Intel Update — May 30 — Rock and a Hard Place

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 24th through the 30th of 2026. This week seems to have flown right by as many different events have come to a head over the past few days. Around the world, all of the current wars continue pretty much the same as before. In Europe, the war in Ukraine has intensified once again as the yearly summer fighting season has resulted in major offensive and counteroffensive actions being conducted by both sides. Most of the war remains fairly stagnant in terms of the front lines actually moving, but major offensives are being conducted far behind the lines in both Russia and in Ukraine via drones and missiles. And the Ukrainian attacks in particular are striking a lot of Russian oil infrastructure, which is affecting the global oil market. As a result, the war in Ukraine has served to put the squeeze on Europe even more than the war in the Middle East already has as Ukrainian forces continue to strike targets that indirectly make Europe's fuel supply even more expensive. Similarly, the Middle East remains in a state of stagnation or stalemate, however you want to put it, with a few engagements being reported this week, both in the Strait of Hormuz, within the Persian Gulf War, but also within Lebanon and Gaza as the Israelis continue offensive actions along multiple fronts. The Israelis are expanding their operations uh to conduct their land invasion into Lebanon, but they're also looking to annex more of Gaza than they already have with Israeli politicians stating that they plan to annex roughly 70% of Gaza. So whether that will actually happen is debatable, but nevertheless, the situation in the Middle East remains tense on many different fronts. Most importantly for us, the global oil inventories have begun to approach minimum operation levels in some parts of the globe this week, mostly in Asia as the shock to the global oil supply continues to be affected more seriously. Closer to home, kinetic strikes continue on fast boats in the Eastern Pacific as the United States begins to accelerate the counter narcotics mission down south. But there are very few details on this. So there's not much to note other than that the strikes happened generally in the Eastern Pacific. Within the homeland itself, civil conflict in the form of street takeovers and routine crime continues as before with no real change from last week. The situation is still insane. These street takeovers are still occurring in dozens of cities around the country pretty much every day. So it's hard to keep track of all of these. But the deteriorating situation in Newark, New Jersey has once again emboldened the anti-ISE demonstrations and served as a good barometer for other unrest which might develop if so desired. So very much a busy week all around. On the strategic movement front, the major military movements for this week have remained much the same as before. No big changes from last week with the little caveat that Cuba is still a central focus. This week, US Southern Command announced that a meeting had taken place at the perimeter fence of Guantanamo Bay between General Donovan and a collection of cheery fellows from various levels of Cuban senior military leadership. Not a whole lot of smiles down in Gitmo, which is probably appropriate, but this meeting does highlight tensions in the region because it's not something that is normally conducted. These meetings like this are pretty rare, and this one's not really clear as to what it was all about. Per their post on social media, the reason for the meeting was very vague and only mentioned stuff like operational security and general perimeter security. Who knows what the real reason for the meeting was all about. Maybe it was just a PR event, more about conveying the seriousness of the situation. It's really impossible to know for sure, but the end result is keeping Cuba at the forefront of the news cycle and reminding us that American aspirations in Cuba are still being formulated, whatever they are. As of right now, there's not really a clear explanation of why the United States is interested in Cuba. Of course, there is the general strategic implications of having a hostile nation, or rather a nation which is more amenable to your adversaries, Russia and China. That makes a lot of sense. The Chinese have a lot of radio listening post down in Cuba. So, it would make sense for the United States to be interested in that sort of behavior and getting them to uh push the Chinese out of Cuba would probably be in our strategic interest as a nation or really any nation would have these strategic interests. But the United States has not made that argument. So I don't want to speak for the White House and make arguments that they have not made. And so far they have not articulated exactly why the United States is interested in Cuba. What what's the point? What do we want from Cuba? That has not really been disclosed other than the general uh consensus of well, they're just bad guys. Okay. Well, that's not really an explanation for anything, so we're just going to have to wait and see. But at the moment, the aspirations for Cuba, either control of it or some kind of influence operation or puppet state, I don't really know. I don't know what the point of this is, but that has never stopped us in the past. So, we'll keep an eye on it. Make sure that uh we prepare for any kind of impact from another war breaking out in terms of the economic situation. I don't know. It's too early to say if this is going to make that cross from diplomacy to actual warfare. these days, those uh two sides of the coin tend to blend together quite well. So, we'll just have to wait and see. But anyway, Cuba is still on the menu, and we'll have to wait and see how it all works out. Within the homeland United States this week, the theme has of course been an increase in horrific crime, man-made horrors beyond comprehension, and far-left riots in New Jersey. So, pretty much situation normal at this point. In New Jersey, the riots at the Delaney Hall detention facility have continued and remained fairly kinetic each night. Over the past few days, a full-blown encampment has been set up on site to help the riers with logistics and to provide them with material aid. This was a substantial effort with an entire party tent for like weddings and such being set up on site along with other tents and really your standard Antifa style autonomous zone kind of arrangement. I don't know if that's what they were calling it on site, but that's kind of what they were building over the past week or so. However, last night substantial reinforcements arrived. The New Jersey State Police have been activated and are on site to assist with security of the main compound and also to keep riers from breaching the perimeter. The state police also ordered these encampments to be removed. Uh so the state police is in invested in trying to get that area cleaned up. And as of this morning, the riers essentially just left a bunch of trash behind. Now, the situation is most certainly not over yet. The riots are certainly not over and protesters remain on site pretty much persistently. With the fences being put up overnight, the chance of the compound being overrun is much reduced. But these logistical efforts propping up immediately are an indicator that money is behind these efforts. If we were to zoom out the map just a little bit, we can see that the New York, New Jersey area is absolutely packed with safe houses used by illegal immigrants. And all of these yellow diamond symbols depict an NGO or an agency that is dedicated to helping illegal immigrants evade capture and commit crimes. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, that's a lot of different safe houses of people that are openly committing crimes." Well, yeah, welcome to my world. I've got thousands of these on the maps, and I'm not even uh speculating here. I'm just using what these people put on their own websites. So, if you were to tap one of these icons on my maps and just put the address, the street address that I have listed for that facility into Google, you'll find out exactly what's at that facility. I can't put the name of the facility down. Uh but they can't uh copyright strike me with a mailing address because you can't copyright mailing addresses. So that's how I have to get around that for now. But by and large, all of these yellow diamonds on the map marked safe, that is the uh mill 2525 symbology symbol for a safe house. That's what I've used to settle in on all of these places where illegal immigrants are being staged and taken care of and provided aid and stuff like that. But anyway, I wanted to focus on Delaney because this is kind of an interesting one. This has been the site where a lot of politicians and congressmen and general big figures come to make speeches and rile the crowd up because it's really close to New York. So, of course, everybody's going to go there in grandstand, which is why this uh protesting started off to begin with. I believe it originally started with an alleged hunger strike at the facility among the uh inmates, detainees, whatever you want to call them, uh waiting deportation, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because these illegals are not held here that long. Uh but maybe they are now. I don't know. Either way, it transcended into just kind of a big mess over the past uh week or so. And due to the close proximity to other things, again, why intelligence preparation of the battle space is quite important. If we see that they are within driving distance of a few dozen different uh milliondoll law firms and groups that are willing to provide them with free legal support and any kind of uh support they want. Well, now you see why this is kind of a big deal. You add in the fact that the White House is really really not interested in cracking down anymore after the whole Minneapolis fiasco and you get kind of a recipe for destruction. So hopefully now that the state police are on scene and kind of involved in this, this will simmer down quite a bit at this one facility. But again, there are many other places within driving distance. There are at least a dozen different federal buildings that these uh people can go cause problems at throughout the greater New York, New Jersey area, and there's not a whole lot that anybody can do about it but play whack-a-ole and just I mean you can't secure them all and these people have the numbers to uh dial up tensions to 11 if they so choose. So suffice it to say that this area has a lot of big money and the federal administration is really really desperate to avoid another Minneapolis. Once again, people get all been out of shape about how the immigration issue is on display in the street. Uh, but it's, you know, it's mostly boomers, neocons, normies, and people who don't understand how important crowd control really is. They may not understand looking at a crowd, reading the crowd, understanding what these people are doing, how they're dressed, what kind of insignia they're wearing. They they don't view the world through the lens of counterterrorism. So, they look at this and they just say, "Well, why are the police being mean?" Well, okay. They're they're trying to prevent somebody from getting killed here. And unfortunately, crowd control is a rather blunt instrument sometimes. So, the average normie Fox News watcher out there might not like it when Abua gets a little tearyeyed from the tear gas. But if it saves her from getting shot in the face because she threw a brick at a cop, then you know that maybe maybe there's a a place for crowd control. So either way, it's a delicate balance. Minneapolis showed that the federal government is not interested in maintaining their side of that balance, and Newark has confirmed it as well by being slow to react, by not using tear gas, by not using less lethal crowd control measures. And this is why we now have a thing to talk about. Right. Again, I don't want to focus on this too much, but when it comes to these counter ice things, this is a major concern. It is a much bigger concern than what's going on in Iran. It's a much bigger concern than paying almost $5 for gas, if we're being perfectly honest here. And so far, the immigration issue, specifically being heavy-handed at some of these riots, this is one of the only subjects where the White House actually cares about public perception and opinion, and they care about the public perception and opinion of their own political enemies, which is just an odd thing. But this is also why this minor policing issue has spiralled into a full-blown situation here. So once again, I don't want to make a molehill into a mountain over this sort of thing. This is one facility. This is in New Jersey because of course it is. And it looks like it's starting to simmer down now. At least the fences will make it a little bit harder for them to damage stuff. So there's that. But I haven't talked about immigration stuff in a while. And it's worth keeping these things on the back burner because as important as it is to understand what's going on around the world, it's even more important to understand what's going on here at home. So far, I do not know of a single agency, group, charity, whatever that has actually been shut down for encouraging these riots and for funding them. So, all it takes is the will and you know, just not seeing it. So, enough of that. Let's move to the Middle East for this week. And like a broken record, the situation remains about as tense as before. And let's start by working chronologically uh by walking through what chaos has unfolded in the region this week. Please forgive me if the details and timelines are a little bit off this week. The strangle hold on information has become much more substantial since the ceasefire went into effect. And it's harder to verify the timeline of events, but the general situation is that the war became kinetic again a few days ago, at least in a limited scope. Shortly after the announcements of an all but finalized peace deal last Friday that we discussed in last last weekend's brief, the United States carried out bombings within Iran on Monday, Memorial Day. During this series of strikes, the United States claimed to have taken out a few fastboats along with a SAM site and Bondara Boss. Sentcom did not acknowledge this series of strikes on their social media page. They have stopped providing press releases on engagements and no video was provided. The only reason that we know that it was the United States who conducted these strikes is because Sentcom spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins has been verbally confirming these strikes with reporters in mainstream media interviews. So after the American strikes on May 2526, the Iranians waited a day then launched their sort of proportionate response counterattack, whatever you want to call it, they launched their own attack again. This attack took the form of one ballistic missile targeting Ali Salam air base in Kuwait along with a handful of drones targeting Kuwait as well. At the time, the battle damage caused by this strike was completely censored and impossible to find out. However, as of last night, we now know that as many as five service members and a few contractors were wounded during this attack. So, casualties are still rolling in even from just one missile strike. Remember how I said that Sentcom is no longer posting their engagements on social media, or at least they're not posting all of them. They're just posting some of them. Well, this was quite handy because Sentcom did post about this Iranian counterattack on their page while pretending that the United States did not launch the first strike. They call this an egregious ceasefire violation and an unjustified Iranian aggression. But in reality, it was the United States which broke the ceasefire first by conducting the Memorial Day strikes. Interestingly enough, in this same exact post, Sentcom directly stated that Kuwaiti forces had successfully intercepted this ballistic missile, which might be a technically factual statement if we stretch the meaning of the word intercepted. However, it's also misleading because the missile actually hit the base anyway, wounding five people and damaging two MQ9 drones. So, it sounds like it hit an aircraft hanger. To me, this sounds like a cover for a failed interception. But that's my own personal opinion. I think they're just lying. I think the the missile actually did hit the base. But anyway, I just found this whole exchange completely baffling because believe it or not, propaganda works. In this case, all that needs to be done is to not disclose the fact that the US conducted strikes in Iran. And when the Iranians counteratt attacked, it'll be like the first time, which is exactly what happened. The US attacks on Memorial Day 1st. The Iranians counterattack on May 28th. And on that same night, the United States counter counterattacked the Iranians claiming to strike a drone that was about to be launched along with a few other undisclosed targets in Bond Abbas. Probably. This brings us to yesterday when President Trump posted this message on his social media platform, which contains a lot of information. President Trump outlined the rough criteria for what the United States would accept as part of a peace deal. But on the more tactical level, he also stated that the US would lift the American side of the blockade. Throughout the day yesterday, nothing much happened on this. And right now, it's hard to determine if this is the truth because no ships are transiting the strait due to what happened next. Yesterday evening, as everyone was trying to figure out what is going on, the UK MTO came in from the top rope with a pile drive to the peace process. For those who are just joining us now, the UK MTO or the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center is the leading authority for most maritime security issues in the Middle East. They cover other areas too, but the Middle East is their main focus. And they are like a British fusion cell run by the Royal Navy that works directly with US Navscent to help civilian ships know what security threats are present around the world. So, think of them like a British government agency that's like mostly civilian run, but they're still like directly tied into the government. They're not like a third party private company. So last night they published two advisory notes, both of which are incredibly interesting. The first one was an announcement that is comparatively rare and is not exactly good news. This was a notice of military operations being conducted north of the Musandam peninsula of Oman, which is this area of Oman, the peninsula that juts out north into the straight of Hormuz. So the UK MTO is saying that the US is going to be conducting military operations north of that. Well, that's in the middle of the street of Hormuz. Specifically, this notice warns of additional Iranian mine laying activity, and that US forces are on high alert. The notice also mentions that Iran continues to attempt to impede mine clearance efforts, which is the first public acknowledgement that the Iranian mines are indeed a threat, and that the United States can't exactly get in there to clear them. The notice goes on to mention that, quote, "Any vessel that does not comply with the direction of US forces may be determined to be an imminent threat and subject to proportionate measures of self-defense in accordance with international law." This sentence alone gives us a lot of information. Uh, for one, this further solidifies developments that took place last week, namely that the US is now conducting air strikes on Iranian vessels based on self-defense criteria. For the three of you who remember my anatomy of an air strike video from a while back, you may know that this is an indication that the US has completely revamped the concepts of kinetic targeting and the lines between deliberate targeting and dynamic targeting are not so clear anymore. Anyway, the US has now decided to allow target engagement authorities or TIAS, TEAS, at lower and lower levels of command to conduct self-defense strikes, which would normally be considered offensive strikes under all prior targeting doctrine as outlined by Sentcom's targeting guidance, JP360, and and a bunch of other long-standing guidance. This document from the UK MTO puts this in writing and is intended to warn the maritime shipping community that the United States will be conducting kinetic strikes in the strait very soon. The second document provided by the UK MTO is a warning that the blockade of Iranian ports is still in effect which takes the wind out of the sales regarding the lifting of the American blockade. So according to US Navent as in United States Naval Forces Central Command, the blockade is still in effect and this notice was published many hours after President Trump's announcement on social media. So somebody is lying about the blockade being lifted. In fact, these two notices are major indications and warnings of the war kicking off again soon and a primary focus is being placed on the straightup Hormuz. This notice directly states that the US Navy cannot guarantee the safety of neutral or merchant shipping, which seems pretty clear to me. And I don't think that any merchant shipping, at least any Western shipping, is going to go through the straight anytime soon unless they pay the Iranian toll. And if they pay the Iranian toll, then the US might pick them up, too. Because funny enough, as I'm recording this right now, I just see a notice come in from Sentcom stating that they disabled a non-compliant vessel in the Gulf of Oman to prevent blockade violation. So, I don't even know what's going on anymore. President Trump says the blockade's lifted. Uh, this looked pretty clear to me. Maybe I'm just stupid or something. I just can't read very well. And now Scom is saying, "Well, we're shooting at vessels which violate the blockade." So, I don't get it. Um, or maybe I do get it. Maybe I do understand it quite well. Uh because this type of well, we're going to let you go, but then when you get there, we're going to bomb you kind of mentality is really prevalent. I'm sure many of you have picked up on where this idea is coming from because there's somebody else in the world who tends to do this sort of thing. We're definitely not going to shoot. You can definitely go through this area. Oh, we bombed you. Okay. Yeah, now we see where this is coming from, right? At least that's my own general theory and I'll leave it at that. But anyway, I'll let that go for now. Uh maybe one day people will start reading between the lines and understand what's really going on here. But if maritime shipping needed any more reason to stay out of the straight this morning something else happened. Observers in Oman spotted a floating object that they assessed to be a naval mine which they say is currently floating to the west of the inshore traffic zone which is the new name that has been given uh to the alternative traffic separation scheme going through Omani waters. So there's a mine floating out there uh somewhere. what they think is a mine. Who who knows what it could actually be, but that's what they said. So, as of this morning, that's pretty much how things stand. We are on day 91 of the war, 3 months in, and the potential for peace remains very much off the menu for the time being. I would venture a guess to say that the hesitance to enter the straight of Hormuz from a western aligned vessel is roughly the same as it was during the height of the shooting. Otherwise, vessels are taking the Iranian route. They're paying the toll and they're just going on their merry way. I don't know if these vessels are being intercepted by the US Navy eventually at some point or what's going on, but right now the most hardest hit, the most affected vessels in the Persian Gulf that are stranded for 3 months now, a full quarter of the year are Western aligned vessels, American vessels, and tanker ships that are not aligned with the Iranians. Of course, things could change rather quickly. Uh, like I've said for months now and many others have said for months, the cleanest ending for this war, well certainly the quickest, but also the cleanest ending for the war is literally for the US to just walk away, declare victory, and privately cut a deal with the Iranians to give them whatever they want to open the straight again. So, we always have to consider the fact that that might happen. It could happen. We could just see a Trump social post one day and the Iranians confirm it that says the war is over. The straight's open, and we're all going to go home, right? That could happen. Those types of posts have been made several times before and they weren't true in the past, but it could happen. I don't want to neglect the fact that one day this could just be over. Personally, I don't think that's what's going to happen at all. I think that this war is going to drag on for a while longer, especially when we have a couple more months of strategic petroleum reserve left in the tank and the markets, the oil markets continue to be completely divorced from reality. some more mainstream sources are starting to catch on to what has been obvious for about 3 months now, which is that oil prices are not reflective of the situation at hand and that the bigger concern is the petroleum supply itself. As bad as prices are right now at the gas pump, it turns out that taking 20 million barrels per day out of the worldwide supply chain will eventually result in actual shortages of petroleum products. Uh the week before last, the United States has drained the strategic petroleum reserve at a higher rate than at any point in history. At least that's the claim that's going around. I don't know if the numbers actually match up, but it certainly seems to based on the charts. Gas is almost $5 per gallon in many places around the country, and this is actually artificially low. Like I said last week, gas prices should be much higher than they actually are right now. And one of the reasons that this has not happened is the wholesale draining of our strategic petroleum reserve. in addition to other nations doing the same from their end and a global tightening of the belt when it comes to petroleum products. So all in all, supply chain issues are seriously on the menu the longer this goes on. As we've known from the very start, time is a finite resource, and as of last night, there are even talks of extending the ceasefire by another 60 days. If that is the intent, we might be in a bit of a pickle because if we continue to drain these strategic reserves at the current rate of rise, we might not have that much time left before supply shortages begin and gas pumps in the US start running dry. Of course, this is not a major concern right now, even though it should be. But the Feds keep kicking that can down the road, and there's not a whole lot of uh expediency toward figuring this solution out. We're 91 days into this and there's not really a whole lot of interest in uh finding a solution anytime soon. It's like, well, let's schedule the meeting for two weeks from now. Well, okay. Uh but that's two weeks of very little oil making its way out of the region. So, not a super great look when the summertime travel season is just beginning right about now. And most Americans are going to be uh shaking their head at the gas pump unless something is done to fix this situation. And as of last night, it looks like many, many indicators are stacking up that point to the United States seeking more of a military solution rather than being interested in some sort of negotiation. But once again, a lot of this is going to be speculation. It'll be over when it's over, but right now it's not over. We just have to take it one day at a time and see what we can do on our end to be more prepared no matter what happens. So that's all I've got for today and let's wrap up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Great net again all around this week and I think a lot of people are participating because weather is great this time of year. So I picked up way more people than I normally do from my own radio station. This week I heard quite a lot of people testing relaying messages around the world, testing other modes and frequencies. Some people trying to hit Australia, which is always really cool. I haven't hit Australia yet. That's pretty that would be pretty cool to uh do. It's pretty hard to hit Australia here from the east coast, but but otherwise, I saw a lot of people checking in to see who's up on the network and exchanging information completely off the grid. Radio networks like this one and others are really helpful when the power goes out, when the grid is completely down, and uh you have to operate completely offline, and maybe even in an environment where there's a lot of jamming. Resilient and capable communications are really helpful to have, especially when things are not going super well. So, that's all I've got for today. Thanks to all of you who support the work here on Patreon and thanks to all of you for sticking around as the summertime rolls in and everything gets more complicated. I have made some progress on the more educational material side of the house this week and I hope to have more at tech tutorials and more more well-rounded informational content out soon to help us navigate these strange and interesting times. There's never enough time in the day and I know that we're all trying to do our best. So, we'll continue on and try to stay one step ahead of the chaos as best we can. The goal of the Ghost Net and most of this other stuff too is to be an asset to the community even when times get tough and everything is collapsing around us. Hopefully things don't ever get that serious, but having these capabilities will be very handy and allow us to have the confidence to face whatever hardship comes next. So, let's get after it and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.