Chris Knowles

Ever since the 13th century, the Silk Road from China to Europe was used to carry everything from silk and pasta to exotic spices from the Far East to Western Europe. It was the route by which both Orientals and Europeans were enriched. In the early 2010s, China devised an agenda by which they would restore the Silk Road under the "One Belt, One Road" policy. The One Belt carried goods across China, the Indian subcontinent, and Turkey to Istanbul and the starting point of the several routes of the historic Orient Express. The One Road was the maritime route to Western Europe by way of the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean. In 2018, China released its Arctic Policy white paper which included the inclusion of the Polar Silk Road, the Chinese trade route through the Northeast Passage from the Bering Strait to the Barents Sea. The new route would cut the trip from China to the markets in Western Europe by one-third. The Chinese chose Greenland as the terminus and transshipment hub for trade with the West. When China adopted an aggressive agenda at exploiting the Polar Silk Road to enhance its trade with the West, the United States and Russia stepped in to ensure that those initiatives were limited to commercial exploits and did not include military adventurism. After consultation with the President of the United States, Russia was entrusted with the responsibility to ensure that the Polar Silk Road would be used for solely commercial purposes. The Chinese did not necessarily agree with or abide by these values or restrictions.

Ever since the Vietnam War, if not World War II, the acquisition process for new goods or services used by the U. S. Armed Forces has been the same. It has involved as much paperwork, and taken as long, to acquire a new software program as it takes to acquire a new aircraft carrier. A service's needs were more likely than not to change between the time the bids were let and the date upon which the product was delivered. This process may not have drastically changed the configuration of the aircraft carrier, but in the realm of software the specifications and need for output can change by the day. {n response to this impediment, the Air Force undertook a new project, Operation Kessel Run. The Kessel Run Experimentation Lab was opened in downtown Boston. It was a joint venture between the Air Force and private industry. Its mandate was to turn around requests for software programs and apps in a matter of months, if not weeks. The timeliness of their output could well make the difference between victory and defeat in an air war. On February 27th, 2019, contingents of Russian tanks, artillery, and mobile SAM launchers rolled across the Ukrainian border and established encampments in Kiev, Kharkiv, and Odessa, as well as a command and control center in central Ukraine. Their purpose was to occupy Ukraine as a precursor to its annexation by the Russian Federation. Ukraine requested the assistance of the United States. That assistance was provided in the form of support by the Air Force and a Naval Carrier Strike Group. Their success depended upon the responsiveness of Kessel Run.

Since before its founding, the United States of America has depended upon its militias to defend and maintain its freedom from incursion by foreign adversaries on American soil. Although frequently the subjects of scorn or ridicule, there are over 500 militias in existence within the country's borders today. Since 2013, China has openly been conducting invasions in America, only this time the invasions do not entail "boots on the ground." They are digital in nature. Blueprints for the latest-generation fighters and bombers have been stolen. Chinese knockoffs can be found in the skies today. Other than military technology, the single greatest target for China is the United States' power grid which depends, in part, upon nuclear power plants. Unit 61398, an office within the Peoples' Liberation Army, was created to initiate hacking attacks on adversaries in the realms of industry, energy, and intellectual property. In 2019, the target upon which they focused was the American power grid. A group known as the Michigan Cyberwarfare Militia, in concert with the National Security Agency, collaborated to fend off such an attack. In the aftermath, the nation's opinion of the militia movement in America came under enhanced scrutiny. Some groups collected information on them as "hate groups" and the FBI used this information in their databases. But their performance during and after a cyberattack on the country's power grid caused that information and those databases to be reassessed.

Within any bureaucracy the size of that to which the government of the United States had grown there were inevitably those who had been in the same or similar roles for a number of administrations, if not decades. They had been hired or appointed to carry out certain tasks and implement certain policies and, whether intentionally or subliminally, they did their job each day as they had been hired to do it, often oblivious to the changes in policy by subsequent administrations. These men and women made up the shadow government. There were those in the print and broadcast media who reveled in referring to a so-called "deep state." But, for the most part, its members were nothing more than holdovers from previous administrations who, without any form of collusion or conspiracy, continued to perform their jobs and implement those policies which, by now, had become second nature. ISIS had not conducted a successful operation which had attracted worldwide attention and served to both improve recruitment or further their apocalyptic agenda for nearly three years. But what they had planned would bring the Western world to its knees and serve to promote the new caliphate in anticipation of the end of days. And to most in the FBI, CIA, NSA and the military establishment the indications and evidence would simply go unnoticed.

On June 23rd, 2016, the United Kingdom conducted a referendum to determine the will of its people to remain in the European Union or to withdraw from it. The results were 16,141,241, or 48.11%, to remain, and 17,410,072, or 51.89% to exit. The following day Prime Minister David Cameron, who supported the "Remainers" in spite of his membership in the Conservative Party which supported the "Brexiters", announced his intention to resign. On July 13th, Theresa May, another Conservative, became Prime Minister. On March 29th, 2017, Prime Minister May triggered Article 50 which began the two-year clock leading up to the United Kingdom's total withdrawal from the EU. On March 31st Spain announced its intention to exercise some degree of control over Gibraltar, which was inferred to include the possibility of re-annexation. On April 2nd Michael Fallon, the UK's Defense Secretary, announced that he would be prepared to go to war with Spain over Gibraltar. The UK's War Plan included the possible threat of blockading the Strait of Gibraltar using the Royal Navy's vessels stationed in Gibraltar supplemented by warships and aircraft from the British Isles. Such a closure would restrict travel from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and the key EU ports of Valencia, Piraeus, Istanbul, Genoa, and Barcelona. The only other oceanic entrance to the Mediterranean would be through the Suez Canal in Egypt. EU countries' economies could be in ruin before the war was over.

Celebrate the return of one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time with this detailed guide featuring exclusive material from the brand-new season. Returning after more than a decade off the air, the 10th season of The X-Files was one of the most anticipated television events of 2016. This Revised and Updated Edition is the only authorized debriefing on all ten seasons of the cult television series and the X-Files films created by Chris Carter.

7 August, 2017 It was at the height of a mid-Winter storm in the South Atlantic. Under a full moon, in the middle of the night, the offshore patrol vessel HMS Clyde had maneuvered itself as close to the deep-sea drill rig 10 miles to the Northeast of East Falkland as it dare lest it be tossed against the rig's four forged tubular steel tension legs. Owned by Yacimientos Petrol feros Fiscales, or YPF, the Argentinian state-owned rig had been pumping oil from the Atlantic seabed within British territorial waters for fifteen months under the terms of an agreement between Great Britain and Argentina's newly-elected president. The Clyde had lowered a 22-foot Pacific rigid inflatable boat into the roiling waters and, with its full complement of Royal Marines on board, it was making full speed toward the structure. The mission of the Special Boat Service, or SBS, team of the United Kingdom Special Forces group was to affix explosive charges to each of the rig's four tension legs, return to the Clyde, and remotely detonate the charges, sending the rig to the ocean floor.

Ever since 1993 when President Bill Clinton first spent his Summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been fascinated by the United States' willingness to have such a concentration of the nation's power elite, both governmental and otherwise, concentrated on this one-hundred square mile island in the Atlantic Ocean. It created such a perfect target for terrorists wanting to destabilize both the Administration and the nation as a whole. By August of 2015 al-Baghdadi was the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, more colloquially known as ISIS. Seeking political legitimacy and global recognition, the President of the United States offered the key to obtaining both. By forcing him to listen to the rationale for granting the new Caliphate full political recognition and, in the process, the latitude to consolidate lands once within the Muslim world's domain as part of the new Caliphate's sovereign territory, al-Baghdadi hoped to return the Islamic realm to its glory days of old. The time was now, and Martha's Vineyard offered a site for negotiation far from the distractions of Washington. What al-Baghdadi had to do was gain the undivided attention of the President and make him an offer which he could not refuse. To do so he was holding Israel hostage pending the outcome of the negotiations, giving the President no alternative but to see the Middle East in the same light as did he and his followers.

"The Complete X-Files" (Limited Edition) is the only authorised debriefing on all nine seasons of the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning science fiction television series and films created by Chris Carter. Discover the facts behind Mulder's alien abduction, Scully's secret objectives, the designs of the shadowy "Cancer Man", and get the full story of the "Mythology" episodes. "The Complete X Files" brings you behind the scenes of this remarkable series. For the first time, the brilliant creators of "The X-Files" - actors, writers, directors and producers - share with you the secrets of what set this show apart from all others. You will learn about the unique methodology - and philosophy- that changed the face of television drama. You will see just how hard these dedicated men and women worked to create episodic television that looked and felt like big-budget Hollywood movies. In addition to exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, "The Complete X Files" brings you previously unpublished photographs giving you a backstage view of the making of the television series and the two "X-Files" feature films. Harrowing truths wait in this exclusive tome of untold secrets and mysteries, offering a unique lens into the mind behind the mythos of the continuing "X-Files" saga. "The Complete X-Files" will captivate fans, conspiracy theorists, and science-fiction audience proving that nothing is what it seems, but 'the truth is out there'.