The Ants and the Rock: Notes From the Slowest News Week of the Year

I sat down tonight to write about what's going on in the world, and the honest answer is that nothing is going on. I listened to the news all week and there was nothing worth listening to. Some people in this business call it a "no news story" cycle, and that's about the most accurate description of the state of the world right now. Things are happening behind the scenes that you and I will never hear about, in the White House, in Beijing, in whatever bunker Iran's new leadership is hiding in, but out in the open it is quiet.

The media cannot stand quiet, because quiet doesn't sell. So instead we get urgency invented out of thin air and fired at an audience with the attention span of a squirrel. I'll give you an analogy for how the news works right now, because once you see the pattern you can't unsee it.

The Ants and the Rock

Imagine I'm standing in front of a camera trying to convince you that a rock is the most important rock in the world. "Look at this rock, everyone. And do you see the ants? The ants are moving toward the rock. What could this mean? Let's bring in an expert. John, you've studied ants for thirty years. They appear to be getting closer to the rock. What might this development signal?"

That's the news in July 2026. A rock, some ants, and an expert named John speculating about what the ants know. I hate it. It's garbage dressed up as news, and every outlet is running the same rock story with different ants. So instead of pretending the ants matter, I'll just give you the honest report.

What Actually Happened This Week

The war with Iran is, for the most part, over. Or paused, depending on who you ask. The Strait of Hormuz is open, crude is sitting around seventy dollars a barrel, right about where it was before the shooting started, and gas is coming back down. Khamenei's funeral is rolling through Tehran right now with world leaders in attendance and the government claiming fifteen to twenty million mourners before it's done. His son and successor still hasn't shown his face in public, at his own father's funeral, and half the internet thinks he's dead. There were signs in the crowd calling for our president's head, which surprises exactly nobody, and no, I'm not losing sleep over it. Worrying about things I can't control doesn't pay my bills.

The rumor mill says the war could still reignite, and honestly the rumor mill isn't wrong to hedge. Israel keeps hitting Lebanon, Hezbollah won't disarm, the Houthis are still the Houthis, and the whole ceasefire is held together with tape and a sixty day countdown. But none of that changes your Monday, because I have one question for you. Are you a billionaire? Are you the CEO of Exxon or Shell? No? Then the price of crude and the insurance premiums on cargo ships transiting Hormuz do not affect your life in any way you can act on. The people they do affect will keep making money and trading over Zoom either way.

What I actually care about is our people. We were never going to storm a beach in Iran, and thank God for that. Instead we lost a Navy helicopter in the Arabian Sea this week, one crew member still missing, mishap under investigation. That's the actual cost of this thing, and it barely made the news. I just wish somebody at the top would make a plan, tell us what it is, and execute. Pick an outcome and work backward. We teach that at the team level, and apparently it's too much to ask at the national level.

Oh, and Venezuela, since everybody suddenly remembered it exists. Maduro and his wife got scooped back in January and are sitting in US custody awaiting trial in New York. Or a max security box. Or someplace that doesn't have a name. Sucks to suck. It was a good run while it lasted, and maybe they cut a deal someday and retire quietly to an island, I don't know. Meanwhile the oil is flowing our direction, two massive earthquakes just flattened part of the country, and now the whole world is responding to the disaster. Hooray.

Clutching at Straws

A hand clutching straws. Photo Credit: Kawika Rogers

Now for the part that actually frustrated the hell out of me this week. Watch how the news covers a shooting now. One shooting, one random state, and within the hour somebody on a panel is trying to link it to terrorism. Maybe he was sympathetic to Iran. Maybe he posted something once. Ninety percent of the time it's not terrorism. It's some guy who hated some other guy, or somebody who lost their mind and decided to shoot at people. That's a tragedy, and it is not a national security event.

There are three hundred and forty million people in this country. There are shootings every single day, in damn near every state, and none of them make national news unless somebody can strap a narrative to one. They're clutching at straws, trying to make something out of nothing. And the labels have gotten stupid along the way. Kill three people and congratulations, you're officially a mass shooter now. Every serial killer in history would laugh at that threshold. A guy kills forty people over two years and it's a criminal matter, a guy kills three and suddenly it's domestic terrorism with wall to wall coverage. ABSOLUTE DOGWATER. The math doesn't math.

There's an old Soviet secret police saying: show me the man and I'll show you the crime. It's 2026 and it has never been easier. Take any shooter, dig through his entire digital life, and you will find a correlation to whatever ideology you need him to represent. After the fact, every time. It's a messed up world, and I can't fix it. All I can do is talk about it and train you on the parts you can control.

An Unpopular Opinion

Camera Lens. Photo Credit: Kawika Rogers

I know a lot of my peers are not Israel's biggest fans right now, and I know I'm holding the minority opinion in the Zaboomafu crew group chat (not a real group chat), but I'll say it anyway. What Israel is doing is what every major power in history has done, which is grab land and expand its influence. We did it. The United States built itself doing it. The Chinese did it to their own people, the Japanese did it to the Chinese, the Russians did it to everybody including Russians. The only difference between then and now is that everyone has a camera in their pocket, and if cell phones existed in the 1880s, the United States would have been crucified a century ago for what we did to the Native Hawaiians & Native Americans.

That camera math is also why the rules of engagement got so restrictive in the later years of the war on terror. Everything was recorded, everything was monitored, and every split second decision got judged by people who were never there. You cannot referee a war from your couch. If you feel that strongly, go to the front, see it for yourself, and tell the men fighting it what they're doing is wrong. I promise you'll be too scared to speak.

And to my friends flooding my feed with Israel memes: brother, you are struggling to make rent. The Prime Minister of Israel is not reading your Instagram, and he is not going to see your repost and shut the whole thing down. Put that energy into something that changes your Tuesday.

Scrolling the Feeds

Chernihiv. Photo Credit: Kawika Rogers

Since the news gave me nothing, I went scrolling and ended up on Sarah Adams' feed. Her intel work is phenomenal, and even her top items this week prove my point about the slow cycle. There's ISIS footage making the rounds, and these guys are still tactical dog water after all these years. Nobody in that entire organization has figured out how to hold a rifle correctly, maintain a weapon system, or shoot, move, and communicate. Basic 03 fundamentals, the stuff brand new infantry Marines learn at ITB in their first months of service, and after decades of war they still look stupid on the world stage. Another item: the IRGC works closely with China, Russia, and North Korea. Groundbreaking. A fifth grader could have told you that for free.

Al-Shabaab is basically running Mogadishu at this point, and are we doing anything about it? Probably not. The FBI has seized more than 600 unauthorized drones around World Cup sites since the tournament kicked off in June, which is good work, and also terrifying if you think about it for longer than four seconds, which nobody will. And my personal favorite: headlines screaming that an American pilot was recovered by Indonesian special forces, written so you'd think a US military aviator got shot down on an operation overseas. Read the story. American citizen, civilian pilot. Technically not a lie, deliberately misleading, and that's the whole industry in one headline.

People die every day, and we highlight the wrong ones because the right ones don't pay. Show me a story about somebody actually helping their community and I'll show you a story that got no clicks. That's not an accident, that's the business model. They even ran so dry this week that they cycled back to Russia and Ukraine reruns, and that one's personal for me. I miss Chernihiv. I miss my people out there. There is nothing I can do about it from a desk in Maryland except keep working & training, so that's what I do.

Meanwhile, In My Actual World

The world gave me nothing to report, so you get some of the daily adventures of Rogers instead. A pest control guy door knocked me this week. I already had a company scheduled, didn't call this guy, didn't need him. But I did door to door sales once upon a time, back when I was broke and sad with nothing going on in my life, and it is a miserable way to make a living, so I let him talk. The guy knocked, opened, and closed me in one continuous motion. EcoShield, I hope you don't screw me.

Students keep emailing about firearms classes, which means I need to finally put the schedule on the calendar and leave it alone. The problem is every time I lock dates, two students want that weekend and two want the next one, and the next one already has a different course on it, and now I'm playing Tetris with people's lives. Maybe the system is broken, maybe I'm just being lazy, and it's probably the second one. I also spent part of the week helping contractors find work. And yes, contractors, not "guards." A guard watches a door. A contractor sells a skill set for money. Words matter in this business, mostly to the people doing the job.

I've got an active shooter training coming up with a church, and I'm looking forward to that one. Church, synagogue, mosque, temple, I do not care where you pray. If you're serious about protecting your people, I'm serious about training them. I also referred a few more people to Constellis this week, which I'll keep doing until they make me an honorary recruiter. That company gave me the contract, the deployment, the experience, and some of the best leadership I've ever worked under, and if I didn't run my own company I'd have worked there until they forced me to retire. Were there some assholes? Sure. Everyone has their 10%.

And I keep doing free training, because I love training more than I love invoicing. Note to self, I still have to pay bills. Consulting, training, whatever you want to call it, it's the same work, I like doing it, and it's fun. Also, apparently I have to pay to get verified on social media now. Pass.

Why I Wrote This Anyway

Because consistency is everything. I believe in publishing on schedule whether the world is on fire or dead quiet, and this week it is dead quiet. That is the honest report: there is no emergency. The funeral will end, the talks will resume, the ants will keep walking toward the rock, and John the expert will keep guessing what it means.

You don't need to watch any of it. Go outside, hug your family, get some dry fire in, learn how to actually put a tourniquet on, and check on your people. The world is still turning, and the most tactical thing you can do in a slow news week is live your life like it isn't news.

References

This assessment incorporates open-source intelligence monitoring via Monitor The Situation (monitorthesituation.org); CNN, CBS News, NBC News, and Al Jazeera live coverage of the Khamenei funeral and US-Iran ceasefire negotiations (July 3–5, 2026); Associated Press and Reuters reporting from Tehran, including Iranian Health Ministry mourner estimates carried by Tasnim News Agency; CSIS State of Play analysis and the UK House of Commons Library briefing on the June 17 US-Iran memorandum of understanding and 60-day ceasefire framework; CNBC and OilPrice.com crude pricing and OPEC+ production reporting (June–July 2026); Navy Times and Washington Post reporting on the US Navy helicopter mishap in the Arabian Sea (July 1, 2026); NBC News reporting and FBI public statements on the seizure of more than 600 unauthorized drones near World Cup venues (July 2026); Asharq Al-Awsat reporting, carried by the Times of Israel and Ynet, on Hamas's expected dissolution of its Gaza governing committee (July 5, 2026); Associated Press reporting on the killing of an American civilian pilot by separatists in Indonesia's Papua region (July 2026); Al Jazeera and Associated Press reporting on the January 3 capture of Nicolas Maduro and the Venezuela transition; UNOCHA and UNICEF situation reports on the June 24 Venezuela earthquakes; and open-source threat reporting published by Sarah Adams.

About the Author

Kawika Rogers is Managing Partner at Eight Point Solutions LLC, a veteran-led defense consulting and training firm based in Maryland. He served as an Infantry Team Leader in the United States Marine Corps, then directed the Field Training Officer program and served as an Armorer for Triple Canopy at Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. He has also served in an advisory and operational capacity in Eastern Europe. Rogers holds over 15 instructor certifications in firearms, defensive tactics, and emergency medicine, and studied International Relations and Global Security at American Military University.

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This assessment is based on publicly available, open-source intelligence. It does not contain classified information. Distribution is authorized for public release.