cannot lose our humanity, and from what I see, we are in extreme danger of that happening if it hasn't happened already. We are Americans. We stop harm from befalling the innocent without hesitation, using violence to do so if need be. But once that enemy is out of the fight, we show them mercy and compassion. And now the Pentagon is trying to act like mercy is a bad thing in any context. And all I can say to that is, may the Lord have mercy on us for allowing this evil mentality to flourish and for not having the courage to call this out sometimes. We have got to change this, and I just don't know how. I just thought it was important to include these ideas for the record just in case we actually end up going into a ground fight on this because when and if we start putting boots on the ground, all of these ideas, all of these sentiments are going to get dialed up to 11. Right now it's just an air war. There's not that much risk, but when you start putting boots on ground, the risk goes up, and also a lot of cascading other effects start shaping up, too. Things get really complicated, and even right now, when it's just the air war component, when it's just a bombing campaign, we're really not fighting this war on good moral or just terms. And this is not to disparage the guys on the ground. I mean, we can definitely support those guys who have been, you know, put in a tight spot and are doing the best they can. But at the top, all we hear from the war department is death, destruction, and ego. None of that magnanimity that got beat into our heads during the GWOT era. None of that integrity or honor. None of that avoiding unnecessary killing. None of that healthy respect for the enemy or at least recognizing that they are defending their homeland. Even in Afghanistan, when we were getting shot at all the time, no one was considered a Taliban sympathizer, right, for realizing that the Taliban fighters were doing what they had to do. That was their job. We had our job, too. And there's a healthy respect there. And you can certainly have some level of respect for your adversary during a time of war, at least when it comes to the uh things they can do to you, right? And even so, having respect for your enemy is not something that's just a moral teaching. It's not really just a moral thing. It's also a practical thing. Having a healthy respect for your adversary prevents your ego and hubris from driving your own operations. You don't have to like them, but be very, very unwise to just think that they're all just goat herders, right? And the Pentagon is just going crazy, and they're they've lost all nuance with this kind of stuff, at least publicly, right? I don't know what the generals are saying to each other in private. I don't know what they're saying off camera, but I can tell you the media blitz with this is not good. It's not doing us any favors, and it's making everything harder. Of course, I'm not exactly saying that a hearts and minds campaign would work in this case. I don't think that would work. The reason that the Pentagon propaganda is the way that it is, and it's understandably the way that it is, is because really driving this war on a strategic level. We didn't go to war on our own terms, and because of that, their propaganda has to look a certain way, which is fine. That's their prerogative. But what is undeniable is that a kill everything and everyone approach, that's not really good, either. We're turning the whole world against us, and we're going to have nobody to blame but ourselves for allowing these events to take place. Look, guys, I hate it. And I personally have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, just like everybody else. I also have a very long memory, and I do not forget every EFP, every roadside bomb, and every rocket and mortar that the Iranians gave to insurgent groups to target Americans with. And I certainly hope and pray that America wins the war, because this is my country and this is my home. And that's what you do when you live in a place on Earth. But reality is reality, and through the actions of our leadership, we have given the Iranians the moral high ground for this present conflict, and that makes me absolutely sick. Again, I'm coming back to the perspective of the service members actually prosecuting targets during this war. And I'm imagining the targeteer opening up their joint publications, their JP360, to see that we cannot target civilian infrastructure because it's a war crime. That gets beat into your head all the time as a targeting guy. Oh, it's a war crime. That's a war crime. This is not just something the left loves to screech, you know, because they don't understand what a war crime actually is. No, I'm really talking about the CENTCOM targeting guidance, such as things like the CAT 1 or category 1 no strike list, right? All of the list of targets that we can't strike in war because of not just, you know, this frivolous thing called international law. Like, I mean, like our actual like laws that are meant to be adhered to by the United States, set in place by Congress, mostly for the purposes of making sure that we keep our humanity. That's what a no strike list is for. It's not really for international law. We don't care about international law. It's for keeping your humanity. And then the president gets on TV and says we're going to strike civilian infrastructure, the same targets that you could crack open a book and see like right at the very top, no, you can't hit civilian power plants. Can you imagine what that's like to sit there and having to be a targeting analyst where you're looking at targets that are completely war crime targets. Again, not in the leftist way of like, "Oh, war crime." No, I mean like actual like stuff that damages your soul kind of targets. And they're striking these things left and right. I have plotted almost 2,000 impact craters on my maps, and in my opinion, having worked in a CENTCOM targeting shop in the past, I've seen enough to let me know that they've thrown a lot of this doctrine out the window, and they are prosecuting targets against long-standing doctrine. We are dropping land mines in civilian towns at this point, which I don't think has been done since Vietnam or maybe even Korea. Land mines are indiscriminate killers, and the very minute that a civilian gets killed by an American land mine in Iran will be the day that America no longer has the right to complain about IEDs killing Americans. And at this point, we are speed running our way to violating every ideal that we used to hold dear. I don't like it myself, and of course, nobody in the West wants to give the Iranians credit for anything. But from a purely neutral perspective, during the lead-up to this war, it was the United States that breached international norms by pretending to engage in diplomacy while never intending to abide by a deal. And that trust being broken cannot be dismissed by anyone. It's going to take a lot of effort to build that trust back. Now, you can argue, "Well, we've got our aircraft carriers and our submarines and our missiles and our cool bombs and stuff." But look, man, as much as I would love to be a participant in a lot of American exceptionalism these days, there's a little bit more nuance to it than that, right? House cannot blame anyone for not wanting to negotiate with the United States right now, because American diplomacy has now boiled down to do what we want or we'll kill you and your entire family, which is fair enough in some circumstances, right? I mean, that's that's kind of what you have to do in some ways, right? I am a Roman citizen. I am an American, right? You have to bring that mentality to the world to some degree. But again, there is no crying in the casino of war, and the Iranians still hold quite a few cards to play, which means that the war has the potential to continue for some time if the belligerents so desire. The other factor that the Iranians are probably thinking about is that if they agree to any sort of peace agreement, the Israelis will just bomb them anyway, since it has already been demonstrated by the strike at South Pars that the Israelis are acting unilaterally in this conflict. Right now, sushi from a truck stop in Kansas is more trustworthy than an American ceasefire, and the Iranians are completely correct in assuming that our word means nothing. Granted, in a larger sense, none of the belligerents in this conflict are completely trustworthy, either. So right now, when it comes to potential peace talks, it's a wash. Most of the statements made by American officials have been easily verifiable lies, and President Trump has mostly been saying stuff just to calm economic markets. But also, the Iranian messaging is fairly unreliable, as well, because they aren't talking much. I mean, they don't really have to. All they have to do is survive, so they don't really need to have this propaganda campaign. But even so, most of their media, the Iranian media that is broadcast to the outside world, is mostly just the, you know, the low-grade Middle Eastern flavored propaganda that is very common for wars like this. So they're not really putting in that much effort. I mean, again, they don't have to. They're on the defense, right? When you're on the defense, you you have a lot of advantages. And of course, the Israelis are going to do whatever they want, which is fair enough from their perspective, but their targeting efforts will absolutely derail any potential deal the US and Iran want to cook up later next week during the alleged halt to bombing of civilian infrastructure within Iran. Even though, honestly, it's becoming a little bit dangerous within the United States to truthfully and neutrally examine the overall situation regarding the war. The Iranians have actually carried out relatively proportionate and reciprocal targeting during this campaign, with the exception being the first couple of days when comms were down and local commanders shot at basically everything in range. The ballistic missile strike again at Dimona, which the Israelis tried to amplify quite a bit with Prime Minister Netanyahu himself going to the impact crater, the impact sites there. This attack, while it was horrific, you know, it's always horrific anytime civilians get killed, this was actually a reciprocal attack targeting the Israeli nuclear program. Specifically, they were targeting a bunker that was allegedly being used by Israeli scientists, which was underneath uh the civilian city there. And this attack itself was conducted after the Israelis targeted the bunkers at Bushehr nuclear power plant a few days ago. So again, this is a tit-for-tat kind of thing. Similarly, various GCC states, mostly just the Arab nations of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, uh places like that, they've been complaining that Iran is launching unprovoked attacks into their nations. However, CENTCOM themselves frequently publish videos of HIMARS systems launching ATACMS missiles into Iran from these same nations. So once again, it's mostly a wash. You don't get to sit there and complain that, "Oh, the Iranians have hit our airports," when you've got ATACMS flying through your airspace, and you're letting the Americans conduct a war from your terrain. You're in this war. So again, this is just a mess all around. But again, let's not over-romanticize the Iranians themselves by any means. They are in this for the long haul, and they know that needlessly targeting things they don't need to will result in public opinion turning against them. What all of this means is that the targeting continues as before. The conflict, the war, the death, the destruction continues just like it has for four months now. And not only is the White House not looking for any off-ramps, but they are looking to intensify this conflict and escalate it as much as possible for the foreseeable future. I don't really care what they're saying. Our actions speak louder than words, and considering the contradictory words from the White House this week, I can't really make assessments based on what they say, only what they do. And so far, cargo flights have been increasing into the region, and advanced party from the 82nd Airborne is already in the Middle East to supplement the two MEUs, which should be arriving uh they should have gotten there by now. And within the homeland of the United States, there are indications and warnings of more units being deployed, as well. The shining example of pinpoint precise journalism that is the Wall Street Journal has leaked that the Pentagon is slated up to 10,000 more troops, regular army, to deploy, as well. Whether or not that's true is anyone's guess, but so far, the United States is making preparations for a more protracted ground fight. However, there are still a few indicators that I have been watching for that haven't really lined up just yet, so I don't think we're going to be invading Iran anytime soon, at least not within the next week. Or at least I certainly hope not, because the forces on station right now are not enough to occupy a Buckee's is a Friday night. So we have some more time before we freak out about Americans putting boots on ground. Maybe by the end of next week at the earliest, depending on how serious they are, but again, time will tell. So, all in all, 1 month into the conflict, the situation remains just as steady as before. The Iranian regime has not collapsed, and it will not collapse without a total occupation of the country. Whether that happens or not is anyone's guess at this point, but we will certainly be on the lookout for any indicators that may emerge over the next few days and weeks. And with that, that's all I have for today. I know kind of a short day, a little bit shorter than what I was expecting. So, let's wrap things up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Once again, another fantastic week for taking the information space to the real world and to trying to exchange information with each other in a more off-grid manner. I know that it's a little boring and super niche, but I think this is a huge part of not just preparedness, but also the act of doing something physical helps a lot. This may sound really weird, uh but over the past few years, I've been working with radio, and especially since the Ghost Net has been working well, I have found that the information that I get via HF radio just it seems more real. It seems like the stakes are higher and or or maybe that there's much more investment in finding out the truth or something like that. I don't really know how to describe it. Maybe some of you know what I'm talking about. It's almost like the same piece of information has more weight when I see it coming in through my radio to my JS8 call screen as opposed to when I just doomscroll past it on my phone. It's almost like the physical act of getting outside, touching grass, and actually putting in some physical work to be informed is a major motivating factor for finding out the truth. Of course, we must always trust but verify everything, but still, in the days ahead, I think that getting involved in the world of radio is a good thing to merge a lot of this this online information space stuff with the real world to kind of help us balance out a lot of that stuff because I think that we tend to doomscroll way too much these days. I'm speaking for myself. I know I do it way too much each day, right? So, getting outside, or even if you have like an indoor radio or something, just you know, being involved in this kind of thing helps quite a lot, I think, even if all you do is receive the signals that others are transmitting. So, a very special thank you to all of you for contributing to the Ghost Net project. I think it's working great. I can't wait to see how this develops over time. It will It will get better. It will get a lot more helpful as time goes on, and I'm sure that there are a lot of other endeavors out there trying to do the same thing to bring a lot of informational efforts to the world of radio. So, that's all I have for today. As always, all of my research and source material can be found on my Obsidian page to trust but verify everything that I use to conduct my daily analysis, and the mapping data that you have seen today and throughout the week can be viewed online via my ArcGIS maps or downloaded offline as KMZ files for use in A Tac if you want to replicate exactly what I have here. All of the links are below as usual, and I hope to continually update all of these products throughout the week just like I do every single day. So, thanks again for sticking with me. Thank you for all of your support, and thank you to all of you on Patreon who keep the project going, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight the sheep.