U.S. Consulates in Mexico this week issued security alerts to American citizens warning of the outbreak of gunfire and violence within the border city of Juarez, situated directly adjacent to El Paso, as well as across the entire Mexican state of Sinaloa.

The violence on Thursday was directly associated with a military operation to detain Ovidio Guzmán, one of the six sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a life sentence at ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado.

According to Defense Secretary Luis Sandoval, following six months of reconnaissance and surveillance within the Sinaloa cartel’s territory, Mexican Army and National Guard forces surrounded a heavily-armored 25-vehicle convoy which immediately opened fire with .50 cal machine guns. A long, moving gun battle took place, including the involvement of helicopter gunships which themselves came under fire.

Guzmán was eventually captured, with 10 military personnel killed in the operation, along with 19 cartel members. 21 others were arrested. The operation by National Guard and army troops prompted Sinaloa Cartel members to burn buses and trucks to block entrances and exits to the State's capital city of Culiacán. They also ambushed security forces along Mexico’s western coast and shot at military and civilian planes at the city’s airport in a bid to prevent authorities from flying the captured cartel boss out of the city. Anticipating this response, Guzmán was instead flown to Mexico City in a military helicopter and now sits within a maximum security prison.

The U.S. has requested the extradition of Mr. Guzmán, who was indicted in 2018 in Washington on charges of smuggling methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. As if by magic, Guzmáns extradition was halted by a Mexican federal judge late Thursday. Mexico's President, López Obrador, said Friday there would be no quick extradition due to legal matters.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, more than 360,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug violence since the government began employing a more aggressive approach against the cartels in 2006.

Guzman’s arrest came just days before President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Mexico City for meetings with Mexican President Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the North American Leaders’ Summit. Earlier this week, Biden told reporters that he plans to also visit the U.S.-Mexico border amid record levels of illegal immigration into the United States

AlertsUSA continues to monitor the domestic and international threat environment around the clock and will immediately notify service subscribers, via SMS messages to their mobile devices, of new alerts, warnings and advisories or any developments which signal a change the overall threat picture for American citizens as events warrant.

Late on New Year's Eve, the Department of Homeland Security dropped a bombshell intelligence brief to law enforcement warning the al Qaeda terrorist organization is actively recruiting new suicide bombers to use aircraft in attacks on the United States that are similar to what took place on September 11, 2001, though employing different strategies and tactics.

According to the government watchdog Judicial Watch, the threat could not come at a worse time as beginning in October, the Biden administration began deploying hundreds of highly trained Federal Air Marshals to the southern border to help with hospital watch, transportation, security and welfare checks at migrant facilities and other humanitarian duties..

Judicial Watch says that hours after learning about the latest Al Qaeda threat, the Air Marshal National Council, which represents thousands of FAM nationwide, fired off letters to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and others reminding them that deploying FAM to the southern border to perform humanitarian work is reckless and putting the nation at extreme risk.

AlertsUSA continues to monitor the domestic and international threat environment around the clock and will immediately notify service subscribers, via SMS messages to their mobile devices, of new alerts, warnings and advisories or any developments which signal a change the overall threat picture for American citizens as events warrant.

According to the Institute for the Study of War:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on January 6 that the assistance would provide Ukraine with Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, surface-to-air missiles, and ammunition. Russian officials and milbloggers scarcely reacted to the latest announcement of military assistance, even though the Kremlin most recently portrayed the transfer of purely defensive Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine as an escalation.

The lack of Russian reaction to the US announcement of military assistance that Ukrainian forces could use to support counteroffensive operations supports ISW’s previous assessment that the Kremlin is more concerned with its information operations and the effect that Western military aid can have on specific Russian military operations in Ukraine than with any particular weapons systems, red lines, or the supposed Russian fears of putative Ukrainian offensive actions against the Russian Federation itself using Western systems.

According to the UK Ministry of Defense:

Militias from the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) were formally integrated into the Russian armed forces on 31 December 2022. President Putin presented the formations with their battle colours during a visit to Rostov-on-Don.

Russia claims the LNR and DNR are intrinsic parts of the Russian Federation following the fixed accession referendums of September 2022. However, it has discreetly controlled both since 2014, creating DNR’s 1st Army Corps and LNR’s 2nd Army Corps and supporting them with Russian military officers.

The status and identities of the DNR and LNR likely remain divisive within the Russian system. Even before the February 2022 invasion, these territories represented a significant drain on Russian finances. Now the Kremlin has overtly committed to supporting them, they will likely constitute a large political, diplomatic and financial cost for Russia which will last well beyond the current phase of the conflict.

How Might Japan Join the Five Eyes?

The release of a new Japanese National Security Strategy last month (the first since 2013) has been described by observers as “drastic,” likely to “shatter policy norms” in place since World War II. This, combined with discussions in Japan’s media on raising defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, reveal a bilateral consensus that the alliance needs to be improved in the area of command-and-control to provide deterrence in a rapidly declining security environment, vis à vis China. There are increasing calls from inside both governments—and outside government—for the United States and Japan to increase intelligence sharing since war planning requires a much higher level of information sharing between militaries. As a result of this, a separate but related question is being asked as to whether Japan should be included in the preeminent intelligence-sharing group, the Five Eyes.

~ READ MORE HERE (CSIS) ~

What Can Deter North Korea?

Neither the ROK nor the United States can afford to let North Korea dominate the peninsula, and thus could consider some more serious actions to deter the growing North Korean nuclear weapon threat.

North Korea has refused any form of diplomacy. The United States has exercised much of the leverage it can get from economic sanctions, and is unlikely to impose any serious enhancements of such sanctions, given Chinese and Russian opposition.

~ READ MORE HERE (1945) ~

A History of Army Information Operations

For the past four decades, the U.S. Army has made repeated attempts to create an enduring doctrinal framework that describes the role of information in conflict, yet these attempts have been largely unsuccessful. What accounts for this struggle? More broadly, why do militaries choose one doctrinal concept over others, and what determines whether a new doctrine will succeed or fail? Building upon classic scholarship in military innovation, this paper traces the evolution of Army information doctrine to highlight the unique role of military sub-communities in determining whether changes to doctrine endure or are ultimately rejected. The structural reforms that were necessary to modify and elevate the role of information within Army doctrine ultimately came to handicap the Army’s ability to transform that role when the strategic environment demanded it. While strategic and technological conditions can create the necessary pretext for doctrinal change, there are important organizational determinants of doctrine that may operate independently of the demands of the overarching strategic environment and that can force difficult and suboptimal compromises with respect to the final product.

~ READ MORE HERE (TNSR) ~

These are the approximate positions of the U.S. Navy’s deployed carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups throughout the world as of January 3, 2023 based on U.S. Navy, public data provided by the U.S. Naval Institute, and open source reporting.

AMERICAS

Texas sues Biden admin over immigration welfare costs
Violence hits Mexico cartel stronghold as ‘Chapo’ son nabbed
Large and potentially dangerous sunspot is turning toward Earth
Cyberattack halts Martinique’s search for new flag, hymn
Hundreds block roads to Mexico’s Chichen Itza ruin
Peru police use tear gas to clear protests after Machu Picchu evacuated
Conservative Peruvian groups march for peace ahead of fresh protests
Mexico sends military to border state after prison jailbreak sparks manhunt
Facing migration flood, US resumes services at Cuba embassy
Hundreds of trucks snarl Bolivia farm region as blockades hit business

EUROPE

Putin: Ukraine must accept loss of territories for there to be dialogue
Germany to give armoured vehicles and Patriot missile system to Ukraine
Shots fired in tense Greece-Turkey patrol boat ramming incident
Shelling heard in frontline Ukrainian cities despite Russian ceasefire
Putin sends warship armed with hypersonic missiles to Atlantic & Indian Oceans
‘Fear still remains’: Ukraine finds sexual crimes where russian troops ruled
Russian brass, under scrutiny over deaths, blames soldiers using cellphones
Expect more strikes 'deeper and deeper' into Russia
After New Year's Eve violence, German police union calls for action
Officer shoots soldiers after a dispute in Vienna barracks
Russia signals aid to Syria out of Turkey likely to continue
Sweden's solution for nuclear waste storage
Turkey freezes pro-Kurdish party funds before vote

MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

New Arab allies face dilemma as Israel shifts hard-right
Chad says it foiled 'destabilisation' bid by officers
Benin's electoral campaign ends this Friday at midnight
Sudan shuts border with Central Africa Republic
Somaliland withdraws troops from contested town after unrest
France backs envoy despite Burkina pressure for withdrawal
Death toll in Somalia twin bombings rises to at least 35
Africa CDC says Uganda's Ebola outbreak is coming under control
Nigeria's new cash withdrawal limit leaves traders in the lurch
Mali avoids sanctions over detention of Ivorian soldiers
Leaders of Turkey, Syria could meet for peace - Erdogan
Building collapse in northern Iraqi city kills 3, injures 9
Egyptian pound sees largest single-day fall since IMF deal

ASIA

Taliban and Pakistan on collision course over cross-border attacks
N. Korean drone penetrated no-fly zone around S. Korea's presidential office
US warship sails through Taiwan Strait, copping a rebuke from China
US to seek ways to enhance defense cooperation with Japan, S.Korea
US moves to reopen Solomon Islands embassy to counter China
Islamic State claims Afghanistan airport checkpoint bombing
Pakistani Taliban threatens to target top leaders of PML-N, PPP
Japan’s PM Kishida vows deeper alliance with US on defense
Myanmar junta to free more than 7,000 prisoners under amnesty
Taliban kill 8 in raids of IS hideouts in Afghanistan
Vietnam removes two deputy PMs amid anti-corruption drive
Russia’s war forces McDonald’s out of Kazakhstan

PUBLIC HEALTH

WHO: XBB.1.5 COVID variant 'most transmissible' yet detected
WHO: Anti-vaccine activism is deadlier than global terrorism
German 'vaccine' data reveals explosion of ‘sudden and unexpected’ deaths
Are vaccines fueling new COVID variants?
EU 'strongly' encourages negative COVID-19 test for travellers from China
China to see 25,000 deaths a day by mid-Jan?
Bodies pile up in China as COVID surge overwhelms crematoriums
Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive new Covid-19 surge in US
Malone: Modeling gone bad