STAY AHEAD OF WHAT’S COMING
The daily SITREP, threat analysis, and tonight’s broadcast are published HERE first.
Watch live on the SDN YouTube channel HERE.
BLUF
The Pentagon treats the cartels as an enemy army now, and enemy armies shoot back. On October 3 the Defense Secretary said troops are coming out of Europe for the Western Hemisphere, called the cartels the ISIS and al Qaeda of our hemisphere, and said we’re at war with them. Troops are in South America and training in Panama through October 25. You’ve seen cartel retaliation: when the Mexican army killed El Mencho in February, CJNG blocked highways with burning vehicles across several states and Texas surged troopers to the border. That was one man. This is a campaign.
Do nothing and the retaliation reaches you as a $4 avocado, a four-hour bridge wait and a sister stuck in a Puerto Vallarta hotel with gunfire on the street.
I break this down in tonight’s episode. Catch the full panel broadcast below.
INSIDE TONIGHT’S FULL SITREP
Guardians get the three moves that keep your family and your table clear of the next cartel retaliation week.
Cancel or harden any Mexico trip in the next 90 days.
Stock two weeks of substitutes for what crosses at Laredo.
Set the family’s stay-home trigger if you live near the border.
The family with these three moves is stocked and off the road the morning the roadblocks go up.
The three moves are below the paywall for Guardians.
GET SDENS SHTF ALERTS WHEN DANGER STRIKES
WHAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND
A war on the cartels is fought on your supply line. The crossings at Laredo and Pharr move the trucks that fill your produce aisle and the cartels’ money. The posture shift is confirmed: troops on the ground in South America, jungle training in Panama, and a December Europe review with reported drawdowns of 25,000 to 40,000 soldiers.
What’s assessed is the response. Cartels don’t fight the Army. They hit the softest thing that hurts, and February showed the playbook: highways blocked with burning trucks across Jalisco and Tamaulipas, border cities told to stay indoors. The object to remember is a burned-out bus across a highway in Jalisco.
Second order: a blocked highway in Tamaulipas is an empty produce truck in Laredo two days later, and an empty truck in Laredo is a bare shelf in San Antonio by the weekend. (Nobody in Washington is pricing your avocados.)
The X is a trip south and a grocery run north that both assume the border is quiet.
EARLY WARNING INDICATORS…
Bridge wait times double. The posted wait at your crossing doubles on a weekday. Normal spikes follow a holiday and clear in a day. Commercial and passenger lanes jumping together, with a Mexican-side stay-indoors advisory, means the other side is locked down. You get a day’s lead on the shelf.
Avocado prices spike at your store. A shelf sign that jumps a dollar in a week on Mexican produce. Seasonal moves climb slowly. A one-week spike the same week as highway blockades in Jalisco or Michoacán is a blocked truck, not a bad harvest, and it says buy substitutes that day.
Troopers staging on border highways. DPS trucks and Rangers at the rest areas on US 83 or I-35, more than usual. A routine operation runs a weekend. A governor-announced surge citing spillover means the state expects the retaliation to cross, and that’s your stay-home trigger.
Tonight’s three moves keep your family off the road south, your table stocked through a blockade week and a stay-home trigger set.
Stop here and you learn the playbook from a bridge wait and an empty shelf. Seven-day free trial.
