Intel Update - Jan 18 - New Beginnings

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for January 12th through the 18th 2025 I thought that today we would forego the camera work and stick with just the slides as I'm going to be jumping around on the map quite a bit and I thought that might be a little bit easier for everyone to follow along with so let's get right to it starting off in the Southeast region let's go ahead and start with Georgia in which an incident occurred in the Georgia capital building a couple of days ago involving Senator Colton Moore just as a brief backstory uh Senator Moore has been a very vocal uh participant in the exposure SL criticism of fton County district attorney Fanny Willis and in her prosecution of Donald Trump uh so much so that he was one of the stronger voices for uh exposing some of her local corruption and things like that at the local state level as one might expect in Georgia Donald Trump himself is not a particularly popular face in in some political circles down there especially within the GOP so a voice like Senator Moore being rather active in Trump's defense was was not taking very well as such Senator Moore has been really uh kind of raked over the coals throughout the some of the more administrative things that have G on in Congress and one of the things that sort of sparked kind of a larger argument is his uh remarks on a former speaker as former Speaker of the House who a lot of big GOP names and you know power players in Georgia politics were trying to name a building after so so the short version of the story is Senator Moore had previously uh gone after Fanny Willis and kind of upset a lot L of the uh never Trump kind of Republicans in Georgia sort of thing then Senator Moore decides to not want to support the naming of a building after a former Speaker of the House simply because that speaker was embroiled in a lot of controversy and a lot of unsavory things I'll just kind of leave it at that and this was the sort of straw that broke the camel's back and allowed uh the speaker of the house to ban Senator Moore from the house floor of course Senator Moore being a senator and the house Speaker being in charge of the house uh this is one of those kind of political rule things that actually can happen the problem arose yesterday when Senator Moore was trying to enter the house floor after being banned for a joint session so this is one of those things where it sounds like it's just some you know internal political problem. But really it's a much larger issue because to the best of my knowledge and I'm certainly no expert on the you know geopolitics of Georgia but to the best of my knowledge if you're holding a joint session and you're all ing Senators to come from the Senate over to the house floor you know to do their job right you can't exactly ban them from the house floor so that's exactly the position that Colton Moore took thus him trying to gain entry to the house floor and of course being arrested in the process of course the uh Georgia State Police that were involved in the arrest and all of the the Capitol Police that were involved in this were all too happy uh to arrest him so uh there was absolutely no resistance there they followed their orders to a te so of course this kind of brings into question who really controls you know Congress down in Georgia and it's it's kind of been a a political thing since then so I did want to highlight it because it's kind of a uh a very interesting thing that I think we'll start seeing more of politically throughout a lot of the other state houses and state senates around the country you know over the next four years so again Canary and the coal mine kind of thing moving up to Washington DC as one might expect the inauguration day preparedness continues throughout the city uh. Even though it looks like most of of the ceremonies are going to be moved indoors like I mentioned in the wire yesterday initial indications and warnings emerg that uh Trump and the Trump team and really a lot of people kind of involved in this whole process decided to move the event indoors now they're claiming that it's due to weather it's going to be due to cold weather I think that's a fairly flimsy excuse It's very obviously in my mind due to security concerns which like I mentioned is not entirely a bad idea I think probably the the bigger point of consternation amongst you know event goers is that a lot of people paid a lot of people paid for tickets and paid for uh you know attending various events that are now going to be behind very secure fences and things like that so uh for those of you who are planning to go to DC for the event I'll I'll talk more about this on the map in a second. But uh one thing that I did want to mention that may be a factor for this last minute change is the company DJI uh which a few days ago earlier in the week decided to push out a software update uh to allow or actually rather remove a lot of geofencing requirements for Consumer grade drones this is a much larger story and I should probably delve more into it. But the short version of this is that previously a lot of consumer grade drones in the United States were actually Geo fenced so if you wanted to take a drone and take it to the National Mall right at the base of the Washington Monument for instance and take it off you know and fly around the software itself wouldn't do it it wouldn't be a an external jamming thing going on it would be actually dji's software for these consumer grade you know buy it straight off of Amazon kind of drones the software itself wouldn't allow you to take off so it's not something that's external uh that would prevent the Drone from flying well now DJI has changed their their software to allow for these consumer grade drones the ability uh to for those drones to actually fly. Even if they're technically not allowed to now I should mention that for a lot of the larger drones uh which include things like remote ID uh and Broad you know broadcasting their kind of position and things like that this is not uh this is not a change on that front really this is probably going to be mostly felt in terms of smaller quadcopter drones that don't have remote ID uh capabilities or requirements so what does this mean well it means that it it could be and this is just a theory of mine that it could be the reason for bringing uh Trump inside for the swearing in inside the Capitol building is could be related into this it could be a a drone threat uh this has been kind of a concern for people for a very very long period of time I personally I have varying thoughts on the actual risk of this I think that really a malign actor who's dedicated is not going to be using a commercial off-the-shelf drone they're going to be using a handmade drone that has none of these remote ID or um geofencing requirements. Anyway so a dedicated terrorist who wants to use a drone to attack something such as in like Ukraine maybe you know a Ukrainian style kind of attack they're not going to be using these commercial off-the-shelf drones so I think that a lot of the panic with regards to this DJI decision is a little bit overstated. However this decision does drastically increase the number of goobers out there that can fly into stuff they're not supposed to so you know for that for that reason alone it's it's probably going to shift our risk assessment slightly. But I can't say definitively that DJI making this decision to unlock all the geofencing on their drones is why they move the event inside it's probably a combination of factors this the fact that there's still a lot of concerns as to whether the US Secret Service can actually do their job you know it's probably just a culmination of risk assessments that realized uh that it would probably be a little bit better just to have the event inside so uh with that in mind let's jump over to the map all right so here on the siip cop map let's go ahead and go to Washington DC again for those of you who maybe not have uh heard about this kind of project project I'm working on this is a an incident tracking map that I'm working on and trying to improve uh as time goes on. But it makes it a little bit easier to share information that has a geospatial component to it so this is just one kind of tool that I'm working on. But as we can see here let me pull up my layers go to incident tracking inauguration day now obviously uh for those of you who may be a little bit concerned uh I'm obviously not going to be doing any sort of public you know intelligence preparation of the battle space or ipb for the Washington DC area for very obvious reasons um not only is it not a good idea to to talk about some of this stuff in kind of the open world. But it's also uh very dangerous to one's safety if you know what I mean uh to be kind of pointing out some of the vulnerabilities in this region so not a super great idea. Anyway but I did want to highlight the the products that have been published from Washington DC themselves for those of you who may be going to the event um so let's just go ahead and turn on this is a a Geor referenced map overlay that was provided by the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service that highlight uh the zones they're going to be closed off so it's going to be basically the entire national capital region as you might expect. However there there was a minor discrepancy I noticed when I turned on the layers that were created by the uh basically the Washington DC GIS manager so let me turn off let's see the road closures and let's just look say for instance down here by lawn font station we can see that there is a little bit of a discrepancy there if I turn off and on the image it looks like there's a lot uh of area that that DC is is saying is closed. But Homeland is saying is is open so just something to keep in mind shocker I know government agencies not talking to one another um is is kind of a thing that's happened since the dawn of time so yeah that's just a reminder to be flexible remember that there's not a whole lot you can do about this sort of thing it's just the way that it is you know our Capital being fenced off for any kind of major major event to uh restrict citizens access is just a thing that kind of is has been normalized now so uh anytime the national capital region has some sort of event this is kind of what you can expect. But anyway just in case something happens or some kind of Maline actor wants to make a fuss or something like that I'll uh I'll leave this these layers on uh just for you guys who may be wanting to be aware of what's going on in the area so jumping back to the slides here let's go out west and talk about the Los Angeles wildfires as one might expect the firefighting efforts continue and have made good progress with regards to the Pacific Palisades and the Ean fires in addition to the Los Angeles wildfires I did want to briefly mention the vistra power plant fire up in Northern California uh which is a fire that it didn't really affect locals that much there were localized evacuations. But it's it's largely a fire that is contained to one of the battery storage facilities at this installation the reason that I did want to mention it. However is because this is allegedly or at least they claim this is the largest battery storage facility in the world so like I mentioned in the wire this is not just a standard natural gas power plant they they do a lot of energy storage there so they generate it uh generate the power. And then they store it in batteries very very very large batteries uh at this plant so having unknown Damage Done to one of the battery storage facilities at this plant is probably going to cause uh some problems for for the electrical infrastructure of Northern California for for some time it's hard to say. Though officially there hasn't really been much information come out about this but I guess we'll have to see over the next few days moving back down to Los Angeles like I mentioned uh the fires continue. However Los Angeles at large is kind of shifting into recovery mode and before we jump back to the map and discuss that I wanted to briefly mention one of the problems that has kind of come up with regards to Los Angeles fires recovery which is uh again politics getting into play which is unfortunate. But it does happen and uh this is a uh County order uh that was issued a few days ago that uh States or is preventing rather it's preventing the cleanup any kind of cleanup operations so people are trying to go back to their homes evacuation orders are lifted they can go back to their homes. But the county will not let anyone or looks like it won't let most people uh clean up or remove the fire debris until a County Inspector comes out and approves of their TR trash I guess I don't know. But yeah it's it's one of those things that's just kind of complicating things because cleanup is is one of those things that just kind of needs to happen right and uh waiting on a government inspector to show up uh takes time so let's jump back to the map and we'll briefly cover some of the events in Los Angeles all right so here in Los Angeles I have not unfortunately been able to make too many updates with regards to some of the rioting and the Looting that's going on or went on following these fires uh. However the uh calire and Los Angeles County officials have been hard at work updating the fire Maps so this is obviously not my work it's something that I'm just pulling in as a data layer uh from my end um. But you can see uh here in say for instance Santa Monica here uh Santa Monica North in the in the Palisades area as well you can see uh all the fire damage so black houses are ones that are still standing and and still good to go uh red houses are ones that have over 50% uh damage in most cases most of these houses are destroyed so uh just wanted to briefly mention this map uh you can see that a lot of areas have not been covered yet uh you can see this one's actually in progress you can see someone's going down the street so this takes a physical person walking by and photographing each one of these houses connecting a survey right uh from the ground and it takes time so it does not mean that say for instance that there's no damage in this area uh just outright it just means that the inspector or you know the unteer has not gotten there yet so uh that's just something to keep in mind uh with regards to how this map kind of operates and works you can see over here in Palisades proper uh it's really hit or miss again traditional Wildfire behavior is is hard to hard to predict sometimes. But we can see that a lot of this this area has been totally uh completely devastated uh let's head over to uh aladen for a second same thing same story uh you can see in Altadena North here a lot of houses that are uh just completely gone entire blocks Gone In some cases so this very serious very serious Wildfire again like I mentioned just because there's no one uh who has marked out this particular area yet it's just the inspector hasn't gotten there so uh just something to keep in mind. Moving forward but yeah uh Alena hit pretty hard uh we can see that there are a lot of mandatory evacuation zones in place I don't know if the fire evacuation zones are still in place at this moment moment to uh really uh do anything more than to prevent people from moving back in. And then having to move right back out again when it comes to evacuation zones you really do have to think sometimes about you know the behavior of people and you know kind of social sciences kind of thing and one of the things that a lot of city planners have to think about and emergency officials have to think about is well the risk isn't over yet and um it looks like it may be safe for now. But uh the problem is that if we let people move back in they're going to be even less inclined to move back out again uh you know just telling a citizen hey look you can move back in because it seems safe for now. But uh in a couple of days it may not be safe anymore it's one of those things where people are just not going to move out if they you know if they're allowed back in in a lot of cases a lot of people feel a lot of strong ways about it. But look at the devastation here it's it's kind of um we're dealing with a lot of people or at least the local authorities are dealing with a lot of people so this is probably why my personal Theory this is probably why a lot of these evacuation zones remain in place not necessarily that the fire risk is the same as before. But um that they uh want to make sure that it's actually totally and completely safe before people are are allowed to return uh rather than just waiting for the risk to be slightly reduced if that makes any sense whatsoever so let's talk aid for a moment of course uh Los Angeles has well known for being a very very big epicenter for local Aid and kind of humanitarian causes I suppose everyone in the city is kind of involved in something like that so to speak generally uh so let's go ahead and go to the layers here let me see if I have it turned on yeah I do so these Green Dots here are uh the places for humanitarian Aid that our government run now there's a lot of private uh Aid efforts going on there for people who uh need resources and things like that um it's it's rather unfortunate. But I I will mention it because I know everyone's thinking about it and they're going to comment on it. Anyway as as much as we might not want to believe it culture politics all this stuff kind of does matter during a disaster it shouldn't but it does and I have gotten a lot of um really negative feedback for focusing on what's happening in Los Angeles because people just don't care about people who live in Los Angeles you know that's not my job to kind of figure out. But I'm just trying to convey the resources here so one of the things that I did want to highlight uh is the fact that a lot of these Aid organizations that are set up in the city proper they have very interesting politics and you really have to be careful who you donate to uh in the Los Angeles area because a lot of these groups are are um Splinter cells of of rather unsavory groups or they're affiliated with with groups that are uh you know encourage violence and things like that so I did want to bring that up and mention it it's unfortunate that I have to. But I did want to mention it along with a good alternative which is uh Team Rubicon I'm not affiliated with this organization but I I do have a couple of friends that are and um they have stood up a couple of uh efforts in Los Angeles uh throughout the sort of area to help kind of people get sort of situated uh for those of you who have not heard of this organization they're a uh veteran Le and primarily you know veteran staffed organization that kind of does a lot of um disaster you know relief stuff you can see from the map they're all over the United States. But they've they've set up things in Los Angeles so if you're looking or you're in the area and you're trying to like you know lend a hand to help clean up and you know as best you can you know with government ordinances getting in the way this is probably one of the better organizations you can get involved with unfortunately uh if we come back to you know a lot of the other groups that are kind of active in Los Angeles I I have seen um and if you just were to Google for instance a lot of the uh you know rollups of like here the top 20 Aid groups you can donate to uh for Los Angeles Aid the the types of Aid that are being requested are not what you might consider to be traditional Disaster Response aid for instance I I don't necessarily think it's exactly a high priority to get as many musicians and singers as possible to you know make music for the homeless throughout the area you know people need food and water and shelter they don't necessarily need some of these higher level cultural things and Los Angeles being Los Angeles uh unfortunately there's a pretty strong uh pretty strong uh how should I say um skewing of priorities uh and and missing of priorities so unfortunately this is a kind of thing that happens so uh I don't think people are going to be you know looking for poetry and you know things like that when their house is burned down they they need somebody to help clean up their house so if you're looking to get involved and actually do some you know traditional Disaster Response a this is probably one of the only uh groups that you can uh do so with in the area so that's pretty much all I have for today uh let's go ahead and roll things up today with the ghost net reports for this week and there were quite a few uh unfortunately I think my own personal antenna was having a bit of an issue or something like that. But uh I was able to get some very interesting propagation I should say probably due to the very strange solar weather we've been having uh and I was able to pick up a station all the way out in Medford Oregon from here on the East Coast which is strange for for uh even for this time of year I don't normally get that far. But came in Crystal Clear uh whoever was checking in from Medford Oregon I was able to pick you up here on the East Coast uh even which was kind of interesting also some other longer form conversations that I unfortunately only caught like half of or uh it didn't decode that's kind of the thing with HF radio sometimes is you kind of have to realize you're only getting half of the conversation sometimes especially if if you don't uh the part of the transmission that has the person's call sign so if they're transmitting something that's you know a longer message and you know the call sign part is at the front you don't really know who they're talking to you know a lot of times so again it's a work in progress we'll keep working on it it's been it's been working out so far. But again just one other tool in the toolbox so that's pretty much all I have for today uh here are the sources as usual and I forgot to mention this reminded me sorry I was going to mention this at the beginning. But I totally forgot the more astute of you would have noticed throughout the week that I have started integrating this uh platform called obsidian uh into the wire reports so for those who. However you want to read my reports if you read them on patreon that's that's awesome if you want to read them on Twitter or telegram wherever wherever you see the report being published you will find at the very end of the report right before the end this link called research and this will take you to my obsidian page where I'm uh linking all of the sources for each of these reports it's kind of an interesting thing is something that I'm trying to to kind of increase the the things that I do for you guys and um I think that this would probably be very helpful rather than you guys having to wait for the end of the week for my sources for each of these reports the reason that I haven't been doing that is is sourcing is very very hard to it's harder than you think to do on multiple platforms so for instance on Twitter any kind of sourcing is really just hard to do because Twitter really really de prioritizes and will shadowban posts and they will depr prior posts that have external links in them so I think I can get away with just having one external link in every one of my wire reports. And then you can get all of the other links here so again it's just something that's kind of unique to all the platforms that that I post uh my work on so one of the cool things about obsidian. Though is you can get to different kinds of uh intelligence reports here I've got a bunch of links if you want to check them out um and if you go back say to a wire report you can see this interactive graph if you're on the desktop uh you can actually see this graph and see which reports are linked to a bunch of other reports uh and the things they're linked to and stuff like that so pretty handy I can also uh make use of of uh tags here at the bottom which is harder to do on multiple platforms and once you click a tag you can see all of the the notes and uh pages that reference that particular tag right so I thought it' be kind of a cool thing to do uh something that I can and do uh to improve U the work that I do for you guys and uh yeah I thought that might be kind of helpful for those of you out there who want to kind of follow the sort of thing so that's pretty much it that's all I have for today thank you guys all for watching and uh thank you for sticking with me for through this one and I guess we'll see what next week brings so hopefully uh Monday will just be a quiet and peaceful inauguration and we don't have to worry about it anymore we can kind of move on to other things. But we'll see how it all all turns out so thank you guys all for watching and we will. See you next time and as always fight in the shade.