When it comes to the drone war or NSA or the “U.S. war machine,” Germany is no more important to our interests than Belgium or Qatar or Guam. It isn’t even a front-line nation anymore, and our spying on the government there isn’t unique or in any way special. There are all sorts of spooky things happening on German soil—spooky, at least, to the public at large—but what’s going on there is not some devious Americanische Fritzkrieg.

It’s a bug. In a jar. A chemically contaminated bug that was a prop in a military exercise held last month in Georgia. Engineers and security police at Moody Air Force Base played out a scenario where “sovereign citizens” used weapons of mass destruction—in the form of contaminated bugs—to attack the base, a trifecta of trickery that melds terrorism, Armageddon, and sedition all into one convenient domestic soup. That bug is the greatest threat to American freedom. Not because of Iran or North Korea or al Qaeda but because of a lazy and thoughtless convergence—that’s the hot word in military circles these days—that can define anyone who does anything as a homegrown terrorist threat. And it’s all about April 19.

Another internal coalition document came in today from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), in response to my earlier piece calling CENTCOM stupid. Certainly surprised me to learn that Saudi Arabia is co-chairing the multilateral Counter-ISIL Finance Group (CIFG) working group.

Yesterday concluded the fiftieth anniversary edition of the naval industrial complex's festival of killing; the annual Sea-Air-Space (SAS) Exposition was held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Located in made-up city National Harbor, Maryland, a military favorite for industry confabs, the expo allows global naval celebrities, defense contractors, and weapons experts the opportunity to demonstrate how well they can kill things without any interference from the general public. Luckily for us, Kerri Carpenter, a sweet, sexy, sparkly romance novelist and social media liaison for the event, was on hand to live tweet the whole thing.

I get an email newsletter everyday from THE SOURCE, produced by something called The Intelligence Community, LLC, which markets itself as "the largest LinkedIn group for National Security professionals" and is building a business based upon nonpartisan expertise and insight. Yesterday's piece screaming ISIS just eight miles from Texas caught my eye, because this "community" of current and former government intelligence people must know something—my membership fee told me. And yet when I dug deeper, what I discovered was just an ecosystem of viral idiocy, of which Gawker is often criticized as being a part. And I learned another lesson: how the fight for eyeballs drives stupid stories, makes us all dumber and just increases the power of the permanocracy.

When the IRS wants to snoop, it calls on a secretive and little-known investigative unit—undercover g-men authorized to pose as lawyers, doctors, journalists, or even priests to gain the trust of targets and gather evidence against them. This building is where the tax collector's spies work.

Nine different organizations, eight separate acronyms, four locations around the globe, three dates, one memo: This internal coalition document came in today from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), in response to my earlier piece calling CENTCOM stupid .

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is in Washington today to meet President Obama. To set the stage yesterday, U.S. Central Command—the military command charged with advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East—announced that ISIS has lost control of 25 to 30 percent of its territory since August. The Pentagon briefing map, pictured below, is meticulous in its utter irrelevance.

Almost two years after Edward Snowden climbed the world stage, the intelligence community is just now putting the finishing touches on a computer-driven system for catching insider threats– one that promises not just to detect future Snowdens and Mannings in the act, but also to predict who the next leakers will be.

On Tuesday evening, CIA director John Brennan spoke at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Micah Zenko, writing for DefenseOne, passed on an exchange between him and Graham Allison, the school's top policy wonk (and frequent government official).

More information has come in on the Invincible series of exercises, following on the Invincible Shield exercise I wrote about yesterday. Two inscrutable documents, called Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests (MIPRs), now make reference to Invisible Sentry 15, held at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. The Purchase Requests allocate more than $350,000 to ICE Corp. (Intelligence, Communications and Engineering, Inc.) to prepare the documents and supply role players for this mysterious Joint Special Operations Command war game. One senior inter-agency role player will be paid $24,005.00 to participate. That would be some retired general to "play" a CIA or White House official. Pretty sweet gig for an exercise that only lasted 10 days.

A secret special operations exercise scheduled in Abu Dhabi by a secret organization practicing a compartmented plan to practice and prepare for the mission of the future? A codename that can't be found on Google or the Internet?

Everyone saw the USS Annapolis come home last year. It returned, poignantly, on Sept. 11, and there was a seriousness amid the usual dockside fanfare—sailors meeting newborn children for the first time, a school band playing "Anchors Aweigh." But there was no mention of the boat's secret missions.

Whatever happened between the United States and Iran last week—and it's too early yet to tell, really—"progress," or even "maintaining the status quo," wasn't good enough to be the whole story. Mendacious Mullahs, Negative Netanyahus, and the whole cast of national security knuckleheads had a field day speculating about war anyhow—because, well, what's the fun of speculating about peace?

When I read that Pakistan is going to spend $4-5 billion to buy submarines from China, it got me thinking about how an ancient (and Western) model of military organization stupidly rules all over the world. And how U.S. military aid to Pakistan helps it prepare for a war with India that the world hopes never to see.

This is the first item in what will become a regular feature on Phase Zero. We'll be posting previously unpublished codenames that refer to secret programs, organizations, and activities. And we'll try to divine from limited information what they might be. If you have new information (or codenames of your own) to share with us, you can email us or use Gawker Media SecureDrop.

You'd think that with all of the problems in the Middle East, thousands of Russian nuclear weapons pointed at us, and over a billion Chinese people, the most prevalent language specialty in the U.S. intelligence community would be Arabic or Russian or Chinese. But a birdie recently told me that it is Spanish. Not Spanish because there are so many Spanish-speaking Americans (10 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 37 million), but intelligence quality Spanish, that's intended for a special world. Linguists and translators and liaison officers are needed not only to wage war against narcoterrorism, apparently, but also for that big contingency when Mexico becomes the next ungoverned pin on the geostrategist's map.

On April 2, the United States is invading the nation of Isla del Sol. Marines and special forces will lead a coalition of 27 nations against organized Islamic terrorists who control the Pacific nation and its Shell Oil wells. And according to internal documents obtained by Gawker, the war will be over by next weekend.

Welcome to Phase Zero, a new Gawker Media site that will cover the world of spying and killing.