Intel Update — June 28 — A Day so Quiet and Still

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for June 22nd through the 28th of 2025. Have you ever had a week where there has been so much that has occurred, so many things to do, so many little tasks that have piled up that your productivity ends up plummeting? Well, that's what this week has been for me. Even just compared to last week, we're certainly in an hourly news cycle at this point. So much so that if something happens in the morning, by the time the afternoon comes, we're uh it's already stale, right? So that's just kind of the way it goes sometimes. And uh nevertheless, we'll try to do the best we can and uh see what the general overall strategic view is for this week. This week we have had a war. We have had lots of unsettling events in Europe and of course a lot of disappointment on the domestic front. Here on the home front there have been two major developments when it comes to domestic political stuff. Of course there have been many different types of protests occurring around the country but really nothing worth uh worth mentioning. It's protest season. You can guarantee that in every single major city there's going to be some kind of demonstration underway uh every weekend and sometimes every day. The situation in Los Angeles remains fairly tenuous as is pretty common, but for the most part it's basically just uh settled into being a more uh standard baseline of domestic instability. Of course, this es and flows over time, but the more concerning things this week have been in the political arena, most notably the sale of public land or the potential sale of public land out west. This was a minor footnote in the big beautiful bill until everyone realized exactly what this means. So in short, this section of the big beautiful bill that is ongoing is rather severe and you can look at it just based on a map alone. So if you are familiar with my ArcGIS maps, uh this should be fairly familiar to you. But if you live out west, I would very strongly encourage you to go check check this website out. This is an ARGS map that was created by a nonprofit that lists or uh tries to categorize all of the public land that could potentially be for sale out in the American West. Now, once you get into this map, you're going to realize how big of a problem this is and how big of a a situation uh this this could be. But right up front, we need to be very very clear that not all of this land will be sold. The line and the verbiage in the big beautiful bill states that this land could be for sale. So essentially it's it's stripping protections from public lands so that big companies like Black Rockck can then come in and essentially buy a lot of this land. Now again the politics of this potential land sale or recategorization of public lands is a big deal especially in the political realm. So a lot of people are going to try to make this about to be politics. Uh however we have to look at it from a more strategic viewpoint as well. So I hate giving statistics because these numbers always change and they're a little bit misleading. But right now, the verbiage as it stands will remove protections and uh potentially list for sale or allow it to be sold roughly 250 million acres of public lands, BLM lands and US Forest Service lands out in the American West. Now, if that sounds like a lot, it's because it is. Uh if we understand that the United States is roughly 3.8 million square miles, if we convert that to acres and then, you know, look at the percentages of this, so simple arithmetic, right? We can see that the big beautiful bill is talking about potentially selling over 10% of the American land mass. Right? So this is not a small thing. This is a very very big thing. We're not talking about just a park here, a park there, a couple of dozen acres that nobody uses. No, we're talking about potentially 10% of our nation, the whole country could potentially be for sale. Now again, those numbers are going to be changed around probably quite a lot. From what I can read, and it's not easy to read, but from what I can tell in the bill itself, 3 million of those acres will immediately be earmarked for sale. So 3 million of that will be immediately sold to the highest bidder. Right? It does not specify that it's going to go to any particular use that can be sold to anyone as far as I can read, right? And of course, right now, the only body with the ability to buy hundreds of square miles of land is Black Rockck. So or or China, right? So through Black Rockck. So again, I cannot state how important this is to be aware of and how serious of an issue this is. Just for scale, the whole country of Ukraine is roughly 148 million acres. So we're talking about selling off a part of the United States that's almost twice the size of Ukraine potentially, or at least removing the protections so that at one day it could be sold. Hopefully everyone can now see why this is a bit of a concern and something to definitely keep an eye on because it certainly doesn't look like the politicians involved in this are interested in listening to anyone at this point. So just something to be mindful of. You know, this is not a small uh little sale of a small forest service parcel. No, this is this is potentially a very very big deal, especially considering the the nature of foreign nations being able to purchase American land, especially in places where there are a lot of military bases near major population centers. Everyone has freaked out about Russia invading Ukraine, but but this bill, as it is currently written, could mean that theoretically Russia could purchase an area almost twice the size of Ukraine in the United States. Again, how this will work out, I don't know. My guess is that they're probably not going to immediately sell 250 million acres of America's, you know, territory. But a good chunk of that will probably happen very very soon, especially the the land that's already been immediately earmarked for um sale. Remember, when it comes to bills, this bill came about from the swipe of a pen, right? So, all it takes is a swipe of a pen to say, "Oh, well, let's change that 3 million to 20 million. Well, let's change it to 100 million." And then there we go. If we recall, when this bill was first announced, it wasn't 3 million. It was only 300,000 acres from what I can read. Again, this is not an easy thing to research, but we've already seen the number increase. So after the bill is passed, are we going to see an amendment that just, you know, scoots through in the middle of the night to essentially just sell off way more than they had planned? That's probably quite likely. So again, pretty big concern uh to be aware of. Something also to be aware of is this week the Hearing Protection Act and the Short Act have been stripped from that same bill. So So again, something to be mindful of. Uh the hearing protection act was only added to the the big beautiful bill as a result of a massive uh outcry of public support. Same thing with the short act. Uh there was a huge push huge activism push to get these added to the bill and then boom they're they're stripped from it uh in the middle of the night without any further comment really. So domestically things are not looking super great on the political front. There's a lot of disenfranchisement going on. There's a lot of uh feelings of betrayal. On the flip side of that, the quasi good news, I suppose, for now is that the Supreme Court has uh taken efforts to sort of crack down on a lot of the activist judge uh judge rulings when it comes to immigration issues. So, the Supreme Court has issued a few rulings over the past few days. I will have to dig more into these because as of the past few years, uh the Supreme Court has not entirely been very clear on a lot of things. So, it's really hard to see how these things are going to work out in in practice. But for now, it looks like the Supreme Court has ruled favorably when it comes to lower level activist judges uh stripping their own power away from them. So that's probably why a lot of this is occurring. But again, this will be debated until the end of time. I guess we're just going to have to see how it impacts the real world uh efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and things like that because the immigration issue is most certainly ongoing. So just to summarize, we can most certainly be thankful and uh be happy for the good things uh the good decisions that are being made, but we also have to hold everyone accountable regardless of political party for the not so great decisions that are being made, especially when it comes to things like domestic land sales and um you know, political promises being made that aren't uh even remotely considered uh to be valid after a short period of time and things like that. So that wraps things up for the United States this week. We'll talk about France and the U brief war in the Middle East here in just a moment, but for right now, let's talk about strategic movement. A few days ago, the Ford carrier strike group departed port and they are inbound for the Middle East. The Ford is probably going to conduct changeover with either the Vincent or the Nimmits, both of which remain more or less in the same area as before. The British carrier, the Prince of Wales carrier strike group, was observed in Singapore a couple of days ago. So they're continuing their their trip over to to Paycom after conducting their exercises with the Indian Navy a few days ago. Bottom line for the strategic movement is that not a whole lot has gone home yet and that may be a clue for what is to continue in the Middle East over the next few days and weeks. For the past few months, we have seen a huge increase in strategic movement to the Middle East. resources have just been pouring into the region, especially things like fighter jets, bombers, uh refueling uh assets, cargo, all kinds of stuff has been pouring into various bases in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and uh even some places in Iraq as far as I know. And even though the United States government has bookended the recent conflict in Iran as the 12-day war and thus implying that it only lasted 12 days, they haven't sent anyone home yet. So, that's going to be something to keep an eye on for the next uh few days because they spent weeks building up these resources and it may take a similar amount of time for everything to start heading back to their normal home bases. But, for right now, there are still two aircraft carriers in the uh in the region and there's a third one on the way. So, that's something to keep an eye on and it may suggest that uh this conflict is not entirely over just yet. Jumping over to the European theater for just a moment, I briefly wanted to mention the spiking attacks that have taken place in France over the past week. Now, we Americans may uh be rather shocked and horrified at the uh practice of stabbing people with syringes in the street. This has unfortunately become a very trendy thing to do in France for a couple of years, and this week was no exception. So this past week over 148 people were stabbed with syringes in coordinated attacks that took place not just in in Paris uh but in a lot of other cities around the country. A few days ago there was a nationwide music sort of festival that that took place in France that wasn't just in Paris. It was like different events in different cities uh occurring all at the same time. So people could go to their you know nearest metropolitan area and you know have some kind of entertainment. Unfortunately, in most cases, there were many people that were uh stabbed with needles. Once again, to an American audience, this may seem extremely horrifying, and it is. However, it is also not out of the norm for France and Western Europe at large. In fact, this has become such a problem that there are dedicated nos and nonprofits that have been stood up to help warn people about the potential for getting stabbed with a needle. This is how widespread this problem has become. And considering that the people who are arrested for stabbing people with needles are really never disclosed to the public, we never learn these people's names. I think we can all kind of make the assessment to determine the the risk of what's actually happening here. But in any case, this situation was unique in that there was actually advanced warning. So eventgoers and the event organizers actually warned people about being stabbed with needles because they detected or somehow or another figured out that a lot of social media posts were going around trying to teach people how to do this. and encouraging these types of attacks. It it's it's exceptionally horrific, but this is what happened. And people still went to the events anyway, and 148 people were wounded, including 11 police officers. The reasons for these syringe attacks is fairly obvious. These usually coincide with some sort of assault, however, not always. Uh there are or have been a few uh cases reported of where people just stab people with needles just for the purposes of either entertainment or to intentionally infect a person with a disease. So, uh, again, very horrific, but it's unfortunately becoming a a big problem. So, a lot of media groups have put out tips and tricks, you know, of how to avoid this sort of thing. Here is a snippet on the slide of a USA Today article that is titled, "What you can do to protect yourself and still have fun." As if this isn't the most unnerving way to talk about this topic ever. Uh, I would very strongly encourage everyone to undertake their own risk assessment. And if you ever think that there's going to be the slightest minuscule potential possibility that you might get stabbed with a needle by a psychopath at an event, you might want to reconsider going to that event in the first place. Either way, do what you want to do. But that's just my advice. Uh so somewhat morbidly ironically on a lighter note, let's discuss the war in the Middle East over the past week or so. Now, I will not spend much time on this because I'm sure most of you have been inundated with all kinds of expert analysis from all of the tens of thousands of Iranian experts on the internet. But the bottom line as far as I'm concerned in my wheelhouse is that the United States did conduct strikes in Iran as we all know. But beyond that, we don't really know what the effect is. Like I've been writing since the strikes occurred, there's really going to be no way for the civilian population or for any of us really to understand or know for sure how much the Iranian weapons program was set back, if indeed it was set back at all or if indeed it actually existed. There's a lot of debate going around. There's a lot of conjecture and a lot of people who seem very certain about a lot of things. From a more strategic standpoint, we can certainly reflect on who does know. So the the only parties that really know without a shadow of a doubt how bad the damage was and how much the Iranian nuclear weapons program was impacted are of course the Iranians and the Israelis or the United States. These are the three main parties that are going to know for sure how bad the damage was. And all three of these parties are going to seek to lie about the status of uh the sites that were struck. So we will probably never know uh how effective these strikes were. There's an awful lot of people going to be looking at the same exact satellite image for the next few weeks and months and talking about all kinds of technical data that they could not possibly know in the open space and it's going to be rather annoying. So that's why I've stepped back from it a little bit. Either way, once again, from a more strategic viewpoint, this may have been a pirick victory at best. And this comes from one minor statistic that has been running around the internet for the past few days. I think this came from a scentcom disclosure, but don't quote me on that. Uh either way, a lot of uh think tanks are saying that the United States during this 12-day conflict, 12-day war, it lasted longer than 12 days, but either way, 12-day war, the United States expended roughly 20% of our THAAD missile stockpile. So, looking to the Far East, uh that does not entirely bode well for Taiwan or any other nation state that we seek to defend uh from very large missiles. Now again, the the Taiwan conflict is much different because Taiwan's a lot closer to China than Israel is to Iran. However, it just kind of shows that the United States is uh certainly a very powerful military, but unfortunately, logistics wins wars and logistics has been a problem. And now that the nations of Ukraine and Israel have sapped the United States of our uh missile defenses and pretty much anything uh to be used in war, this is a concern now. So, from a wave top level here at home, the average American citizen who couldn't give one hoot about the Middle East, except for the fact they probably don't want to repeat 2003 again, really, there are two things of note that I can think of off the top of my head, which are one, it's probably wise to assume that this is not over yet. I'm already starting to see the the push for a Colon Powellesque testimony on weapons of mass destruction. So, we're pulling out the WMD's uh claims again. You know, this missing uranium, this missing highlyenriched uranium, you know, in this phantom base that no one knows about. We're starting to see echoes of 2003 again, as if we didn't see them during this entire conflict. But still, it would probably be a wise decision to assume that they're not going to let this go. The Israelis certainly are not interested in letting it go because a lot of their low-level ministers are saying that, well, if you know, Iran starts enriching stuff again, you know, we're going to blow them up. and then they wait two days and say, "Oh, the Iranians are enriching stuff again." So, it's the same old story as always, but still something to be mindful of. I don't think this is over just yet. It's nice to call it the 12-day war, but I don't think it's over. It may be. Hopefully, hopefully this is over. But if the history of the Middle East is any indication whatsoever, there is no question as to whether or not a ceasefire is going to be violated. It's going to be violated. The ceasefire will be broken. The question is how long it's going to take. It could be days. It could be years. I don't know. ages depends on a lot of factors but for the United States for oil prices things are still quite volatile it's very interesting that you can see a lot of uh concerns mount and then the P markets crude oil gets very very expensive very shortly and then the war is declared to be over by the white house more or less they're already talking about Nobel Peace Prize nominations and things like that for this 12-day war and then of course the P markets the crude markets calm down again basically to their precrisis levels but then you look at the shipping and you see that even after this war is over. There are still a few crude oil companies that are still making U-turns uh throughout the street of Hormuz. So, I don't know. It seems to me like there's a lot of people out there who have invested a lot of money in intelligence analysis of the risks to shipping and things like that. Very big corporations are involved and these very big corporations are still seeing an awful lot of risk. So that's the bottom line for today is that this may not entirely be over and oftent times at the very very end of a conflict or what seems to be the end of a conflict very serious outcomes can still be arrived at. We shall see how it develops in classic form. But that's pretty much all I have for this week. So let's wrap things up today with the intercepted ghost net reports. And this week it has been very interesting for the ghost net for me personally mostly because I have been uh in an off-grid manner for a couple of days this week. classic thunderstorms roll in and you know uh knock out power for several hours. But even so, the work must go on, right? And this week I was able to write, record, edit, produce, and upload uh two separate wire reports in an off-grid manner while the power is out. And I think that was uh a pretty good uh test of capabilities here. So hopefully it wasn't too out of the ordinary for this week. But of course during the Ghost Net, my power was out as well. So, even though my own personal, you know, HF shortwave radio setup is entirely off-grid, that's the way it normally functions, uh, just as a baseline, the issue is thunderstorms. Uh, so unfortunately, right during the Ghostnet window, uh, was when thunderstorms were, uh, kicking around and being very very kinetic. So, I I had to unplug my antenna a little bit a little bit early just to avoid any kind of uh, you know, fritzing out my radio. I didn't want to, you know, blow up a radio when lightning strikes were occurring, you know, just a few hundred yards away. That that's not very good for radios. So, but anyway, this has very much been a summer of uh preparedness and making sure that everything is in tip-top shape and is operational when it is needed the most. But the good thing is that this is exactly what the Ghost Net is designed to do. It's designed to operate even if all else fails. It's not the best thing ever, but it is something that I think works pretty well. So, thank you guys all for participating even if uh I had to tune out for about half an hour or so due to uh lightning in my area and of course uh not wanting to run my desktop computer to uh do the web SDR monitoring like I normally do. I really do appreciate you all guys for carrying on in my absence and uh that's a very good thing to see. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Thank you guys for sticking around and uh hopefully we will have a lot more to say next week. So, once again, thank you for all of your support and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.