Attacks in France, US Threats Rising
300: Preparing For Disruptions
Good morning everyone.
Welcome again to new subs - we are approaching 26,000 subscribers which is insane - I appreciate all of you for following this venture, it’s proven to be an excellent alternative to some of the more popular social media platforms that engage in routine reach throttling, shadowbans, and other fuckery. It ‘s never been more apparent that big tech loves to regulate and propagate it’s soft view of the world and the approved narratives that go with it.
Just this morning in the wake of the attacks on French high speed railways our good Twitter buddy @Internpierre mentioned he was in Paris and was a bit apprehensive about being there. In response I commented on instagram “be careful dog”. Instagram removed the comment saying it was violent/a threat and then refused to reinstate it after I attempted to appeal it.
The censorship and selective targeting really is getting ridiculous at this point but if you’ve been following my main account on Instagram for years you already know this.
Appreciate some of the supportive DMs yall have been sharing - always good to understand what it is each of you finds valuable and differentiated about what I do here.
Today we’re going to talk about some updates related to the likelihood of escalation in the United States ahead of the 2024 election as well as some of the scenarios I am willing to formally share on what I expect to play out. This includes global events as well.
This week highlighted a number of threats globally and within the US — in the past month we’ve seen violent riots in Leeds, UK, a massive global cyber outage, a targeted attack on French high speed railways this morning, and growing aggressive demonstrations against Israel within the US.
These events demonstrate a growing threat threshold for people to factor into their everyday lives and contingency planning so that they are prepared for anything and know how to navigate disruptive times.
First was the global CrowdStrike outage that I covered in a post earlier this week. This was global in scale impacting all corners of industry and technology.
Then Wednesday we saw a concerning escalation in the Anti Israel saga — to be clear I’m not going to dive into the arguments for or against Israeli policy — it’s largely irrelevant compared to the immediate threat posed to Americans by the agitators we see on the anti Israeli side.
They aren’t just anti Israel or Pro Palestine — these are individuals who are Anti America. They are Anti “Colonialists” and they are Pro Hamas. They are OKAY with violence to justify the ends they wish to achieve — which is the definition of terrorism.
Pro Hamas protestors chanted Allah Akbar, burned American flags, attempted to assault counter protestors and assaulted law enforcement.
I said it on Twitter and I will repeat it again here — these people have zero reservations about harming you if the opportunity arises and they feel you are against their cause. Their behavior is accepted — most who were arrested have already been released, enjoying a much better fate than the “true extremists” who protested at the US capitol on January 6th.
It’s a hate crime to drive over an LGBTQ sidewalk but burn the American flag and assault officers? All good.
I know these topics can be unsettling or uncomfortable to think about or discuss but they are pressing at the moment and in my opinion we can fully expect more of this to happen in the near future.
Many Westerners have become accustomed to the idea that these things only happen in foreign countries or regions where violent conflict is ongoing but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The West has been spoiled with years and years of affluence, prosperous economic growth, and relatively stable societal norms — you don’t have to look far to see that state is being quickly left behind.
We just had an attempt on a former presidents life that killed one and injured several others. We have violent and aggressive protests near government buildings. We have growing warnings from US agencies about the imminent threat of violence and terror. On top of that we’ve multiplied the likelihood of bad actors engaging in attacks by letting in millions and millions of completely unvetted individuals from all over the world. The FBI has admitted to capturing would be terrorists while simultaneously making it clear that some have gotten through already.
The threat is two fold — organic disruptive events within the U.S. and across the world AND the potential for fuckery linked to political incentives and goals (this should be obvious in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life). That is why this environment is so unpredictable, it can be hard to identify what exactly is happening and what the motivation behind these instances might be.
Today we will be covering:
The rise in violent demonstrations in the US and Europe
Cyber outages and recent events
The sabotage of French high speed rail systems ahead of the olympics
Growing warnings of an imminent attack on US soil by Federal agencies
The goal as usual is to spread awareness and talk through some of the basic ways you can hedge and prepare against these types of events as we move into a highly tumultuous election season with a volatile global stage as the background.
Let’s start with an overview of US threat scenarios and alerts.
The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
—Tony Blair