WWF’s Secret War

WWF has provided paramilitary forces with salaries, training, and supplies — including knives, night vision binoculars, riot gear, and batons — and funded raids on villages. In one African country, it embroiled itself in a botched arms deal to buy assault rifles from a brutal army that has paraded the streets with the severed heads of alleged “criminals.”

The charity has operated like a global spymaster, organizing, financing, and running dangerous and secretive networks of informants motivated by “fear” and “revenge,” including within indigenous communities, to provide park officials with intelligence — all while publicly denying working with informants.

The Advent of the “Digital Mercenaries”

a new type of modern “soldiers of fortune” emerges center stage. Namely, the ascent of a new breed, one that could be best described as “digital mercenaries”. The advent of these new professionals is of no less importance than their “traditional” counterparts who provide muscle and boots on the ground in distant and difficult environments. Provided the current state of accelerated technological development, relentless international race for artificial intelligence dominance coupled with profound global uncertainty marked by increasing “gray zone” cyber activities intensity renders their rise to prominence, as an inevitable. In fact, these new “cyber soldiers and spies” for hire and their respective operations in benefit of their clients will probably become the permanent new norm, rather than a series of occasional and fairly rare episodes of obscure nature.

Sabotage Studies: Electrical System, Railroads

A successful operation against the two points mentioned above would cut off all electrical supply except that derived from El Zapote.

I’m way more interested in the plane!

Can I confirm Air 21 is an cargo aircraft company the CIA is using to wet lease to hide any association? No. BUT, I am very sure they started flying under a new contact with a new customer Jan 11th, and since then have been flying almost exclusively to Colombia and Venezuela.

Now there’s a Kalashnikov kamikaze drone.

The Kalashnikov drone — officially named the KUB-UAV — will likewise be simple to operate, effective and cheap, its manufacturers claim — and just as revolutionary. It will mark “a step toward a completely new form of combat,” said Sergey Chemezov, chairman of Russia’s state-owned Rostec arms manufacturer, which owns a controlling stake in Kalashnikov, according to Kalashnikov’s news statement on the launch.

The KUB is four feet wide, can fly for 30 minutes at a speed of 80 mph and carries six pounds of explosives, the news release says. That makes it roughly the size of a coffee table that can be guided to explode on a target 40 miles away — the equivalent of a “small, slow and presumably inexpensive cruise missile,” according to a report by the National Interest website.

The Obrez and its Cousins

The concept is a Mosin-Nagant rifle with the barrel cut down to 4-8 inches and the buttstock lopped off, to make a concealable weapon in leiu of a proper pistol. Mosin rifles were fairly common and handguns much more difficult to obtain, so the obrez was a way for folks who needed a sneaky gun (be they criminals, partisans, or revolutionaries) to conceal under a coat. Recoil is pretty hefty, and accuracy non-existent, but they work well enough in close quarter.