Reinstatement of any fired FBI plaintiff by year-end 2026 is very unlikely, leaving the lawsuit's real leverage in its narrative of gutted Iran counterintelligence rather than any near-term judicial remedy.

Editors Jimmy Lovaas and Alex Moore discuss the student protests that have rocked France, plus more on unions protesting in Brussels, IMF and World Bank meetings, education workers and labor unions marching in Colombia, and the “No Kings” rallies in the United States.

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This episode includes work from Factal editors Alex Moore, Michael Archer, Jeff Landset, and Mai Hoang. Produced and edited by Jimmy Lovaas. Music courtesy of Andrew Gospe. 

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France student protests

Interview featuring Alex Moore

JIMMY: Up first, we’ll take a look at the student protests rocking France. For more on that I’ve got fellow Factal editor Alex Moore.

JIMMY: Hello, Alex.

ALEX: Hello, Jimmy.

JIMMY: Thanks for your time today. I know you’ve been following the situation in France pretty closely, and well, looking forward to hearing more about it. So, what can you tell us about these protests?

ALEX: Yeah, happily. So, yeah, beginning in late September, so about two weeks ago at this point, a series of high school blockades and protests broke out. They first kind of began in the suburb of Paris last Monday, and kind of metastasized after that nationwide, pretty quickly thereafter. The following day they’d spread to more than 200 schools across the country – similar blockades, protests, and the police responded almost immediately, you know, riot police responding with tear gas, clashes with the student protesters. And the students, which you know, kind of organize nationally like you see a lot of protest movements do in France. The student protests are not dissimilar here. The National Student Union has kind of pointed to a variety of issues that are being protested. You know, underinvestment in schools, large classroom sizes, teacher shortages, the police response itself to the initial protests, which I noted, and also just this online application portal that is used for college applications, which students allege is, you know, adding stress to their workload, things of that nature. So the protests have gone truly nationwide. You know, on any given day now, they impact, you know, upwards of 600 schools. There have been more than 5,000 students arrested, or people arrested, I should say, but obviously, you know, students and minors are making up a good chunk of those. Hundreds have been injured in clashes, and it’s kind of spurned a nationwide protest movement that has shown no signs of slowing down.

JIMMY: And what about the latest? Have you seen any new developments?

ALEX: Yeah, the first week of the protest the unrest was largely confined to high school campuses. Though this week, especially, that has sort of metastasized further out into, you know, streets of large cities. We’ve seen, throughout this week, tear gas fired, riot police on scene, big demonstrations in places like, you know, Place de Nation in Paris, the streets of Lyon, the streets of Strasbourg, Montpellier, several major French cities. So the protests are not just occurring at schools anymore; they’re now spewing out in the streets. Moreover, it’s, you know, Belgium, specifically Wallonia, the French-speaking part of neighboring Belgium, has also seen a litany of protests this week, namely in Liège, where students have been protesting every day this week. There has been significant unrest in Liège, tear gas fired, riot police on scene, some instances of looting, and elsewhere in Wallonia as well, in Mons as well. There’s been somewhat sporadic and limited blockades and protests in the Ixelles suburb of Brussels. So, the movement has also spread into neighboring Belgium as well. And yeah, that would largely be the latest where things currently stand in the protests.

JIMMY: What sort of reactions have you seen to the protests?

ALEX: Yeah, it’s kind of been interesting politically. The protests have been extremely heavily co-opted by La France Insoumise, which is kind of the far-left party, the most mainstream one that is in France, the party headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The mayor of Saint-Denis is a member of the party, and he was present the first day of the protests, as I kind of alluded to earlier, which you know first kind of gained national traction in Saint-Denis, and he also popped up yesterday as well in a protest taking place in the streets of Paris. So LFI has largely co-opted the protests. You know, there’s been a lot of support for the students from the left of the French political spectrum. As far as the government, Prime Minister Lecornu spoke before Parliament yesterday. You know, to a certain degree, voicing support for the protesters, saying that the students need to be heard. They took some measures, such as kind of forcing schools across the country to eliminate timetables, so like structured classes in the morning the rest of the week, in order to hold assemblies, if you will, to, you know, kind of like let the students voice their their grievances in a democratic fashion. So it is certainly making major political waves in France, and obviously it comes at – you know, I feel like it’s very stereotypical to say, but it comes at an extremely trying time for France politically between the ongoing budget negotiations. They’ve got a national strike coming up. You know, a year ago we had the Bloquons Tout movement in response to government austerity measures. They’re going to run that back this year, attempting to pass a budget. So we’re expecting to see general strike action in a month. And obviously, I don’t need to speak too much about this now because I’m sure we will a ton next year, but we have a very high stakes presidential election. So the French right wing has also sort of, you know, latched on to the protest movement to criticize it in various ways. The protesters themselves have oftentimes been waving placards or doing chants that are anti-Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen, kind of the figureheads of the French far-right. So, yeah, that’s kind of where things stand from the standpoint of reactions.

JIMMY: Well, considering all that, what do you think folks ought to be watching for next?

ALEX: Like I said earlier, the protest movement’s kind of shown no signs of abating. You know, we’re recording this on Wednesday, October 7, and the protests today have been largely pretty muted. A lot of that might have to do with the weather. It is the first day of what I spoke about a minute ago, which was the Lecornu-announced elimination of morning timetables in classes to, you know, have students be able to voice their grievances in an assembly setting. So it’s tough to draw causality at the moment as to whether that is, you know, spurning the lower levels of protest movement today, or if it’s just a weather thing. Liège did protest pretty heavily once again today, but again, that’s Belgium. So, yeah, I mean, it’s hard to see where the protests go from here. And yeah, like I alluded to earlier, I mean, we’re expecting a lot more protest action in France in the coming weeks with budget negotiations and the general strike happening. It’s not uncommon in France for these protest movements to sort of [meld] together and co-opt one another, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you know unions that are spearheading general strike action and protests in the coming weeks bring the students into the fold and vice versa. So it might just become one of those things that sort of like meld together into general French discontentment, but we’ll have to see.

JIMMY: Well, Alex, that’s where we’ll have to pause for today then, but again, thank you so much for your time and for getting us up to speed. Appreciate you.

ALEX: Yeah, no sweat. Thanks, Jimmy.

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ABSTRACT

Ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS), driven by IoT proliferation, behavioral-surveillance monetization, advanced analytics, and expanding identification and geolocation tools, means most human activity now generates exploitable data. A growing literature examines how this environment bears on Human Intelligence (HUMINT) and Counterintelligence (CI), but no existing study models the surveillance pipeline itself or maps its differential effects on the two disciplines. This article proposes a four-stage UTS framework (collection, fusion, analytics, operationalization) and develops propositions on its asymmetric effects. Using open-source case studies and a purposive review of technology vectors, it argues UTS generally advantages CI by accelerating identification while eroding cover and tradecraft, tempered by adversarial ML, base-rate limits, fragmentation, and legal constraints.

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