Spencer Coursen's Blog, page 3

Ready Player 2: Tomorrow’s Disruptors Will Level-Up from GameStop

GameStop Is Just the Beginning...

In today’s age of individualized entertainment and curated content, the likelihood of something becoming a monoculture moment are few and far between. The series finale of ‘Game of Thrones’ was probably the last time a significant part the world’s population sat down for a collective shared experience. With so many lives going in so many directions, it was increasingly impossible for a singular occurrence to capture the attention of an entire nation. COVID19 has served as something of a course-correction for that. Everything from the murder of George Floyd to the Capitol Building insurrection -- 2020 was earmarked by those which captured our attention and inspired many into action. And while the COVID vaccine has finally begun to help usher in whatever version our new normal will assume, the early months of 2021 have most certainly demonstrated that we are still very far from being immune. And perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this newly realized reality, is what the success of the GameStop stunt reveals about the threshold and tipping point of our collective turmoil.

Financial Illiteracy Is an Issue

Like many of you, my initial take-away from the GameStop fiasco was one of trending-on-twitter entertainment. I’ve always been more of a “Motley Fool” consumer, so while I had maybe heard of r/WallStreetBets in passing, I never really paid it much attention. And as is always the case when there is an all-encompassing culturalal phenomenon such as this, there were a lot of really great insights, think pieces, memes and take-aways that were readily available to provide context to the gluttonous consumption.

But one eye-opening level of realization that kept being echoed through every thought-piece I read,  was just how many people in America did not have even a weekly-watcher-of-‘Billions’ level of financial literacy.

From The Ringer to The Washington Post, it seemed as though the editor at every outlet was requiring their writers to include a sidebar to their articles explaining everything from what a stock is, to what a hedge fund does. The explanation was so dumbed-down, I really began to wonder if the uninitiated may truly believe the stock market is based on nothing more than the emotional index of how a few thousand people on Wall Street are feeling on any given day. 

But then again, if those real-world valuations can literally be undone by a few thousand people in an online forum who are sharing memes of chicken nuggets and collegially referring to their day-trade earnings as “tendies,” then perhaps our economy is much more in-line with that misinformed outlook than any of us would really prefer to believe.

From a protective strategy vantage point, this fiasco has shined a very bright light into a very dark corner on just how complacent so many of our safeguards really are -- not the least of which is the underpinnings of our confidence in what financial futures may hold.

Which of course makes me wonder if this was perhaps less of a fiasco and more of a shock as to why the hell this had not happened before? After all, when you create a game, a game has winners, and the game has losers. The only significant change-up in this particular scenario was that the traditional losers became winners. Just like Rocky knocking out Apollo Creed in the first movie ... he was not supposed to win. Not in a million years. But then he did ... and it turned out his story was just getting started. 

Now, my personal opinion is that this only became a big deal simply because the script got flipped. And like the Rocky story, the underdog won. Except in this instance, it wasn’t so much about an amateur fighter and a world-champ boxer trading punches in a ring, but rather scrappy low-stake day-traders going up against the billion-dollar hedge funds of Wall Street. 

And it was such an unprecedented move by the little guys, that the big boys never saw it coming. Smaller traders pooled their resources together (which is exactly what the largest traders also do) and they influenced the outcome of a market valuation to their own advantage. 

Now, were these Redditors market disruptors? Yes they were. Was there collusion? Of course there was.Did anyone really think they’d be able to pull it off? Of course not.And is what they did illegal? Turns out, the answer is “no.”

They simply saw a vulnerability they could exploit, and then took advantage of the fact that no one would even notice until it was too late for them to be stopped. 

Yet, great as it was these modern-day Robin Hoods were able to “steal from the rich and give back to the poor” -- and the irony cannot be underscored enough that the platform they used to initiate this endeavor was a stock-trading app of the very same name -- there are some much bigger concerns to consider. The least of these is an undeniable decay of trust, a key fundamental of our financial systems.

Truth is, this “money” thing only works because we all adhere to a social contract — an overarching collective agreement. We only believe that a dollar bill is worth one-hundred cents because we have agreed that on that understanding as a rule. Otherwise, it’s just a piece of paper, and not worth the money it is printed on.

And who’s to say that the next time a group of people get overly emotional about something they believe should be saved, they don’t inflate the valuation of a more stable commodity like aluminum or copper or zinc (the three primary commodities by which many of our communications rely)?

Or ... what if something happens like “The Big Short” movie warned us about? Our national security could very easily be put at risk if a bunch Russian trolls (who are already in the Reddit-sphere) begin to -- in a very slow, methodical, and QAnon-type fashion -- convince everyone to start messing with the one necessity we all can’t live without: water.

The Outsiders’ Perspective

The most important protective take-away from all of this, is that whenever you do decide to do your own audit, or conduct your own risk assessment – whether it’s of your home, your school, or your workplace, or even just taking stock of your own life, keep this in mind: 

It doesn’t matter if you are red-teaming your organization for penetration testing or triaging your risk of being exploited by a social engineering concern, or even if you are just doing a table-top of a crisis management scenario with the usual suspects who most commonly serve as the decision makers for your team, it’s absolutely essential that you always bring on board at least one outsider into the fold. 

Bring in someone with soft eyes and an unbiased world view. Find someone who does not see what you see: who doesn’t understand the culture, the ethos, the nuance and the norms of your organization. Identify someone who isn’t afraid to ask the questions that no one else ever thought to ask; who isn’t afraid to bring up some inherent vulnerability that may have previously gone unseen but, once realized, is too big to be ignored. This is particularly hard for leaders and executives to do. They often want to surround themselves with those who think like they do, providing them the assurance that they know all that they need to know to prevent risk or disaster. But the reality is, that desire to stake confidence in confirmation bias is ultimately something that leads to the delta between policy and practice growing into a deeper and wider divide. 

Valuation vs. Emotion

Speaking of policy vs. practice, one of the most glaring realities brought to the forefront of concern during all of this was how many stock market rules are nothing more than “understood.” They are simply the agreed upon norms adhered to by those who live and work in a very finance-centric culture. Two months ago, no one would ever imagine someone making an investment on a stock based purely on emotion because it was believed to be understood that smart money would only be based on an expectation of legitimate valuation. But then someone did ... and they convinced their friends to do the same. From there, the social media phenomenon of FOMO took hold and it changed market susceptibility forever.

And from that day forward, getting ‘GameStopped’ will reverberate through every business class taught and every economics lecture ever told. 

Don’t Get So Caught Up In The Improbable That You Lose Sight Of The Possible

This is not a one off. This will happen again. I don’t know if it will be with the stock market, or whether it will be with some other social enterprise, but rest assured, this is neither improbable nor impossible. In fact, it has now become likely. The precedent has been set – the fire lit. 

There are a lot of smart, frustrated, emotionally fragile, and economically disenfranchised people out there who are struggling every day to survive. If their survival means exploiting your vulnerabilities to help them get through another day, they are going to do it. And if they can game a system by circumventing the rule book, they’ll call on their friends to help make it happen.

Too many people watched what happened with GameStop and saw the little guy getting what they felt was their due. Their stories are out there. They are real. They are emotionally resonant. They are relatable. They are damned impactful.

Some people got in early and got out quick and well-off enough to pay for their medical bills, afford that month’s prescriptions cost, or to afford that surgery their pet needed. Others were just happy to pay down their debt. These people weren’t running out and buying yachts or million-dollar mansions. Not in the slightest. They were just happy to be getting by ... able to survive another day.

The economic disparity in this country is real and over the past year it has only gotten worse, much worse.

The pandemic has devastated the lives and livelihoods of too many of our brothers and sisters -- our fellow Americans -- and it doesn’t matter how good of a neighbor you are, or how nice of a friend you have been, or how fair of an employer you believe yourself to be.

We each have our own tipping point – a threshold that, once breached makes each of us more likely to take risks we wouldn’t have in the past. And once a breach has occurred, it cannot be undone. After almost a year of feeling abandoned, betrayed, and undervalued, do not be surprised by the fact that there is a groundswell of people who are now willing to – and will do – what we would all do if we were in their very same shoes. 

FALSE EQUIVALENCE

One of the more common responses I hear when I make security enhancement recommendations to clients — especially to public figures and public-facing clients — is their tendency to benchmark their risk as compared to the risks of others on a higher rung of hierarchy. Stars of television and movies will admit they are famous but will counter that they aren’t a world-wide phenomenon. Business magnates may mention their mansions on both coasts but will downplay their wealth by bemoaning their absence from the Forbes 400 list. However, my clients who are famous and wealthy are not the only ones who cling to this safety trap of false equivalence.

When we are evaluating our risks, we have a tendency to compare our own situation to that of other people in our social orbit. If we have a nice house, but we don’t have the nicest house on the street, we may incorrectly predict our risk to be lower than that of our neighbor. If we have a nice car, but our neighbor has a nicer car, we may falsely believe that their car is much more likely to be targeted for theft than our own. But in almost every circumstance, we would be wrong. When it comes to being targeted for a crime, what we think has nothing to do with it. What matters most is the perception of what other people believe to be true. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are, what matters is how wealthy others believe you to be. Moreover, the very fact that you aren’t in the fanciest house or the fanciest car suggests to those who wish to do harm that you may be the easier, more successful target. 

In today’s world, where our everyday risks are on the rise, now, more than ever, is not the time to fall into the safety trap of false equivalence. Do not allow yourself to think for even a second that you are not at risk because someone else simply has more. Because if you have something that someone else wants, and they think that they can take it, well then guess what? You’re at risk. If you are the easier target, you are a better target and are at greater risk than someone who just has more: more money, more security, more … anything. 

As the Billy Joel song warned, “We didn’t start the fire,” but that doesn’t mean we won’t get burned. So look out for yourselves accordingly. 

Onward. Upward.

—Spencer Coursen

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Protective Intelligence In Action

Better Late Than Never

The global risks impacting the everyday activities of home, school, work, and life has reprioritized, in the minds of many Americans, what it means to be able to keep ourselves safe and our loved ones protected. As a result, schools, businesses, and organizations across the United States have turned to protective intelligence to help reduce risk and prevent violence.

Protective Intelligence is the process by which dedicated teams of protectors proactively identify, assess, and then ultimately work to manage a known threat away from harmful outcome. It is a practice which was historically reserved for only the most prominent of protected persons i.e.; royalty; presidents; and prime ministers who could afford to have the resources of their own government directed toward keeping themselves protected. More recently, this practice has become a cornerstone of big business who have learned to see proactive security not as a cost, but as a force multiplier.

A Growth Industry

The business of Protective Intelligence is expected to be one of the most sought-after corporate resources as America begins its return to normal. Most organizations may never experience a high-level threat -- and thereby may not require the skillset and capability of a protective entity to be maintained in-house. Many have chosen to outsource their protective intelligence needs to a dedicated service provider -- thereby allowing the business to rest assured they have a trusted resource in place well before they realize they need them.

A key benefit of an out-sourced protective intelligence program is that it removes bias and inter-personal influence from the collection and assessment process, and provides for a dispassionate and impartial evaluation of which concerns should be given priority. 

Another advantage is that employees are much more likely to submit a concern, an observation, or even an insight to an outside party who they do not interact with every day, but who they know is a trusted voice and has a regular audience with the decision makers.

Duty of Care

What is most important for the everyday business owner, school administrator, and HR manager to understand, is that while one small component of protective intelligence is to help you to reduce risk and prevent violence, the overarching takeaway of the intelligence is to provide you with the best intelligence possible so that you can make the most informed decisions to help your company, business, organization or school to be as successful as possible.

So, if you’re a school who is planning on having an assembly before the holiday break, and the focus is going to be on staying safe while shopping online, what a protective intelligence program may provide is a key insight on something that has been trending throughout the student body. As the holidays approach, and there is suddenly a sharp increase in tone and talking points on the topic of depression, a school administrator may decide it is in the best interest of the students to pivot the focus of the assembly away from cyber security and more toward the reality of seasonal affective disorders, holiday depression, and suicide prevention.

Students at North Kingstown High School in Rhode Island attend an assembly on cyberbullying. Photo Credit: Cyberbullying Research Center

The Realistic Risk of Insider Threats

An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization which originates from people inside the organization, such as employees, former employees, contractors or business associates who have intimate insight and information concerning the organization's security practices.

For those who wish to do harm, the single most influential factor of target selection is “likelihood of success.” This is why insider threats always pose a greater risk of harm than outside actors. Students attack their schools, and workers attack their offices because that is often where: the initial grievance is born; where the ideation that they can “do something about it” is first nurtured; and where the “research and planning” for their attack can often be disguised as day-to-day activity.

Just last week, lawyers representing Tesla filed the requisite paperwork to sue a former employee, accusing him of industrial espionage, trade secret theft, and breach of contract. Tesla has accused the former software engineer of downloading about 26,000 sensitive files in his first week. Had those protective intelligence safeguards not been in place to alert Tesla to such a breach of trust, the cost of Tesla finding out only after those secrets had been sold could have been in the billions of dollars.

Photo Credit via @Shutterstock

Raw Intel Is Just That: Raw

“We’re going to kill them. Destroy them. We will not let them get away with this. After what they said last week, we cannot let this stand. So let’s go out there and show everyone in this town exactly who we are!”

Is that language cause for concern? It certainly could be.

If that language was posted to a  Facebook page of an alt-right militia movement ahead of a Black Lives Matter rally, it would most certainly be cause for concern.

But what if that same language came from the text message of a high school quarterback who was responding to his dad asking him what his coach said to the team in the locker room that had them all so fired up before the big game? Well, that changes the context, doesn’t it?

© 2021 Coursen Security Group

In order for intelligence to become actionable, it needs to be properly assessed, managed, vetted, and verified. This means that just because someone tweets out an emotional outburst which could be construed as a threat, does not mean it is immediately worthy of having every available resources deployed in its direction. Nor does it mean that if a concern is found to be warranted, that all of those available resources will not be brought to bear.

What it does mean is that each and every concern should be assessed, vetted, and managed in a tried and true fashion by a capable team of knowledgable professionals who can then prescribe a best course of action. Fears will always be bigger than budgets, which is why the ideal protective intelligence team is not only capable of making a timely assessment, but is equally capable of making recommendations for how an organization’s limited resources can be allocated in the most effective manner possible.

Interpreting intelligence is no different that interpreting language. Just as good interpreter is intimately familiar with the idioms, slang, and the relevance of local lingo in the person they are translating for, so, too, is there a need for protective intelligence to be processed in such a way that it becomes most relevant to whomever is on the receiving end of the assessment.

My Conversation with Stefanie Drysdale

In this week’s podcast I had the pleasure of speaking with Stefanie Drysdale, the Vice President of Cyber for Prescient -- a global risk management firm specializing in intelligence, due diligence, investigations, and cybersecurity. 

Stefanie and I discussed a number of topics impacting today’s security environment, but we kept circling back to one key theme: the importance of protective intelligence.

We had a very dynamic discussion, touching on many facets of industry interest. Stefanie is a treasure-trove of knowledge and insight, and I think you will find some very valuable take-aways from our conversation.

Onward. Upward.

Work. Sweat. Win.

—Spencer Coursen

Preparing Today For A Safer Tomorrow

Yesterday’s inauguration was by all appropriate measure the most secure inauguration in the history of the United States. The U.S. Secret Service and the other protective partners deserve all due credit for a job well done in their implementation of a highly effective mixture of both due diligence and vigilance. 

A Blessing In Disguise?

Timing is everything. Horrible as the attack on the Capitol Building was, as grossly negligent and criminally complacent as the Capitol Police had been in allowing that insurrection to happen, perhaps that attack did serve as a blessing in disguise. That attack ultimately served as the shot-across-the-bow to bring clarity to security shortcomings and brought a cultural clarity to the forefront of all our minds as to what was most important -- the inauguration. Without that act, the inauguration would most likely have been secure, but would it have been positioned to be as vigilantly protected as possible?

America has always done two things very well: complacency and hyper-vigilance. We are either living our lives under the false sense of security that nothing is going to happen, or -- in the aftermath of getting slapped across the face -- we go so up-and-right in our hyper-vigilance that we are patting down grandma and then force-fitting her wheel chair through an X-ray machine before she’s even allowed into a ballpark.

If the most unsafe day to fly in America was September 11th, 2001, then the safest day to fly was most certainly the very next day. And if the most complacent the security on Capitol Hill had ever been was January 6th ... then the most secure time on Capitol Hill was yesterday: January 20th. 

All I’m saying is that everything happens for a reason. And timing, is very often, everything. 

But in all seriousness, job well done by the Secret Service. Job well done indeed.

Unforced Errors

As the ramp-up to the inauguration took center stage, some politicians could not seem to get out of their own way. I found it quite hypocritical to hear so many political leaders commenting on how much of a priority it was to secure the inauguration for the preservation of democracy but then in the very next breath admonishing the protection process to the nearest journalist with a camera. One popular opinion of the politicos was just how insulting it was to them for the FBI to conduct background checks on the National Guard members who had been sent to D.C. to help. It shocked me how many of them thought it was absolutely appalling to call into question the loyalty of a soldier.

Photo Credit: Military Times

I don’t know if they thought that courting support for the armed forces would curry them some favor, but as a veteran myself, I certainly took no offense to the background screening process -- soldiers are routinely vetted all the time. This is precisely why I could not believe how many politicians were fumbling their own credibility by denouncing such a standard operating procedure. 

Any junior staffer should have been able to inform their boss that if you want to take part in a National Special Security Event -- and you don’t already hold a top-secret clearance -- then yes, the FBI is going to vet you. It is literally a legally required mandate.

Loyalty As Currency

There is a very big difference between questioning someone’s loyalty and questioning where that loyalty lies. Every single one of those insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol Building two weeks ago believed themselves to be loyal Americans. The underlying issue was that their loyalty was more aligned with Donald Trump than to Joseph Biden.

Again, this is why the FBI ran the background checks. And then -- low and behold -- what did they find? Twelve National Guard members did have something in their background to be cause enough to remove them from inaugural duty: two for outright having been either sympathetic too or directly affiliated with support groups involved in the Jan. 6th attack, and 10 others for having what the FBI cited as “a number of different reasons.”

What did all of those politicians have to say about that?

You guessed it: not a thing. 

On High Alert

With so many eyes on the security apparatus taking shape, last week did see a lot of security-related developments. These were not just in terms of arrests being made by the Justice Department as they tracked down those involved in the attack on Capitol Hill, but we also saw the resignation of the Chief of the Capitol Police; the resignation of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Capitol Building; and perhaps most worrisome, there was “the” FBI memo. 

The memo, which was shared internally throughout the law enforcement and intelligence community, put something of an exclamation point on just how rife with dissent some 300,00 people on message-sharing communities and online message boards like GAB and TELEGRAM really were. The memo’s rather dire wording warned of a “high likelihood of armed protests in all 50 states in the days leading up to and after the inauguration.”

Videos and posts on Facebook, Telegram and YouTube -- all stemming from alt-right, QAnon, and militia-centric corners of the political spectrum -- predicted Trump would take over the emergency broadcast system to declare martial law and arrest prominent Democrats.

And so, around the country in Capitol cities, in all 50 states: the warnings went out; the alarm bells rang; the barricades went up; the police stood prepared; and then....

Nothing.

...nothing of note anyway.

On Friday, a Virginia man was arrested after trying to drive through a check point with fake credentials. He was armed with an unlicensed handgun and more than 500 rounds of ammo and was immediately taken into custody by Capitol Police. 

On Monday, a fire at a homeless encampment led to a brief lockdown of the Capitol complex and upended an inauguration rehearsal. The rehearsal was suspended out of an abundance of caution more than due to any clear or present danger.

And on Wednesday morning, a bomb threat was called in targeting the Supreme Court -- which sits just across the street from the Capitol Building. The building itself and the surrounding grounds were checked, but nothing was found, and the building was not ordered to be evacuated. (The Supreme Court Building has also been closed to the public for the past several months due to the pandemic.) 

Game Day

By the time the cameras turned on and America tuned-in, everything appeared to be in place to ensure a safe and successful inauguration. And despite Jack Tapper tweeting out the worrisome concern that was at least on my mind, everything went as planned. 

Lady Gaga sang the national anthem. J-Lo performed “This Land is Your Land.” Kamala Harris took her oath of Office. Joseph Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. President Biden gave what I thought was a very good speech, and then Garth Brooks sang “Amazing Grace.”

Photo Credit: AP

And it all took place without incident. A peaceful transition of power once more setting the democratic standard for the world to follow.

And even throughout the rest of the country, there seemed to be peace in the land. 

Here in Austin, there were more Biden supporters at the State Capitol Building than there were supporters of former President Trump.  

And from what I have been able to ascertain from the rest of the country’s media, it appears Capitol Cities in the other states were reporting pretty much the exact same situation. 

Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq

— Morgan Mckay (@morganfmckay) January 20, 2021

By late Wednesday afternoon, America seemed to have returned to normalcy, and by this weekend most roads will be re-opened, National Guard members will return to their homes, police officers will report back to their duty stations, and barricades and bike racks will go back to wherever they get stored until the next time they are needed.

Tomorrow’s Concern

But my biggest fear in nothing having broken bad is that people will think that nothing bad today will mean nothing bad tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that. After all, that is the very essence of The Safety Trap: just because fears have been abated does NOT mean that risk no longer remains. Because it does. Perhaps more so now than ever before. 

Just because there was a strong protective presence around the country today which served as a direct deterrent to attack, does not mean that same protective presence is going to be there tomorrow. 

Just as a house that has all of the lights on, the smell of a grill in the air, and the sound of kids playing in the backyard pool is a deterrent against someone breaking into your home -- because their likelihood of success is low -- does not mean your home offers that same level of deterrence when your family is away on vacation. 

Same goes for all of the soft targets that were originally intended for attack. Just because the bad guys tipped their hand and let us in on what they were planning to do, does not mean they won’t learn from their mistakes and implement those factors into the next phase of their attack plan. 

Another concern lies with all of those disillusioned QAnon and alt-right believers; they will now be ripe for recruitment by militias, white supremacy groups, other far-right neofascist movements like the Proud Boys, and so on. So many “Stop the Steal” supporters have attached their identity and have invested themselves in like-minded community that many will seek comfort in any organization willing to embrace them as one of their own. 

The Militia Movement

Let me be very clear: far-right militias pose the greatest current domestic threat to the national security of the United States. 

Now, this is not to say that America does not have foreign concerns, or that the far-left does not have their own foothold in domestic disruption, but the truth is: the overwhelming majority of militias in the United States cling to a right-wing ideology, their activity is widespread, their sphere of influence is growing, and their numbers are growing.

Photo Cred: WSJ

Even though there are those who will say there is nothing here to fear because militia membership numbers took a downward turn for two years between 2017 and 2019 -- which coincided with a higher-than-normal approval rating of then President Trump, a robust economy, and a low rate of unemployment -- the troubling facts are that militia enrollment numbers have been on the rise since the outbreak of the pandemic. And as of this month’s reports, many protective intelligence forecasts have militia enrollment numbers trending upward to an all-time high over these next few months.

Which means that everyone from the Justice Department at the national level to the police departments at the local level will need to be aware of the very real risk that these groups represent and should be prepared and ready to respond should their efforts to do harm escalate from mountain-side training camp antics to downtown armed insurrection. 

The Trump Factor

And perhaps the most consequential variable in how all of this plays out is how these fringe groups believe Donald Trump is being treated during the impeachment trials these upcoming weeks. If Trump is somehow able to create, or take hold, or establish some kind of an auxiliary bully-pulpit from which he can communicate directly with all of his disenfranchised followers, then ... well ... we may really have a tough time on our hands. 

So...fair warning.

Striking a Balance Between Awareness and Preparation

Now, I’m not saying this to scare you.

I’m not positioning myself to monger fear.

But I am here to tell you that the threat of domestic terrorism exists, that we should be cautious about that reality, and that we should not so much live in fear of this concern -- but rather -- strike a balance between being aware and being prepared.

And that begins with a willingness to participate in your own protection. 

If you know how to look both ways before you cross the street, then you can teach yourself to think twice before allowing yourself to be compromised by an overly emotional decision. 

The three biggest safety traps to which most people fall victim are: complacency; over confidence; and being too polite. All three of these are easily correctable. If we are just willing to participate in our own protection, we can teach ourselves to prepare today for a safer tomorrow. 

Because at the end of the day, everyday safety really does require the participation of everyone. And a healthy sense of skepticism coupled with a moderate dose of vigilance are a small price to pay for the liberties and the freedoms which flow so freely from peace.

Onward. Upward.

Work. Sweat. Win.

—Spencer Coursen

What Comes Next? America’s Uncertainty With Safety Could Be Biden’s Biggest Challenge

For the first time in America’s history, the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next is not a guarantee. At best, it’s a hopeful expectation. At worst, it may be the point of no return for our country as we know her. 

After last week’s attack at the Capitol Building, I have been helping to manage an increased level of client concerns as they relate to the security of the inauguration:

“Is something going to happen?”

“Should we leave the city?”

“Is Biden safe? What about Harris?

“After what happened last week, how can you be so sure?”

To all those with questions or concerns, let me say this:

I have full faith and confidence that the inauguration itself will be very well protected. The inauguration has always been identified as a National Special Security Event -- which means the Secret Service has been working for over a year to ensure the certainty of safety for all involved. This is something the Secret Service does extremely well. They do it better than anyone. And I can testify to this as being true because I have firsthand, on-the-ground experience with just how much goes into the planning for this very event.

In the latter part of 2007 and the early part of 2008, during the ramp-up to then president-elect Obama taking the oath of office, I was involved in working alongside the Presidential Inauguration Committee. I was intimately familiar with many (not all) of the protective safeguards put into place to keep not just the president and his family secure, but to also ensure all of the attendees who would be seated in close proximity to the first family would be protected as well.

Believe me when I tell you that every consideration, every contingency., every remote possibility was secured with effective redundancy. Federal agencies, state and local police, the National Guard, and even the U.S. Military are all heavily involved and invested in making sure the transition of power is as peaceful, secure, and successful an event as humanly possible.

But the downside of this level planning is that it drains resources from everywhere else.

It’s like that old cop joke which says the best time to rob a local bank is anytime the president is in town for a visit. The inauguration is something similar. With so much attention focused on DC, with so much time, effort, energy, and resources deployed to secure one particular venue for one singular event, the opportunities to wreak havoc on those targets-of-opportunity outside of the Capitol Building perimeter are instantly afforded a much higher likelihood of being successful than they otherwise would.

Does this automatically mean there will there be a successful attack somewhere else? No, it does not.

Does it mean that there is a higher likelihood of someone trying to exploit a short-term vulnerability? Yes, it most certainly does.

Who is most at-risk of being targeted?

Anyone who is believed to have played a part in the “steal” is at risk of being targeted. This means that state and local governments, court houses, news outlets, journalists, public figures, social media companies, and the CEOs and senior executives of these organizations will need to be especially vigilant. 

The protective teams entrusted to keep those places and people safe need to be on high-alert and at-the-ready.Their protective intelligence resources need to be on-point, their emergency considerations need to be implemented, and whatever protective contingencies they have planned had better be vetted, prepped, and ready to rock-and-roll at a moment’s notice.

As of this morning, the most realistic concern — and by that, I mean there is actionable intelligence to support the belief that something is going to happen — that intelligence does NOT support an attack on the inauguration itself.

The intelligence DOES support disruptive and armed efforts elsewhere. Specific targets of mention: local government buildings; news organizations; social media companies.

Let me be clear: I am not overly worried about the people who want to peacefully protest at a local state house. I am also not overly concerned about the ones who will be camping out in front of the headquarters of some social media company.

What I AM most worried about is a small team of people — five to fifteen in number — who are well-armed and well-trained. I am most concerned about the small groups of armed assaulters who can enact real havoc on a soft target and will do so by using the peaceful protests as camouflage for their intention — who will use the demonstrations by others as a decoy for their own violent exploits. 

I don’t think it has set in just how lucky we all are that what happened at the Capitol Building wasn’t much, MUCH worse. Just imagine if there had been an alt-right militia group embedded within the group of insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol. How much real harm would they have caused?

When I talk about successful stunts being the teaching tools of terror, last week’s incident is EXACTLY what I’m talking about. Because that kind of stunt, that level of success, which was broadcast live on TV, and which can then be recorded, studied, adopted, and then adapted, is precisely the kind of tipping-point that inspires others to rise up and join-in their cause. This in turn gives birth to copy cats. That breach of threshold leaves all of us less safe.

If past is prologue, the success of the capitol attack has only added fuel to the inspirational fire of those who want to watch it all burn. And with Trump now impeached for a second time, and Senate leadership giving every indication that their trial to convict him will extend well into Biden’s first 100 days in office, the likelihood of things quieting down after the inauguration is less than likely. It’s damn near zero.

Add to this the fact that many of those most likely to act upon their grievance, who had previously been congregating in groups on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Parler have recently had their accounts blocked and their access to these groups removed. So did they stop communicating? Of course not. They simply migrated to more anonymous, encrypted, and secure platforms like Signal and Telegram which will make their leakage to do harm that much more difficult to monitor.

How Did We Get Here?

One of the topics I discuss in my book is the Safety Trap of Avoidance. The key take-away being: “If we choose to ignore today’s concerns we will be forced to face tomorrow’s crisis.”

How many times were we told that this is exactly where all of that would lead?

How many times have we been warned that the lowering of our attention span would have real impact and consequence?

How many times were we cautioned about how promoting the tribalism of “us vs them” in political messaging may help to get someone elected but would also leave a trail of real harm it its wake?

How many times were we advised against the commingling of news and opinion? Of native advertising alongside legitimate news? Of the adding of water to wine by using a click-bait headline?

How many times were we told that doing so would lower the confidence and detract our trust in the institutions who not only distributed our news, but also of the anchors who gave voice to these narratives?

Time and time and time again, we were advised, and cautioned, and warned.

Today’s crisis is a direct result of our shirking of responsibility. We collectively chose to defer present pain for future torment. Because in part we were lazy, and in part because the profits and the profiteering were too good to turn down.

Morals are always at their highest when the situation is at its most hypothetical. But you add money to the mix, and morals goes out the window. 

The “Stop The Steal” group on Facebook had 300,000 members and was growing at such an exponential rate that for Facebook to say they knew nothing about it until they were made aware of it by journalists who were covering the group for their news stories is just absurd. Twitter deleted 70,000 Q-Anon accounts. The problem, of course, is that the damage was already done. No sense closing the barn door once the horses have already escaped. Truth is, accounts and groups like that were previously permitted to stay on the platforms because they generated engagement. Engagement generates ad buys, ad buys promote profits. And when a businessperson is given the choice to decide between today’s profits vs tomorrows apology, money is the only moral that matters.

The First Civil War

And so, we now find ourselves in a quagmire, with a new president taking office during a time when America’s certainty for a secure future may very well be at an all-time low. Those first 100 days after inauguration day may very well be the most critical time in the American Experiment since the first Civil War. And yes, I say the first Civil War with the intention and fear that we are danger-close to experiencing another.

It is eerily similar to that time when father fought son; brother fought brother; veteran fought veteran. The fight was ultimately about two opposing views for America’s future. A direct parallel to today’s concern.

You see, the Civil War was not fought over the moral issue of slavery, so much as it was fought over the politics of slavery. 

In a PBS special entitled, “Causes of the Civil War” they say,

“The South wished to take slavery into the western territories, while the North was committed to keeping them open to white labor alone. Meanwhile, the newly formed Republican party, whose members were strongly opposed to the westward expansion of slavery into new states, was gaining prominence. The election of a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, as President in 1860 sealed the deal. His victory, without a single Southern electoral vote, was a clear signal to the Southern states that they had lost all influence.”

The feeling of not being heard: believing your voice no longer has influence; that your vote was not counted; that this election is not legitimate because it was stolen; is what so many people who stormed the Capitol believe to be what Joe Biden represents. 

And perhaps most troubling: It doesn’t matter that none of what they believe is true.

THE FACTS ARE CLEAR:

Joe Biden won the election.

All votes were counted.

The election WAS NOT STOLEN

Problem is, too many people want to believe the lie.

The Safety Trap of Susceptibility

There’s a great movie directed by David Mamet and starring Val Kilmer called, “Spartan.”

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you give it a watch sometime. It’s not exactly the most edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it is a rather realistic portrayal of how a special operator navigates the environment of a clandestine world where politics and public relations are often working toward an opposing end-point. 

In one particular scene, the powers-that-be fake a persons death by saying that their blood was found on a boat. The operator is confused as he knows for certain the person is — in fact — not dead. He asks, “How did they fake the bloody-type?” The counter-part answers, “We don’t have to fake the blood-type. We just issue a press release.”

I sometimes wonder if Giuliani saw that movie too. Because to watch him argue in open court was indistinguishable from watching a Saturday Night Live sketch.

You see ... there was no Kraken to release. There was no evidence of fraud. There was no legitimacy to his claims of conspiracy. There was no fraud. Yet, despite his claims to the contrary being tossed with prejudice out of court, his supporters still wanted to believe because they were told to believe it.

This is what I refer to as, “The Safety Trap of Susceptibility,” which basically states that the more safe you feel because of the accepted-ness and inclusiveness of a group, the more at-risk you are at being exploited by that same group of like-minded believers. This risk is exponentially elevated when the social structure of acceptance is directly tied to "groupthink” which is often prescribed and promoted by a supposed “authority” figure -- especially if that figure is in a position of known posture and prominence within the group -- like that of a priest in a church, a general in an army, or in America’s most recent example, the president of a country.

But no matter how hard you may try, there is no number of times you can repeat a lie that it makes that lie turn true.

But as I said before: In a world where opinion matters more than truth. Where beliefs matter more than facts. Where the one who pronounces that all news is “fake news” unless you hear it directly from him, but does so, only so he can proclaim his fake news to be real news, and their real news to be fake.

Because his followers want to believe. They need to believe. To see past his lies would mean to accept they themselves had been fooled. And when the shameful cling to false righteousness, they will believe anything that has some semblance to their own sense of self…and their own sense of salvation.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

We are at a crossroads. In threat management, we call this “watch and wait.” But what we don’t do is simply hope that nothing will happen. We must be proactive. We must anticipate. We remain adaptive, and vigilant. We need to keep our heads on a swivel. We need to plan. We need to prepare, but most importantly, we need to remain aware of the realistic risks we are most likely to face, so that we can be proactive in the participation of our own protection.

What will tomorrow bring? I for one am praying for peace, but I’m also preparing for war. 

As the code of the samurai reminds us: it is better to be the warrior in the garden, than it is to be the gardener in a war. Pray for peace. Prepare for war. Tend to the part of the garden you can touch. Teach as many as you can along the way.

We will endure. We will be OK. But for the next 100 days, we really need to live our lives with a healthy sense of skepticism and a moderate dose of vigilance. We need to get our heads out of the sands. Keep our heads on a swivel. Watch your back…and your friends back too.

Do your part every day to prepare today for a safer tomorrow.

Onward. Upward

Work. Sweat. Win.

—Spencer Coursen

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The Safety Trap of Expectation: An Attack On Americas Capitol

"Unmet Expectations Occur More Than We Want To Admit”

You may ask, how does something like this happen? How could a building with security cameras, metal detectors, and an armed contingent of highly trained protectors have fallen victim to such a predatory act? The honest answer, is that it happens all the time.  Like most breaches of security, it happened, because it was allowed to happen. A false sense of security gave way to complacency. And when complacency sets in, bad things are allowed to happen. Not because we want them too, but because we become so accustomed to nothing ever happening, that we simply assume that nothing ever will.  But then, when something does happen, we expect for the practice to exceed expectation, when in reality it falters to the lowest level of historic performance. 

Up until yesterday morning, if you were to ask the average person on the street how likely it would be for a protest to successfully breach the Capitol Building, they would most certainly laugh at the absurdity of the question. The Capitol Building? In Washington, D.C.? In America? Don’t be ridiculous. Yet it happened. It happened easily. It happened with warning. And it happened with little to no opposition whatsoever. 

And now the all-too-familiar question is being asked once more, “How did this happen?”  But today we're going to answer that question differently. Today we’re going to address the underlying framework which allowed those failures to happen. For far too long we have accepted a false sense of security enforced by authorities who only alleviates fears without reducing risk -- and who have promoted a course of action which relies mostly on responding to crises, not actively prevent them. 

And this is why these harmful actions are permitted to repeatedly happen. Because when you don’t expect danger, you simply fail to see the signs that something bad is about to happen. But the signs are always there, and staying safe is about training yourself to see them.

This is the paradox of “The Safety Trap.” Our fears have been abated but the risks remain. There are multiple factors of influence which can lead us down this perilous path, but for the purposes of this example, I would like to focus on only one: expectation.

The Safety Trap Of EXPECTATION

When it comes to staying safe, expectation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the risk of something happening is so low that no one ever expects for it to happen. As a result of this expectation, the allocation of resources dedicated to security safeguards gets pushed lower and lower down on the order of priority. So long as nothing happens, no one ever complains. Everyone agrees that finite budgets are best spent where they will have the most effective impact. Of course, when something does happen, the expectation immediately reverts back to why didn’t we have the best safeguards in place that money could buy. Unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works. If you want to ensure you are protected in a car crash, you have to buckle-up your seat-belt and pay-up your insurance premium before the accident. Deciding you really should employ those precautions after the wreck, doesn’t really do anyone any good. 

The Capitol Police never expected to be overrun. They expected their authority would be enough. They expected irrational actors to act in a rational fashion. They expected for the safeguards they had in place on a normal day to perform as prescribed when their need would really arise. But that’s not how the real world works. Their false sense of security gave way to complacency. And when complacency sets it, bad things are allowed to happen. Not because we want them too, but because we become so accustomed to nothing ever happening, that we simply assume that nothing ever will.  But then, when something does happen, we expect for the practice to exceed expectation, when in reality it falters to the lowest level of historic performance.

You see, there was no real safety there. There was only an expectation of safety that never really existed. And what many members of Congress are now being forced to accept is how they believed they were being protected was not at all in-line with the protections being provided.