The Wire - November 18, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z November 18, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: CLOUDFLARE OUTAGE LIMITS WEBSITE ACCESS GLOBALLY FOR SEVERAL HOURS. IED ATTACK TARGETS TRAIN IN POLAND. COUNTER-ICE ACTIVITIES CONTINUE IN CHARLOTTE.//

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-International Events-

Poland: More details have come to light regarding multiple acts of sabotage conducted on the Warsaw-Lublin rail line over the weekend. Train service was interrupted on Sunday near the village of Mika as multiple acts of sabotage were noted. The most significant act of sabotage involved explosives being planted on the rails, which detonated as a train rolled over the trigger mechanism to complete an electrical circuit, and thus detonating the explosives. After this explosive attack, Polish authorities conducted a sweep of the tracks along the line, which revealed several other acts of sabotage such as cutting electrical lines and otherwise tampering with rail equipment.

-HomeFront-

USA: This morning a brief outage of Cloudflare was reported, which resulted in many websites being offline for a short time. Most of the hardest-hit platforms included Twitter/X, Uber, OpenAI, and Spotify. DownDetector itself was also affected by the outage. Cloudflare stated that the reason for the outage involved a software bug during routine maintenance.

Analyst Comment: Considering the major outage of Amazon Web Services in October, this is the second instance in 30 days of a major internet service company breaking a good chunk of the internet due to human error.

North Carolina: ICE operations continue in Charlotte, with local media stating that deportation operations also began in Raleigh today.

Analyst Comment: Resistance to the deportation of violent criminals has been high from all levels of society in Charlotte. Local media groups have been openly been teaching illegals how to evade ICE, and have been providing legal advice on interacting with ICE agents. Local churches have also been allowing their spaces to be used for seminars on how to evade ICE detention. Several US citizens have been arrested for interfering with ICE operations, including one transgender individual who attacked an ICE convoy yesterday.

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Analyst Comments: Regarding the derailing attacks in Poland, Polish government officials have laid blame on Russia, as expected. This is largely for two main reasons, and also a third reason that probably won't be publicized. For one, the attacks were sophisticated enough to indicate they were not conducted by an amateur. Secondly (and most significantly) the rail line that was attacked leads directly to Ukraine and is used to ship arms to the front. Most Polish authorities have thusly blamed Russia, stating that saboteurs planted the explosives with the intent to derail a train carrying weapons to Ukraine. What the authorities are probably not saying, is that forensic analysis of the explosive residue found at the scene probably indicates the explosive wasn't Homemade Explosive (HME), but rather a more military-grade compound. Polish authorities might not publicly confirm this, but this forensic analysis is probably what gave them the confidence to publicly point the finger at Russia instead of relying on the usual dodging of the question. Obviously these details are impossible to verify independently; incidents like this are squarely based on trust. It could be Russia, but it it could just as easily be a false-flag attack. Concerning the ongoing investigation, this afternoon Polish authorities stated that two Ukrainian nationals are suspected of carrying out the attack, both of which are assessed to have been turncoats working for Russia for some time.

As with all things that take place at present regarding this war, truth is rare and deception is plentiful, so discerning what really happened will probably not be possible for a while. Either way, the result is the same: Tensions remaining high as the war drags on.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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