/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 23:15

📝 🌍 🇸🇴 Paweł Wójcik on X:

Heaviest hits on Burkina Faso junta by JNIM in months. War raging all over the Sahel, IS suicide bombings Russians in Mali, IS rampaging in JNIM-held Burkina territory, both rampaging around Niamey in Niger.

*Niger
A continuation of what I have been warning of every month, ever since president Bazoum was deposed in July 2023 - security degradation and consistent exploitation of the security vacuum caused by the French withdrawal in particular, and the US, cannot be patched up.

Not only has especially the Islamic State consolidated their territorial/influence gains over parts of Niger they had no access in the same capacity prior to 2024, the whole global Islamic State seems to be massively benefitting from free space -allowing ISWAP's gains in Nigeria.

The direct result is multifold. Better weapons, better technology, better access to previously hidden and difficult to link up with smuggling routes. More jihadii specialists arriving to the Sahel from the Maghreb and beyond (including Europe!).

On the other hand, Niger is also being harrased by al-Qaeda affiliates JNIM, which, while significantly weaker than the Islamic State in Niger or Nigeria, was still able to extend their reach beyond Niamey, likely crossing paths with IS. Another theater of the war between...

IS and AQ is bound to arise here, just as it has been the case since 2019 basically everywhere over the Sahel, southern Maghreb and the north of Gulf of Guinea adjacent countries. For example, JNIM was able to stop ISGS's advanxe into Benin in 2022 - that allowed the group...

To build an anti-IS wall on the border of Burkina, Benin, Nigeria, and cross that bridge themselves, with the first proper JNIM operarions claim in Nigeria being issued just a few months ago - massively influencing already poisonous terror landscape in the country.

Connected to this, as other colleagues have covered fabsenbln the United States had already arrived, hundreds strong team of AFRICOM is currently being supplied via air, no doubt in preparation for the anti-Islamic State campaign in the north-west and north-east of Nigeria

Their role will be assistance, but don't underestimate that support - the Iraqis have benefitted massively from having the US commandos embedded into operations, significantly degrading main IS Central over years there.
And, degrading them there, has caused an unlikely result...

Which is a catastrophic shift of power among the Islamic State affiliates, and (what I have been saying for two years), West Africa region now being the main global lifeline for the group. With all negatives and positives of that fact.

JNIM seems to be trying to continue their pressure campaing in all over the Sahel, mainly in Mali and Burkina, with hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed in just recent two days. The group is actually forced to conduct a quick and cheap but deadly strategic messaging -

They have been very clearly hurt by the Islamic State offensive in Burkina Faso against them and still unclear in consequences and causes defection of one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in Burkina to the Islamic State.

The war then continues, and as my long time followers know, several conflicts in the Sahel/Gulf of Guinea have merged into one. There has been significantly more coverage ever since the US airstrikes in December targeted the Islamic State in Nigeria. But it still not enough.

📎 Paweł Wójcik

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 22:26

🗳 🇺🇸 📊 GSS data on politics by ancestral origin, grouped into “Heritage American” tiers among early Euro settlers/immigrants + all others:

A: English, Scottish, German, Dutch
B: French, Scandi, Swiss, Austrian, Belgian
C: Italian, Irish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian
D: All others

Not only are heritage Americans the most conservative, but individually the Dutch, English, Germans, and Scots are the most conservative.

Note where the natural conservative Indians are: second last.

The Dutch, English, Germans, and Scots are among four of the most Republican ethnicities.

(4) Mean ideology by ethnicity:

(5) Mean Party ID by ethnicity:

Source: The General Social Survey (GSS). This uses the 1994–2024 cumulative cross-section of 46,311 respondents for the survey years. 36,452 provided valid responses to the ETHNIC variable (self-reported ancestral country of origin) after excluding code 97 ("American Only").

Tiers are based on relative dates of settlement and immigration for Europeans. All others include every groups with decent samples.

"American Only" Exclusion: 859 respondents: is excluded from all analyses and all heritage tiers. Some suggest this group is largely descended from colonial-era settlers (Fischer's Albion's Seed), their self-ID as simply “American” rather than a specific country makes them ambiguous.

📎 Charlie Smirkley

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 21:45

🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 The problems with an air campaign against Iran

This excellent graphic allows us to understand better the issues facing any attempt to strike Iran. Now that we have some sense of the power of the potential force deployed we can highlight a few important points.

600 Tomahawk missiles may sound like a lot but we need some comparisons. In 2025 alone Russia launched 1900-2000 missiles into Ukraine.

But given the patchy air defence in Ukraine we should also count drones. Including strike drones, Russia launched around 34000 strikes on Ukraine.

Needless to say, Ukraine remains intact. The strikes have taken their toll but the country is intact. 600 Tomahawks represent less than 2% of this strike capability.

But Tomahawks are a rare commodity. If the US fired all 600 this would be 10-15% of their total inventory - not total inventory on their ships, the total inventory in existence!

We could add in the aircraft capacities but this is controversial. Risking these aircraft against Iranian air defence - yes, it does exist don’t believe the silly propaganda - is a big proposition. The planes have maybe 600-1000 bombs. So even at an upper-end estimate we have less than 5% of the Russian strikes on Ukraine.

But the real problem is defence, not offence. All in this force has between 1300 and 1500 air defence missiles. Iran has 80000 Shahed drones ready to launch and can produce around 400 a day.

Imagine is the Iranians launched 1000- 2000 Shaheds in the first day. This would attrition the entire battery of the US strike group’s air defence. It would then be completely vulnerable.

The Iranians could then launch more advanced anti-shipping missiles. These are rarer. They have maybe a few thousand. But if they use the drones to attrition air defence they wouldn’t need many. They could also send in the speedboats with short-range anti-ship missiles.

The risks here for the US are unimaginably large. I hope the people in charge understand this. The US Navy failed to defeat the Houthis. Iran is a far larger proposition.

🔗 Phillip Pilkington

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 21:11

🇬🇧🇯🇵 The British and Japanese economies grew by 0.1% in Q4 2025 respectively.

In 2025, Japan's population declined by ~900k people while the UK added ~750k new residents to its population.

@CIG_telegram

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 19:16

🐣 ✏️ 💸 A newly published paper found pronatal policies only worked when supported by culture.

"Maternity benefits increased fertility only among women who grew up in religious families" in the Baltics.

This could explain why many pronatal policies have not boosted fertility more.

In 1982, there was a big expansion in child benefits in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania including maternity leave wage benefits, a cash payment for birth and 18 months of job protection.

Five East European countries with comparable economic systems did not get the benefits.

The study found, "among women who grew up in religious households, fertility went up by a statistically significant 5.7 percentage points representing a 46.3% increase."

Meanwhile, there was "no change in fertility among women who did not grow up in religious households."

This study suggests several things. First, family expectations may be set early, often in childhood. Second, and most importantly, pronatal policy does not work well in a vacuum.

Pronatal policy relies on cultural drivers of family intention - absent these, it falls flat.

Why haven't pronatal policies haven't done more in places like Hungary and Scandinavia. It may be simply that the cultural pronatalism was lacking.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecin.70041?campaign=wolearlyview

📎 More Births

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 17:04

🇺🇸🇮🇷 — Eighteen F-35A Lightning IIs are currently moving from RAF Lakenheath towards CENTCOM; likely destination is the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 16:29

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 With Rodynskoe now back under Russian control, Russian forces have officially established full control over the Pokrovsk agglomeration.

The Pokrovsk Agglomeration is made up the cities of Rodynskoe, Pokrovsk, Myrnograd, Novogrodovka, and the village of Grodovka.

The fighting for this agglomeration began when Russian entered Grodovka on August 10, 2024. That means the battles lasted for around 1 year, 6 months, and 4 days.

🔗 AMK Mapping

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 03:39

🇺🇸⚡️ — The U.S. Air Force conducted the first-ever airlift of a next-generation nuclear reactor using C-17 aircraft, transporting eight modular components of a next-generation mini nuclear reactor as part of a joint Department of Defense and Department of Energy effort called Operation Windlord.

➡️ The reactor modules, built by California-based startup Valar Atomics, were flown from March Air Reserve Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

➡️ The system, known as the Ward250, uses helium cooling and graphite moderation and is slated for testing at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab under the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 01:50

🛢 🇺🇸 US petroleum inventories in million barrels - EIA

📎 Giovanni Staunovo

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 01:50

🛢 🇺🇸 “We’re approaching the point at which we are going to have to find new sources of production. OPEC spare capacity is starting to shrink, US shale is maturing. If demand keeps growing, where are those barrels going to come from?” - WSJ

📎 Jim Russell

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 00:38

No Telegram shoutout?

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 00:05

🔥The full Replay of Episode 132 is now on Twitter, Odysee and Rumble!
WARSTRIKE Episode 132:  Vice in America and Who is Profiting From it

🚨Please send all Superchats through Entropy: https://entropystream.live/app/WarrenBalogh

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LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/warstrike88

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 23:17

🌍 🌡 The region that is fast becoming unlivable is the most heavily populated region of Africa, and it is already a zone of great instability. Just because the Aid era has ended does not mean that this can be put in a box. There is not a lot the West can do about it. But one thing it can do is arm-twist the oil sheikhs who are destabilizing the region.

📎 Policy Tensor

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 20:49

🇺🇸🇮🇱⚔️🇮🇷 President Trump told PM Netanyahu in December he would back Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program if no U.S.-Iran deal is reached, sources tell CBS.

Two months later, CBS News has learned that internal discussions between senior figures in the U.S. military and intelligence community have started to contemplate the possibility of supporting a fresh round of Israeli strikes on Iran.

American deliberations have focused less on whether Israel could act than on how the United States might assist, including the provision of aerial refueling for Israeli aircraft and the delicate matter of securing overflight permission from countries along the potential route, said two other U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

🔗 Faytuks Network

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 20:26

🇺🇸 🇲🇽 📈 There will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States by 2050 (officially).

More than any Hispanic country except Mexico. Americans don't want to live in Mexico, Cuba, or Peru.

Americans want to live in America!

America needs mass deportations. America needs remigration.

📎 White Papers Policy Institute

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 23:02

🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️ — U.S. officials do not have a clear plan for who would take power if Iran’s regime collapsed, CNN reports.

➡️ U.S. intelligence suggests the IRGC would likely fill any immediate leadership vacuum, but its internal hierarchy is not well understood, especially after the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

➡️ Unlike in Venezuela, the U.S. lacks detailed insight into potential successors. Some officials believe there was a brief window during peak protests when military action might have shifted momentum toward Iran’s opposition.

➡️ Sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN that they now wonder whether Trump “missed the moment" and question whether military strikes weeks later would accomplish what they could have last month.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 22:06

⚠️🇻🇪🇺🇸 EASA has lifted its warnings about Venezuelan airspace.

This will allow the resumption of commercial flights between Venezuela and Europe and the overflight of European airlines over the country.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 21:15

🇯🇵💵🇺🇸 Japanese markets are making history:

The correlation between the Japanese Yen and the Topix stock index just flipped positive for the first time since 2005.

This means both the Yen and Japanese stocks are rising together, a rare historical signal in this market.

The shift comes as the Yen has strengthened +1% against the USD over the last year while the Topix index has rallied +38%.

Historically, such a pattern has typically occurred during secular bull markets like Japan in 1982-1990, Germany in 1985-1995, and China in 2000-2008.

🔗 Kobeissi Letter

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 21:01

🇻🇪🛢🇺🇸 Venezuelan crude oil exports have collapsed after the kidnapping of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.

The only effect Operation Absolute Resolve had was to reshuffle the trade routes with Venezuela stopping oil exports to China thus making the US the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil, however Venezuelan oil exports to the US have not surpassed the levels seen after former US president, Joe Biden, partially lifted sanctions on Venezuela's oil refineries.

@CIG_telegram

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 17:18

🇵🇸🇮🇱⚡- Israel has given Hamas 60 days to disarm entirely, if it does not, the Israeli military will resume the war, The Times of Israel reports.

Israel's deadline contradicts Trump's 'Two-Phase Disarmament' plan.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 17:04

🇺🇸🇮🇷 — The RC-135V Rivet Joint reconaissance plane previously present in Qatar has redeployed from Qatar to Greece after carrying out multiple reconnaissance sorties to find Iranian targets.

The plane was likely moved to protect it from Iranian attacks.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 16:21

📢 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 Rubio:

China's a big country. It's got a billion-something people, the second largest economy in the world. They have nuclear weapons.

It would be crazy, it is insane for the United States and China not to have relations and interact with one another.

📎 Clash Report

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 02:09

⚓️ 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 After the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group transits the Atlantic, the U.S. will have 2 aircraft carriers and 15 destroyers (plus a few subs) to work with across combatant commands.

Approx. 33% of the deployed U.S. Navy fleet is represented below, which can carry 600+ TLAMs.

📎 Ian Ellis

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 01:50

🛢 🇺🇸 Drilling activity in the US (Baker Hughes/Primary Vision)

📎 Giovanni Staunovo

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 01:50

🛢 🇺🇸 We are heading into an oil supply crisis.

- The only source of production growth over the past decade, US shale, is declining
- 80% of producing fields are past their peak
- We have underinvested in oil for over a decade

At the same time, our safety nets are largely gone.

- The SPR is depleted
- OPEC excess capacity is almost gone
- DUCs are largely depleted

Meanwhile, by 2040 we are expected to add ~10 mbpd of demand… where is it supposed to come from?

- It takes ~20 years from exploration to first production
- Meaning exploration today delivers oil in ~2046

The problem is simple: we are not exploring for new oil.

Oil prices will have to rise to incentivize new production.

📎 Lukas Ekwueme

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

16 February 2026 00:38

🇺🇸 — During a discussion last month on the challenges surrounding America's strikes on the Iranian nuclear program last year, CENTCOM military officer Claire Randolph called out "Twitter feeds of randos" for publishing information on American aircraft movements using open-source intelligence that would usually be considered secret or top secret information.

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 23:39

🛢 🇨🇺 🇺🇸 A Bloomberg analysis of satellite data shows that much of Cuba has gone dark this year due to the Trump's oil blockade

It’s now a waiting game between Washington and Havana to see who blinks first. Trump argues the regime is so weak it will collapse on its own and is severing all sources of external support to speed the process. Díaz-Canel has indicated he’s open to negotiations with the US, but not about the country’s one-party system of government.

From rural towns to provincial capitals and Havana itself, everyday Cubans are living under increasing duress as a result. While the regime survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s through similarly aggressive belt-tightening and stoicism, it could still import fuel to keep the lights on.

Not being able to do so this time, Bustamante said, represents “a very significant blow that will severely strain an already severely strained electric grid.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-cuba-oil-supply-power-grid-blackout

📎 Joe Weisenthal

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 21:16

🏜 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 Unusual rainfall in the driest region on Earth has turned Death Valley into a vibrant carpet of blooms, creating a spectacular desert superbloom.

📎 Breaking911

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 20:28

🇨🇳🤝🇮🇷 China’s Eyes, Iran’s Fist: PLA’s Satellites & IRGC’s “Kill Chain”

China’s satellite network provides Iran with 24/7/365 coverage and real-time updates: SIGINT, terrain mapping, telemetry; radar, optical, and infrared all-weather/day & night imaging, allowing Iran to precisely strike Israeli and U.S. targets. No China, no “boom, boom, Tel Aviv!”

“Kill chain” is the sequential process used to identify, track, and destroy threats: Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess. The six stages fall into two classes: “eyes” and “fists.” China provides the eyes; Iran provides the fists. China’s satellite network delivers full spectrum “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance” (ISR) coverage that Iran’s tiny satellite fleet cannot. Absent PLA’s eyes, IRGC punches in the dark.

Integration of Iranian military systems with Chinese ISR systems began at least a decade ago. Iran’s migration to BeiDou satellite navigation system—alternative to U.S.-controlled GPS—is instructive. Migration began in 2015. Commentators gushed that Iran “ditched” GPS for BeiDou in the Twelve-Day War, but developing technological architecture was conditio sine qua non for migration. Iran established ground stations (2015–18); received BeiDou–2 (pre–2020) & –3 (post–2020) tech and training; upgraded military and civilian software and hardware to utilize BeiDou’s encrypted signals. Migration was completed in 2025.

China and Iran do not admit to ISR cooperation; both side issue vague statements about “technical cooperation,” etc. But there are logical means to establish the “eyes and fist” arrangement. Noor-2 is nearing decay, leaving Noor–3 as the sole confirmable military sat that is active. The orbital paths of Khayyam and Pars–1 show low coverage of the Middle East. Both are in sun-synchronous orbit (consistent sunlight) at 97.4° and 97.5° inclinations, respectively, imaging in daylight the same locales in the Middle East at the same time each day (2–3 passes per day per sat; 10 mins per pass per sat). This is insufficient.

Iran requires persistent, full-spectrum (eyes & ears) coverage—not just during the Twelve-Day War, but every day—that its sats cannot deliver. Iran, as discussed, lacks GEO SIGINT sats, very high-resolution optical imaging, IR, geolocating, terrain mapping, advanced SAR, multispectral and hyperspectral technologies; proliferated architecture (LEO constellations, as noted, deliver multilayered “no hide” coverage).

The coverage that Iran needed in the Twelve-Day War could only have come from China. Russia, apart from its own distractions, has no proliferated architecture and few LEO sats in its inventory to share

It is improbable that Iranian ISR drones penetrated Israeli airspace during the war, or that Iranian radar systems located dynamic targets by themselves (pre-war intel is virtually useless once assets are relocated). Yet, Iranian missiles found relocated targets and struck them accurately (we witnessed IDF batteries get blasted frequently). That happens only with real-time data and precise geolocation. Launches by Iran or Yemen of one or two ballistic missiles were designed to bait air defenses into activating radars, allowing an ELINT partner to “find and fix.” Yemen, derided by Israel for “missing” targets, assuredly did a lot to help IRGC and PLA map the multi-layered (sea and land) air defense network protecting Israel, and acquire detailed electronic fingerprints.

More details ⬇️

🔗 https://mahendrarajah.com/2025/09/15/satellites/

/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

15 February 2026 20:26

🇺🇸 🇲🇽 📈 23% of all Mexicans live in the United States (39 million). There were barely 4 million Mexicans in the US in 1960.

Remittances from the US to Mexico top $64 BILLION. Some $9.3 billion comes from Texas, another $21 billion from California.

America needs mass deportations!

📎 White Papers Policy Institute