Intel Update - March 8 - An Arms Race, Apparently

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for March 2nd through the 8th 2025 so let's get right to it right up front let's start with everyone's favorite topic trade disputes I know not the most exciting topic to cover. However this is probably going to be somewhat impacting at the grocery store over the next few weeks if things continue on as they have been so far most of the rhetoric between the United States Canada and Mexico has largely remained the same every party involved is fairly entrenched in their positions. However the United States has started to give the indications and warnings that they're willing to back down or at least the White House has kind of floated these ideas of some sort of reconciliatory trade deals or something like that at the moment. However most trade between the United States and Canada and between the United States and Mexico is subject to a 25% tariff going back on previous agreements there have been some carve outs for some kinds of goods between the United States Canada and Mexico uh similar to the the old NAFTA years it's really random which goods are are going to be impacted by the trade tariffs or by uh being carved out or Exempted from the trade tariffs so I guess we just kind of have to see how that works out. But it is important to note that the 25% tariff uh is not a blanket tariff it's on most things but there are some things that are carved out for now it's just important to note that the tariffs are going ahead as planned so what have Canada and Mexico done in response well mostly Canada has been driving the show here and pushing back a little bit more on the United States than Mexico mostly because Canada has the ability to push back just the tiniest bit more than Mexico Mexico's economy is almost entirely and completely reliant on the United States so they really don't have any negotiating room almost at all. However Canada does have a little bit more leeway um especially in the National Defense space or uh territorial you know defense space so Canada has a lot of Arctic Wilderness and they have a lot of uh say in things like NORAD and you know the north shared North American uh air based defense so if Canada wants to get squirely they can they can bring a little bit of inconvenience uh a little bit more inconvenience than Mexico for instance mostly Canada and Mexico have essentially copied each other's homework with regards to what they're doing to push back on the White House and mostly it's in the form of reciprocal tariffs. However in Canada's case it's quite interesting because Canada has or or at least Trudeau has really kind of done a whole lot of word smithing because it turns out that if Canada were to enact reciprocal tariffs on the United States say a 25% tariff on most Goods Canada would have to lower their tax rate because it turns out most people are finding out again that Canada has had much higher tariffs on the United States than the other way around for instance Canada has had a roughly 250% tariff on things like dairy products milk and uh I think eggs also have a very high tariff between the United States and Canada so again if Canada wanted to enact a re reciprocal tariff they're going to have to lower their tax rate because we are tariffing them at 25% on some things and they are tariffing us at 250% on some things so that's kind of an interesting little tidbit there which is why you're seeing a lot of Canadian politicians kind of H and Hall back and forth on what to do because well Canada has you know Canada's politicians have kind of put them in a tight spot Mexico has done something sort of similar really in terms of pushing back against the United States Mexico has a little bit more leeway to impact things like fruit uh so they can tear fruit and produce Imports into the United States and they can also cause a little bit of trouble with things like car parts auto manufacturing uh relies a lot on the facilities in Mexico to make cheap car parts so when it comes to trade deals that's pretty much what's kind of going on right now and that's how kind of things kind of stand. However there is an unspoken aspect to all of this which is becoming a lot more openly spoken over the past few weeks especially from the White House or or Trump's own state like during press briefings and things like that is the element of crime so obviously uh one of Mexico's Chief resources is organized crime Mexico is I know that it may be inflammatory to say. But Mexico is a textbook Narco State they are influenced very very heavily by the assortment of cartels uh that essentially put all of their politicians into power right every time an election rolls around you have mass murders of anyone who is running against a cartel so no one can get elected in Mexico from the lowest level all the way up to the to the top of the the highest office without some sort of deal you know being made or more likely a selection of deals so when Mexico says they're going to push back with things like fruit and uh things like car parts well that's just that's just the kind of White Market you know that's the open things they can talk about what they were really trying to insinuate is well we're just going to make your life a little bit more difficult with the cartels so how is this happening well Mexico can just turn a blind eye to a lot of the things that in terms of security on the border they can encourage things they can actively help things quite a bit you know they can they can make life um a little bit more difficult uh in the short term maybe in the long term too I don't know. But that's going to be a harder thing to assess something that's been a little bit more mentioned I guess a little bit more discussed is what's going on in Canada with regards to the uh border security situation there so once again the dispute between the United States and Canada it's about trade. But it's also about border security uh one of the things that the White House especially once Trump took over mentioned is that Canada is allowing a lot of drugs to come in through the northern border especially things like fenil precursors which are shipped in from China Canada turns a blind eye and there's a pretty big drug trade in Canada you might not think about it. But it it is so a lot of drugs come into the United States through Canada uh a lot of the higher grade um prescription kind of drugs or or precursors to make things like fentel come in through Canada come in through New York and and and there you go interestingly enough a lot of the smaller little side comments that President Trump has made if we're if we're going to pick apart smaller comments one of the things that has become increasingly noticeable is the White House Trump specifically really just pointing the finger at Canada saying hey look you guys are not doing all you can to prevent drugs and immigrants also a lot of Indian immigrants coming through Canada uh from coming across the border which I I find to be very interesting so this whole trade dispute thing is is not just about economic fairness and reciprocal tariffs there's also an element of border security to it and National Security to it so I guess we'll just kind of have to see how that works out in the long run so that's pretty much how things stand right now at the border with regards to uh Canadian and Mexican trade tariffs there's uh not really a whole lot to sink our teeth into. But there is the general assessment out there not just my own assessment but most people tend to think that these trade tariffs are not going to be in effect for too long this is more of a negotiating tactic than anything else. However personalities do matter right so you know this this could go on for a lot longer than people might want to think it will it's definitely not a bluff I don't know um why a lot of people tend to think the White House is bluffing they're not bluffing they're they're telling you policy decisions so you can say that's good or bad it's up to you to decide. But this is uh definitely not a bluff because these things have come into fruition so we'll have to kind of see how long uh this plays out also in Canada I wanted to briefly mention something that occurred last night because I I didn't have time it occurred after the wire went out and I wanted to talk about it because it's an interesting case this was the case of a mass shooting at a restaurant in Scarboro now this is the shooting that took place at the piper arms Pub in uh Toronto or more specifically Scarboro the District of of Toronto there of course the situation is still developing this is a very Dynamic situation there's not a whole lot of details that are confirmed. However the general story is that three armed men wearing disguises uh and entered the establishment the piper arms Pub there and started shooting randomly uh now what's the most interesting part about this is that the pub uh had just opened so this was opening night for that Pub this particular area has been um a little bit run down in the past this Pub has has kind of uh been renovated and it went out of business and it's kind of just gotten its feet under it again and it had o on opening night a mass shooting incident which I found to be very interesting uh also interesting is that no one was killed at least not as of this report right so six people were wounded so there were six people that actually received gunshot wounds and there were six more people depending on which news story you read There were six more people that were injured my guess just speculating here is that could have been broken glass debris physical ailments uh medical condition pre-existing medical conditions these kinds of things tend to happen so when you see a news report uh that has six gunshot wounds. And then you know another number of wounded or injured it depends on uh how the whole situation worked out but interestingly enough most of the mainstream media articles that I have found on this say that no one suffered even life-threatening injuries so you've got three gunmen with what are assessed to be rifles at least that's what the mainstream media says three dudes with rifles go into a restaurant spray the place down with gunfire and no one even gets seriously hurt so this is very interesting to me I I don't understand one why there aren't more casualties I know it's kind of morbid you know thought. But generally speaking you would think there would be more uh however there weren't and also the context of the local area is very important too my first thought when I was reading about this is who's going to attack like you know like an Applebees like this makes no sense you know hold the place up you know rob it okay fine. But mass shooting at a restaurant is pretty rare so I thought okay well well maybe there's some kind of connection with the owner maybe it's some kind of organized crime or a hit job or something I don't know well it's harder to kind of get a beat on this because this is a a chain a franchise so it's owned mostly by Indians and it's in a heavily uh Indian and Chinese District of Toronto if you pull up the population demographics you can see that the overwhelming majority of people who live in this area are Chinese or Indian of Asian East Asian West Asian South Asian descent so I don't know maybe there's something to it with that I don't know if this is factional violence or if this is some kind of family deal uh. But it doesn't necessarily look like straight up terrorism but again this is all very speculative and and there's not a whole lot of of details it could have been a terrorist attack. But generally speaking you would think that it would have worked out a little bit differently especially considering that the gunman got away so they had a getaway vehicle a silver car and once you know they were done shooting at the place they left which is odd for terrorism usually they they have some sort of um Death Wish kind of thing so you know it's hard to say what actually happened. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what details come out from this but right now that's pretty much all I have moving down to the Southeast region I want to mention the epine docks essentially have uh died on the vine there's really been nothing new uh to quite literally no one's surprise uh. However there is still a very large media blitz out there about it most of the influencers who took part in the binder Scandal have kind of just not quite disappeared. But they've kind of been laying low on the topic for a while after they realized that this was a very big outrage kind of thing the attorney General has mostly been doing Fox News interviews for the past few days or since this whole Scandal broke out was really nothing new so uh I don't know I don't think we're going to get anything I don't think anybody really expected anything it's just impressive that this was a very big media blitz this was a big campaign issue for one this was a very big Scandal and I don't think anyone was actually expecting anyone involved in this entire Scandal to to Really face justice. But I think that you're you're going to explicitly tell us that you're going to release a lot of things and and nothing has happened so it would have been a lot different like I wrote In The Wire it would have been a lot different if they had just said ah well you know there's ongoing investigations we can't let this out cuz we're planning to prosecute these people. Even if they did that or said that and then just didn't prosecute anyone for a few decades uh it would have been unfortunate uh but I I don't think it would have been surprising for anyone. But to come out and explicitly say hey we're going to do this we're going to do this we're going to do this and then immediately you know renig on those promises we within 24 hours that's a that's a hard uh thing for people for people to swallow so either way I don't think very many people are uh going to be impressed with whatever phase two looks like there hasn't been any talk about phase two uh release of any sort of documents um. Although the doj the attorney general has has stated that whatever is released will be redacted so we know how that goes but. Anyway just wanted to kind of keep that fresh in everyone's mind for those of you who have not been following it uh and the rather fortunate way that that's kind of worked out another incident that occurred this week which I found to be very interesting was uh down in Florida there were three separate civilian aircraft uh violations of the closed airspace surrounding president Trump's Residence at Mar Lago uh this occurred uh last week actually on Saturday these airspace violations resulted in F-16 scrambling from the uh first Air Force out of Tindle Air Force Base and what's kind of interesting in this case is that in during at least two of these inter ceptions uh the military aircraft had to deploy flares to get the attention of these civilian Pilots this is a very interesting case because over the years an increasingly pertinent problem within civilian Aviation is is complacency I've had a lot of Pilots tell me about this and and and talk about this I know a little bit about Aviation here and there and one of the cultural things that has become more of a concern is problems with the international distress frequency now I do not know the details of of these specific interceptions. But I can speak generally on on how these things work so during the military interception of civilian aircraft who are violating like National Security airspace one of the very first steps is to make contact via radio with the offending aircraft so it's going to depend a lot on standard operating procedure or sop for whichever military unit is doing the interception. However generally speaking most military Pilots will try to contact that civilian aircraft on uh the international distress frequency of of 121.5 MHz which is colloquially known as guard on the guard freak now here's the big problem with this not a lot of Civilian or general aviation aircraft monitor guard uh the FAA regulations state that you are required to monitor the emergency International distress frequency you're you're required to monitor guard if your aircraft has that capability the problem is is that no one really enforces it at all and and a lot of aircraft don't have uh they don't have multiple radios so an aircraft who's flying around the pilot is primarily going to be monitoring the airspace uh coordinator frequency for wherever they are so they're going to be talking to the Tower or whatever Tower or airspace controller is controlling them through their flight uh and that's not going to be the emergency frequency now most general aviation aircraft nowadays have two radios or they have a radio that has the ability to dual monitor so I don't know what that's about. But I personally I listen to a lot of Aviation traffic and I hear a lot of people just kind of either not monitor the emergency frequency or they monitor it too much so I I have heard many times and I know a lot of Pilots can attest to this is a pilot trying to hop on the international distress frequency to declare an emergency right and other people hop on the radio to tell them that they're on guard you're you're on guard you know it's like yeah I know I'm I'm trying to transmit an emergency so again radio culture seems to transcend into the aviation Community to people trying Pilots actually experiencing an inflat emergency trying to use the emergency frequency and people chastising them for using the emergency frequency so I don't know it's one of those kind of interesting cultural things. But I I say all of that to say this is kind of important because if a pilot fails to respond to military aircraft right so if they're not monitoring guard if they're just flying around up there without a care in the world and they're not monitoring guard they're only monitoring the ground frequency uh for the airspace that they're in sometimes a military Pilot's not going to know what frequency they're on so they're going to hit up the international frequency 121.5 right and here's the deal if a pilot fails to respond to these Radio Calls escalation of force is going to to start taking place right so one of the things they're going to do is try to get on their wing uh try to visually communicate with the aircraft via hand signals from cockpit to cockpit and uh they're going to try to get really really close and and see if maybe there's a medical emergency if if this this does happen occasionally a pilot will get up there flying by themselves and they'll have a heart attack or something and their planing is still flying and occasionally that that does happen it's unfortunate. But it does happen so that's again one of the things we start working up towards an engagement if you guys kind of follow where I'm going with this so one of the next things is if a military aircraft gets off the wing of a civilian aircraft and they're not responding they're not paying attention they're either looking at their instruments they looking right out their right off their Dash they're not looking off their wing and one of the next things they're going to do is try to fly in front of that civilian aircraft and pop a few flares uh to get their attention so now we start starting to see this escalation of force kind of building up of course military aircraft are not just going to go up there and shoot down a Cessna right that's not how this works. But you can see that we this is a dangerous thing we are kind of escalating towards this and it it kind of tells me that if at least the the Air Force Pao who who released these details if they're saying the Air Force's testimony is that they had to pop flares in in two of these interceptions that tells me that they were working through a checklist of escalation of force and they got pretty close to the bottom so uh I guess this is probably one of those things where it's just again another call for situational awareness especially among civilian Pilots a lot of people have been flying for many many years and unfortunately a lot of people uh don't necessarily understand the times we're living in they may think that just a great day for flying and they don't understand that that tensions are pretty high especially in the National Defense sort of Homeland defense kind of atmosphere so a lot of people don't understand they maybe fly to they don't take the time to check for a notam or a flight restriction temporary flight restriction any kind of airspace closure they don't check the notams before they fly they're supposed to. But they don't they're supposed to monitor the emergency frequency but they don't and this is dangerous okay it's dangerous for them it's dangerous for everybody else so once again just kind of an increase call for vigilance with that so it's following the faa's regulations for all the pilots out there is you know and being really on top of things uh and not just being a kind of hot shot pilot out there in the general aviation uh sphere following these regulations as best you can doing a little bit more you know to try to be a little bit more situationally aware this is not something that's just you know a kind of paranoid thing to do this is this might actually save your life so again something to kind of keep in mind I thought it was kind of very interesting especially when we've been talking a lot about risk and and situation awareness lately so so that's pretty much all I have on that let's move over to Western Europe and talk about the rearm Europe Campaign which has been recently announced or put into fruition over the past few uh days and weeks all of this is coming really from the recent actions from president Trump and the White House to push back on uh European military defense spending so once again the United States is essentially making Europe pay for their own defense for once now as I'll get to in a moment this is a double-edged sword uh. But right now the European Union is floating a very very ambitious really mostly impossible but a very ambitious plan to invest 800 billion euro into a sort of collective defense kind of fund NATO sort of thing. But fund some Nations not through NATO kind of thing it's hard to explain but it's it's really just a lot of European nations doing two things they're increasing their own military defense spending budget for their own country. But they're also trying to put uh some money in the in the till for uh the collective defense of Europe now how this is going to shake out I don't know. But a lot of countries have announced very very ambitious plans Germany has announced to basically double their defense budget uh Norway has uh decided to increase maritime operations in the Baltic Sea they they announced this weeks ago Poland has announced that they are going to double their defense budget and double the size their military too so again there are really big ambitious plans being made and I'm very curious as to see how the economic aspect of this is going to be handled as well because someone's going to have to pay for this and right now Europe is is on the brink just like the Western World the western civilization on on the whole planet is essentially right on the brink of an economic uh disaster and Europe decides you know what we need to do we need to spend even more so I'm very curious as to see how this will will shake out in in the long run. But right now a lot of nations are rearming and as essentially engaging in what they themselves call an arms race now like I mentioned this is kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand you really do want uh a nation to pay for its own defense you know if a nation is screaming and shouting about how you know please protect us please save us kind of thing Russia is a huge threat well in invest in your own infrastructure you know maybe it would not be a super good idea to kill off all of your nuclear reactors right. And then start buying oil and gas from Russia you know maybe that was not such a good idea energy is most certainly a National Defense issue right going all the way back to Japan and Pearl Harbor oil petroleum oil lubricant this is a huge motivating factor for war a lot of times even going back uh throughout history and uh this is a huge thing so on the one hand it is good to see uh Europe kind of improving their defense situation uh for either their independent or for their shared defense this is probably a good thing uh because the United States will be funding less of it. But on the other hand most of the these nations are very big warmongers like they have got a lot of talk and they have really tried to do everything they possibly can to get a war started so NATO at large has you just taking Russia out of it for a minute I know that Russia gets painted as the aggressor a lot of times and and this is true in some regards. But just take Russia out of it for a moment NATO regardless of what Russia is doing NATO by itself has a massive appetite for war with Russia forgetting anything that Russia may have done uh NATO has really got a big appetite for war so think that if most NATO member states if they had the armies that they want they would have started a war already uh either with Russia or with somebody else they would have picked somebody so Europe at large not being prepared or capable is the only thing that has held back World War III so far you know it takes two to tango and Europe is absolutely not ready they were not ready for the Ukrainian War for one. But they're also not ready for the implications of what a peace deal might look like so yeah it's going to be a very interesting time now one of the things to remember. Though is that if Europe wants to rearm itself it's going to take time it's going to take a very long time may even take a decade who knows uh. But these things just can't be conjured up out of thin air you can print money out of thin air for sure but you can't print artillery shells by adding a zero uh to a computer it just doesn't work like that you need to actually have the industrial capacity to rearm in any serious way you know you can't add a zero to a computer and just spring a human being into life you have to to have you know a fighting age male to fill your military this is a generational thing and uh right now not a lot of people in Western Europe are willing to uh fight for their Nation it's just the way that it is this is this is what the data indicates so it's going to be very very interesting to see how all of this works out over time especially as it becomes harder and harder to sell the idea of Russia being an aggressor when there are Terror attacks at home we have the similar situation here in the United States where we're we're constantly told by powerful people governments even that X or Y is a threat overseas. Whereas we've got Terror attacks occurring here at home so as we have seen this week throughout Germany and Austria there have been a lot of kinetic incidents that have occurred over the past few months there was a a deliberate terror attack in Manheim that highlighted well who's the real enemy here like maybe we should value Homeland defense more than you know defense from a foreign aggressor. But once again these are all very subjective and very debatable things what is palpable. However is that people are are definitely noticing that maybe a realignment of priorities would be in order so with that we have Europe rearming itself how long will it take who knows and what that rearming will look like is also anybody's yes everyone is spending money on defense which is on the one hand a good thing because you know Homeland defense is one of the basic characteristics of a nation state and it is one of the basic responsibilities of a government right to protect its people. However it is also quite probably obvious that the more that a nation is prepared for War uh sometimes that is a motivator for getting into a war in the first place so throughout some Nations the whole idea of peace through strength doesn't necessarily work out so well uh in terms of of what political ideations are present throughout the ruling parties in some Nations so I guess we'll have to see how it works out that's just kind of the way things are these days with these National very big strategic things. But there's not a lot of good feelings going on uh throughout Europe with regards to the uh rearmament but also the the risks that their politicians are bringing to the table and whether or not they're actually serious about rearming or if this is all just smok and mirrors like usual so we shall see how things work out so wrapping things up today with the ghost net again a very good week for for ghostnet reports just as a reminder we are coming up on daylight savings again so for those of you don't forget like me half the time I forget the daylight savings occurs and for many of us who live in uh areas that actually go by daylight savings the timeline will shift so again the ghost net reports on Thursday night is at least for me in in Eastern time it's 8:00 p, m. In the winter time and 900 p, m. Uh in the summer time so it will shift forward by an hour again not all US states go by daylight savings so keeping things in sort of UTC time is uh a little bit more helpful for the global audience so yeah just just as a reminder we're going to be shifting uh a little bit later with the daylight saving shift so that's pretty much all all I have for today I thank you guys all for watching here are the sources uh for this week and once again you can get all the sources and paperwork all all you want from my obsidian page as usual and the slides for this uh briefing will be on patreon just like usual you can download them in PDF form so that's pretty much all I have for today thank you guys all for watching thank you for your support and we will. See you next time and as always fight in the shade.