Intel Update — May 9 — Intended Consequences

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 3rd through the 9th of 2026. So, let's get right to it. At the more strategic level this week, the insanity continues with events in the Middle East mostly remaining in a state of chaos. At home, multiple domestic issues have been brewing for a while as both the summertime crime and immigration issues remain impacting for many Americans, which has been exacerbated by both the reforms within EBT benefits around the country coming into effect over the past few weeks, but also the international fuel crisis, which is beginning to hit some parts of the globe rather seriously at this point. For us Americans, our canary in the coal mine for the fuel crisis is Europe, and I'm afraid our friends across the pond are feeling the effects of roughly 20% of the global energy supply remaining mostly offline. All of these issues are exacerbating all of the pre-existing conflicts that are going on around the world, and I've made an actual slide this time for tracking some of the conflicts that I'm keeping an eye on that are going on around the world at the moment. Just so that we don't forget that there are a lot of different conflicts that are currently being fought around the world. First off, we have the situation in Venezuela, which has reached a point of sort of stability, although it's still kind of dubious as to what's actually going on. We snatched Maduro, and then that's all we heard from it. There really hasn't been any update on the status of the governance of Venezuela. There have been a few people step up to kind of take control, but this has really become more of a vassal state situation for the United States to export Venezuelan oil. This is what the United States has openly stated, so I don't know how this is working out domestically within Venezuela, but I guess we'll have to see how it works out. I just wanted to remind everyone that Venezuela still is a thing. They still exist, they're still around, and that's still a planning factor for things moving forward, especially with the chaos in the oil markets. Similarly, in the same area, but kind of a different conflict, are the narco strikes, which continue to take place in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. I suspect, again, I don't know, but I suspect off the coast of Ecuador or Colombia. Once again, US Southcom continues to post videos every day of themselves hitting narco boats and fast boats trafficking drugs, and there's really not been a whole lot of explanation as to what's going on here because again, a lot of the justification for the targeting for narcotics vessels in the Caribbean Sea is that Maduro was the technical leader of the cartel of the Sun and because of that, these are combatants now. That was kind of a loose justification at the time, but most people are not going to lose any sleep over drug dealer boats getting, you know, hit with Hellfire missiles. So, it just kind of went from there, but now that Maduro is gone, the strikes continue, right? So, they're not striking things in the Caribbean Sea, they're striking things in the Eastern Pacific. This is kind of an interesting campaign. It's a long-term bombing campaign that is going on that not a lot of people know about. So, that's worthy of consideration. Same thing in Somalia. We are indeed conducting air strikes in Somalia on a fairly regular basis and have been doing so for many years now. So, just want to remind everybody, yeah, that's going on. We're bombing Somalia. It's not very much, but it's still going on. So, you have to kind of account for it. As to why we're doing this, I don't really know. The AFRICOM uh PR pages have mostly just said this is due to, you know, trying to crack down on insurgents who may be eventually potentially supporting the Houthis at some point. I don't know. It's kind of a loose explanation. We may just be bombing stuff just to bomb stuff, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering that there's an active shooting war going on in Mali right now with a civil war underway there. So, that's something to keep an eye on. Africa is definitely pretty hot these days. It's probably not going to matter too much for the United States like I mentioned before, but American tax dollars are going to be funding something one way or the other. So, something to be aware of. Similarly, in the Middle East, we of course have the war in Iran, which we'll of course talk about in great depth, but we also have a war in Lebanon. A lot of people have forgotten about the war in Lebanon is continuing to go on. The ceasefire there in Lebanon kind of just went away. I don't know if it ever really went into effect, but the Israelis are continuing to push into Lebanon to secure their buffer zone or maybe it's more accurately described as living space. I don't know. But, that's that war is continuing on for sure. There was a strike the other day in Beirut. The large-scale bombing of Beirut has largely ceased or largely kind of tamped down a little bit, but they are conducting precision strikes in Beirut, allegedly precision strikes, right? That's definitely going on. And also, of course, we have the war in Ukraine. So, we still have a land war in Europe going on. It has reached a point of stability, I think. It's hard to say with these sorts of things. The war in Ukraine tends to tends to change its nature once a year or so or once every 6 months, depending on how the war has gone so far. And right now, there's currently a ceasefire going on for the uh Victory in Europe uh Day, VE Day. Russia and Ukraine have called a bit of a truce for a couple of days here uh to just, you know, celebrate that holiday, and then they're going to get back to it, but hopefully we'll get close to a peace deal. Again, there has been uh quite a bit of talk with regards to securing a peace deal over the years. We've gotten really close to seeing the end of this war a few times uh right before veering away. So, that can always happen. It's not over until the fat lady sings, and the war in Ukraine is certainly not over just yet. Similarly, in Iran, the war in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf War, whatever you want to call it, is still going on and has mostly transitioned into what I think should probably be called the Hormuz Crisis, because that's basically where a lot of this hostility is uh remaining for now. The larger war, the bombing campaign within Iran, has largely come to a point of pause due to this ceasefire. However, things in the Strait of Hormuz, uh the only thing that really matters in this entire conflict at this point, are still very much uh at a point of contention. So, that's kind of going on. And then also, in Southeast Asia, briefly wanted to mention the Burmese Civil War is still going on. It's been going on for many, many years. It's been a lot of interesting uh combat data coming out of that for those of you who like to study uh the the way of modern war, uh the Burmese Civil War or the Myanmar Conflict or Myanmar Crisis, however you want to phrase it, that is a factor as well, because Southeast Asia is looking at a large-scale famine situation because of the Hormuz Crisis. So, fertilizer can't make it out of the Middle East to Southeast Asia for the rice planting seasons, and that's a bit of a problem. And there's already a hot shooting war in Burma, which the United States, by the way, is supporting like we are supporting the rebels in Myanmar. Publicly, we're not supporting them with military aid, but we are providing them with non-military aid and material and stuff like that. So, again, something the United States is involved in. It's probably not that big of a deal outside the area, and it's not something that's going to spill into a wider region. I mean, it's South these Asia, so it always could, but it's probably not likely. What's more likely is that is that this is going to be a complicating factor as food shortages and food insecurity becomes a thing over the next couple of years due to the planting seasons being thrown off due to the Hormuz crisis. So, again, everything is a domino. Things are coming into fruition that we probably did not expect or, you know, the second and third order effects are starting to rear their ugly head, and they're probably likely to do so over the next few months as well. Hard to predict, but we'll do the best we can with it. Taking a look at the strategic movement for this week, a lot of the assets that are staged around the world are do reflect a lot of these conflicts. So, the biggest change is the departure of the Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Middle East this week. The Ford is going home to conclude her very, very long deployment to the region, and I think she's planned to undergo long-term repairs from the fire that she suffered a few weeks ago. There is no replacement for the Ford right now because the Lincoln and the Bush are operating together as part of the unified command effort that is the American blockade in the Gulf of Oman. Maintaining this blockade is a gargantuan effort, which requires a lot of resources, and since the hostilities are mostly confined to the Gulf of Oman right now, the US forces in the region are concentrated in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, as well as in the Indian Ocean, which is mostly serving as one big interdiction zone for Iranian ships that either run the blockade or otherwise are strategic targets or stateless vessels. So, that's the force allocation that I'm tracking around the world for this week. A lot of hardware, a lot of steel is in the water, and and it doesn't look like there's going to be any change on that anytime soon. So, before we get into the homeland concerns for this week, let me briefly take a moment and recap the tactical situation on the ground in the Middle East, just because a lot has happened and things are starting to become more active after a couple of weeks of ceasefire. There has been a lot of shooting in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 48 hours with skirmishes being reported between Iran and the UAE, as well as between American forces and Iranian gunboats. There's not a whole lot of information on any of these sporadic engagements, but I am working on plotting these as best that I can. Just know that out at sea, it's impossible to know for sure where anything is hit, because unless we see a boat sinking in real time, there's just there's not really a good point of reference for stuff like this. So, it's a lot more challenging uh when there's uh combat on the high seas as opposed to on the land where we could get a satellite image to confirm stuff uh and local eyewitnesses are actually physically there to record this stuff. So, it's been really complicated to plot stuff this week. I'm still waiting on some clean satellite imagery to figure out what actually was struck in uh the UAE and also on Qeshm Island. These things are not exactly uh easy at this point because the stranglehold on information is definitely tightening around the region. On the more diplomatic side of things, two major initiatives have come to a head. Project Freedom from the United States and the Persian Gulf Strait Authority from the Iranians. Details on both are pretty sketchy and hard to verify, but Project Freedom was the short-lived effort to force open the Strait of Hormuz and essentially provide top cover and missile defense for merchant vessels to get out of the Persian Gulf. This effort lasted about 24 hours because the Iranians had struck three of the first five ships that attempted to make a run for it. At least that's the number by my account. It could be more, it could be less. I don't know the exact hour that Project Freedom officially began. Either way, this project is over or at least halted for the foreseeable future, which might be for a variety of reasons. Mainstream media is saying that the US stopped uh Project Freedom because the Saudis and the Emiratis banned the use of their airspace for this operation because they saw it as a sharp escalation that would only result in retaliatory efforts targeting them. I can't confirm beyond all doubt that's what happened because a lot of this is just conjecture and, you know, rumor and stuff like that. But, either way, what's clear is that Project Freedom is over or at least paused for now. In response to this effort, in response to the Project Freedom scuffle, the Iranians formalized what they are calling the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is basically just a web portal and an email system that ships can use to apply for permission to transit the strait. How this is going to work out is anyone's guess, but the general consensus is that the GCC states are probably not going to accept the Iranians controlling the strait because it was an international waterway before the war. However, again, easier said than done, right? And removing Persian control from this waterway is proving to be way more complicated than anyone in the US government seems to know. So, for now, the situation is kind of a hot shooting stalemate. It's hard to describe. The Iranians control the strait or at least influence it enough to prevent free travel through it. Mines are still a problem. The minefield's still there, and the US Navy can't begin to clear them in earnest until the situation is over. And the merchant traffic through the strait is not looking good and has trickled down to basically nothing. Only local ships and a handful of Chinese and shadow fleet tankers have transited in and out of the Gulf. So, traffic is not anywhere near normal. Quite a tough spot we seem to find ourselves in in the Middle East, but on the home front, things are becoming a little bit more serious as well. On the home front for this week, right now, the biggest factor for the United States is the fuel crisis. Specifically, not just the high prices, but also sheer availability, which might become a problem at some point. For those of you who are looking to plan ahead, and if you're looking for an indicator to start thinking about fuel and preparedness terms, now is the time to start thinking about that. This is a pretty big topic, and it would take far too long to flesh out all of this. But, the short version of what to pay attention to is that there's no real way to know how high gas prices will get before the availability itself is cut off. And there are competing ideas on this from a preparedness perspective. I don't know which one's right. I'll just explain the general idea here. Right now, there are a lot of people who are talking about oil rising to $200 or even $300 per barrel because those are the numbers that President Trump himself said would be acceptable. He clearly stated that even if oil got to $200 a barrel, the current war would be worth it. Now, what might this mean in terms of gas prices? Well, most people expect this to be about 7 to $9 per gallon for regular unleaded. Of course, this figure is going to vary by state quite a bit, but $7 is a general figure that is cited by most journalists. However, this figure is based on an economic model and not really a national defense model. Again, there's competing ideas here. So, economists will tell you the math because they have the spreadsheets. So, if you ask an economist, "Hey, how much could gas prices become if the Strait of Hormuz were to be closed forever?" And they'll dutifully give you a figure. I mean, it's you're going to some high, you know, astronomical number or something like that. But if you ask me that question, I'll tell you that question is kind of a farce because if it's planned to be closed forever, we're going to use strategic resources on Iran, and this is going to be all kind of a moot point. Just to cut right to the point to pay attention to, do not assume that gas prices will just keep getting more and more expensive forever. For as long as this lasts, there is a zero barrier, right? At some point, we're going to be using strategic measures, and gasoline itself will be measured mostly by availability and not its market price. This point is indefinable and unknown because there's just there's just too many factors to know how this is all going to work out, but what is certain is that gasoline is not going to get to 20 or $30 per gallon because long before it gets to that point of scarcity, price alone is not going to be the most important factor, and we'll probably just have a large-scale war before that. Personally, again, I don't know which theory is correct. I just know that a lot of people hop on the news. All the talking heads get on there and say, "Okay, oil is going to be $150 a a if this happens. Oil is going to be $200 a barrel if this happens. And if it goes on for this long, it'll be at $300 a barrel at this date or something like that if something doesn't change. And I think that that is probably not the best way to think about it because long before that, we're going to have issues with availability. And the reason for that is because in terms of what's going on in the Middle East, there are more factors than just the White House and Iran and the Israelis. It's not just about turning the tap on or off. There are complications within the oil production cycle as well. For instance, oil is not just like a spigot that you can turn on and off. There is a ramp up and a ramp down process that takes time. And maintenance is a problem, too. If an oil rig is shut down for too long, things get clogged up from methane hydrates or something, and everything corrodes. It's not something that you can just turn back on in many cases. And when it is turned back on, it might not produce as much oil as before due to these problems. Just to add a little bit of context on this for what a lot of the talking heads are saying, there's an interesting relationship between pumping oil out of the ground, refining it, and then storing it. For instance, Kuwait. Kuwait has produced exactly zero barrels of oil for export for the month of April. So, they're exporting not a single barrel from their from their country during the month of April. But, they're still pumping it out of the ground, and they're filling up their storage slowly. Why are they doing this? Why are they still pumping oil out of the ground to fill up with their storage, you know, fill up their storage tanks, when they know that they can't get a tanker out through the Gulf? Well, it's because you can't exactly turn that stuff off. If you shut down the pumps hard, you know, shut them off completely, then the whole system gets out of whack. So, basically, you have to just turn that turn that production down to a minimum. What that number is is going to vary by refinery, right? You can't really know. If the storage starts filling up, then they then they have to shut that stuff hard down, and it's going to become even longer of a process to start their infrastructure back up again. Before the war, Kuwait was producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day on average. So, you go from 2.5 million barrels to zero barrels exported. That means that either you've cut production all the way down and you're just trickling the oil out of the ground to keep the keep the pipes warm, so to speak. But, it's got to go somewhere. It's got to go into the storage, otherwise very bad things happen with regards to the machinery and maintenance and stuff like that. So, getting back to that 2.5 million barrel per day production level might take a lot longer than we might think, especially if production has been halted or reduced sharply for such a long period of time. OPEC in general, the GCC states, are well known for ramping up and ramping down production for both economic and political purposes. So, there is a little bit of elasticity there, or a lot of elasticity there, in terms of how much they produce versus how much they export. So, there's a lot of flexibility in the system. So, this effect may be negligible. I don't know. But, if we just take the UAE into account, another factor which must be considered is the straight-up destruction of refineries. I've said this many times before, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, but several Arab nations have stated that many of their facilities have been damaged to the tune of billions of dollars. And what's more, a lot of these facilities will take years to repair enough to get back to full capacity. So, once again, it's not just an issue of the strait itself being closed and exporting being a problem. It's also on the production side of the house. There are production problems as well. It's going to take many, many, many years to get back to the level, if we are ever to get back to the level of oil production that existed on February 27th of this year. In one day, it all came crashing down, and I don't know how this is going to work out in the future. And, as luck would have it, the destruction or damage of facilities in the Middle East is not the only factor to consider because a lot of refineries have been destroyed or damaged around the world either by industrial accidents or due to armed conflict. Like I mentioned last week, the war in Ukraine starting to involve the targeting of Russian oil refineries is something that is easily forgotten because it's a different war, and it's targeting Russian oil probably won't affect Europe as much because years of sanctions have largely stifled the market for Russian oil in the Western world. But Russia sells a lot of oil to China and China also gets their oil from the Middle East. So China is going to be heavily affected if this continues on because they're getting the double whammy of Russian production being affected. We don't know how much it's affected, but it can't be zero, right? Having 18 or 20 of your refineries being hit by drones and taken offline for a while, that's not nothing. It's got to have some level of impact. But their other main suppliers are also being hindered in the Middle East. So China is definitely paying attention to what's going on. And if everybody who says, "Oh well, it's worth it if we're affecting China." Well, the United States is going to be affected, too. Maybe more so in some areas because the United States, by comparison, is also being heavily impacted because we also import a lot of oil from the Middle East for domestic production and refinement. The US does produce a lot of oil, but it's a different product altogether. This is a gross oversimplification, but the US mostly produces a lot of light sweet crude, which we export around the world. The actual refineries in the US are built to handle the heavy crude from the Middle East. Even though the US does export a lot of oil, a lot of what we need for domestic production actually comes from the Middle East. Thus, our current high gas prices. Why are we exporting so much petroleum if our gas prices are so high? Shouldn't we just keep that here? Well, yeah, probably, but we can't refine it here. So we sell what we can and we buy what we can. And we refine what we can here at home. And what we need to refine here at home is the Middle Eastern oil. That's one of the reasons for the craziness. I've gotten a lot of messages and emails from people asking like, "Why are we sending our oil overseas if we need it here at home?" Well, it's because we can't refine it here. So we sell it to the customer who can. Again, this is a gross oversimplification, but that's kind of the general gist of the how complicated things are at the moment. In the context of refineries around the world being impacted, we're also not immune to problems with domestic production on our end. Just taking a look at the map, we can see the recent problems at domestic US refineries over the past couple of weeks. There have been several fires and maintenance problems that have impacted production, which is undeniable. What is definitely harder to get a bead on is whether or not these incidents are the result of malign action. On the one hand, it's quite the coincidence that the Middle East is cut off, Russian refiners are being taken offline due to the war, and now refineries all around the world from India to China are catching fire. On the other hand, this is exactly what I would expect because when one major refinery is taken offline, all of the others have to take up that slack. And how do they take up that slack? They run to the red line, don't they? Many refiners are being pushed to their limits and beyond in the US right now, and a lot of mothballed units are being brought online again because the US is desperate to produce and refine as much petroleum as possible. So, it's a tough spot because everything's being run at the red line, and things break all the time. Personally, I'd wager that we will continue to see a sharp increase in legitimate and verifiable industrial accidents at refineries in the US over the next few months. So, that's going to be something to be aware of and keep an eye out for as the situation in the Middle East remains in a state of, well, I guess stagnation is still the best word to describe it. Taking all of the words and statements by officials out of the equation and just ignoring all of the talk and rhetoric, the events will speak for themselves. The strait is still closed to Western tanker traffic. The US Navy has not yet been able to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait, therefore supply is down. Demand in the US remains the same and is going to go up as the summertime arrives. And because of that imbalance, prices climb higher, and the official policy of the White House, as it stands, is that $200 a barrel is an acceptable price to pay. Of course, that may change if we ever get close to that. It may just be words right now, but President Trump has given us a number that he says is acceptable. And so, we have something concrete to plan on, for better or for worse. Might not happen tomorrow or ever, but starting to think about the practical ways to insulate against these problems would be a good idea. I was just trying to think the other day, what would I do if gas got up to $9 a gallon? Like, how would I be able to maintain operational readiness if that's the case? Well, it's complicated because it's not just about price, but planning for long-term disruptions would be wise at this point, and I myself am digging down right now to start organizing my mapping products to help wherever possible. There's no need to panic, there's no need to start stock piling fuel at the moment, although I mean, you certainly could if you wanted to, but regardless of what happens in the Middle East, the energy crisis in the homeland is already beginning to happen, and the question is how serious it's going to be. Hopefully, it won't be too bad, but we'll do the best we can no matter what. And with that, that's all I have for today, but I did want to close today by reminding us all that no matter what happens in the Middle East, we still have a lot of problems here in the homeland that are more serious and more impacting to us on a daily basis. One of the biggest problems that has shifted out of the news cycle is the issue of both illegal immigration and the sharp increase in crime around the country. Many of you know that earlier this year I wanted to create a segment just for reminding us of all of the important incidents that took place, but have just become memory hold and forgotten about. And today, I wanted to highlight just one case among many, which is the case of Marco Villanueva Gonzalez. Back in 2018, this individual killed Jordan Huguely by driving 86 mph in a 35 mph zone in Midvale, Utah. This led to a crash which killed Huguely, and at the time Gonzalez was arrested. As he was a juvenile at the time, he was sentenced to only 6 months probation by Judge Tupac Renteria. And from there, he was just basically let go. Jumping forward to last year, since Gonzalez is an illegal immigrant, he was picked up by ICE in Salt Lake City on drug charges and held in ICE detention. This arrest was publicized by the ICE social media page at the time, and everyone just forgot about it and assumed that he got deported. That assumption was incorrect because somewhere along the way ICE let him go. What he has been doing between May of 2025 and now is not known, but it turns out that it is not good because he was just arrested again. On May 4th, he was released from the Salt Lake County Jail to ICE. So, he's back in ICE custody and completely off the grid. We don't know if he's been deported for real this time or if he's been released back into society again. It is hard to make general assumptions based on a case study, but accountability at ICE when it comes to actually deporting criminals has been lacking over the past few months after attention has shifted away from this issue. I don't know how many deportations are happening because ICE stopped publishing the numbers, but I can prove beyond all doubt that at least one person who was in their custody somehow not just evaded deportation, but remained in the United States committing crimes. And I wanted to mention this because it is so incredibly easy for us to forget that there are victims here. A father lost his son by an illegal who suffered no meaningful consequences for his actions. Not only did Gonzalez not show any remorse for his actions, but he continued to be a menace to society for years because Tupac Linteria gave him a slap on the wrist and ICE failed to deport him despite parading around his arrest as a PR victory. All the while a father has been trying to get the tiniest gram of justice for his son. ICE now has the chance to do the absolute minimum and finally deport this individual and it would be a very good idea for them to do so because at this point with tens of thousands of victims like this being murdered every single year, deportation is the moderate, loving, and kind option and the option that allows this individual to evade justice to be honest. But in polite society, this is the option that we have at the moment for handling these types of people and this delicate balance might not be in place forever. So, we'll keep Jordan and his family in our prayers and do what we can to not forget these cases even though the latest shiny object might distract our attention. It's a hard thing to keep a good foundational perspective on events these days because we're constantly dragged from one headline to the next, but we have to remember what the end goal is, which is to do good things, help stop the civilization decline, reverse the bad things, and hold bad people accountable, and do so from a place of honor and magnanimity. We are not going to get out of this mess without everyone putting in their part and going above and beyond to improve the world around them. Many times we don't have a direct way to do this, but we can help in indirect ways at minimum. Picking up trash, keeping yourself clean and physically fit, and learning a lot of new skills that might be helpful are all things that we can do on the individual level. We do not have a chance at tackling these big things until we can do the little things right. For me, one of those little things is building maps and awareness and also working on communication stuff. I know it's boring, but think about how you would have known any of the information I've covered today if a platform goes down. Sure, you might hear it from somebody else or in some alternative way, but I think that strengthening our lines of communication are a basic requirement for moving forward at a time when everything from censorship to technical outages are becoming more of a headache. And that makes for a good transition into the Ghost Net reports for this week. As many of you know, the Ghost Net is a radio net which hopes to provide some level of both emergency preparedness and also everyday use. Back in the day, we used to get the news over the radio, which is a shocking concept now, but this is our attempt to rekindle old-school reliable ways to exchange information around the world no matter what happens. And this week, the net was fantastic once again with many people sharing a lot of information about events and incidents in their local areas around the world. I myself have been trying out the Android version of JS8Call, which is the software package that we use to control our radios, and it seems to be working out quite well. I've heard some reports from people saying that the Android version doesn't decode as well as the desktop version, but I can't really tell a difference on my end. I will say though that it is harder to send longer messages, at least on the version that I have, I can't send more than just one standard block of messages on JS8Call on Android, but the app is continually being updated, so hopefully this will be a good analog to replace a lot of the capability we have from our laptops on our phones at some point. Right now, I've been testing this with my own field radio setup, and I've been trying to streamline the experience as best I can. More to come on that later, but for everyone who might be hearing of the Ghost Net for the first time, you can check out the handbook I've written on it, as well as the entire playlist on the project that's on my YouTube page. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. As always, all of my research can be found on my Obsidian page, and my mapping data can either be found at the links below or on my GitHub page, where I provide updated KMZs for my work as I make updates, which is pretty much every day. So, thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.