Intel Update - Feb 8 - Challenges Ahead

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for February 2nd through the 8th 2025 so let's get right to it I know that it has been a rather busy week with regards to trade disputes and the uh short. But rather intense trade war between the United States of Mexico and the United States and Canada uh since that really has not come to fruition and uh or rather it did come to fruition. But it was rapidly negotiated or put into the negotiation status I I will not comment on that now uh because it's going to change quite significantly by the time this comes out I think and over the next month or so either way the uh trade disputes that have been going on this month are not particularly a pressing concern not an immediate concern at the moment so we will kick that can down the road and talk about that another time I I didn't want to uh take up too much of your time today so I thought I would move to something that I did not mention in The Wire this week and I did not mention it because I felt like I had to explain this one a little bit due to the sourcing so down in the Southeast region a few days ago a report emerged from Breitbart and this is important because this is the only source for this information a report emerged uh from Breitbart that indicated that one American citizen and at least one other Mexican national and a few others were injured or wounded after their vehicle struck a landmine an improvised landmine in Mexico now as this report is rather alarming I did want to briefly mention that this is not particularly out of the realm of normality at the moment going back as far as 2022 various cartel groups close to the Border. But usually further down into Mexico started using what uh a few think tanks and groups are calling improvised anti-vehicle landmines or ivms I'll just call them landmines. Moving forward these are essentially your Al-Qaeda GWT specials right pressure plate IEDs that are imp placed in dirt roads that cartel members know uh rival cartels use and frequent the cartel that places a land mine knows where it is uh knows where the IED is in placed and they drive around it. Whereas their adversaries drive over it once again very concerning uh however this goes back at least to 2022 when this tactic started being used sort of along the same lines as drones uh dropping IEDs or improvised munitions of some kind on cartel observation posts closer to the Border we have seen this this has become more common I don't know how common it it is in reality. However it's it's definitely not as common to say in Ukraine but those uh tactics are definitely being used by Cel members now considering that we are potentially looking at a rather large escalation of of conflict and force down in the Border region I thought I would mention this now let's get back to the source of this information for a moment Breitbart uh I know a lot of you as soon as I say that word as soon as I say that Media Group you you probably know where this is going and that I am very skeptical of the legitimacy or accuracy of this information of course Breitbart did provide a photograph of the uh mangled pickup truck here a very heavily watermarked image of the the pickup truck. But we don't have much more information than that so let's take a look at what Breitbart wrote Because this is of course the only source of information and I would like to draw your attention to this one paragraph from their their journalistic report here because what I'm trying to do is narrow down obviously where the IED detonation took place was this on the border uh was this rather close to where American citizens might frequent uh via trade or something like that or was this something else so drawing even closer attention to this specific sentence here this is really the only information that we have to go on to geolocate where this incident took place and this is the sentence that states that the vehicle was moving along a dirt road that connects the rural communities of Guadalupe Victoria and Santa Rita in the municipality of San Fernando to Maas so from this information we've got a pretty good chance at geoca where this IED attack may have taken place so the first thing that I did was of course go to Google Maps and identify where Santa Rita is and where Guadalupe Victoria is and draw a line between the two right now of course this is a gigantic intelligence Gap right what is an intelligence Gap something we don't know right something we don't know and we need to find out and one of the biggest intelligence gaps here to finding out where this incident took place is obviously which route did the pickup truck take well we don't know. But right now I'm going off of the most direct route so this is something to work from again the more assumptions that we make the more data points that we have to kind of go off of. Even though it's not confirmed The Wider margin of error are assessment is going to have nevertheless I have identified some locations where I think maybe the IID attack took place now from this image of the truck itself we can't really geolocate much uh we can say that it did take place on a dirt road probably in an area with no trees in the background. But judging from this area and from the route that it it's very likely that the truck took between these two locations well there's a lot of twists and turns it's a pretty long distance it's not just a short Little J it may have taken 20 30 minutes to to get between these two places and of course they may not have taken the most direct route again in cartel land down there you you don't want to take the most direct route between two places sometimes. But nevertheless one of the most interesting parts to me is that there are a lot of straight roads if you'll notice uh some of you who may be a more of a student of warfare you may notice that there are very few uh bends in the road and for those of you who may not uh be aware of how ambushes normally work is you normally generally speaking doctrinally speaking most ambushes are conducted in some sort of uh Bend in the road or uh someplace where a person can very easily unplace something. And then egress from the area without being seen also you want your adversary to slow down uh or or enter the Kill Zone right uh as more of a funnel uh kind of effect right so you want to kind of narrow it down a long straight stretch of highway is not the best place to put an IED uh in terms of doctor so it's very interesting that this looks like that might be what happened now there are a couple of places that i' I've identified that I think I may be able to geolocate uh down to where maybe uh the cartel was was thinking about putting uh the IEDs uh or or the landmine in this case so I'll I'll narrow that down a little bit more I I will put this data on the map. But I want to refine it a little bit more but all in all this is pretty much where I'm kind of stuck in the investigation process to figure out where these these this IID was placed so again if anyone has any specific grid for where this may have taken place I'd be very fascinated to figure out exactly where this this detonation site occurred and I'll put it on the map uh. But for now this is kind of what I'm looking into just kind of a casual thing because I think this is very interesting into understanding the mind of both the cartels and how they operate. But also how far the conflict is moving North and how close to the Border we're getting with the sort of things but in any case this is pretty much all I have on this one so I'll continue to refine the grids and see what I can find out. But despite all of that let's head over to the map and we can talk about the region a little bit more at large all right everyone so here we are on the map uh let's scroll in here just a little bit to show a little bit of perspective here we are just South of the Border right along the Gulf Coast and as you probably could guess the main uh big players in town the big dogs in town are the Cartel de gulo guys otherwise known as the golf cartel or CDG so right now for those of you who are not uh sped up on the uh Street politics of the cartels down in in Mexico really we've got a pretty big turf war going on right here there have been a lot of problems up in the front and region which we'll scroll in and zoom into just a moment. But generally speaking this is kind of the region where these landmine claims are coming from now once again I did want to briefly mention that along the border here we're starting to get into uh really second and third order effects land right so let's go ahead and zoom into the front and region here for just a moment and talk about some of the second and third order effects that are popping up as many of you have seen on social media following the uh Skirmish that occurred as far as I can tell it occurred right here on this sand Bank uh just to the north of this cluster of buildings and um I'm still working on plotting out a lot of the cartel safe houses and staging areas that a lot of cartel members and coyotes use to you know egress across the border a lot of this is very public information they're not really trying to hide it super well that will probably change over the next um over the next few months. But I did want to just highlight the General region here and show that yeah the the American positions here along the border are fairly well intense now uh they're trying to advertise this so this is not proprietary information they're they're fairly well trying to make people very well aware that the American presence here is uh uh most certainly a show of force so once again Fronton is the region where where this Skirmish occurred couple weeks ago now I think or maybe a few days ago time is moving pretty fast isn't it so very generally speaking very broadly speaking uh what we're probably going to see and this is a very common sense thing if you think about it for a moment is say there are a lot of different trafficking places along the border and there are well as the Border becomes hard closed in certain areas the number of areas that become acceptable smuggling routes become very very very crowded let's just put it that way so you've got a lot of turf wars kickoff so that's exactly what's happened the United States closes the border right or tries to I mean it's a big it's going to take a long time. But you know the United States increases security along the well-known smuggling routes and what does that mean well the businessmen South of the Border they have to move to another area and you we're starting to tighten the Noose as you as you see here so what does all of this mean this means that the United States the more our border security increases okay over the next few months the more the border security increases the more violence uh we're going to start seeing South of the Border from competition turf wars you name it right so that is essentially something to be on the on the lookout for uh over the next few months now once again the border is not closed uh there are plenty of smuggling areas it's just that the cameras only focus on the areas that are very public so you know that's one of those things that's going to to be a a concern for a very long period of time it's not something that happens overnight if you just zoom in and look along the border it's going to take a long time and a lot of people 10,000 people is not going to cut it even. Even if you've got 10,000 Mexican troops on the other side of the border and you trust them which you shouldn't uh it's going to be a very gargantuan task so uh. Moving forward just to kind of talk about some of the more significant activities this week there was a raid in noo Laredo across the border from the of course Texas town of Laredo was not able to geolocate where the shooting or where the skirmishes took place. But they rolled up El mando I down there a lot of mainstream media and a lot of prot trump media saying that Eland Ricky was like a very high ranking member uh in in the city and that's from what I can tell that's not really true uh he was like a mid-level manager so he's definitely not the head of anything he's not making that many decisions really uh so my guess is that that was probably a situation where Mexico rolled up somebody they knew probably wouldn't tick off the cartel too bad just to sweeten the deal with regards to American Trade disputes. But either way that's again very subjective so uh that's pretty much the situation right now again I have many many data layers that I am working on uh along the border because I think and this is just my gut assessment I think this is probably going to get rather rather kinetic uh how how much of it's going to affect the United States or the average American citizen I don't know probably not very much uh people who live along the border here they know what I'm more concerned about is uh Nationwide and some of the the cities and strongholds for cartel members around the United States so once again hard thing to say how this is going to work out. But I guess we will have to see so jumping back to the slides for a moment to talk about the western region I briefly wanted to mention something that I again did not mentioned in in the wire reports this weekend this was uh the case of a combative man on a flight from Denver as many of you read this week Frontier flight 4856 experienced a combative man shortly after takeoff from Denver who was rather it's a rather strange case I'm not entirely certain we're getting the full story here. However allegedly at least mainstream media reporting suggests that a a woman on the flight turned around to ask a guy if he wanted to switch seats with her and he lost his mind uh at least that's what the mainstream media claims and he immediately started uh attacking the aircraft so once again flying Frontier or Spirit or something like that you're you're going to basically just be on a public bus in the sky so this is not entirely out of the norm of what happens uh. However he caused some pretty big damage to the aircraft as you can see here in the image he broke the plexiglass sort of safety barrier that prevents passengers from doing this exact sort of thing to to the aircraft window here now of course I have to mention that the aircraft the Integrity of the aircraft is definitely not compromised or anything like that. But nobody's going to be able to punch their way through an aircraft window that's obviously not going to happen but the plexiglass guard on the inside uh to prevent scratches and damage to the actual window itself uh he was able to get through so there was no air marshal on this flight to detain the man so various Good Samaritans passengers mostly ex-military guys it seems uh had to detain the guy and hog time up pretty good with zip ties and boot laces so once again if you're looking to increase your EDC preparedness something to keep in mind right one detail that I did want to mention because I think it's glossed over by a lot of media is that the man himself has not been named of course it was fairly typical as he was shouting in another language other than English during this scuffle so I'm not entirely certain what his status is or what the deal with this guy is. However Frontier Airlines has declined to charge the man criminally for the damage to their plane and very strange uh because this guy freaks out and takes chunks of the airplane apart and uh I guess they're okay with that so something to keep in mind I think it's very interesting and I I think that we can maybe read between the lines on who this man probably was. But again don't want to speculate too much I guess we'll just have to kind of wait and see but since no charges have been filed it's going to hard be hard to find out who he was either way something to be mindful of when you're out traveling moving out west I briefly wanted to mention that the search has concluded for the bearing air uh aircraft November 321 Bravo Alpha which went missing uh a couple of days ago this aircraft as many of you know was scheduled to land in Gnome uh was overdue never never landed in Gnome and from there a a search was enacted so unfortunately this aircraft was was located last night a few dozen miles from Nome Alaska it did not go down in the ocean it did make it to land uh. However there were no survivors uh from the aircraft all all 10 uh persons were found inside the airframe there I'm still working on refining a grid to find out exactly where it where it actually did land if nothing more than for an after Action Report because I uh I was trying to do the best I could to find out maybe where this aircraft could have gone uh from my end again as best I could just being some kind of you know random guy on the internet. But I did want to briefly mention though as kind of a sort of like an admin comment here that I know that a lot of people got really really upset for some reason that I tracked this one and was trying to you know find this aircraft. But we have to remember the difference between an overdue plane and a plane that we can confirm crashed I I am aware that Alaska is a very dangerous place and that these kinds of incidents happen all the time. But again missing does not equal dead at the time right and even I know a lot of you complain that I go to work on things like this I really just do it because I would hope that somebody would do the same for me and this is this has become kind of a problem over the past couple of weeks so I'll I'll address it now because of the terminally online nature of most people these days people just consume news like it's a drug and they don't realize that I'm not a journalist okay uh I don't think many people can really fully understand what I'm doing here and I'm not regurgitating what has already happened I am I'm working forward into the future right this is not Netflix or the NFL this is real life stuff right so people calling me sensationalist or complaining that I'm working on stuff literally during the rescue phase I don't know what to tell you except that I'm I'm really saddened that we're now at this point I got a lot of comments and a lot of uh messages from people saying I'm stupid planes crash in Alaska all the time. And so on and so forth I mean yeah I know it's it's a dangerous place but again if I was the one on the ground if I had survived a plane crash in such a remote and inhospitable place I would hope that everyone capable of helping no matter how minimally would be looking for me or trying to help in some way. Even if it's just some random idiot on the internet making a map that may or may not be helpful or may may or may not even be viewed by anybody who can make a difference right I don't know anyone on the plane nor am I anywhere near the area or have any vested interest in helping out I just I I could have ignored this altogether. But I didn't so once again if I was out there in the cold uh I would not not appreciate all of the other random idiots trying to tell the guy that's trying to help me it's a waste of time right now granted in this case this crash resulted in no survivors so again once we know that no one survived again incident response once we know that no one survived we can shift in from from the rescue phase into recovery mode and you know start backing down what we can contribute you know from the internet I'm not going to sit here and give you a whole hourong expose on the plane crash once once we know that there's no more good that we can do people know the authorities know know where the aircraft is we can we can move on right so I did want to briefly mention that because it's become kind of a um it's become kind of burdensome to some degree so I thought I would share uh a little bit of things I have to deal with on kind of a daily basis and sort of in a similar vein uh and before we close out with the ghost net today I I wanted to briefly mention tensions are high in the Middle East once again as very important things are happening that are becoming tougher to talk about so that's really all I'll say on that you can read what I wrote or not it's up to you uh I'm trying to keep my thoughts and comments as constructive helpful and information dense uh as possible so I don't waste anyone's time so I will do the best I can to to cover events in the Middle East because very important things are happening things are moving I'm very much aware that we have entered into a new era of uh Middle East Doctrine and Middle East foreign policy and you you might classify it as being sort of an upheaval a shaking up of the entire region for good or for bad it's it's uh you can't that it's a very important time for the Middle East. But as we go forward I I feel like I need to mention this frustration because it's going to affect things uh. Moving forward and that is that I've really just personally reached a saturation point of being frustrated that I am always expected to Grant preferential treatment to one side in this conflict there's definitely a case of preferential treatment going on for so long that equal treatment looks like discrimination so there will be no good faith open and honest discussion on this top topic I'm afraid uh this is the only thing that I am censored on really to be honest and it's not even the platforms themselves it's not really a a top- down like government censorship or platform censorship it's it's a huge portion of the people who consume my content and and use my work unfortunately so I would really appreciate having open and honest discussions about events in the Middle East and how they affect American policy I understand people don't really care uh to some degree or to a large degree I understand uh. However like it or not the United States is involved in the Middle East and understanding which way the wind is a blow in is kind of important for the American taxpayer so this is making risk assessment and a general feeling of how War might develop uh further quite challenging it it's making things very very difficult it's hard to write an assessment when the expectation is there for me to calculate the mathematical number of times I criticize one side. And then make sure to criticize the other side the same number of times to balance things out so you know you can see how this gets a little frustrating. But I'm going to keep an eye on the region and we will see how things develop I just probably will not be able to go into much detail on some things because it's just too much work on my end to have to explain my perspective or why I arrive at certain assessments uh it it just takes such a long period of time if I have to you know have a 5H Hour podcast to explain one sentence in one of my assessments it's just you know cost prohibitive right when it comes to time management so I'll do the best I can I'm not going to self censor. But just know know that it's put me in kind of a tough spot when it comes to the Middle East and I'm not alone in this there are a lot of other people uh that are trying to talk about the Middle East and they run into these things they just don't normally address it so directly I suppose. But either way moving forward I I do appreciate your kind words of support I really really do appreciate that but what I would appreciate more is for all of you to pay attention uh specifically to all of the hatred that I get whenever I talk about the Middle East and I want you to ask yourself this is again I don't matter I want you to ask yourself is all of this Badness right is this because I S2 here and being unfair slanted or biased is that what's going on here or is this vitrio because I am being neutral or trying to be at least and those people who are used to preferential treatment don't like that so I'm just asking you to think about that for yourself and judge for yourself I don't want to tell you what to think. But but even more importantly and is absolutely critical look at those people who think that preferential treatment is actually not a bad thing in this case look at those people who think that preferential treatment is a good thing in this case and take note right yeah I know not not what everyone was expecting today. But I uh I did want to explain a little bit and sort of talk about some of the challenges ahead when it comes to things like you tracking events at the at the border where we're we're starting to get into things where things are not very easy to do anymore like they have been so far. But things not very easy not just for myself but for any of you who are out there trying to learn what's going on in the Middle East figure out what's the root of this conflict really truly uh is this really just a a generational thing or is the like a millenn you know thousand- year old conflict or is this something else or whatever same thing with the cartels what is going on with the southern border why is it the way that it is how did this conflict develop uh how does this history of Central and South America play into this very big questions. But a lot of challenges a lot of challenges to try to get to this truth so yeah I'm sorry if this wasn't as information dense as I normally like to make these to be. But again I think uh focusing on some of this stuff is is a little bit helpful so I am sorry if I've been a little tired or. But it's all right we'll get back at it on Monday and keep. Moving forward so uh let's go ahead and talk about some of the ghostnet stuff for this week uh before we close out today and again pretty same as always uh fairly fairly useful I did get a couple of news reports I did not I have not heard about and and maybe some of you have heard about these uh things this was a shooting in New Albany which uh two people were killed and four were wounded in a warehouse uh mass shooting it looks like I did a little bit of research and this looks like this may have been a uh I hate I hate to say the word standard. But a fairly standard disgruntled employee kind of thing guy's not getting along with his co-workers too well and apparently just decided to settle disputes or settle his own frustrations by shooting everyone so again not a good thing. But this uh unfortunately is becoming uh fairly typical so you can you guys can research that on on your own if you're in the area so that's prettyy much all I have for today again here are the sources uh for this week's research again all of these sources can be found on my obsidian page sorted by the day so that you can see what each source is for for each wire report for the day. But yeah I guess we'll see what we can get to it uh next week it's all right uh we'll get back at it on Monday and and see what we can do to to keep. Moving forward and improving things um I'm currently putting together uh the next book club selection Choice uh which I think is going to be pretty interesting this time around and uh I'm also working on building out some of the data sets that I that I showed you on the map I I've really been spending a lot of my time in arcgis trying to uh build out the data sets I have not published most of them yet I'm just trying to get the template down get you know the spreadsheets all together and it's it's kind of a it's kind of a mess sometimes as you guys know. But either way uh hopefully I'll have something for you this week on that to kind of develop that out a little bit more so again thank you all for your support uh thank you all for watching and we will. See you next time and as always by the shade.