The Wire - December 19, 2024

//The Wire//2300Z December 19, 2024//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: TEAMSTERS LAUNCH LABOR STRIKE AGAINST AMAZON. FAA IMPLEMENTS 22 NEW NO-FLY ZONES FOR DRONES IN NEW JERSEY.//
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-International Events-
Europe: Preparations for shifting to wartime societies continue as before. A few days ago Poland mandated firearms training courses as part of the curriculum for schoolchildren, continuing the trend of militarization that intensified in early November. Election-related conflict continues in Georgia and Romania as before. Germany continues “Plan Deutschland”, a wartime-preparations scenario by which they are considering the logistical needs for a widespread military deployment throughout their nation. Statements urging individual citizens to prepare for war continue in the United Kingdom, Estonia, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and in most other EU member states.
AC: Whether or not all of these actions are just posturing efforts remains debatable, and should also be considered in the context of Europe’s continual push toward energy solutions that are nowhere near capable of sustaining a wartime scenario. Nevertheless, preparations continue to progress in any case.
-HomeFront-
New Jersey: Overnight, the FAA established 22x new airspace closures around critical infrastructure sites due to the concerns presented by the recent drone situation. All 22 of these Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) are mostly centered around electrical substations, highlighting what the main concerns are with regards malign drone activity. AC: Of note, most of these TFRs are quite small, only prohibiting drone flights immediately adjacent to critical sites. One TFR has a larger radius of 2nm as it is centered over Picatinny Arsenal, a major research and development center for military UAS technology and one of the prime suspects for at least some of the drone sightings throughout the area.
Washington D.C. – Following the widespread outrage regarding the recent continuing resolution spending bill proposed in Congress, enough opposition has materialized to stall the bill for the time being, increasing the potential for another government shutdown. This afternoon, Donald Trump took to social media to announce that a deal had been reached to get the resolution across the finish line to avoid a shutdown.
USA: This morning the Teamsters began a labor strike which has targeted several Amazon warehouse facilities and fulfillment centers around the United States. New York, Illinois, and Georgia seem to be host to the primarily affected facilities, and picket lines have been organized at hundreds of other Amazon facilities around the US.
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Analyst Comments: The Teamster labor strike appears to largely be centered around Amazon resisting the efforts by the Teamsters to subvert their employees at these facilities. Following the power shifts in various labor union organizations around the United States, organizations like the Teamsters have increasingly dedicated time and funding to targeting large corporations such as Amazon. A few incidents have occurred over the past few months whereby Teamster intelligence networks have attempted to subvert Amazon facilities. Considering that Jeff Bezos and the entire Amazon corporation at large is fairly well hated by the average person for many reasons, most people haven’t really cared about what the labor unions are doing, or the power-plays that have been occurring for months. This was most clearly illustrated by the ILA scandal from a few months ago, which highlighted the national security risks that labor unions can present at critical times. In this case, staging a labor strike during the Christmas holiday is likely intended to serve as a force-multiplier to increase the pressure on logistical networks during a time of congestion. While most of Amazon’s products are low-grade consumer goods that present no risk to national security if they were to be delayed in transit, Amazon also is a large provider of mail-order prescription medication. It’s not clear as to if a labor strike will cause disruptions to this logistical chain, but historical estimates suggest that upwards of 55% of Americans receive their prescription medications via mail-order sources. How much of this share is allocated to Amazon is unknown, but this does highlight that a labor conflict that takes place between a company most people hate, and a labor union most people hate, can still have the potential to impact logistics in ways that many people wouldn’t expect.
Analyst: S2A1
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