Intel Update: May 12-18, 2024

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground as usual it's been a pretty jam-packed week uh but here we are once again with another graphical intelligence summary so again kind of a busy week. But I think this one will be a little bit on the short side because a lot of these events have kind of worked their way out throughout the week so let's go ahead and get started starting with the southwestern region we have the Pelican Island Causeway Bridge Collision incident this is one of those incidents where a lot of people are very very concerned about it especially in the context of what recently happened in b Baltimore. However this is one of those more routine sorts of um accidents back on Wednesday May 15th a petroleum oil lubricant Affiliated po uh barge used for the storing of distillates and kind of moving things around in the region collided with the Pelican Island Causeway Bridge uh the bridge itself has uh both a vehicle trackway and an old uh rail line the a piece of the rail line actually collapsed now that rail line had not been in use for at least several years that had been out of action for a very long time the Pelican Island Causeway Bridge itself is uh very much in a state of disrepair before this accident actually happened as far as I can tell there have been uh many many talks of being able to uh Revitalize replace build a completely new bridge altogether uh for several years before this accident occurred so again the bridge was not in really good shape before this incident and now uh looks like a lot of Structural Engineers are trying to figure out out if the bridge is still viable so the barge broke loose from its moing lines or toe line parted actually and it made contact with a couple of the pylons on the bridge so again this is one of those things where people are very concerned about it. But we have to remember in the grand scheme of things when it comes to like a barge breaking loose from it's either moing line or toe line or something this happens kind of a lot this happens quite often uh throughout the United States just it's just due to the nature of the job right so this is something that does not on the same magnitude or scale as the Baltimore crisis. Even though a lot of people are kind of trying to compare apples to oranges with regards to this incident and the Baltimore one so just something to keep in mind I know people are very concerned about it uh the people on Pelican Island uh they're they're kind of hosed for now um it's really hard to tell uh when the bridge is going to be open the authorities haven't said anything uh with regards to a timeline for reopening the bridge to to vehicle traffic. But as far as I can tell there are several thousand about ,000 people living on Pelican Island and there's a few other things on the island as well a few manufacturing some salvage companies ironically uh things like that so you know this bridge being out of action is going to be very inconvenient. But as far as Pelican Island is concerned there's nothing that's like a huge major gargantuan super super important uh critical infrastructure like Hub the things that are on Pelican Island that are important for critical infrastructure and like strategically important uh they have their own dock and they don't use the bridge to get to work or to move things around so um it's going to be interesting to see how this whole incident shakes out because uh it looks like it may uh be a very significant repair so. Moving on to the more interesting uh incident this week uh there was an incident involving a Russian notam off the coast of California so a few people have uh saw this and freaked out all over the Internet mostly Twitter and uh this whole incident has kind of just kind of snow ball into being I think more than what it really is. However I didn't want to talk about it because people are still running with the original information and it's it's it's over it's canceled so so Thursday night almost simultaneously was me dropping the wire for that day uh a not Tam popped up a notice to Airman this is uh sort of like a uh press statement or a informational release for Pilots uh to be aware of things like hazards or no fly zones or flight restrictions or things like that we tend to monitor not Tams that's why I have a whole video on discussing what notams are why they're important. But we monitor these in the sort of Open Source Community because they're kind of important and they kind of highlight things that you may not have you may not hear from from mainstream media so like clockwork uh an interesting not toown popped up off the coast of California just a square or rectangle box about 500 mil off the coast of Los Angeles and here you can see the notam you can read the not for yourself and see why people may have been a little bit surprised by this one. But really the gist of it is right here it says the Russian Federation plans to conduct rocket firings impact area within the Oakland artcc so on and so forth with the uh coordinates for the the Box uh so people were a little bit surprised that the Russians are going to be shooting Rockets or missiles or something and they're going to be landing just a few hundred miles off the coast of Los Angeles uh so of course the internet spun up about it no details come out because once the Nots really there aren't any amplifying information sources you have to kind of like figure it out yourself or look for a press statement or something. But the notam is very very short it's intended to be so that it can be transmitted to aircraft as they're flying so again notams are a really good indicator. But they're not the definitive story they are what we call an indicator or a warning indications and warnings for a more substantial incident so so just as the internet was kind of getting spun up about it we were trying to figure out what's going on what going on with this is this one of those sort of diplomacy by missile kinds of things uh the notan was canceled uh we can see the original notam was supposed to be for 10 days which is about the length of a Russian naval exercise it was supposed to go until May 26th. But it was cancelled without explanation without any kind of amplifying information uh it was canceled within just a few hours so is this a whole just kind of big mistake is this somebody with a typo or what's going on we don't really know um now I will theorize this is just my own Theory uh. But I will theorize that it could be one of two things one it could be a space launch that's the most non- nefarious way of putting a notam out Russians conduct a space launch the booster debris is got to fall back to Earth somewhere maybe it was going to fall within this box that's fairly standard not nefarious at all fairly common the only difference is the wording uh the Russian Federation plants to conduct rocket firing is that's not that's not something that's normally done when there's a Russian space launch or an American space launch for that matter or Chinese space launch uh they will put that in there they'll put like uh Russian space program or some kind of International Space Station thing something like that they will make you aware that it is in fact a civilian uh space mission uh and not a military missile test or something like that this is the notam that we see when there's a rocket test or a missile test or something like like a ballistic missile test this is what we see this is what it looks like so I'm sure the people in Washington would just kind of brush it off by saying oh was a Russian space launch that we just canceled it's a non-issue don't worry about it. However they're forgetting that this exact same thing happened a couple years ago off the coast of Ireland if if anybody remembers that I actually covered that uh I think in one of the older standardized briefs where uh Russia caused this big International Scandal when they said hey we're going to be conducting missile firings and it's going to be off the coast of Ireland within Ireland's uh fishing Waters their economic exclusion zone so NATO freaked out the UK freaked out Ireland freaked out everybody got spun up over. And then Russia like the day before the exercise was supposed to begin said oh we're going to cancel it don't worry about it oh and the fact that we were going to do this exercise in the first place that's disinformation from the West like come on man like you know the Russians tend to do that sometimes so again you're probably not going to hear anything from Russia on this uh Russia can't or the Russian military they can't go to the F they don't have a way for you know putting in these notams themselves so some coordination is taking place between Russian uh defense Ministry and the FAA so they have a way of of creating these things. But uh I don't think it's automatic for a military thing I think it has to come from the Russian Ministry of Defense to the dod to the FAA I'm not certain so don't quote me on that. But I'm I'm fairly certain that somebody in the government is going to know what this actually is and whether or not they're going to tell the truth on it is up to them I guess so again this may or may not be over it may be all it may be just you know absolutely nothing whatsoever. But this is a kind of thing that we should you know kind of stay on the lookout for Russia loves to do these classic Cold War tactics they love these Cold War tricks man it's like for them the Cold War never ended I guess for us too. But they really love this kind of stuff just a mess with us and so you know that's probably it or it could be something along those lines. But again kind of interesting thing I thought I wanted to point that out because of all the you know absolutely uh insane uh messages out there on the internet these days you know I thought I would kind of uh alleviate some fears on that regard so uh. Moving on to Eastern Europe the big ticket item for this week was the attempted assassination uh hopefully it will just stay as an attempt uh of prime minister Robert fito in Slovakia uh so this is one of the guys in technically it's Eastern Europe. But you could probably say it's a little bit of both um where this guy was very much anti- World economic Forum uh very much anti- uh Co lockdowns very much the West calls him pro- Russia. But he's uh I guess you could say that that is a fair categorization but more along the lines lately he's just been anti- Ukraine so just because you're anti- Ukraine doesn't necessarily make you pro- Russia. Although that does kind of work out to be uh the case a lot of times basically within the past couple of weeks and even I think before the day he was shot he uh canceled the funding uh for Ukraine so you know that's a huge deal he was also instrumental in um holding up Ukraine from joining NATO uh so you know he's one of these big big dogs in that regard and he was shot by an assassin um this week so yeah not super great uh he was actually hit four times in the chest as far as I can tell he is still in very very serious condition he's undergone multiple surgeries uh some sources are claiming he's in a medically induced coma so he's not doing well uh. But again some sources within government like you get one Deputy Minister on on you know Slovakian TV and they say he's stable and then the next guy says we're not out of the woods yet so um it's going to probably be a few more days few weeks before we figure out his you know overall condition so uh his assassin his assassin interestingly enough is a a somewhat popular local semi celebrity uh by the name of Y Cula uh who is a um I guess his the title you could call him is basically just dissident um extreme far-left uh activist protester um demonstration organizer poet uh writer you know local voice for being anti fito right so that's his whole kind of like uh sort of arrangement for the past few years is just to kind of oppose everything fito has done and now he and now he shot him so uh the story. However gets a little bit deeper so it's not just some dissatisfied political opponent um this is where kind of the rabbit hole gets really deep and uh the internet kind of has freaked out a little bit on this one as well uh not a whole lot of this is confirmed so I'll just say that right up front not a whole lot of this is confirmed it's kind of a developing story right now. But it doesn't look like this is an organic incident this does not look like Tula just deciding to go shoot the Prime Minister one day this looks more like a very strongly uh coordinated and planned attack mostly because of cula's wife which again is unconfirmed. But local sources claim that she actually is an Ukrainian Refugee so there's tie back to Ukraine uh you know it's it's like we're not talking about connecting 15 Dots here we're talking about connecting dots that are touching each other at this point so again this is where the whole um internet sentiment of this being perhaps our modern modern day Arch duuk ferdinan incident I don't know I can't say for certain either way uh. But I do know that his wife has been detained in conjunction with uh this incident now the reason for the detention varies widely uh some sources claim that his uh cula's wife has been placed in police protection to protect her from the people who obviously see the Ukrainian connection uh. However other sources claim that she's actually been uh placed under arrest in conjunction with this investigation I can't say either way slaki and media is not exactly the most RI reliable thing in the world and neither are local sources so it's really hard to say what is actually going on all we know with decent certainty is that um the Assassin's wife is uh in custody uh somewhat unwillingly. Though the reasons for being so uh very widely depend on what source you go with so again developing story don't have a whole lot of information but I think this is uh a very deep rabbit hole and this has very very wide ranging consequences this is not just a Slovakia thing this is directly tied to Ukraine so yeah this is just not a good incident all around um speaking of Ukraine there was a development this week with regards to Russia and this was a somewhat surprising uh Personnel change uh Sergey shu is out of a job or he's transitioned to a new job this one immediately even describing the story gets kind of politically like inflammatory because uh what we know is that Sergey shu is no longer the minister of defense for Russia he is now the secretary of the Russian Council Uh Russian Security Council so uh some sources of course NATO Western sources claim that he was fired uh Eastern European sources Russian sources claim that he was promoted into a more strategic role where he actually has more power uh and his replacement has um basically been put into the position of Minister of Defense to Signal the uh changes with regard regards to how Russia is now treating the Ukrainian War the latter part of that is probably more true uh Sergey sho's replacement is Andre bitov so he is he was a former deputy prime minister or uh actually I think his most famous role was he was the uh economics uh minister so he um has no military background he has no like National Security he never served on the National Security Council abut never served on any kind of like major strategic thing. However he's now the minister of defense and what I think is a lot more accurate is to describe this as being a Personnel shift that is indicative of Russia's changing Doctrine with regards to the Ukrainian War basically Russia's digging in for the Long Haul and personally I don't think Russia is digging in for the Long Haul with Ukraine I think Russia is digging in for the Long Haul with other countries as well so um you tend to not just kind of like basic Warfare 101 you don't replace your minister of defense during an active War uh you that tends to not happen unless there's a very serious uh incident which I don't think happened I mean old old Sergey shu is is very well known to be kind of a corrupt dude um. But I mean it's Russia right so that that word doesn't really necessarily ring as as heavily as it does in the west um but I think that replacing him at kind of you know the height of the Ukrainian War kind of coming to a close sort of signals that and putting an economics guy in charge kind of signals Russia trying to you know wrap this thing up. And then move into the next phase of Russia's development you could say Russian expansion into something else or something like that uh either way Putin himself has had a lot of speeches lately about you know you know Russia's rise and Russia building again so it's hard to say. But I don't think shyo was fired um I don't there's no indications that he did there hasn't been any like gross military failure lately the Russian army has been doing really good in Ukraine over the past year or so despite all the Western sources which are just you know fantasy uh at this point. But you know Russia's assault didn't go super well now Putin does have I should I should mention this Putin does have a um a very long memory and he tends to fire people you know years down the line for things they did years in the past so maybe he was fired or promoted out of the way uh up into the National Security Council so that he doesn't do uh kind of his punishment for this whole Ukraine war thing not going super well uh in the first couple of years of it that could be it. But I think that more along the lines this is probably a indicative of Russia's changing um mentalities and changing ing Doctrine and this is probably a little bit tied into the next category which is in the Far East with regards to Taiwan and China mostly mostly China so again lately there have been an awful lot of Chinese incursion flights and pln ships in the Taiwan straight uh kind of harassing Taiwan in typical Chinese fashion uh the kinman island crisis has gotten a little bit worse as we all know uh kenman island is one of those weird sorts of diplomatic things where it's technically Taiwan. But it's like two miles away from one of China's largest naval ports um that crisis has gotten a little bit worse there have been a lot of drone incursions on kenman island this week uh in the past month or so uh. But with regards to China and tying this back into Russia a little bit uh there was a Chinese State visit or a Russian State visit to China uh this week which went very very well uh for Russia and for China and it would seem that uh really from the West the biggest takeaways are that Russia and China are getting really close uh they're getting really really close um generally speaking China doesn't have any friends uh China as like on the state level has kind of ticked off the whole planet uh because of the Chinese Communist way of doing business uh so they don't really have hardly any allies I mean they they only have you know hesitant business partners um as far as uh China goes the major world power that's kind of um been around for them is Russia. But again Russia and Chinese tensions have been pretty pretty um significant they both like have a lot of international dayon back and forth over the years but now it looks like things are things are coming together for Russia and China again another major Chinese Ally in the region is North Korea. But North Korea is such a case study I don't think you can like bring them into this discussion but by and large Taiwan incidents kind of increasing China increasing uh flights and incursions within the South China Sea and in the Taiwan straight uh and Russia kind of being interwoven in all of this what does this tell us well it tells us the world's changing as if we didn't know already uh even just this week Vladimir Putin in a few speeches like daughtered around the country uh he has mentioned the word multi-polar several times uh so this kind of shows us that's that's the theme basically uh for. Moving forward and I think I think all of this is tied together Russia's activities to shift the way the Ukraine war is going Personnel changes wise and like strategy wise combined with China's actions in both the Taiwan straight with regards to the Taiwan issue. But also in the South China Sea with regards to you know them uh kind of pressing the Philippines a little bit it's like man things are going pretty crazy in the international uh Arena right now and you know America's kind of kind of left holding the bag here and we're we're just you know arguing with each other in Congress and not really doing anything productive or even being aware of what's going on around the world so again very very interesting week uh not a whole lot of like emergency stuff. But there have been a lot of very very strong uh indicators and warnings of a you know changing World on the international front with regards to Russia and China the tensions between Russia and China uh in the United States have man I I think you'd be really hardpressed to find a time where um the tensions were higher it's like you know you you just had little little diplomatic incidents over the past few weeks that have kind of like uh solidified this and and things that like the polyi major would probably just notice more than anybody and you're like you know does this really matter this incident not really. But it's just indicators right like uh When Vladimir Putin for his State visit you can find the the Clips online um he he gave uh zun ping a hug right like this has I don't think you that's ever happened you know so the Chinese leader Zan ping who is very well known to be very reserved like you very rarely hear him speak outside of like a a taped choreographed speech um you very rarely hear him make like an off-hand remark about anything and now he's hugging like physically embracing Vladimir Putin you know like and he he he started the engagement so it's like you know that's a pretty big indicator same thing a couple weeks ago when uh Anthony blinkin was in China for you know the American uh State visit uh literally there's a clip of of of Jinping standing around just kind of you know waiting around and he was asking he asked one of his AIDS like uh when is he going to leave like when is this guy leaving like is he leaving Saturday or like when is he going to be gone and um you know China or zean ping personally somebody who choreographs his moves very strongly was knew that that was that remark was being taped and recorded and that was a not so you know subtle nudge to the to the American delegation to uh basically say you're not welcome here you're not wanted here there was no uh nobody to receive a blinking at the airport like they it's just like got off a Lanza flight or something like that like it's like this is not like a state visit like you know go to baggage claim kind of thing there was basically nobody there they sent like a like a secretary or some kind of you know driver for him. But still it's like man these little things seem like they don't matter but they really do kind of highlight China and the United States are not doing super well right now. Even though we've got so much Chinese influence in in Congress and in the White House good grief uh you very really struggle to find more Chinese influence in the White House than right now uh. And yet relations are still really poor uh same thing with Russia like you know relations between the United States and Russia it's like the world is kind of ignoring the United States and just doing their own thing which we've known for many many months. But coming into an American election season I think you're going to see some pretty crazy stuff in the international front we've already got about 18 different crises that are just stacking up um that are just I'm just kind of waiting to see when is this going to pop off in this random Nation around the world uh because Russia or China wants to poke the United States you know you know because the United States has been poking them for almost a century. But you see how this kind of goes it's a pretty complicated uh series of international incidents this week um not a whole lot that matter for people who just want the quick you know news. But if you want to like understand how screwed we are in the international Arena these SE little things really start to add up so I think I'll call it a day on that and mention some of the ghostnet reports so like I mentioned last week I'm going to start kind of uh integrating some of the news reports that I hear from my station uh sent to the ghostnet tag uh on js8 call so again if you're not familiar with this I have a whole series of videos talking about what the ghost net is. But I thought this would be a very interesting way to start to get people to start you know pushing their local news reports and actually start coming together and providing news and information on a local level uh that I can highlight uh you know every week and just show the usefulness of radio so this is something new I don't know if anybody else is doing this. But you know this hopefully will be quite helpful and since I mentioned it last week you guys did not disappoint so I did get several reports this week from my station that I heard personally I also used an SDR so I used a web SDR from I think Pennsylvania that's the one I typically use cuz it it seems to work a little bit better for me uh. But some of the reports I got this week were interesting one of the ones I got I had not heard about before and I completely missed it when it occurred a couple weeks ago. But apparently on May 4th uh going back uh quite a quite a ways there was a massive uh Cyber attack in Kansas City which brought down most of the city's uh governmental web uh system so you can read the report that somebody sent uh and kind of highlights uh what's going on with this again this is me just kind of helping you get your local news out and uh show the integration of how radio can help us do that CU I had not heard of this so that's very very interesting uh something else somebody mentioned is uh the events in Texas with regards to the weather so I got several kind of reports it was very hard for me to get from you know Texas all the way out this way uh I have pretty good coverage of the East Coast. But from Texas to Pennsylvania that was a little bit a little bit too much to ask I think so I only caught little bits and pieces of the story. But we've got somebody talking about transmission lines down um in the downtown area I guess uh somebody I caught a reply from somebody which uh kind of confirmed to me that this was Houston uh somebody was talking about I didn't catch who it was or anything. But um somebody also said that it was a good test because they had uh no uh they had no power and they were running the radio and cooking dinner. At the same time so again this is fantastic this is exactly what this is meant to do do to provide a SE way of making it as seamless as possible so that uh when you've got no power when you've got no water you're in a disaster situation you can still be effective and you can still get the news you can still share information you can still have contact with the outside world this is exactly what this is for so uh thank you guys for participating on that uh and there was one more H comment I should mention of uh I really didn't catch who it was from or or who it was I think it was a message to someone uh. But it was talking about how YouTube has removed 35,000 uh European uh videos for misinformation uh with regards to the the EU uh cracking down on censorship uh throughout their region so again yeah very very important cuz otherwise you're not going to hear that stuff right yeah this has been a a really good success so far again baby steps this will improve over time uh this will get better uh and it it will only uh you're you're going to get out of it what you put into it and I can see a lot of people are putting a lot into it so thank you all for that this has been really really great uh and I think that this is a good way for us to start thinking about things like Logistics and information flow and things like that uh that aren't necessarily you know in the internet sphere right it's really really hard um to to have a sort of independent free standing information exchange service right uh. But hopefully this this will help quite a bit uh with regards to things uh like trying to be a little bit more resilient with your Communications and things like that so again thank you all for watching uh here are the slides for this time or the excuse me the sources for this time uh not a whole lot again. But I think I've rambled on and taken up enough of your time this week so I think we'll call it a day uh we'll pick things up again on Monday with the standard wire reports and I guess we'll. See you next time so thank you all for watching and we'll see you then and as always fight in the shade.