Posted by BW Actual on Nov 14th 2025
BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF
Southern Spear
- U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave a name to the ongoing U.S. military campaign against drug cartels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific: it will henceforth be called Operation Southern Spear.
- Hegseth added: "this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people."
- The Pentagon also confirmed a 20th known strike in the operation now called Southern Spear. This one took place in the Caribbean - like most of the others - earlier this week, and it killed four alleged narco-traffickers. That brings the total killed in recent strikes to 80.
West Bank
- Israeli settlers ignored Pres. Herzog's plea to cease their extremist violence, and torched a mosque in the occupied West Bank.
- Extremist attacks have displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, and the Israeli military is beginning to mount a frustrated crackdown on the perpetrators. Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir joined Herzog in condemning the violence earlier this week.
Pakistan
- Pakistan's pliant parliament passed an amendment bestowing still more powers upon the country's already-strong army chief and de facto leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir. The amendment will grant Munir lifelong immunity from prosecution and create a new court above the Supreme Court.
China
- Chinese tech giant Baidu unveiled its first artificial intelligence chips - which will reach the market in 2026 and 2027 - as well as a new AI model, Ernie 5.0, which rivaled DeepSeek and GPT-5 on performance.
- Baidu is one of many Chinese tech companies developing domestic rivals to export-controlled U.S. technology. Critics say the U.S. restrictions are doing more to inspire China to compete with the U.S. than to keep advanced tech out of Chinese hands.
- Separately, the European Union (EU) is reportedly planning to introduce a "handling fee" for small shipments imported from outside the bloc early next year - two years sooner than previously anticipated.
- The EU's move is widely seen as part of an effort to raise barriers for importing cheap Chinese goods, and EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic told the Financial Times that the new fee would "send a strong signal" that the bloc wants to protect domestic producers from cheap foreign (read: Chinese) competitors.