Intel Update - Jan. 3 - Mostly-Peaceful War

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for December 21st through January 3rd, 2026. It would seem as though we have kicked off the new year with a sprinkling of geopolitical intrigue and high explosives. Of course, the hot ticket today is war. The timeless question of what it's good for has been answered in the form of the United States capturing Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro in a raid overnight. Coinciding with the raid were significant strikes throughout Caracus as well as a few air defense sites outside the city. As of right now, I don't have much more than that and what I already pushed out in the wire this morning, but President Trump is expected to address the nation later today. So, I may push out an update wire this afternoon if the strikes are continuing because that's the grand question. Was this a oneanddone raid or was this a start of a larger campaign? At the moment, the situation in Caracus is chaos and Maduro's political opposition has already allegedly seized key government buildings, but the conflict might not be over just yet. This is the biggest kinetic regime change in the region in a very long time. So, it's not clear how this is going to work out over the next few weeks. Obviously, cutting the head off the snake means that the conflict is largely over when it comes to the Venezuelan government. And removing Maduro in this manner, as in with his cooperation, is going to set back operations for a while. However, it is absolutely certain that the strikes on narcotics facilities and trafficking routes are not over just yet. My personal guess is that the strikes on narcotics trafficking are about to get dialed up to 11 now that the head honcho is no longer in the picture. The cartel of the sun, the cartel that was operating alongside the Venezuelan government did not just evaporate with Maduro. Oh no, there are very likely going to be very violent internal power struggles over the next few days. And more pertinently to the situation at hand. The drug traffickers in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Honduras, and every other Central American nation are rejoicing because one of their main competitors is gone. So when you see all of these jubilant celebrations about this raid in Colombia, for example, just remember that the US removed a major faction from a much wider war than just Venezuela. I would bet that right now there are some absolutely giddy narot traffickers in Colombia that are gearing up for a lot of new customers. Now that they know there will be a power struggle in Venezuela for some time, but I guess we'll have to see how it all works out. That's the thing about regime change and destabilization operations, nothing is a certainty. The US put a lot of work in to destabilize Venezuela and usher in a government that will basically do what the United States says, but at the end of the day, there's still a lot that can go wrong. So, we'll keep an eye out and see how this develops. More broadly, the arrival of the new year has marked a subtle increase in tensions around the world, which have gone largely unnoticed or have been minimized in the press. The American strikes in Somalia have continued fairly regularly with a slight increase in targeting efforts being reported over the Christmas holiday. Some might be surprised to learn that we are conducting strikes in Somalia, but yes, the US conducts regular strikes in Somalia. However, back in November, US Afric started providing notices for these strikes on their press release page. So now we can track these strikes a little bit better. In the same region, Israel quietly recognized the autonomous region of Somali land a few days ago, granting nation state status to the region which has broken away from Somalia. This is a conflict that goes back a long way, but rumors have circulated that they have granted this recognition as part of a trade deal. Somali land gets international recognition and thus access to more financial markets and Israel gets to put military bases in Somali land which they can use for the deportation of Palestinians from Gaza. That last detail is conjecture right now and something that the government of Somali land has denied but going out on a limb this does line up with the strategic interests of all involved. The US is also probably involved as well. So, I would imagine an increased US presence in Somali land over the next few years simply because it's probably cheaper and easier to run operations out of a country that only exists because Israel says it does. But again, that's just my guess. Moving to strategic movement for this week. It would seem that it's a bit of a moot point to cover now. But I'm starting to suspect that the United States might have some interest in the nation of Venezuela for some reason. Anyway, stale slide this week, but the Grand Flotillaa off the coast of Venezuela is quite obviously still there and probably will be for some time. All right, moving down into the regions for this week. I only have time to expand on one current event that I was scratching my head over last night, and this is the Charlotte terror attack that was foiled by the FBI over the holiday. In Charlotte, one individual was arrested after planning a New Year's terror attack. Christian Sturdivvent was arrested over the holiday after a series of investigative efforts, the rough timeline of which is as follows. Back in 2022, Sturdivan contacted ISIS fighters on social media wanting to join up. They, the real ISIS fighters, encouraged him to conduct a home invasion style attack by which he would burst into people's homes and murder them with hammers. At this point, the FBI became involved, probably because they surveil all of this stuff, and his family also got involved, preventing him from carrying out his initial hammer attack in 2022. His family allegedly started hiding knives and blunt instruments from him at this point. Cut to last month when Sturdivvent returned to social media. This time making the regular jihadi style threats that are common these days. He also directly tried to reach out to ISIS again, but this time he landed in the inbox of an FBI agent because of course he did. From here, the FBI got him to confess everything as he thought he was joining ISIS. At this point, the FBI realized they're probably not dealing with somebody who's altogether there. So they tried to get him committed to a mental institution, but a local judge would not sign the order to have him involuntarily committed. Once this request was denied, the FBI moved forward with the criminal case, raided his house, and arrested him. However, the timeline is important to note. According to the Department of Justice, this is their own testimony. The hearing with the magistrate judge took place days before his arrest, and Sturdivan made an appearance in person, so this wasn't a secret hearing. The FBI also states that he was arrested several days after this hearing with the magistrate judge. So this means that Sturdivan had a couple of days where he knew the FBI was on to him. Considering this timeline, it sounds like the FBI left a wannabe jihadi terrorist at home with his weapons and the knowledge that his plans had been discovered and his arrest was imminent. In the couple of days that it took the FBI to get a warrant to make an arrest, any actual terrorist operating with some level of cognizance would have carried out the attack, as the FBI gave him free reign and ample opportunity to do so. Now, I have not seen any confirmation of this, but it would make sense that the FBI probably had him under more direct and active surveillance during this period of time. However, this is still a risky move that was entirely preventable. They did not need to put him under surveillance. The FBI has a history of arresting people and holding them indefinitely without charge for much, much less. So, just remember that the very moment that that magistrate judge slammed their gavvel and told the FBI no, the FBI could have walked out of that courtroom, slapped cuffs on him right then and there, and prevented him from getting away, they could have done that, and they have done that in countless other cases throughout history, right? But in this case, they did not. They let him go home. They let him be under surveillance. I guess maybe the FBI is just going to say that he was under surveillance and he may or may not have been. There's no way to actually confirm that. We're just going to have to take their word for it. So, this case really started grinding my gears because the DOJ is trying to spin this to put the spotlight on yet another low-level judge letting violent criminals out of jail, which is certainly a big problem that is crippling the nation at this point. However, the spotlight casts a wide beam that also includes the FBI themselves because in trying to dunk on a judge, which is fairly easy to do, they still admitted that the FBI dropped the ball on a clear and present terrorist threat, that's their own testimony. Now, this wouldn't be worth harping on so much ordinarily. However, right now, the federal DOJ needs any win they can get. They need any kind of PR victory. So, this specific case is being paraded around Washington, and the usual individuals have been running the media circuit. So, this is going to be in the press for quite a while because they just they they need some good news on their front. Additional details of the attack were also kind of interesting. The suspect originally planned to obtain a firearm for the attack. This is one of the reasons why the suspect reached out to what he thought were ISIS fighters in the beginning because he wanted to get some firearms to conduct a more kinetic attack. However, the DOJ statement on the raid that was conducted at his house made no mention of a firearm being found. So, he wasn't able to get one. To bluntly convey a detail that will not show up in any police report. The most unbelievable part of this whole story is that a black 18-year-old male was somehow unable to obtain a firearm in Charlotte of all places. Personally, I think this is exceptionally improbable unless local gangs would have nothing to do with him, which is just a hunch. Just during the week of this guy's arrest, there were three separate murders reported within just a few miles of this individual's planned attack area. One fatal stabbing and two separate fatal shootings that were reported in the same exact area, one of which took place outside of daycare. Again, this is not to downplay this individual's actions. He was very clearly trying to become a terrorist for several years now, and he did not just hop on social media and say edgy things. He actually took deliberate steps to train, arm himself, and plan a more coherent attack. Even though everything he did was extremely lowgrade, it was still very deliberate. However, we cannot pretend like this was on the same level as what happened last year, which brings us to this week in history. Now that I have been using the Obsidian platform for a year, it's it's now a lot easier for me to introduce a new slide, which I'm calling this week in history. I'm going to try to cover some of the more substantial events that happened and we really did not get any closure on. I think it's very helpful to actually complete the circling back, right, and remind ourselves of some of the past events that may be pertinent to current events because a lot of things have slipped down the memory hole over just the past year, as is becoming quite common these days. This week in 2025, we were covering two terrorist attacks that were vastly more significant than the ones busted during this New Year holiday. First up, we had the very strange and mysterious Cybert truck bombing incident that took place at the Trump International Hotel in Vegas. The suspect in that case was identified as Matthew Lilesberger and we got almost zero closure on this case. After about two weeks, the incident disappeared from the headlines and after things calmed down, the Department of Defense actually classified the manifesto that circulated after the attack, which effectively shut down any of the claims made in it. Personally, I have no idea what this case was all about or what happened here. There are too many loose ends and too many variables to really understand what went on here. The public knows maybe 5% of the story. And when we're making assessments based off of that little information, we get really, really wide analytical theories that are all equally plausible. More information means a narrowing of these analytical theories, and we just didn't get that with this case. Similarly, at almost the exact same time, we had the Bourban Street vehicle ramming attack. This attack was a bit more clear as it was a fairly standard complex attack carried out by Shamsu Den Bahar Jabar who appears to have gone through the classic terrorist lonewolf pipeline of online radicalization. The attack itself took the form of a vehicle ramming attack during the New Year celebrations down Bourbon Street, ending with the asalent exiting the vehicle and shooting as many people as he could before being killed himself. 14 people were killed during this attack and 57 other people were wounded, making this a significant terror attack that did not result in much attention at the time. Now, there were a lot of details that were never clarified. And this case did have the classic ISIS flag with the creases still in it from the packaging, which is always a pretty big red flag for things like this. But by and large, this was another terror attack that killed people and was immediately forgotten by the news cycle within a couple of weeks around the globe. This week in history, we were also watching the DPRK test a new missile system, which they claim was the first hypersonic missile test they had conducted. The jury is still out on that one. It's debatable as to whether or not it was a true hypersonic test because all ballistic missiles are hypersonic technically. What really matters is the maneuverability at new stages of the missile's flight. And North Korea being North Korea, this is not exactly a certainty. So, that pretty much wraps up all of the things that got brushed under the rug this time last year. So, let's conclude today by looking at how the Ghost Net is doing. The Ghost Net has really taken off this year and we've seen a wider adoption from a bunch of new people throughout the past few months, which is great. Now that we've worked out the basics of how it functions and we've proven that it's a good concept, we can start making it easier for use by regular people and not super turbo nerds like like ourselves. Right now, HF radio is still hard to understand and it's hard to use by normal people in a truly off-grid way, but we're making some progress on that. So, we'll see what we can do this year. And with that, that's pretty much all I have for today. Thank you all for making this project worked really well over the past year, and I look forward to seeing how these projects expand and can get refined throughout this new year. And as a side note, thank you again to everyone for keeping me going over the past year in general. I won't say it's been a particularly easy year in many ways, and 2026 is probably going to be pretty tough all around. But the good news is that this gives us the chance to do good stuff and sharpen our teeth on a lot of skills that we are going to need. If 2025 did one thing, it's telling us in no uncertain terms just how serious the general situation is. And now that we have this knowledge, we can put that motivation to good use and work hard to save well, civilization at large. I guess this is no small task. So this year, let's all do what we can to help keep things moving forward, it's New Year's, no black pilling, that's an order. We're going to do the best we can and that's all that can be expected of anyone, so failures are ahead. We are going to fail in many ways, that is a certainty. But victory is also certain in many ways too. And I think we have a real chance at turning some things around. So let's get after it. Work hard, pray hard, and everything's going to be all right. And with that, thank you guys again, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.