Spoken like a true military guy!

Title by Paul Ayres editorial by Jeff Allen

Let me explain this in plain terms, because most people have never seen this up close. I spent decades as an intelligence operator in Special Operations, during the Cold War and after. I worked on 5 continents and spent time in counterinsurgency and counterintelligence environments, tracking organized resistance groups and separating them from the people supporting them. There are certain patterns you see over and over, no matter the country or ideology. Organized resistance does not start with gunfights. It starts with structure. You see observers, intermediaries, hidden drop points or digital equivalents, disciplined communication, people assigned specific roles, and a strategy built around slowly wearing down a stronger force while staying just below the threshold that triggers a full response. That is why what I am seeing in Minneapolis concerns me. This is not just people showing up to protest. There are reports of spotters, structured communication groups, people assigned to follow vehicles, others logging license plates into shared databases, dispatch style coordination directing teams across the city, and standardized reporting on federal units and movements using easily accessible technology. Messages rotate and auto delete. New participants are vetted. Some locals are providing cover and support. There are coordination points and rapid escalation from observing to physically interfering. That is organization. That is command and control. That is basic operational security. Any experienced intelligence operator would recognize the framework. If you swap out federal agents for coalition forces, the layout looks very similar to what we dealt with in the middle east, Bosnia, and other places in the early phases of insurgent networks. The most serious issue is that this is happening inside the United States. Americans organizing against American law enforcement with parallel intelligence and response systems is a different category from protest. Doxxing, coordinated vehicle tracking, harassment, and physical obstruction cross into organized resistance behavior, whether people like that label or not. This model is well known. You stay low level most of the time, push authorities into overreacting when possible, control the public narrative, and avoid presenting a single target that can be dismantled. It is how decentralized movements survive and expand. For many years, we have dismantled these networks. Seeing pieces of that framework show up in US cities, sometimes with support or tolerance from local institutions, should concern anyone who cares about stability. I am not advocating violence or escalation. I am stating a historical pattern. Once this kind of infrastructure exists, it rarely fades away on its own. If the organizers believe they are winning the narrative battle, they entrench. If they believe they are losing, escalation becomes more likely leading to physical instigation. We can recognize what we are looking at and address it honestly, or we can keep calling it spontaneous activism while the networks mature and spread. The United States Constitution does not explicitly guarantee a right to “protest.” The First Amendment protects the right of the people to assemble peaceably and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, along with freedoms of speech, religion, and the press. The operative legal language is “peaceably assemble,” which historically refers to orderly gatherings for discussion, expression, and petitioning the government, not disruptive, violent, or coercive actions. Courts have consistently held that while expressive conduct is protected, the government may impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions and may prohibit violence, obstruction, and disorderly conduct. In short, the Constitution protects peaceful assembly and expression, not unlimited protest behavior. From my perspective, this is no longer normal political tension. These are early internal conflict dynamics that nations usually only confront overseas, not at home.