Intel Update - May 23 - Dwindling Options

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the intel update for May 17th through the 23rd, 2026. It's been a very busy week as usual, so let's get right to it. This week, the flash points from last week continue to build on all fronts. Here at home, domestic crime and general public foolishness has frequently transitioned into a state of civil unrest in some areas such as the more visible cases in New Jersey. Similarly, riot season is in full bloom this year within the homeland with many major US cities being hosted to popup parties or other similar rioting just for the sake of rioting.

[00:00:31]Around our hemisphere, the potential for some kind of entanglement in Cuba continues as the rhetoric has been dialed up on that front with American military forces being staged within the Caribbean once again. Overseas, our friends in the United Kingdom have had a rough week when it comes to the details coming out regarding the Henry Noak murder trial, which appears to be another watershed moment for the UK and their two-tier policing system. Around the world, industrial accidents continue to strike petroleum refineries as the global energy crisis continues with no end in sight. In the Middle East, tensions are growing once again as rhetoric from Washington indicates that the United States is interested in reigniting the war once again in an attempt to break Iranian control over the straight of Hormuz. Meanwhile, in Africa, an Ebola outbreak has been announced in the Congo and antivirus cases continue to be reported around the world as the previous cruise ship situation has not yet been resolved. All in all, a very busy week once again. A lot of things up in the air and not a whole lot of resolution on many fronts.

[00:01:27]Moving to strategic movement for this week, there are two main theaters of war that are worth keeping an eye on.

[00:01:32]Firstly, is of course the Middle East where American resupply operations have been conducted as best they can during the ceasefire. All assets and resources are already on station in the Middle East with the exception of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, which is still in the Atlantic somewhere.

[00:01:46]Depending on when she departed and how fast she's going, it could take a while before she's on station. I know a lot of people are speculating that the war in Iran is scheduled to begin again this weekend because there have been some very interesting cases where President Trump has canled a few functions and rushed back to the White House to be in Washington. You know, just in case uh national security needs take president, which most people seem to think is code word for, yeah, we're going to strike Iran again. And especially considering President Trump also said that we are going to strike Iran this weekend. He said that a few days ago. So, this may indeed happen either tonight before this brief comes out or Sunday night or Monday night. Who knows? It could happen any day now or it could never happen. We just don't know. So, a lot of this is going to be guesswork. But if they are going to reignite the war, they're going to be launching it again without the Eisenhower being on station to protect Israel with missile defenses, which is probably going to be her primary mission if she was supposed to replace the Ford.

[00:02:40]The scheduling and mission set for a lot of these carrier strike groups is thrown all out of whack because this war has required three carrier strike groups when normally we have only one in the Middle East. So saying exactly which one's replacing who is sometimes quite challenging and we don't exactly know what the mission is going to be. If the Ike is replacing the four, then she's probably going to be on station in the Mediterranean Sea in the eastern Med just off the coast of Israel. But if she's supposed to transit Suez and go south uh into the Red Sea, then that might take a couple extra days. There has been some concern with potential attacks or terrorism or something like that within the Suez Canal because it is again a choke point and a carrier is pretty much a sitting duck when transiting the canal which is why the Bush carrier strike group when she arrived on station she actually went around a long way around the continent of Africa. So the Eisenhower, if she is indeed intended for Sentcom and she is indeed headed for the MED, she's probably going to stay in the Med. But again, this is really conjecture and just kind of guesswork, but it's still quite handy to know where a lot of strategic assets are located. And right now, there are a lot of assets in the Middle East ready to continue the fight if that is the chosen course of action.

[00:03:43]A little bit closer to home, another potential conflict is brewing, Cuba. And we can see this with the strategic movement once again. So two days ago, the USS Nimtt's carrier strike group arrived in the Caribbean, taking up stations somewhere off the coast of Cuba. This is why it's worth being aware of what highlevel strategic military movements are being made. Because if we remember, the US parked an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela about 4 months before that operation came to a head. I'm sure many of you were quite annoyed with me for many months talking about how there's an aircraft carrier down there off the coast of Venezuela.

[00:04:15]But that annoyance actually paid off because we actually did end up launching a little miniature war. Thankfully, it did not uh come to a full-blown war and it was really more uh just a pre-planned raid, but still uh that aircraft carrier was an indication. So, this is important in the context of Cuba because right now basically no one thinks that military action is on the table. No one is seriously considering that the United States might actually engage in some kind of military operation in Cuba. that is not really on anybody's radar. Uh even theoretically, most consensus seems to conclude that all of this Cuba talk is just talk and it's really just to satisfy one of President Trump's remaining support bases, the CubanAmerican voting block. There is a substantial Cuban presence in Florida.

[00:04:58]So maybe this is more political rhetoric than anything else to secure votes. I don't know. However, moving an aircraft carrier is not something that is traditionally done on a whim. And based on his terms so far, every single time President Trump has moved an aircraft carrier somewhere, he has used it.

[00:05:13]Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc. And since Cuba is 90 mi off the coast of Florida, there will be no observable staging of forces like we see around the world. For instance, we knew Venezuela and Iran were about to pop off almost down to the day because the whole world could clearly see the buildup at ford staging areas. However, in the case of Cuba, every potential target within Cuba is well within range of bases in southern Florida. The combat radius of the standard CH47 Chinook is about 200 miles, and the MH6 Little Bird is about 100 miles. So, they may need to use the carrier to stage from for whatever they have planned, if they have anything planned in Cuba. But at the very very wavetop level, if the US wanted to launch some kind of operation in Cuba, there is little chance that we would know about it beforehand, unlike the two previous wars we've started this year.

[00:06:01]So on the more strategic level, we are working with a total of five active fronts around the world right now that the United States is involved in in some form or fashion and two additional potential fronts that might open up at some point. The United States is involved in the war in Ukraine, the Gulf War, and of course the war on narcotics trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The US is also somewhat involved in the loose collection of conflicts and civil wars underway in Western Africa.

[00:06:27]And American air strikes in Somalia have been regular and routine for many years now. In addition to these active combat operations, two additional theaters are on the menu. Cuba and of course Taiwan at some point. There hasn't really been any update on either one of these. I'm just giving you the early indications and warnings to keep an eye on Cuba and Taiwan. There's very much debate about both of these locations and what might happen. And it's of course possible that neither of these make the transition to a more active front, but these are the conflicts that could potentially become hot later on. And speaking of the heat here in the homeland, riot season has begun to spread throughout many American cities and suburbs. This is no surprise to anyone who can read between the lines, but this week has witnessed a sharp increase in riots, street takeovers, and general foolishness being undertaken in the streets. Right up front, all of the incidents that have been observed in the headlines this week are not the result of anything specific.

[00:07:17]This is purely just due to cultural reasons. Most of the mainstream media are calling these incidents teen takeovers, but these are almost always attended by full-grown adults, and the media is just trying to find euphemisms to avoid pointing out the obvious. This week, there have been four high-profile takeover style events which have occurred in areas not traditionally hosted to do this type of activity.

[00:07:37]Places like Chicago, Detroit, and the like are generally witness to half a dozen street takeovers every single night. So, it's hard to keep track of them because they just happen so often in these cities, but this week more traditionally upper scale neighborhoods have observed various exhibitions of churish behavior such as in Long Branch, New Jersey, and also in Nuranget Beach in Rhode Island. two locations which were at one point staples of wholesome Americana. But lately, the neighborhood has gone downhill for obvious reasons.

[00:08:05]As a result of this rash of takeover events, many towns throughout New England have quietly slipped into full-blown deployment mode with curfews popping up and being enforced with a heavy hand in an attempt to keep the situation from deteriorating into chaos.

[00:08:18]So, if you are in New England, particularly along the coast, be advised that you will probably see an extremely overwhelming police presence in most public venues, particularly at beaches, over the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of money in the tourism industry up there in the summertime, and local towns know that all it takes is one viral video of dudes dancing on top of cars for people to avoid their town this summer. So, spicy times. Keep your head on a swivel. Be aware of when these crowds start showing up at places, and just just be aware. Across the pond, things aren't much better and societal tensions continue to get worse by the day. Just as a bit of an administrative note, the situation has become too chaotic for me to track personally. It's just too big at this point. I try to cover the high-profile crimes and very big incidents that might result in spicy situations, but right now there is literally a groundbreaking major case nearly every single hour in the UK.

[00:09:10]There are assaults, murders, mutilations, and child trafficking incidents every single hour. And I just cannot keep up with all of it. It has literally gotten that bad. Even this week, the murder trial of Henry Noak is not even the biggest scandal to take place today. Last night, there was a mass stabbing involving six victims in London. And there's also another mass rape trial which involves a group of Pakistani men getting very light sentences for the assault and abuse of children. There are around a dozen or so more incidents that I don't have time to get into, including a knife wielding man causing chaos inside a Morrison supermarket, a stabbing attack resulting from a gang initiation, and a handful of other crimes so bad that I can't even give you the approximate details in mixed company. So, suffice it to say, it's mass hysteria. Well, maybe not that far, but still quite busy in the United Kingdom. There are many stabbing attacks every day. Okay, there are many assaults every single day and it's really hard to pinpoint down where these are taking place for one because a lot of the time, well, not a lot of the time, most of the time, the British media has been ordered by the British government to censor this kind of thing. So, we're fighting a losing battle when it comes to the information space on a lot of these uh assaults and really, really horrific crimes because we just can't figure out that they occur until years later in some cases like the Henry Noak trial. In terms of preparing for what comes next, the United Kingdom is still in the early phases, but some elements might be transitioning to a more active approach to handling the sheer volume of horrific crime. Vigilantism is quite literally the only thing the British people have in some cases at this point, which is unfortunate to realize, but this is the reality of what happens next. In some cases, not all, but some, uh, every option for a peaceful solution has been exhausted. And in some cases, there really is no option left. This of course varies case by case. Uh but many British people are finding that out and it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth and more than that the British government seems to be rather oblivious about what happens when the average Englishman gets backed into a corner. So suffice it to say a mass uprising throughout the UK is very unlikely at the moment at least.

[00:11:13]But there are increasing numbers of fighting aged males who are siding with their countrymen to make the attempt to take back their country from the foreign invaders that have been brought into the British homeland. especially the ones which are just absolutely inconceivably violent. Again, many of you have heard this before, so I won't dwell on it too much, but the situation is quite serious, and we may start to see the the early indications of of more organized attempts to handle the situation. I'll just put it that way. So, it ain't over till it's over. And as bleak as the situation looks for the Anglo population of Western Europe and by extension, the United States as well, there are ways of handling these problems. And I'll just leave it at that for now. and I'll continue monitoring the situation in the United Kingdom to see how our brothers across the sea can get by even when the situation gets tough. I'm confident they can handle it uh one way or the other, but it's going to be a long and hard road to get there. So, speaking of tough situations, the crisis in the Middle East continues to make life interesting for most of the planet as the energy crisis continues to grow by the day.

[00:12:12]Rumors have been flying out of Washington nearly every day this week regarding President Trump being inclined to restart the war, perhaps under a different name to avoid congressional approval. But nevertheless, the war rhetoric has been ratcheted up once again. On the tactical front, if the conflict is to begin once more, the Iranians have been very clear about where their targets will be, which mostly comprises of desalination plants and oil refineries. The Iranians have also managed to resupply and build more drones and missiles during the ceasefire. This is all conjecture because there's no real way to know for sure, but some estimates are saying that the Iranians might have replaced a substantial number of missiles and drones to the point that they have largely recovered from whatever supply they depleted during the opening days of the war. Of course, the raw material production capacity like their ability to make steel and aluminum within Iran took a huge hit because the United States and Israel completely destroyed or severely damaged many if not most of the factories around the country.

[00:13:08]However, the most important industry for Iran right now is the defense industry, and they have been working overtime since the bombs started falling to sprint towards replacing their stockpiles of missiles and drones. How many they have at this moment is anyone's guess, but going off of everything that's happened so far during this war. The United States has done nothing but underestimate the Iranians at literally every single step, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. So, as much as the Pentagon likes to look down on the Iranians, there is not one single aspect of how they have fought the war so far where the Iranians have underperformed. They have been punching above their weight this entire time. The Iranians certainly and undoubtedly control the straight of Hormuz and they project enough influence over the Persian Gulf to keep everybody's head down indefinitely. So even though technically the Iranians are undermatched in their fight against the United States, technically speaking, as long as the United States keeps fighting the war in the same way, the Iranians will continue to have, if not dominance, that might not be the right word, but they're going to have enough control over a small area to cause a lot of problems essentially indefinitely. But once again, in timehonored tradition, we will have to see what happens.

[00:14:17]continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is an interesting position to take. But it's also what happens when American leadership is painted into a corner, which is exactly what's happened. And as far as the Israelis are concerned, this is exactly what they were going for. In the world of grand military strategy, many famous military leaders throughout history have been noted for leaving their options open until the very last minute, which allowed them to have flexibility for as long as possible. For better or for worse, this is the complete opposite of President Trump's personality, as he favors a completely different doctrine.

[00:14:50]He favors decisive and bold moves in nearly every aspect of his administration, which is a respectable strategy in business, I guess. But when it comes to warfare, he was by far the most susceptible to this kind of trap.

[00:15:03]Even for people who wanted to engage in this war, even for the war hawks, even for the military strategists who have been looking to fight a war with Iran for decades now, the way that this has come about has been less than ideal because it's left a lot of people with a lot less options than they thought they were going to have when such a war were to break out. During the opening salvos to this war, President Trump killed the Ayatollah, which limited his options right out of the gate. And this got messy very, very quickly. If he had not killed the Ayatollah and most of the military leadership, I have no doubt that a peace deal would have already been signed. We would already be done with this war. But because the United States killed most of the moderates on the first day of the war, the hardliners are now holding out within Iran and taking the position of making this incredibly painful for the United States. So the exact opposite of what President Trump has said is actually what happened. We did not kill the hardliners on that first day and now we're dealing with a more amable regime.

[00:15:57]Actually, it's quite the opposite. We killed the moderates first and now the options are limited for getting out of this because the IRGC leadership is basically taking the position of bring it on. Anyone who has ever cracked a military history textbook could see this coming a mile away because this is essentially a very loose correlation with how World War I began. I'm not saying this is going to be a World War again, although you could argue that World War II has already begun in many other ways. But when it comes to the Iran situation itself, it's quite interesting because it turns out that one of the reasons why World War I began and transitioned from a series of smaller wars into one, you know, large confilration throughout Europe and even Western Asia before transitioning around the world is that a lot of key leaders and key decisions were forced or were not made. For instance, we cite a lot of times the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as being one of the catalysts for the beginning of World War I. Well, why is that? Why was his assassination so important? France Ferdinand's assassination was so critical and so important because he was one of the last dissenting voices, one of the last big voices that urged the AustriaHungarian Empire to not go to war with Serbia and thus kick off the war. When he was assassinated, he could not oppose to the war anymore and so it was on essentially the short version of it. Same thing happened in Turkey with Inver Pasha.

[00:17:16]Again, the critical people who were trying to force a war ended up forcing a war. So we see the same kind of mentality today in Iran and this has been a very strategic nightmare to manage because the senior political echelons of the United States have made decisions. They have done things.

[00:17:32]They've committed targeting actions on the battlefield, but also in the political realm that have resulted in having few options later on. So right now we're stuck. President Trump has neither a political solution nor a military solution which is just what the Israelis wanted. And the few allies that we have left are pivoting to China or in some cases even Russia. All the while our strategic petroleum reserve is being drained to sell to Europe to keep global fuel prices low. What's quite interesting about this conflict is that we don't have to wait 100 years to look back in retrospect and say, "Oh gosh, now we know what what what started the war." No, we actually know right now. Uh it's quite clear. So we at least have that going for us. But in terms of a solution, I really don't know what the US intends to do at this point. There are indeed about half a dozen different solutions that would 100% work to end the conflict. But the hard part is getting the ego and foreign influence out of the ear of military decision makers long enough to actually let them see the light and end this on positive terms. Personally, I think that we're absolutely dealing with a Truman Show situation where President Trump is personally being sequestered from the truth of the military situation on the ground, which is why there's such a huge disconnect between reality and what the White House is saying these days. And breaking this spell is really the only barrier to getting sub$2 gas again, at least within a couple of years. This is most certainly not an apocalyptic all is lost situation. We can get out of this.

[00:18:55]There are solutions to end this. It just requires our political leadership to get us out of this. I did not declare war on Iran. So I cannot step forward and end the war. Right? That's not how this works. Foreign conflicts, foreign wars are squarely in the realm of the executive branch and Congress. But Congress has, you know, sherked their duty on this. So this is now the executive branch's job. And because of that, we have to kind of rely on them.

[00:19:18]This is not something that we can do ourselves or even help with. So we're kind of at the mercy of the White House uh when it comes to this war. And they've proven time and time again they're not interested in listening to us. So that's what makes us hard. That's why we have to kind of prepare for things that are outside of our control.

[00:19:33]And if the United States goes back to war and the Iranians dutifully respond by blowing up even more petroleum infrastructure, we're probably going to hit that $200 per barrel milestone, mostly for zero military gain. So quite the cliffhanger we end on this week. The stakes are high and potential for another round of war is on the horizon once again. Not only are we not out of this uh conflict, but we are probably farther away from a peace deal today than we ever have been. This can of course be turned around on a single tweet, on a single email. That's all it takes to end this. And then we can move on. But right now, we are still in a state of war. And seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend, we have to remember the 13 service members who lost their lives while fighting this war.

[00:20:15]Captain Cody Cork, Sergeant Firstclass Noah Tietjkins, Sergeant Firstclass Nicole Moore, Sergeant Declan Cody, Major Jeffrey O'Brien, Chief War Officer 3 Robert Marsen, Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, Technical Sergeant Tyler Simmons, Captain Curtis Angst, Captain Seth Koval, Technical Sergeant Ashley Puit, Captain Ariana Savino, and Major John Kleiner. All of these service members were killed in action during the height of the conflict. I just wanted to take a moment to remember that this war has not just blown up pipelines in the Middle East and dropped a bunch of bombs on caves. It's also torn apart American families here at home. We should do well to remember that and hope and pray that these are the last lives lost and that a peaceful end to this nightmare can come about soon. The solutions are there. We can end this. We can walk away, admit our mistakes, and move forward. But until then, we can remember the lives lost and pray that there are no more.

[00:21:08]And with that, let's uh finish up today with the intercepted ghost net reports.

[00:21:13]Surprisingly, this week's Thursday radio night check-in was absolutely packed with people, which was awesome to see. I guess the holiday weekend gave some people enough time to work on radio stuff, which is fantastic. I know I myself struggle a lot of time to finish up work early enough to hop on the net myself. But anyway, I saw a lot of new people testing things out, trying new antennas, new rigs, all kinds of stuff, and participating in the ghost net for the first time. So, that was really great. Learning new things, keeping skills sharp, and maintaining lines of communication when all other means fail is quite a useful skill to have. We want to be problem solvers, not problem creators. And trying to have more situational awareness, even in a grid down or a more censored location, this is going to be very helpful in the long run. So, that's all I have for today.

[00:21:55]Thanks for sticking with me. And as usual, all of my research notes and geospatial products can be found at the links below. And for those of you who are looking to be a little bit more prepared during this weekend of potential interesting times, you can download KMZ files of all of my mapping products so that you can have a better picture of your local area just in case you need it. So for those of you nerds out there running ATAC or Calapo or some other kind of geospatial app, I've got plenty of KMZ files that you can load in for free as needed. So it's all there.

[00:22:23]All of this work could not be possible without those of you who support my endeavors on Patreon. So, I cannot thank you guys enough and I hope that the products that I'm building are useful.

[00:22:31]If not for now in some cases, then maybe for later on. We'll see. If nothing else, more tutorials are coming down the line and I think that'll be pretty handy and may be helpful for many others to have options and capabilities, especially while working through these strange and interesting times in which we live. So, thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.