Intel Update — September 20 — The Good — The Bad — and the Redeemed

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for September 14th through the 20th 2025. Like I say every week it has been very very busy. But thankfully this week, dare I say it, we have a bit of good news. So let's get right to it. Starting off with the global strategic concerns. All in all, around the world it's been fairly dynamic in many different ways. Down in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, the United States has struck another narco vessel. I don't have an exact grid, as with all of these, so we just have to kind of guess where it's at. But the United States continues to strike narco vessels down there. You would think you would think that they would uh be a little bit more careful. We keep dropping hellfires and uh what I also suspect to be small diameter bombs or SCBs, the GBU39s, I believe. And the cartel, the cartel deololis continues to send those boats out. Everyone's talking about how we keep sinking their boats, but uh nobody's really remarked on the fact that we keep dropping hellfires on their boats and they keep sending them out anyway. I don't know, if I was a small boat driver, I might be a little bit more hesitant, but that kind of speaks to the deliberation and the dedication that these cartels have to running uh drugs and people throughout the region. So, moving over to Europe. This is a developing situation as I'm recording this. Uh this morning, there were several cyber attacks that struck multiple airports uh not just in London, but also around Europe. Apparently, it was that the ticketing system uh was cyber attacked, but no real indication on what's going on or what's affected, but a lot of flights have been cancelled and a lot of people stranded because of that. So, we've seen this before in Europe, so it's not entirely surprising, but it's something to be aware of if you're traveling to Europe uh over the next couple of days. And finally, here in the Far East, we have seen an improvement of relations between the United States and China regarding the Tik Tok deal. So, it's a complicated arrangement and conglomerate of ownership, but the United States appear appears to have gotten what they wanted and uh China seems okay with it, I suppose. But either way, this is a a positive movement for tensions in the region to kind of deescalate. That's the way things are for right now, even though the Taiwan issue has kind of not really been addressed and still remains a fairly persistent point of conflict between the East and the West. So, that's it for the rather long-winded uh overview of what's going on this week. Let's move over to strategic movement. Like I said before, the war in the Caribbean Sea continues as before. All of the platforms that were down there a couple of weeks ago are still there. They're just moving around. Uh the F-35s are in Puerto Rico. And there are quite a few MQ9 Reaper drones that have been observed in Puerto Rico as well. So it does indeed look like the United States is settling in for the long haul uh to just keep sinking as many boats as humanly possible coming out of Venezuela. So that's it for strategic movement. Let's move around to the United States and talk about some of the kinetic events that have taken place this week. Here at home in the United States, we have had turmoil that has taken a few different uh tones over the past week or so since the Charlie Kirk assassination. Most of which is centered around a few different ideas. So, first of all, we have a lot of immigration uh stuff getting kicked back up again. So, we've got local opposition to ICE operations in Chicago, which is taking kind of uh national spotlight at the moment, but we also have similar efforts in New York City. So, we've got that pretty solid base of counter ice and pro-rime rhetoric and atmosphere out there in a lot of major cities around the United States. But, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, we can just heap a lot more icing on top of that cake, which has taken the form of uh two things. One, speech related stuff and also violence related stuff. So, the White House has done a very poor job, I'll say this very clearly, the White House has done a very very poor job at separating out these two issues, right? There is a major major major difference between saying mean things about Charlie Kirk and threatening to harm more people. Right? There there's a very clear line there, right? And it turns out that there's nearly complete overlap between those two ideas, right? When it comes to most people talking about the Kirk assassination, many of you have seen that that vin diagram is basically two circles stacked on top of each other. Meaning that the people who say mean things about Charlie Kirk also tend to encourage violence in the same exact social media post. Right? So, the White House has not done a very good job at at talking about that, right? And they're they've set themselves back quite a bit. I think they drag out Pam Bonnie and throw her on the uh media circuit to talk about hate speech, not realizing that this is not really a speech issue at this point, right? This is not about trying to police issues of someone saying mean things about somebody. They can do that all they want, right? That doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. What does matter is interrupting the terrorist attack planning cycle. And that's exactly what the federal government is trying to do. At least it's what it seems like. It's what I hope. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is kind of a common thing these days in all political realms. But all of this comes down to there being a major difference between somebody saying, you know, Charlie Kirk was a bad guy and someone hopping on social media and encouraging their millions of followers to go out and hurt people. And the latter is exactly what is happening. You've got a lot of streamers on Twitch, on kick, and they are uh they're all over these these social media platforms. They're all over these streaming platforms, and they're speaking to young people. They're speaking to people in Discord. They're arranging these groups, right? We know just from the the Kirk assassination itself that the killer was in, you know, a Discord group, right? And a lot of people had knowledge of the attack beforehand. At least that's that's the general insinuation so far based on statements by the FBI. So, all in all, this is not really a speech thing. So for all the libertarians screeching out there, chill out, right? This is not a speech thing. This is in my world now. This is uh this is in the world of counterterrorism, you will find no bigger skeptic of the US government than myself. However, if I hear the words slippery slope one more time, I'm going to become rather annoyed because we are in the trenches now, right? So all in all, positive movement in the right direction, but we also have to keep an eye on a lot of the malign actors that are starting to crop up. We've got Antifa, which is probably getting ready to mobilize if the feds uh actually do make them a terrorist organization. I don't know how they would do that to be honest. They may just flag them as an FTO so that they can cut their funding, but a lot of their funding comes from billionaires in the domestic United States. So, I'm not quite sure how that's going to work out. So, I don't want to commit to any kind of uh assessment on that just just yet. The left was largely neutered by the election. They lost a lot of their steam, but I think they're going to probably get it back if uh organizations like Antifa start becoming a good way to solidify resistance to the Trump regime. Right. I'm not going to say it's 2016 all over again. with regards to the mobilization of the left to, you know, just start their screeching as well. But it may uh it may take some of that historical atmosphere moving forward. But so that's what I'm trying to focus on uh personally moving forward is the immigration angle, the the cartel stuff that's linked into that with organized crime and and more standard uh criminal enterprise kind of stuff, but also the more terrorism angle, the the counterterrorism angle that comes with a lot of these leftist groups becoming more and more emboldened and wellunded and stuff like that. So going to be a busy winter all around, but that's exactly what I'm trying to focus on. And it's not all negative. It's more along the lines of just being aware of what's going on. You don't have to be doom and gloom all the time, right? That's very popular to do these days. But I think that it's very important to slot uh that reaction to Kirk's murder into the appropriate response, right? So yeah, you can mourn and lament uh not just Kirk himself, but also the state of the world and the state of the country, but we've got to get to work and we've got to get serious about our own survival now. If we didn't realize that before, we got to realize it now. and uh especially amongst all of the the normies that are going to come over and start realizing what's happening around them for once in their life. Uh so they are not to be shunned, they are to be helpfully guided, right? We're all about helping each other out and uh better late than never. So more broadly around the country, a lot of the violence and a lot of the kinetic activities that have taken place have largely been centered around the firing slash uh suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, the Jimmy Kimmel show, right? The ratings were already down. ABC was looking for an out and they got it. They're probably going to do the same with the View actually u because I saw that um they were getting some federal pressure from the FCC on that one too, but don't think this is any sort of victory even though there's hundreds of demonstrators out in the street protesting to bring Jimmy Kimmel back, his show was already tanking and they're probably looking for a way out. But nonetheless, the same demonstrators that are protesting a Jimmy Kimmel stuff that nobody cares about walk across the street and then protest ICE, right? So, they're the same kind of people, the same demonstrators, same groups, right? And some of them can be pretty kinetic, even though they're a lot of them are mentally ill, such as in Pittsburgh where the FBI field office uh in in Pittsburgh there was attacked by a dude who rammed his vehicle into the front gate or the the entry control point or ECP. No idea what that's about, but generally vehicle ramming attacks tend to be one of two things. A drunk driver or someone who's clinically insane. And it seems to me like it was the latter in this case because authorities stated that he had written uh like with a marker or a paint pen or something all over his vehicle. I tried to find some photos of that to see what he was talking about, but I I couldn't find any photos of what he actually wrote on his vehicle from the from what the feds have said. It doesn't seem like it was very uh clear as to what this dude was all about. But anyway, vehicle ramming attacks always tend to uh pop up when there's some something crazy in the news, right? gets all the the loonies uh riled up and this has definitely been a week for that. So, most of the unrest has of course been centered in Chicago this week uh because the politicians just keep heaping gasoline on that bonfire of counter ice and pro- crime initiative by the local politicians. You've got the mayor, Brandon Johnson, uh, in utter panic mode, trying to do what he can to keep the feds out of his city because he doesn't want to look bad. But because he's not a very smart man, he doesn't seem to realize that the words that he says are going to be recorded and they have meaning. So, when you call law enforcement a sickness that needs to be eradicated, that tends to be what we might u catch a terrorism charge for. So, I don't think the feds are going to go that far. They I mean they could if they wanted, but either way, chances are if you see somebody wearing a mask at one of these protests or one of these like events where you know ICE has to fling somebody across the street, chances are that the person flying through the air is a political candidate uh for some political office in Chicago. So that's mostly what that's about. However, things can get pretty violent pretty quickly. I know everybody's kind of burned out on the whole protester scene. We've seen thousands of people protesting random things that I've causes I've never even heard about over the past few years. I know it's not 2016 anymore. We're all kind of burned out about it, but that still doesn't mean that some pretty serious stuff can't can't happen. So, just something to be aware of. A lot of these groups are trying to become more solidified. It's not like they're formalized groups a lot of times, but you do have this weird conglomerate of politicians running for office trying to throw rocks at ice. people who are paid to be there, people who are there because they're mentally ill, you know, the whole gambit, right? So, it's not like you can put them under one convenient label despite, you know, media sources wanting to do that. But either way, something I'm going to be focusing on over the next few weeks because the White House, and it's not necessarily their fault a lot of times, but the White House has indeed engaged in a lot of activity that is going to be a point of solidification and a point of like unity for these uh for these people who are trying to cause harms. So, it's not the end of the world, but it's something to be aware of because most leftist politicians and leftist voice like politically left voices, even elected officials have urged violence. And you you can't underestimate that, you have to realize that crazy people exist. And though it may be hard for you to imagine that someone would look at a congressman or a congresswoman on social media and say, "I'm going to do exactly what they said." You got to remember people listen to the Kardashians for fashion advice. Okay? So there are enough crazy people out there listening to politicians and listening to big voices and listening to kick streamers. The people most likely to conduct the attack are the people who are also listening to these violent people and doing what they say. Right? So you can't discount that. It's not the end of the world again. But we've got to be aware that the risks are pretty high. And as long as these politicians and these influencers, it it sounds, you know, really bad to say that people listen to influencers, but they do. That's that they they really do. They do on the right, they do on the left. And as long as a lot of big voices are calling for continued violence, then you're going to get continued violence. So, I know a lot of conservative podcasters are now obviously and very quietly increasing their security, which is a good thing. Uh, but it's just something to to be mindful of, right? So, getting down into the regions, let's talk about Washington DC this week. And this is where we get probably the best news we've had all year, which is the changes to the H-1B visa scheme. Yesterday, President Trump signed the gold card uh membership sort of uh subscription package to American citizenship, I suppose. But they also changed how H-1B visas work. And it seems to be a quite a positive change uh for everything from counterterrorism to the safety of Americans on roadways to uh the American job market and economy as well. So, what have they done? Well, the short version is they have made it so that if you want an H-1B visa, you got to pay a $100,000 annual payment to the feds. So, they've slapped a $100,000 fee per H1B visa per year. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what many might describe to be a torpedo to the H-1B visa farming scheme. So, if any company, if any American company wants to have an H-1B visa come over from India, they have to redeem the $100,000 annual payment and they have to keep paying that along with a bunch of other uh stipulations as well. There's a pretty high uh fee just to apply. And then there's the $100,000 fee on top of that. So, it's basically not really removed the H-1B visa at, you know, entirely from, you know, existence, but it has made it very cost prohibitive to engage in as opposed to the few thousand I used to have to pay just in miscellaneous fees. Now, it's 100 grand per person per year. Now, some of you out there may have exceptionally good hearing, and you may be wondering why you don't hear the wailing and nashing of teeth from Silicon Valley, who have basically marketed their entire existence around the H-1B visa farming schemes. In other words, why is big tech not freaking out about this? Well, mostly because uh the pipeline for big tech basically remains the same. So, most of Silicon Valley gets their uh Indians imported into the United States through student visas. So, they bring him over on a student visa and then they can transition into an H-1B visa from there. That's the loophole for this. That's the catch uh to what Trump just signed, at least based on what I can read. So, that's a way that big tech can be okay with this because their farming scheme for foreign workers basically remains unchanged. They can get someone over here on a student visa or an L1 visa and then transition that into an H-1B visa, right? So, the the the farming is still there for big tech. So, don't think Microsoft's going to be emptying out anytime soon. And also, fun fact, this doesn't apply retroactively. So, everybody who's already in the United States with an H-1B visa is going to stay here, right? So, they're not getting booted because of that. So, some good, some bad. I think it's generally good, but it could be better, right? I think a lot more pressure can be applied uh to to get this loophole closed up so that you can't transition one visa to another to to escape the uh the magic uh fee payment here. Another thing which was done separately uh but it was something that was done kind of unilaterally by the state department is that the state department said they're no longer going to be accepting visas for any commercial truck drivers effective immediately. They Marco Rubio announced that I think on Thursday. So again, positive movement, right? I think that was probably done based on the deaths of those people in Florida uh from the Harender Singh uh case. But so again, all in all, positive movement, good stuff. We'll keep moving and keep applying pressure to uh to to help close these loopholes and maybe uh address some of those 55 million visa holders in the United States in due time. Moving over to the Midwestern region, I kind of jumped the gun and talked about Illinois, Chicago already, so I'll kind of skip that. But I wanted to mention something that is rather interesting in the realm of the immigration uh angle, which is Minnesota. So, a couple of days ago, the marriage license for Ilhan Omar was leaked, which confirms that she indeed married her brother so that he could obtain a green card. So, the classic green card marriage, the classic immigration fraud. So, I thought that was kind of interesting. I don't know if there's any traction or movement on trying to police this sort of thing, but I mean, you you can't have a much more smoking gun than this uh when it comes to immigration fraud and committing multiple felonies, right? So, I don't know. Uh it had been suspected for a long time. Uh I don't know if they're going to try to oust a congresswoman from office, especially one that's, you know, kind of got a lot of power these days or not a lot of power, but a lot of is very vocal these days. But I don't know. they went after George Santos. So, but yeah, I did want to mention it just because I don't want it to become memory hold and I thought it was kind of uh interesting that what we knew years ago has proven to be true. So, that's it for the United States. Let's briefly touch on Venezuela this week. I am continuing to work on the IPB or intelligence preparation of the battle space for Venezuela. Yes, I know this is amateur grade stuff, but airfields and military bases are what you got to start with first if you don't have time. And the whole world's been a little bit busy over the past couple of weeks. So, I'm trying to get back into Venezuela, especially considering that now that we have three sunken narco vessels, and I suspect there will be more. My guess is the next thing is probably going to be an F-16 shootown. The the Venezuelan military has mostly slipped into posturing. They know they can't win uh against the US military, and it's not to insult V the Venezuelan military. They literally just can't. There's there's no way they can have any kind of defense against the US military. It's just not it's just a non-starter. Not to say that they can't, you know, put up a good fight in some certain areas and in some situations, but by and large, uh, considering the force that's down there, I mean, you know, they're not going to be able to stop us from whacking narco boats. So, that will probably continue. The cartel deos, which is more heavily involved in the government of Venezuela than one might think. They're basically the way that cartels work in Venezuela is this one cartel is basically implanted at multiple levels of military and political existence. So unlike in say Mexico where there's this like uh passive, you know, everybody's on the take with, you know, the cartels down there and there's multiple cartels kind of fighting for each other, the cartel de la Solles is really the only power in Venezuela and they're more heavily ingrained in Maduro's government. So it's it's not like they're, you know, completely married up with the government, but they're close, right? They're a lot closer than we might think. So that's why this is kind of a big deal because when you're targeting a cartel in Venezuela, you're really targeting in many cases the Venezuelan military. So I would not be surprised if these dudes on these narco boats, which they seem to be targeting with rather large munitions, probably to ensure there are no survivors uh or evidence left. My guess is that they're probably soldiers. Uh but again, that's pure speculation, you know, so there's no way to confirm or deny e either way. But that's kind of how things work in Venezuela. It's a very strange and unique relationship between the government, the military, and the cartels, or really the one main cartel that's down there, which is kind of interesting because then TDA, Trender Aragon, gets thrown into the the mix because that's how the United States is claiming to go after these when really they're not targeting TDA. There's TDA has very little presence in Venezuela now. Although they they might be starting to get more popular uh since the United States has interest in Venezuela, but before anybody knew who TDA was, Maduro had already thrown most of TDA's leadership in prison. So they were kind of on their way out and then uh they found their way into the United States because we had open borders for so many years and then they started committing a lot of crimes and occupying places. Then they became a household name in the United States and cut forward to where the United States is on the brink of war with Venezuela. And we've got a complicated story, don't we? We've got a complicated situation. So, I will have uh more clear products uh on this soon. I just uh right now I'm trying to learn a lot of stuff myself. I'm not a Venezuela expert, but uh thankfully uh Venezuela leaks more information to the internet than War Thunder forums. So, it's not terribly hard to find out where their troops are located and what bases are truly operational versus which ones are just derelictked. So, it just it just takes me a little bit more time to go through it and figure out what's where just in case things start to get a little bit more exciting down there. So, I think that's uh pretty much it for today. I'll roll it up. It's already I've already talked too much today. So, uh let's go ahead and uh finish up with the intercepted ghost net reports. Again, the past couple of weeks, I I I didn't mention it last week, but the past couple of weeks have been absolutely fantastic for the Ghost Net. I've talked to a lot of people. I've got a lot of messages from people who say they've seen, you know, 40 to 70 people uh on the net during the window at any given time. Not that everybody's talking, but they've just seen these call signs come up through like heartbeat messages or something like that. Of course, this is all mostly dependent on solar weather, right? So, if there's a lot of solar weather interference, you're not going to see or talk to as many people as you might otherwise. However, uh I think that the solar weather for the past couple weeks hasn't been super terrible. Uh maybe it's because the sun is starting to set later in the day. I don't know. But either way, it's good stuff. More people are using it. A lot of more different call signs are are popping up and uh I think that a lot of people are getting involved. So, also, as another reminder, there is a VHF option, so it's probably not going to be successful. So don't get your hopes up, but it's there. If all you have is a bow fang, I've got a frequency for you. So download the ghost net plan and you'll see all of the stuff there. There is also a meshtastic node. So for those of you who want to plug that into your fancy RM1 node or any other meshtastic device, you can certainly do so. Line of sight stuff is just not really good to have on a national level simply because the chances of everyone being in line of sight of each other is fairly minimal. Whereas with HF, I can talk to somebody in Canada or down in, you know, Central America fairly easily. But from where I'm at, I can only get a couple of miles with say a Bow Fang radio, right? So unless somebody's a couple of miles, you know, from me, then there's not really a pretty good chance of the line of sight stuff working super well. But guess what? It's there just in case you need it. So that's all I have for today, everyone. Thank you for all of your support. I really do mean it. That's what keeps me going forward and uh continuing this stuff. So, thank you guys all for that and I will see you next time.