Intel Update - July 6: Water, Explosions, and Drones

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for June 30th through July 6th 2024 got a lot to cover today so let's get right to it beginning with the Northeast region in Washington DC a few days ago there was a boil water advisory declared for the entire District now I know what everyone's thinking was this due to some sort of malign actor or get Samaritan no this was in fact due to low water levels some of the Water Management uh facilities were having to switch over and uh sort of mitigate the effects of having a low water supply during this you know hot summer so uh they had due to that they had increased levels of turbidity in the water which sort of hinders um any sort of chemical treatment effort so really the boiled water advisory it was just purely a precautionary uh effort and there really wasn't anything more to it than that. Moving on to a little bit more uh recent and sort of sketchy story I did want to mention it just in case there are any sort of lingering reports out there uh last night so on July the 5th uh there were many stories kind of circulating on social media indicating that President Biden has suffered a medical issue on board Air Force One uh as he transits for his uh weekly trip uh back to his home in Delaware uh just bottom line uh I don't think the story is true uh. However it parts of it may be true generally speaking when it comes to anything involving like the president or or uh anything to do with like the White House like staffers or anything usually it doesn't really pay very well to get wrapped around the axle with this sort of thing because well you know it's just such a highly controlled environment so really as far as the story goes it it looks like it isn't true uh. However it's really hard to tell and it and it just kind of highlights the sort of things that we should be looking out for uh if such a large sort of strategic issue were to come about so I heard about the issue and the very first thing that I started doing was looking up the hfgcs this is an Air Force managed uh communications platform that is a really good indicator of something going on in the world so usually if the hfgcs this radio system uh is active and you can turn on your your radio and and check out the frequencies that we know about uh and there's traffic on it then generally speaking something's going on none of that happened during this incident same thing uh with regards to strategic assets like U E6 BS uh sort of Doomsday planes e4s uh like the the night watch aircraft and none none of this stuff was active at the time uh now granted you can make the the argument that uh these aircraft can take off without emitting any sort of transponder data and that is true. However generally speaking with something like this you would probably expect to to see them at least take off uh with adsb because the airports that these uh aircraft are sort of you know stationed at are uh generally speaking pretty pretty busy a airport so usually you're not going to see an aircraft of a strategic nature in the US take off without a transponder unless they're doing training or something and they've well coordinated in advance. But in any case I didn't see any of that um Air Force 2 uh the vice president was actually in the air at the time uh sort of as the story broke uh Air Force 2 was over Louisiana heading west no change to that aircraft's flight path and that would absolutely occur if something you know happened to to Biden or something like that and you know of course taking a Peak uh around the world to what the Russians were doing no activity from them no strategic assets up no radio messages no nothing so uh you know generally speaking the Russians react to to pretty good significant events uh here in the US just like we do so um there's really nothing major uh from them so again all of the Strategic indicators that you may care about as a taxpayer uh that sort of indicate something going on you know with you know the sort of military leadership of this country uh none of those indicators are present so that's kind of where I sort of checked out as far as um really caring about this incident now again we also have to consider that a real event like this probably would not be uh so readily available to the Press uh if we remember uh the secretary of defense was in the hospital for almost a week before literally anyone noticed so you know it it it it may not traditionally be thought of is very is being very easy to hide the president for such a long period of time. However you know nowadays they could probably get away with it for a few days uh I mean as we remember in the leadup to the 2020 election Biden basically disappeared for like three months and no one saw him like there wasn't any like proof of life being you know given so you know just something to to consider. Moving forward uh into this sort of very tenuous uh election season that's already gotten pretty crazy you're probably going to see a lot more information Warfare kind of things like this or false rumors or something to that effect so again just take everything with the grain of salt uh realize having the ability to realize how much a national event affects you is a very valuable skill I think uh it's not entirely easy sometimes and it's better to be safe than sorry uh. However you know stuff like this probably doesn't really matter a whole lot but in any case that's really all I have for the Northeast so let's move on down to the southeast uh again we have another explosion uh this time at General Dynamics in Camden uh they're they they had a fairly large explosion uh at the factory down there they make uh Hydro Rockets apkws hellfires I think they make some jams or um excuse me javelins I think uh or at least the components for these missiles and um uh weapon systems uh. Anyway they had an explosion at the factory no word on what caused it but it killed one worker and two others were wounded so uh again the cause of the blast is not known or excuse me I think that it's fairly obvious that General Dynamics knows what happened uh. But they're just not releasing it to the public for you know obvious reasons so again it's never good to have a major major major explosives Factory uh defense industry uh blowing up this time of year or really any time of year so again just another sign of critical infrastructure uh being impacted either by malign actors or by accident or otherwise being affected negatively in some way moving over to the East Central midwestern region a more political event that I think it's probably worth uh looking at is uh in Wisconsin the Wisconsin Supreme Court reverses their own ruling uh to allow uh dropboxes for the 2024 election now this is a very hotly contested uh sort of thing if you aren't from Wisconsin or you're not aware of the political situation on the Supreme Court uh in Wisconsin I would say that you know being sort of an outsider looking in this looks like a fairly fairly kinetic uh political situation uh it's fairly dirty it's fairly nasty um there's been a lot of political Scandal uh with the Supreme Court specifically in Wisconsin and um this ruling just kind of continues that so again Wisconsin had uh previously banned the use of ballot draw box boxes because a state law well makes it illegal for a ballot drop box to exist outside of a polling station um. However people did it anyway and around 40% of all the votes cast in Wisconsin came via these you know illegal dropboxes well Supreme Court back in 2021 or 22 said hey that's illegal and in 2023 the uh court switched to a liberal majority and now we have just a few weeks before voter registration uh sort of comes into effect or the deadline for that comes into effect uh we now have this judgment that makes dropboxes legal again so we can kind of see how this goes uh it's not really surprising uh at all. But you know it's just something to be in mind mindful of that uh the same old tricks are kind of being pulled again so again that's all I have on that moving over to Western Europe uh this was again more of a sort of rumor thing. But I did want to address it because it it it kind of matters a little bit throughout Europe there have been sort of inklings and rumors and well in many cases actually like confirm stories that a lot of US military bases throughout Europe have increased their fpcon level to fpcon Charlie or at least they did for a while some of reduced back down to a more um easy to maintain level. But for a while there there were several bases that were at fpcon Charlie so what does this mean for the lay person well really this just means that um a lot of military bases throughout Europe are on an increased alert status they're not on like high alert you know like a lot of people are saying in sort of Civilian media really is just an increase in the force protection condition. Which means that military bases are kind of you know a little bit on edge with regards to the potential for a terror attack uh so far it doesn't look like that has materialized or or that threat has not materialized or if it has it's just kind of been quietly uh kept kept Under Wraps uh and we also have to remember that ukom the you know United States European command is is very large there are a lot of bases in Europe and every single base is different so when you see someone say okay all military bases are at fpcon Charlie well that that tells me that they probably don't have the whole story uh because really not a lot of bases are capable of sustaining con Charlie for a long period of time you know so it it tells me that maybe they're at like Bravo Plus or something like that uh where they're mostly operating at sort of like a slightly more increased level there are a lot more random anti-terrorism measures there's a lot more you know vehicle searches they increase those they you sort of restrict access they close a few Gates so on. And so forth you know things that you might expect to see uh from an increased security posture these sort of things happen without a specific label being put on them and that has definitely been a trend you can see this worldwide the military and a lot of Base commanders without increasing their fpcon level have quietly started implementing you know a little bit more security measures like let's upgrade that security barrier over there or let's close this gate during you know certain times of day uh more so than we might do ordinarily so that's just something to keep in mind is is that we may not get these sort of huge red flags going up of you know military forces being on Red Alert sort of thing uh we may actually just see quietly just implementing better security practices which you know is probably not a bad thing. But but it is an indicator of the the uh sort of stressful situation that is kind of happening throughout Europe and wrapping things up down in the med uh let's talk about two very interesting stories the first of which is border clashes uh along the border with turkey and Syria so uh turkey and Syria have been kind of at each other's throats for a very long time both historically uh you know going back Millennia in some cases I guess. But also more recently in the form of refugees so of course as the Syrian War sort of got underway most of the refugees fled to Turkey Turkey begrudgingly took in a lot of these refugees and turkey has been having a lot of problems with the refugees over the past few years uh made worse by the fact that uh turkey had a pretty big earthquake a while ago and that sort of uh impacted a lot of the refugees sort of you know uh operations in the area so turkey and Syria are not on super great terms right now um at least a people uh within turkey and Syria so ethnic Turks and ethnic syrians uh a few days ago this sort of um popped up again uh where a Syrian man was discovered to have committed a horrible horrible crime against a Syrian child and ethnic Turks freaked out about it as as you might expect and sort of took out took revenge on this uh this horrific crime in a lot of Syrian sort of neighborhoods if you want to call it that uh. As a result from that a lot of syrians ethnic syrians in Syria uh started attacking border crossing checkpoints with turkey uh with small arms and turkey has shut those border crossings down I don't think they're still down I think they're I think they're they're quiet they quietly open those border crossings back up again. But I'm not entirely certain about that uh in any case the situation between turkey and Syria is not super great uh which is interesting considering the the situation uh going on down south you know with the Israel Gaza Lebanon sort of thing so again just another potential way for a conflict to flare up now again I want to stress that uh the sort of tensions between turkey and Syria are not new this has been going on for a while occasionally you'll have border clashes turkey will shut the border down and it's kind of a non-starter. However I did want to mention it just in case things get a little squirly down south um but in any case I thought it was kind of interesting so um moving over Switching gears to Italy uh the Italians uh quietly with American Support American intelligence support intercepted uh at least two Chinese drones that were Bound for Libya so Chinese cargo ship lands in jotaro major port city that handles a lot well it's not a major port city. But a lot a port city which handles a lot of traffic going down to North Africa uh Chinese cargo ship moves into the port offloads six containers uh labeled wind turbine equipment and uh the Italian customs people uh undo the wrapping and find out wait a minute these are not wind turbines this is not clean energy these are military drones so basically China has ripped off like an earlier version uh of the sort of American uh drone sort of ecosystem I guess you should say uh it's not really an mq1 uh replacement. But you can kind of see here uh that this is not a small drone this isn't a toy quadcopter this is a big deal so this is China's version of a large uh fixed wi uh platform so again the Italians uh sort of busted that up uh again with American Support allegedly if you if you read the news on that so again they were trying to ship these to Libya uh for the Libyan National Army which makes a lot of sense because China's been trying to slowly increase their uh sort of foothold in Africa uh for a very long time you know China is generally speaking China doesn't really have a whole lot of allies uh historically speaking um just because a lot of a lot of nations are not really um well let's just say the the impacts of ma and had the the the uh diplomatic efforts on that front really just haven't left most of the world with good feelings towards China China's trying to change that and they have definitely changed that in some regards um. But when it comes to Africa China loves to purchase friends with a checkbook uh and this is definitely one way to do that by arming the Libyan National Army so again very interesting set of events for this week uh let's go ahead and wrap things up by talking about the intercepted ghostnet report uh again sorry for this week it just so happened to be that uh the ghost net uh Communications window uh for this time occurred at uh 900 p, m. On July 4th so again right as people were getting ready uh to celebrate uh the holiday and blow some fireworks so I did not really expect a whole lot of people to be on ghostnet. But there were quite a few quite a few of you were out there multitasking uh got a lot of happy Independence Day messages I'm not going to show all of them because they came in a little bit garbled um I had a thunderstorm roll through my area right at the exact same time most people were transmitting uh which kind of flung my antenna around a little bit so you know the things that you have to deal with when you deal with radio you know it's not perfect. But I did get one one really good news report that came in really solid for just a few minutes uh and this was talking about Mexico electing a new president um talking about the EU Parliament. And so on and so forth so um it's a little bit you know garbled here and there but you kind of get the gist right of of uh someone talking about the political changes throughout Europe so again wasn't expecting very much just due to the holiday. But I think we got some pretty good stuff so quite a few of you out there were checking in I saw quite a lot of you um. But uh yeah I thought that was a a pretty good calm window even on a holiday so so that's pretty much all I have for today uh thank you all for watching I know that I am terribly terribly behind schedule with regards to a lot of projects that I've been working on it seems like this summer I don't know if anybody else out there is the same way. But it seems like uh basically everything I do this summer has taken three times longer than it should so um I will be up on the Forgotten 500 which is our uh book club offering here uh pretty soon hopefully I can finish wrapping up that video along with the book club offering for last month so I'm kind of two months behind now uh. But anyway I'll catch up I will catch up hopefully this week uh and we can uh sort of try to pick apart some of the the Lessons Learned for a a more modern time these days it has never been more important to to continue reading books and learning and growing and doing the best you can so hopefully we'll continue on with more of that so thank you all for watching again and we will. See you next time and as always fight in the shade.