Ominous implications of the U.S. insurgency
Key Markets report for Thursday, 29 January 2026
In the United States, recent events in Minnesota came with an unmistakable whiff of an insurgency that could escalate into a full blown Civil War. We are not there yet and a civil war is not inevitable, but it is clear that the “protests” against ICE agents in Minneapolis weren’t spontaneous. Beginning in December 2025, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched the Operation Metro Surge: “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out.”
The DHS deployed at least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Customs and Border Patrol officers to Minneapolis-St. Paul, initially to target fraud in Somali-American community. From there, things escalated quite bigly: ICE says it has arrested 3,000 people in Minneapolis since the start of the operation, but it appears that only 23 of them were actual Somalis. So far, the operation resulted in two American casualties: Renée Nicole Macklin Good (on 7 January) and Alex Jeffrey Pretti (on 24 January).
But what escalated in addition to the Operation Metro Surge was the operation inflammatory narrative surge, fomenting a massive resistance. On 23 January, an alleged crowd of 50,000 people marched in downtown Minneapolis, demanding that all ICE agents withdraw from the metropolitan area. Hundreds of small businesses closed on January 23, posting signs on their doors in solidarity. Seven hundred businesses reportedly closed in total.
The legal/political clash
Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, along with the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, filed suit against the DHS to halt ICE deployments, arguing that the ICE operation is unconstitutional and violates the state’s sovereignty. Adding to the inflammatory rhetoric, Governor Tim Walz stated on January 24, 2026:
“This federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. It’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today that campaign claimed another life. I’ve seen the videos from several angles, and it’s sickening.”
But Governor Walz might be using “the people of our state” as human shields: the Trump administration has apparently opened criminal investigations against him and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Escalating tensions have led the Pentagon to place 1,500 soldiers on standby for a possible deployment to Minnesota, just days after President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as key state officials refused to cooperate with Federal authorities to resolve the standoff.
What the Trump administration is demanding is for state and local authorities in Minnesota to turn over incarcerated “criminal illegal aliens” and those with active warrants, and for local law enforcement to turn over “all illegal aliens” arrested by local police and assist federal officers in apprehending individuals.
An organized insurrection?
The ominous aspect in this conflict is that the resistance appears very well organized, rather than spontaneous. One former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency operations characterized the events in Minneapolis as a “low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.” He added:
This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization… The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies.
Journalist James O’Keefe, who was on the ground, corroborated thsi view, stating:
“What strikes me is how organized these agitators in Minneapolis are. They have spotters everywhere in the city and suburbs, on street corners, even 30 minutes away from downtown. … I was inside what appeared to be a fully autonomous Zone. No police presence. The police were told to leave. I identified myself as Press and they said they will kill Press and will not let me leave.”
But perhaps the most worrisome was what former special operations agent E.M. Burlingame wrote (note, he is not even involved in any of the events in Minnesota):
“Those behind all of this are using social media to directly threaten special operations guys and their families. I’ve had it directed at me and mine in the last week and a half. And not minor threats. … There’s more than color revolution underway here in the US. There is the very beginning of Phase V to Phase VI civil war which those backing intend to be an outright revolution that breaks the US up. For only if the US is broken up can Russia and China eventually be broken up.”
This leads us to the view that the events in Minnesota (like the “No Kings” protests in the U.S. during the summer months and October 2025) may be deliberate, coordinated attempts to weaken and destabilize the Trump administration and even initiate the cascade of events that could lead to the breakup of the U.S.
History repeating?
In Tuesday’s TrendCompass (“The most important news from Davos”), I suggested that in adopting the American System of political economy, the Trump administration “will alienate all those economic ‘elites’ that have benefited most abundantly from the ‘Free Trade’ system and who are today among the world’s most powerful groups.”
These groups do not act overtly but hide behind layers of bought and paid-for politicians, NGOs, think tanks and academic institutions, organizing, training and funding groups that can be mobilized to stage protests as well as color revolutions. As we saw, the “No Kings” protests were organized by a broad coalition of over 200 progressive and left-leaning groups including “Indivisible” (a central coordinator handling data, communications, and mobilization), the 50501 movement, ACLU, MoveOn, Public Citizen, unions like the American Federation of Teachers and Communications Workers of America, Democratic Socialists of America, Planned Parenthood, League of Conservation Voters, and others.
Their funding came from a network of philanthropic foundations and donor-advised funds, often described in conservative reporting as “dark money” channels supporting progressive causes. Prominent reported funders include: the George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Arabella Advisors network, Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller-linked funds and Warren Buffett-linked funds and donor networks.
This all was discernible on the horizon long ago
In March 2023 I published an article titled, “USA is the central battlefield in the global total war,” which is indeed between two systems of governance. In that article I wrote as follows:
Even if the shooting war is raging in Ukraine, the United States remains the central battlefield in this total war. The people of the US are under a seemingly unrelated barrage of attacks that have escalated for several decades now and are almost too many to enumerate, but their effects include a sustained decline in living standards, progressive collapse of the nation’s infrastructure, loss of freedoms and permanent warfare. And yes, Americans are dying, only not exactly in trenches:
Like Henry Carey, those who understood the nature of this conflict knew that the ultimate showdown was coming. In addressing the American people, Ernesto Che Guevara invoked the coming clash: "I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all - you live in the belly of the beast." Che got many things wrong, but I believe he did get that part right.
There’s a good chance this will escalate
The “Former Special Forces Warrant Officer” cited in the beginning of this article noted that, “history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.” It would appear that the infrastructure definitely exists. That implies that the Administration can’t withdraw and surrender. And on the other side - the entrenched free-trade supporting oligarchy - they can’t surrender either. For them, this conflict is existential.
To them, Trump is what Abraham Lincoln was to the British Empire: a brazen challenger to be eliminated. Lincoln prevailed in the civil war thanks to the intervention of Russia’s Czar Alexander II. Today, the secret alliance between the Trump Administration and Vladimir Putin’s government could play the same role. In any case, we can expect more of what we saw in Minnesota, along with an escalation of psychological operations, anti-Trump and anti-Russia propaganda, and covert involvement of European powers in support of the “Free Trade” camp and Russia and China in support of the “American System” camp.
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Today’s trading signals
With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio:
