Intel Update - Oct. 24 - Unraveling

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Underground. This is the intel update for October 18th through the 24th, 2026. Just when we think things can't get any more insane, the very fabric of the internet itself begins unraveling. So let's get right to it. At the strategic level, one of the main concerns this week has been the series of disasters in the IT world, mostly the PHP shell vulnerability and the eMudhra certificate authority scandal. Both of which would be devastating on their own, but in combination with the dozen or so other major cybersecurity incidents that have also taken place, this week has been intense within the cyber realm. And right now, a lot of questions are being asked regarding how the very nature of internet security is being handled. The other major concern this week is the impending war in Iran. I know, everyone's favorite topic, but it looks like things are about to pop off once again. Nearly everyone who has been watching the war, including the lead-up to it which began around this time last year, is theorizing that the war is going to resume imminently. Possibly as soon as tonight, even before this video gets uploaded. As always, the exact timing is always hard to predict, but we'll get into why people are thinking that in just a second. Otherwise, around the world, quite a few other major incidents have taken place which are continuing to press a lot of the instability we have seen over the past few days. Within France, riots continue and major developments of police and military forces have taken place around the country today to prevent the chaos from last weekend from intensifying again this weekend. Within our own hemisphere, three main areas of focus have been rather busy lately and are worth keeping an eye on for later. The continuing counter-narco mission within Ecuador, the continual pressure to overthrow Cuba, and the Salvadoran mission to Haiti, which has already resulted in a wider war popping off. Regarding all three concerns, there's not much to report on any of these issues, but these are things to be aware of leading into next week. Here on the home front, the insanity surrounding the upcoming election season continues with early voting beginning in many states this week. Most of the impact to the homeland this week has been within the energy sector, with crude futures increasing again on the indications of war popping off in the Middle East once more. Brent crude futures climbed as high as $116 or $117 a barrel yesterday, and WTI also got up to $105 a barrel. This was compounded by issues being reported at the Joliet Refinery, with some equipment being shut down for repairs a few days ago, which contributed to the recent spike in fuel prices. However, as bad as things are here in the US in terms of energy, the situation in Europe is much worse as fuel prices are one of the contributing factors to the unrest currently underway around the continent. Moving over to Europe, the situation is more or less on fire as riots within France and Italy have become a central focus point this week as multiple issues have come to a head. In Italy, the protests and riots are twofold. In the south, the protests are more agricultural in nature as farmers and freight companies protest against high fuel costs and high taxes. In the north, the protests in Milan are completely different, and similar to the protests in France that are mostly organized along labor and social class lines with a heavy migrant population locally resulting in unrest transitioning into looting and riots once night falls. Over in France, riots have been reported sporadically throughout the week, but this weekend is expected to result in a lot more flashpoints throughout most major cities. As a result, large scale fortification efforts have been undertaken this week throughout the nation with many commercial businesses installing metal cages to barricade their storefronts. Some businesses are even laying bricks and cinder block walls to permanently close off windows and doorways to rioters. As one might expect, this is a major indicator that the chaos is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Mass deployments of police are underway throughout Paris with upwards of 70,000 police and military forces staging around critical infrastructure such as government buildings and historical sites. Just to put it in perspective how serious these riots are, they've closed down the Louvre this weekend due to the planned riots. Just as a reminder of the motivations for what's going on in France, most of the riots within Paris and other major cities are the result of a few different factors. To oversimplify the situation a little bit, uh, much of the genuine protest activity which often devolves into riots is being organized and carried out by what we might classify as more traditionally far left political groups. From there, once the chaos devolves in a particular area, the very, very large migrant population gets involved, mostly in the form of looting after dark. Other than the looting, a lot of more politically focused groups are also protesting too. Every issue from the Palestinian cause to the internal politics of Tunisia is well represented at most French protests. Additionally, there are other elements as well which are a lot more complicated to describe. A lot of labor unions within France are also protesting which form a good chunk of protest attendance. Some of which remain more along the lines of just being socially annoying, such as blocking roads, but some other more labor-focused protests have turned into riots. On top of all of this, many normal everyday French citizens are also quite upset about the gasoline situation nationwide as the shortages and high prices continue to get more serious. It is against this backdrop that we are starting to see other more serious events take place. The stage is set for more factional violence to spiral out of control, such as the shooting spree that took place yesterday in the suburbs of Paris. Details are still very hard to verify, but trying to track down and geolocate all of the shooting sites is quite challenging and will take some time. However, the very rough story of what happened involves a man who started shooting at random people while driving through several towns southwest of Paris. After about 15 minutes, the drive-by shooting spree came to a conclusion, though we don't exactly know how the situation came to a halt. We don't know if he surrendered to police or if he was shot. We, we just don't know. We do know that the suspect survived and is in custody, so maybe in a few days there will be more details regarding what this attack was all about. Many of the eyewitnesses are not exactly, uh, providing helpful statements, uh, so we don't have a whole lot of information that's very solid at the moment. But I will definitely be keeping an eye on this, especially as the violence in France continues on. Moving to strategic movement for this week. It's always a good idea to keep an eye on what assets are being moved around the planet. And so far this week, there's been no major change to the American naval forces that have been deployed around the planet from last week. The Teddy Roosevelt is still participating in drills off the coast of Japan before she is expected to restock and refit and then head into the CENTCOM AOR. Otherwise, the other two carrier strike groups remain in the northern Arabian Sea, the Bush and the Washington, along with the Boxer ARG. Concerning aviation assets, various flight tracking websites suggest that the evacuation of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar may be underway. A handful of tankers have departed, heading south to bases within Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. All satellite imagery, including European satellites, has been censored in the region to intentionally delay releases of imagery by 24 hours at minimum. And so far, there has not been a pass over this air base since- Tuesday. So we are awaiting fresh satellite imagery that will really confirm how much the base has emptied out. Once again, this is a major indicator for the war kicking off again because this air base has a lot of really juicy targets on the ground, which are usually moved out of the way before the United States begins offensive operations that might trigger an Iranian retaliation in the form of strikes on this air base. But again, by the time we get a fresh pass, it might be a moot point, but nevertheless, this is a good indicator of hostilities commencing and a handful of tankers flying south for the winter suggests that things are going to kick off soon. Around the Middle East itself, before we dive into the impending escalation of the war, I did briefly want to mention two items of note, which are important to be aware of around the region. In Jordan, yesterday, a mass shooting was reported at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in Hammoud. Early in the morning, multiple gunmen approached the church and began shooting into a crowd of parishioners which had gathered for a funeral. A total of seven people were killed, and 34 others wounded during the attack. The gunmen have not yet been identified, however based on the video evidence, this looks like a deliberate terror attack targeting a Christian site. Following the attack, counter-terrorism operations have increased throughout the nation, and tensions are escalating as Jordan tries to determine what group was behind the attack. The other item to be aware of is over in Israel, the elections are coming up on October 27th, and as a result, the threat posture is elevated around the region. As the political race appears to be quite existential for Prime Minister Netanyahu, concerns are growing that he may seek to escalate some sort of conflict as to have an excuse to delay or cancel the elections. Elections have been postponed twice before, specifically due to the October 7th attacks, and then also many times throughout history. So it's not out of the question for some sort of security issue to reignite shortly before election day. We've all been planning for this and kind of waiting for this, so if Netanyahu wants to do this, you know, this is not going to be a big surprise. On a similar front, Netanyahu also announced the kickoff of another campaign in the West Bank, which seeks to conduct clearance operations in a few villages which Israeli forces have wanted to take for a long time. So this could be another flashpoint to be aware of if this campaign turns out to be substantial. It's hard to say how big this is going to be in the West Bank, but it doesn't look like it's gonna be very good, and this is going to inflame tensions around the region once again. Within Iran itself, the expansion of the war appears to be imminent, and the situation is beginning to unravel throughout the region. Exactly what is planned is not known, but many different late stage indications and warnings have emerged this week suggesting that another bombing campaign similar to how the war started might be on the menu very soon. It's really hard to definitively say exactly what is going to happen, but at this point, most people who have been watching this seem to think that it's not an if attacks will happen, but when. And based on the data itself, I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. As far as timing, that remains an unknown. It could be as soon as tonight, or it could be as late as mid-November. But either way, indications and warnings are stacking up, which cannot be ignored. So let's break down some of the indicators of hostilities recommencing, which might help us understand just how likely this really is. Many of these indicators are unconfirmed. I wanna make that clear right up front. And some sources have asked to remain unmentioned, so, so just take much of this with a grain of salt, as I do myself. But let's start with what we know for sure, the confirmed and undeniable events that have taken place. Within the Gulf States, the US has begun to draw down military and diplomatic personnel. This has been confirmed in Saudi Arabia, with the State Department announcing the evacuation of non-essential personnel, family members, and dependents due to the potential for the war to escalate sharply. This indicator is very significant, even if it may not seem like it. In military terms, a lot of these duty stations within the Gulf States are PCS, or permanent change of station sites, meaning that this is not really a deployment location, this is their home base. And a lot of the personnel, either military or civilian, who are stationed at these places have their families with them. Sending the dependents out of the country is a major indicator that they might not be coming back to their homes. It's one thing to put employees on a plane and put them in a hotel somewhere for a few weeks, but to put families on planes and get them out of the region, that is really rare to do without a major war kicking off. So even though this seems like a minor detail, getting dependents out of the region is a pretty solid indicator of something happening. In terms of more military sides, various government officials in many Gulf States, such as Oman and the UAE, have confirmed that the US is drawing down their presence at various military bases around the region. Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE is being drawn down, along with several other bases that were previously used for strikes during the height of the war. These are the bases that are within easy missile range of Iran, which are going to probably be hit with retaliatory fire when the war kicks off again. On the other side of the wire, Iran is making a lot of preparations too, and a lot of their preparations are actually finished. Recent imagery from Natanz as of yesterday indicates that the IRGC has essentially finished their fortification of the infamous Pickaxe Mountain Complex, just to the south of the Natanz nuclear facility. Commercial satellite imagery from yesterday indicates that essentially nothing has changed since October 7th, when I purchased the last image. So I got an image back then, and I got an image yesterday, and loading both images into some mapping software, we can toggle between the October 7 image and the October 23rd image, which reveals that there is very little activity at most of the tunnel entrances. The western tunnels are about the same, with the dirt berms still there protecting the entrance from vehicle traffic, just like they were before. The central and eastern tunnels are also the same as before. No real change at any of these sites. And if we also take a look at the, uh, spoil piles, the big dirt and rock piles that are the result of excavation inside the mountain, the main spoil pile to the northwest is about the same size as before, so no indicators of much further digging. Based on the imagery and reports from within Iran itself, it looks like they have actually abandoned this facility altogether, with the exception of some vehicular traffic that might be a small contingent of security guards manning the main gate. Other than that limited vehicle traffic, this place looks very empty, which is exactly how it would look if more serious weapons are expected to be dropped at this location. More generally around the country, Iranian press is stating that Iran has reactivated their Mosaic defensive doctrine, which is a unique command and control structure that allows all 31 of the regional IRGC commanders to act independently in...In the event of a communications outage and launch missiles on their own without waiting for approval from higher command. Due to the obvious risk of a commander making a mistake and launching a missile when he shouldn't have, this defensive plan is really an emergency measure that is not in place all the time. In fact, even during the height of the war, this plan was only in place for the first few days after the Ayatollah was killed. After that initial shock and awe of the first week of the war, if we remember when things got really busy, Iranian leadership was able to actually link up with their field commanders and get the word to them that they could stop firing independently and instead coordinate attacks with higher headquarters. It is this process that has been reactivated, which is a strong indicator that at least Iran thinks that a major series of airstrikes is about to begin very soon. So those are the main indicators that we know for sure. Regarding the more speculative indications and warnings, there are other mumblings down the grapevine which are hard to independently confirm, but are nevertheless important to round out a more clear picture of what's going on. During times as serious as this, it is acceptable to go more out on a limb to mention details that might be important for making decisions in the absence of more confirmed information. The first item to be aware of is the increase in Russian activity within Iran. Over the past few weeks, Russian cargo aircraft have been observed landing in Tehran. Most reports suggest a total of about 12 to 14 aircraft. Russian and Iranian sources are claiming that these aircraft have been delivering air defense missiles and drone components, and at the same time, those empty aircraft have actually been evacuating Russian advisors and diplomats on the ground. So the word on the street, so to speak, is that the Russians are getting out of dodge before the shooting starts again. Of course, I cannot confirm any of that myself, but it would make a lot of sense and is worth being aware of. Another series of events that's been worthy of note have been the Israeli activities over the skies of Iraq this week. At least two, possibly three sorties of Israeli aircraft have scrambled and conducted what looked to be rehearsal operations in Iraq. They took along refueling tankers and made a whole show of conducting drills right along the Iranian border. And though we don't know exactly what the intent of these exercises was, it could be both a training scenario and also desensitizing Iranian air defenses to their presence. This has been done many times before, particularly over southern Iraq, where a lot of tribal Bedouin goat herders also tend to moonlight as intelligence collection assets for anyone who wants to pay up. Even the shepherds in the hills have iPhones now, and when the Israelis are on their way to bomb Iran, they usually post videos of the aircraft flying overhead on social media. So from the Israeli perspective, it would make a lot of sense to play a grand shell game in this area to confuse observers as to which attack is really the big one. Now, those are the main late stage indications and warnings supporting the idea that the war will resume soon, in addition to the massive buildup of naval forces in the region and the past few months of resupply at American bases around the region. But if we want to have a more well-rounded idea of the possible courses of action, we have to consider any indicators that might not explicitly point to a wider war. So are there any indications that point to the war not kicking off again? Well, for one, there has not been an observable surge of fighter aircraft and refueling tankers surging into the Middle East over the past few weeks. However, this might not be an indicator of much as there are already dozens of refuelers and fighter aircraft already in the region since the war began. Most of them have been flying into Ovda Air Base in Israel, so they're gonna be turning off their transponders, so we don't really have a really good picture of what aircraft are in Israel. And since Israel is a black hole for satellite imagery and has been for many years now, there is no chance of being able to find out how many aircraft are in Israel right now. We can assume that there's probably quite a lot, but assumptions don't really make for good decision-making, so we just have to leave this as a bit of an unknown for now. The actual number of fighter aircraft that have been slowly trickling into the region could be high, it could be nothing. It's really hard to say. Another detail to remember is the naval assets not exactly being in the ideal position just yet. The Teddy Roosevelt is still in the Pacific and will take at least a week before she's on station. And if we consider the overlap needed to hand off operations from one of the other carriers, that would put her at peak readiness right around the time of the US midterm elections. So if the war kicks off around the time of the Israeli elections, we'll be short one carrier until the Roosevelt can get on station. I'm not saying it can't happen. The war could kick off before it's ready, but timing-wise, that's a little bit iffy. And perhaps the biggest general sentiment of all is that it just doesn't feel like the United States is interested in continuing the war. And if the White House does decide to do this, we will be doing so from a point of disadvantage. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to unsafe levels. Uh, the US has pulled forces so far away from Iran that if we do launch attacks, we will be unable to match the pace of the initial days of the war, and there really just aren't any feasible military options left. The war has been going on for almost eight months now, and we've tried pretty much every trick in the book, and it hasn't really worked out on the military front. Unfortunately, the chief counterargument to all of these counter indicators, right? Is that they were also in place during the start of the war, and the war began anyway. Every geopolitical and military analyst who is not an idiot or paid by the Israeli lobby said that this war would end up exactly like it did. Everybody said it was a bad idea, and they did it anyway. Everybody said that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed, and this will lead to an energy crisis, and they did it anyway. Everybody said, "We don't have enough interceptor missiles to stop all of the Iranian missiles," and they did it anyway. We knew this from the very start, which is why I was talking about this for four months before this war began because it was so absurdly clear how this would end up, and yet they did it anyway. So reigniting the war from a position of disadvantage when we're reaching the bottom of missile defenses and we're at the bottom of fuel reserves, that's exactly the kind of thing the White House would do at this point, especially after the midterms when they feel like they have nothing left to lose. It can't get any worse after the midterms, right? In terms of, uh, political losses, at least on the home front. So they might feel that they have nothing left to lose, and they might as well just go in for a penny, in for a pound. Which is why it's worth being aware of the potential for things to escalate once again and the follow-on effects of all of this. Iran has threatened to cut undersea cables throughout the region, and as-As a result, global communications are now in the line of fire, even more so than during the initial strikes on data centers in Dubai a few months ago. Will they actually cut the cables in the Strait of Hormuz? I don't know, but it's on the table. And if we look at the map of submarine cables, they wouldn't even have to get their feet wet because a major internet communications cable runs directly to Bandar Abbas. There's a landing station there for that cable onshore. Granted, if they cut this cable, they would also cut their own, uh, internet access for a lot of the country. But if they wanted to do something like that, they certainly could. They could also drag an anchor over some of the other cables out there. It's not like they have to have divers and little mini submarines going down to tamper with cables. All they have to do is get a, uh, very large commercial ship to drag their anchor over the cable, and there you go. Global communication's impacted severely. All of this is on the table, just like the use of strategic weapons is on the table of options the United States is considering as well. So no matter what happens from now until the midterms, we're in another window of escalation. And this week, the vulnerabilities in the tech sector have pointed out that this time around, we might be more directly impacted within the homeland on the communications and infrastructure front. I've not mentioned it in great depth today because I wanted to keep things short, and I already pushed out a special report on this a few days ago. But the fallout from the PHP Shell server and the Imudra scandal have continued, and now there are a few dozen other completely separate cybersecurity issues being patched right now. Again, I wrote about this already, and I don't have much to add at this time. But suffice it to say that the world of cybersecurity is on fire right now, to the point that a lot of IT professionals are calling it the internet apocalypse. I myself would not go that far, but the events of the past week have really caused a lot of questions as to the very bedrock of how internet traffic and trust is being managed around the world. Murphy's Law certainly seems to be striking once again because we've got a potential escalation of the war involving maybe communications cables at the same time that we have major, major cybersecurity vulnerabilities coming about. It's just not a really good week for communications and, uh, making sure that we can stay aware of what's happening around the world. All of this is a rather unfortunate segue to closing out for today with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Perhaps now more than ever, we are starting to realize just how hard it is to know what is going on around the world if you do not have reliable internet access or if somebody's random server goes down. It is incredibly frustrating, but we have to remember that the internet is just a bunch of computers connected together. And if your data is on somebody else's computer, well, it's vulnerable. And this week we found out that it's more vulnerable than we previously thought. So having some sort of backup, some form of understanding of what you might do if your data either gets compromised or if servers go down, or if communications are not possible. Having some generalized plan of what to do in that sort of situation would be very wise to start thinking about. Cybersecurity events, data breaches, hacks, ransomware stuff, all of that is, is definitely a concern. But really, this week, a lot of these scandals have really started to make us question the very fabric of how we run the internet. A lot of this stuff is very, very hard to mitigate, but we're gonna do the best we can, and hopefully, some of the more long-range radio networks can help us out to at least have something just in case the, the worst happens. It's not like the end is nigh or anything like that. Certainly nothing to panic over, but now is a time of heightened awareness, especially with things like communications. And things like the Ghost Net can help out somewhat. I'm sure there are other radio networks out there that may be better, but this is the one I'm involved in, and it's been really helpful this week. Many of you actually took to the airwaves more frequently than the weekly net this week, and several times many of you sent me messages confirming that you heard some breaking news items over the radio, either shortly before or immediately after I myself had written a report on it, which is good to see. So it's most certainly not just the Thursday night, you know, communications net that people are using this. It's actually useful during the week, and many of you are using it during the week, which is great to see. Once again, the Ghost Net itself is nothing particularly special. It's just a radio plan that takes advantage of pre-existing software that's been around for years. The real benefit is in actually using what exists, which many of you are doing, and that is fantastic. It's certainly not perfect, but if a cable gets cut and some random server gets cut off in the Middle East, radio might be a good fallback option for situations like this. It is true that global load balancing is a thing, and the loss of one or two data servers should not have too much impact in theory. But remember what happened during the early days of the war. An Amazon data center got hit in Dubai, and that caused a lot of communications problems. So just in case, the Ghost Net is an option that can help. It's not gonna replace everything. It's not gonna be for everybody. But this is what it was created for, to have, uh, at least somewhat of an over-the-horizon information exchange system that people can use in their local area. You can download the PDF that explains everything about this from my GitHub page. And for those of you on Patreon, I will attach it to this post so that you can find it easier. And on more of an admin note, I plan to leave all of my radios running full-time until well after the midterms. And apart from my more radio-based comms plans, I will also be up on Reticulum via Meshchat X. At the moment, my own Meshchat arrangement is purely internet based, so not super great. I'm working on getting it more offline. But right now, I do have virtual private servers mirroring my Nomad Net page in strategic places around the world that should be less affected by communications outages. So even if the worst happens and things pop off in the Middle East at the same exact time as a cyber attack or critical vulnerability ex- is exploited, I have at least done what I can to harden my own ability to provide wire reports, even under the worst conditions. I'm trying to really focus on that. I've really tried to do a lot of that this year, and I guess we're gonna have to give it a try and see how it goes. I know it's rather exhausting to have to make these types of preparations, and I know it's not as clean and polished as we may want it to be sometimes. But if push comes to shove, I think a lot of us are really well prepared to transition to a contested communications environment, which is a really good confidence booster just in case things get serious. We will most certainly do the best we can, and that's all we can do. And with that, that's all I have for today. As always, all of my research can be found on my Obsidian page for easy access. And if you prefer a more resilient old-school way of reading reports, you can also check out my Nomad Net page, which hosts most of the same content and sources. As for the mapping data I have shown today, everything can be found on my GitHub page as KMZ files for import into ATAC. Or if you just want to view things online and not have to worry about any of this map nerd stuff, you can visit my ArcGIS pages, which have online maps that you can sort and click and explore however you like. For those who like to monitor the situation, I also have a dashboard built for talks which runs in a web browser and will provide a central hub where I usually bring up whatever live streams are available if we need to start live battle tracking at some point over the next couple of weeks. I know it's a lot to take in, but I've already done most of this work, so there are a lot of resources that are available for whatever you need. The hard part is already done, so now we can move to the next phases of whatever comes next. So thanks again for watching, and thanks again to all of those on Patreon who keep the project going. This fire hose of data, the satellite imagery and all of the enterprise-level accounts that I need to have to keep all of this going, all of this is not possible without your support, so I thank you dearly for that. So thanks again, and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.