Please note that AI was used to generate this transcript, so there may be errors.
[00:00:00] Kevin Uniacke: Is it organized criminal groups who are gonna be operating outside of that stadium in Mexico City, or is that more relevant to Guadalajara? Doing a little bit of digging and research, it’s like, yeah, authorities are tracking like 62 different criminal factions in the city or Mexico, four of which are fighting for territorial control right outside, right near the venue, right?
[00:00:28] AJ Nash: Hello, and welcome to NeedleStack. I’m your host, AJ Nash, the digital intelligence advocate here at Authenticate. My background is intelligence. I spent a couple decades in the US intelligence community, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, counter trafficking of persons, and chasing war criminals.
[00:00:43] AJ Nash: Been in the private sector for, over a decade now, building intel programs, help people, figure out how to do intelligence-driven security, and that’s led to a whole lot of interesting opportunities and things like today, where I get to host podcasts and have great conversations.
[00:00:54] AJ Nash: And today’s topic is fascinating, in my opinion, at least. We’re gonna talk about proactively securing major sporting events. Now we’ve talked about the Olympics in the past, of course, and you’ve got the World Cup coming up and, and we’re lucky enough today to have Kevin Uniacke with us, and he’s the director of intelligence programs at Seerist.
[00:01:10] AJ Nash: Now, Kevin’s background includes 10 years in the Air Force, like myself. Another five he spent at the National Guard, but he also has a stint at Harvard and Cornell and the World Bank sprinkled in, so clearly it’s an impressive resume that Kevin brings to the table today.
[00:01:21] AJ Nash: Kevin, anything you wanna add, for the audience before we jump into the conversation?
[00:01:24] Kevin Uniacke: AJ, pleasure to meet you and thanks for getting me on the podcast. As I mentioned earlier, this is my first podcast, so I’m excited to dig into this. I think you hit the wave tops there. A majority of my professional background has been as a Air Force intel officer, so jack of all trades, master of none. stints overseas and in some deployments and supporting operations. And I think there’s a lot of transferability of what you would do in, US Department of Defense, context versus the much smaller time I’ve had, in private sector intelligence, here for the last year and almost a half with Cirrus.
[00:01:58] Kevin Uniacke: So yeah, excited to kinda dig into the intel pieces today and see what good nuggets we can hopefully extract for people, whether you’re a soccer advocate or just someone who’s looking to kind of figure out how to take this framework and apply it to something else.
[00:02:11] AJ Nash: I’m honored to hear that, you know, this is your first podcast. I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of them. I know, I know you’ve done some public speaking, so it’s all pretty much the same, if I’m gonna be honest. this is a little bit easier, I think, than some ’cause it’s just you and me, and, you know, whoever ends up tuning in later we’ll find out about.
[00:02:23] AJ Nash: So listen, let’s, let’s jump right into the conversation. I think this is a really interesting topic. I was lucky enough in my past, I’ve done some work, with support of Olympics operations. so I’ve, I have some experience with some of these, these large-scale events. But, you know, they’re massive, right?
[00:02:36] AJ Nash: So the question I guess I wanna open with is how do security organizations break down all of the potential threats from these massive events into bite-sized categories?
[00:02:46] Kevin Uniacke: Yeah, I think, and always a challenge, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences with the Olympics. But I think like most things, right, if you’re not tracking with, you know, the World Cup, from a geographic perspective, the scope is pretty massive, the scope and scale.
[00:03:01] Kevin Uniacke: Three different countries at 16 venues is what we’re counting. And, and that’s not even accounting for where teams are training and where are there different like host parties and where is other social events. So it’s, it’s just something that spans, you know, quite, three countries. I mean, whether you’re in Canada or get to go down to Mexico, it’s a lot.
[00:03:21] Kevin Uniacke: And, and I think that the old phrase or approach of, you know, how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time always makes sense. But I think it’s really important, sort of the starting point for any big security, conversation with the scope and scale of what we’re looking at for FIFA World Cup 2026 is, if you approach it as one security problem, I think that’s already the wrong starting point.
[00:03:40] Kevin Uniacke: You’ve got to break it down into as many different categories as you need. And so what applies in Canada is gonna be fundamentally and inherently different from what you’re seeing in the US, and then also what you see in Mexico. But I think that the frameworks that you have when you approach those can be pretty similar. I think I would be remiss, I mean, we mentioned, you know, 14N intel officer and I still use a lot of the teachings that I got from my origins, today. Maybe we just call them something different. So if I didn’t talk about the intel cycle,
[00:04:09] Kevin Uniacke: And, so I think one of the big things, you know, whether I’m putting on my practitioner hat or like supporting clients who get to do this, it’s more about like within the intel cycle in the planning phase, I think that’s where you gotta spend a majority of your time. Like what questions you are asking at the onset will help drive and allocate your resources most efficiently, regardless of what your use case is, what location you’re looking at. And so with such a massive effort, I think you need to be asking like, first, who is my audience? You know, is this an internal stakeholder? what type of business line, if I am a commercial sector business, like what am I supporting? Am I a vendor? Am I a host? Am I a hotel who’s receiving people? Am I a big company like Airbnb who’s like doing some sort of sponsorship? that will kind of drive the first type of intelligence you’re looking at. and then hopefully you should be having active conversations with them to figure out how they best consume information, right? and then I think, you know, the second piece is, you know, what are the requirements then? You know, priority intelligence requirements we always have and, what questions should you be asking, and then where are the gaps?
[00:05:19] Kevin Uniacke: And so to, in the planning phase of doing your research. And if you’re not doing your research about like 75% of your workflow, I think you can already be moving down the wrong area. So I’ll pause there for a bit. That’s kind of what I’ve seen. from an Olympics perspective, when you were doing this in the past, how would you approach something from your
[00:05:38] AJ Nash: Yeah. So it’s interesting, the World Cup this year is particularly interesting to me. So generally speaking, when you do the Olympics, it’s one country. So one country hosts the Olympics. I’m a huge advocate for the intelligence cycle, so I love hearing somebody talk about it ’cause I hammer on it all the time that it’s all about planning and direction.
[00:05:55] AJ Nash: Everything else builds off that. You have to understand your stakeholders, and you have to understand their requirements, and from there you can figure out what you’re gonna collect and, you know, build all these things, right? But it starts with the stakeholders. Now again, with the Olympics, generally that’s one country.
[00:06:06] AJ Nash: at least it’s one… the set of stakeholders starts with the nation state that’s hosting obviously, and you have one environment for the most part to deal with. So one set of laws, you got ingress and egress from a very finite number of locations for where things are gonna come and go.
[00:06:19] AJ Nash: The Olympic Village, Those are pretty tightly set up too for ingress and egress. So you’re starting, I think. Whereas this year’s World Cup is ridiculous. It’s three countries with three different sets of laws. I don’t know how many airports are gonna be used for this whole thing, and then you’ve got all the different venues, right?
[00:06:36] AJ Nash: So it is so much larger, in my opinion, of a scale to worry about. And again, so you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta figure out your stakeholders. Plus you’ve got FIFA itself, like they’ve got their own organization and their own needs and where they’re gonna be located, right?
[00:06:54] AJ Nash: So all these different orgs have all of their own different requirements. And then of course, every nation state has to have something, right? So you have to have probably A liaison? So somebody from each state that’s participating, They’ve got their own security requirements if you’re coming out of, I don’t know who’s…
[00:07:08] AJ Nash: If you’re coming out, is Saudi Arabia in this year? Maybe they are. So if Saudi Arabia’s travel needs and security i- issues are going to be different than Mexico, which is one of the host countries, for instance. A- And there’s a variance, right? So you’ve got just this massive amount of stakeholders.
[00:07:23] AJ Nash: Now, I will say, I’m curious, from your position, when I did the Olympics, when I helped support some of the Olympic stuff, and that was Brazil and then, and then, going to Tokyo to talk to them about setting theirs up, it was years in advance. I mean, the discussions for these things were two, three years in advance.
[00:07:36] AJ Nash: You start building out your needs. You’ve got this giant SOC, right? There’s some centralized security operations center, and then there’s all these satellites I have to assume, this has all started years ago too. These events are scheduled out years in advance.
[00:07:47] AJ Nash: Countries know they’re gonna host long before the date comes, Is it the same? To your knowledge at all three of these countries and things that have been getting built out for a long time?
[00:07:56] Kevin Uniacke: So I mean, that’s a great question, and some of which I can answer. What I would say about this, this iteration This iteration Of the World Cup at least, they’ve kind of divested down a lot of the, control or, ownership down to the state level or even lower instead of like one overarching entity that’s gonna organize like how things go.
[00:08:18] Kevin Uniacke: And so I think. and then when you are down at maybe the, much more of a tactical, view than maybe that strategic governing body who’s gonna be organizing and allocating resources and sharing information,
[00:08:33] Kevin Uniacke: I think that’s the part that becomes pretty challenging.
[00:08:36] Kevin Uniacke: I think for years. I think that the dynamic, geopolitical environment, which we know is always evolving daily, has entered in a whole bunch of new variables that have frustrated new challenges for companies, whether you’re participating or hosting or, you’re FIFA to kind of contend and deal with. But One thing that I think is very interesting, When you talk, how do you break this down into bite-size pieces? The thing that I go back to is like, do I have access or the ability to go from like the strategic level down to the tactical level and then back and forth within that?
[00:09:14] Kevin Uniacke: Because so often now we know that everything is hyper-connected, so front and top of mind for everybody right now is the Iran Middle East conflict. And sure, there’s the regional aspect of what is going on, but there is the ripple effect of what that means, whether its Strait of Hormuz or impact to airline industry because of rising fuel costs. Those aren’t just lived experiences within the Middle East. Those are something that are going to have and do have an impact even in the Americas, So like, to me, that’s a strategic level perspective. And so I need to understand that because those challenges that flow over from the Middle East are going to have potential unique problem sets when I’m thinking about, hey, I’m in the US, I wanna go up to Canada. I usually would take some sort of, flight to get up there if I don’t have the ability to just drive across the border.
[00:10:02] Kevin Uniacke: But if costs are rising and airlines are cutting, how many routes they’re doing per day, what does that do to my planning timeline in advance if I just wanted to simply go to Toronto to watch my team of choice play?
[00:10:14] Kevin Uniacke: And that strategic level thing is, is a problem set that I need to be able to apply within a, a local context. But then you also need that like venue level granularity here, right? And, you know, when you think about Mexico, it’s easy to lose context and granularity like just even the Mexico City venue versus Guadalajara. And when talking, I think it’s Estadio Banorte is what they just renamed it to versus Azteca. You know, from an outsider’s perspective, I need to leverage and get nuance in, in context to be like, well, what is actually the threat landscape there?
[00:10:50] Kevin Uniacke: Is it organized criminal groups who are gonna be operating outside of that stadium in Mexico City, or is that more relevant to Guadalajara? Doing a little bit of digging and research, it’s like, yeah, authorities are tracking like 62 different criminal factions in the city or Mexico, four of which are fighting for territorial control right outside, right near the venue, right?
[00:11:07] Kevin Uniacke: And so that’s like a dynamic, you know, environment right outside the stadium when it’s also A bigger problem set, which people and travelers are very much dialed into and trying to dissect of like what is gonna happen when I travel to Mexico. So I need to be able to go from like big level down to like what’s going on within the block, because maybe there’s groups who are gonna try and take advantage of this situation here. And so hopefully to get that context and that research and that understanding to benchmark, you should be doing that well in advance or at least have access to some sort of information and database that allows you to do that quickly if maybe you’re not the expert.
[00:11:46] Kevin Uniacke: ‘Cause I can tell you, I played soccer. I’m no pro And I’m definitely note a Mexico specialist. Air Force-wise, I focused a lot on Africa, so, you know, like I need to get smart quick. How do I do that?
[00:11:59] AJ Nash: Well, you make a good point, right? So just adding to the complication, I was talking about in terms of, hey, there’s three different nations, but that isn’t enough, right? I mean, the security situation a quick look at the stadium list here.
[00:12:09] AJ Nash: I mean, the US has Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, LA, Miami, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area. Mexico has three ar-Canada has a couple. These are all different environments, right?
[00:12:22] AJ Nash: Like you said, Mexico City and Guadalajara, they’re not the same. Like they’re not, San Francisco And Kansas City. Obviously each of these venues hosts events regularly. They all have large sporting stadiums. So they already have their own crew, they already have their own people, they already have their own protocols.
[00:12:37] AJ Nash: For the stadium itself, that’s pretty well established. You know, Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco, for instance, just hosted a Super Bowl. you know, they’ve also hosted all the San Francisco 49er games. They’re in good shape. And I’m gonna go ahead and make the assumption that the stadiums in Mexico and Toronto, or in Mexico and Canada are as well.
[00:12:53] AJ Nash: So you have people. The stadiums are probably well prepared. And then of course, you’ve got the local municipalities, the police, and et cetera. Again, they all have their own standards and their own procedures. So at least you do come in with some things that are normalized, but none of them are used to having tens of thousands of people from all over the world show up at the same time.
[00:13:11] AJ Nash: I mean, it, whatever it is, 50,000, 70,000 people might show up at a football game, you know, at a Super Bowl, let’s say. But the vast majority of them are Americans traveling domestically. And then as you mentioned, right? You started planning for this a few years ago. Well, a few years ago, there was no Iran-US-Israel combat going on.
[00:13:29] AJ Nash: If I understand correctly is coming to the World Cup. I don’t even know who FIFA’s chosen to replace them with at this point. So you got that last-minute piece. There were expectations, obviously. Geopolitics has changed. I think the United States is not necessarily as desirable a travel location for some people now.
[00:13:44] AJ Nash: So I’ve read conflicting reports. I’ve read reports that hotels don’t have the bookings they thought they would have, and there may be a lower attendance. But then I’ve also read stories about price gouging for trains. You know, I think Boston specifically was like $100 to get to the stadium or something.
[00:13:57] AJ Nash: So all sorts of different pieces that were never planned for, that you cannot plan for, right? ”Cause things change. You know, it’s a quote I use all the time. Mike Tyson’s got some great ones, but his best, in my opinion, is everything’s, they have a plan till they get punched in the mouth.
[00:14:11] AJ Nash: Which to me is just everything there is about intelligence, is you do all the planning and, It. Obviously, planning and direction matters, intel requirements, because you have to have a baseline, you have to have a lot of things established. But no matter how well you establish those things, something happens.
[00:14:25] AJ Nash: There’s fog of war. There’s, in this case, all sorts of international events. So you’ve got to be able to adapt on the fly and just somehow keep it all orderly at the same time. It just feels like there’s a lot of risk with it, in trying to get it all organized.
[00:14:40] AJ Nash: And again, that coordination effort across all the different nations and to have your national coordination and, all the different, Corporations, right? Every corporation that’s involved in this, should have their own as well to understand their risks.
[00:14:54] AJ Nash: You know, we’re gonna send our executives there, or, you know, what’s our risk to our brand? We don’t wanna have our billboard in the wrong place tied to the wrong country, Or the wrong message? So there’s just of things to worry about, right?
[00:15:07] AJ Nash: You talked a little bit, right? And how we’ve talked already about how important that is, how it’s been going on for a long time. But what happens as you get into this and things start moving around? A good example that there’s infrastructure issues, right?
[00:15:22] AJ Nash: I mean, we’re gonna have to add a ton of capacity and we gotta figure that out. So how do organizations take that baseline that they developed, those intel requirements based on their stakeholders, and they build all that out, and then how do you handle contingency operations? How do you pivot across all of these things?
[00:15:39] AJ Nash: And I guess the other question that goes along with it is ultimately, if we’re so spread out, If we’ve set this out one major source, who’s in charge?
[00:15:47] Kevin Uniacke: If anyone or maybe you can tell me who’s in charge, let me know. I would assume FIFA. The one thing at least about the open source space, having already, and I’ll explain in, in a moment, had leveraged it in my Air Force life, is like there you’re already getting after some…
[00:16:03] Kevin Uniacke: One of the biggest challenges, which is information sharing. It’s open source. You can share it anyways. We don’t have to worry about, you know, like, “Oh, who is this releasable to? And what agreements do we have?” Like you do in the classified space. so I, I love that aspect of it, and it’s something that we would leverage.
[00:16:17] Kevin Uniacke: I supported Air Mobility Command for five and a half years out of California.
[00:16:21] Kevin Uniacke: We’d have a global Mission set. But just because we could always communicate with those stakeholders. So at least love that piece because I think you need to be dynamic in these fast-moving environments. as also an intel strategist and a guy who has to worry about, you know, contingency plannings to either get buy off from senior stakeholders or because you also just wanna be, like, preserving life if it’s from, like, a mission perspective. you need to make sure that that planning translates to a good monitoring capability. And so by a good understanding again of that ultra important initial phase of understanding the threat. I think we, we call it threat, have equal intent and capability to do so. And then, like, how can you have a way to visualize and surface those threats in a way that is not overwhelming, lets you know what the new information is, and then how do you interrogate it, right?
[00:17:19] Kevin Uniacke: And so different dashboards that are specific to if it is you wanna do the strategic level three different countries, do you have your dashboard that is My stakeholder cares about traveler perspective, and I already know the hotels that they’re at, so I want a way to put down assets and do a geographic fencing to surface real-time threats ’cause I know there’s a protest history, trends that go on out there, and I think that that could be a flashpoint, and I wanna know if there’s gonna be roadblocks, they’re gonna leave this way out of the hotel or not.
[00:17:50] Kevin Uniacke: So I wanna understand maybe what’s bubbling up. Or is it more flights are canceled and, you know, we are not going to be able to remove people from, you know, Guadalajara because we didn’t think that,
[00:18:06] Kevin Uniacke: The CJNG would be a problem and would expose themselves to ruining their revenue-generating Supply chains and out to watch the games, but they are. So it’s like? Because Best laid plans. So for me specific to those requirements in an open source environment that is like building, whether through Boolean or natural language queries, Searches tied that help you surface it, but a way to interrogate the data too.
[00:18:33] Kevin Uniacke: ‘Cause I, I remember I was in Germany at Ramstein Air Base, and I was on an intel watch, team for a general officer, group of general officers over there. So you’d be like one of one at night watching the whole theater, or at least your AOR or area of responsibility. And I’d just be like scrolling through thousands of pieces of traffic being like, “All right, which one aligns with the requirement?
[00:18:55] Kevin Uniacke: Does this meet the threshold? What do I miss?”
[00:18:58] Kevin Uniacke: And that could be first you wanna be like, how do I understand the threshold for escalating to a decision or, or at least to get it from an awareness perspective? But then also confidence associated with this?
[00:19:11] Kevin Uniacke: So like either, right? or how can you pull the thread to know that you’re, you already have reliability Ratings assessed to what you’re trying to interrogate. And so the pool of data is just as important as being able to monitor because needle in the haystack type thing, information data points are all out there.
[00:19:32] Kevin Uniacke: But you can be if you’re trying to navigate and monitor a real threat environment. but you’re with stuff. So What helps me and monitoring or telling clients, “Here’s what I would do to do this,” it is having that plan, having the ability to monitor, but then also like a tranche of higher reliability sources that I know can corroborate some of the information that Might be coming in social media that you’re talking about. because then I think building a narrative can lead to a good decision.
[00:20:04] AJ Nash: Yeah. I mean you, you talked about old school intel basically, and I, I remember a lot of that. You had the intel requirements and it’s very manual. You’re just going through going, does this meet the threshold?” And it’s very subjective. You try to make it objective, right?
[00:20:16] AJ Nash: But it still ends up. It’s why you have, you know, analysts and experts to decide, is this important, isn’t it? You talk about validity. You know, we’ve got the ICD standards obviously to discuss, you know, possible, probable, et cetera, and multiple sources. And you’ve got admiralty, you know, ratings if you’re dealing with humans.
[00:20:30] AJ Nash: But ultimately, it’s a lot of just experience, right? And now the idea is that, people want AI to do all of this, and AI’s gonna decide. We’re gonna plug in our requirements into AI and our levels and our expertise is gonna be an AI thing, which is, it’s…
[00:20:44] Kevin Uniacke: Human-centered, That’s what I say.
[00:20:46] Kevin Uniacke: It’s still gotta be human-centered, and it’s a force multiplier.
[00:20:49] Kevin Uniacke: I don’t want to see position space, especially in areas like this,
[00:20:53] AJ Nash: 100%. I use AI. You kind of have to at this
[00:20:55] AJ Nash: point. But it does allow meplease double-check.There’s a reason we don’t put bombs on targets based on AI, at least usually we don’t.
[00:21:04] AJ Nash: There’s rumors we might be starting to do some of that now. I don’t recommend it. But there’s a reason, right? There’s a human in the loop help us go through lots of information fast, which, you know, for these large events like this matters, but it still makes a lot of mistakes still. It is not infallible.
[00:21:17] AJ Nash: It’s not perfect. The AI, the I in AI isn’t real. There’s no intelligence to AI, for anybody who’s curious. That isn’t how it works. It’s not an intelligent being. It gives you the impression they’re designed and how we interact, and it’s very cool to work with, but it’s a really, really smart parrot.
[00:21:32] AJ Nash: You know, it’s still not really communicating with you. You can have a chat with your parrot, but I promise you, it doesn’t know what it’s saying.
[00:21:37] Kevin Uniacke: Or it might be telling you what it thinks you want it to
[00:21:39] Kevin Uniacke: I mean, there’s a lot of LLMs there where it’s like, “I think this just wants to be my friend.” You know, it’s like, ” Absolutely.”
[00:21:46] AJ Nash: The reason we love AI so much is that AI always tells me I’m brilliant. It always tells me I’ve come up with an idea nobody’s ever thought of before. You’ve never sat down with an AI platform and said, “You know what? You’re kinda crazy and stupid. Maybe you should stop asking me these questions.”
[00:21:57] AJ Nash: They don’t do that because they’re not designed to do that, because then you’ll stop interacting with them. But when a parrot screams out, he’s guilty, he’s a murderer,” it doesn’t mean you really are. It might well have been heard. So, something to keep in mind.
[00:22:08] AJ Nash: Aside from this point, though, it is great to hear you talk about this old school, you know, intel style and some of the processes that we’ve always had to go through, right? And now, you know, on these massive scales, trying to make sense of all of this, is very difficult a little bit about the output of all this, right? So you’ve got years of planning for this. We’ve got our intel requirements. Let’s assume we’ve got our stakeholders, we understand who they are, we’ve built our requirements based on those. Lots of sub-organizations, right?
[00:22:34] AJ Nash: Every police organization for each of these cities has intel filed into them. They’ve got their federal, and they’ve got their state and their local coming in, and you’ve got your corporate intelligence, et cetera. So everybody’s got their requirements, everybody’s got their needs.
[00:22:44] AJ Nash: Everybody’s pouring this stuff in. And then what does that generally look like? What? Standard weekly briefings, flash reporting as something interesting is happening? What does it look like? What’s the output to the people who need it, who are responsible?
[00:22:58] AJ Nash: How does that looklanner’s level, the mayor of a city or The regional director versus, the guy who’s checking bags? How do these piecesn how do we adapt, as we’re going along because things just?
[00:23:15] Kevin Uniacke: No, great question. I think I also get to say my… So A, we talked about the intel cycle. I’m going through my bingo card here, so check, awesome.Second one Say it depends? because that’s, that’s a Good one third I would’ve said probably earlier is let me… great question, let me check and get back to you.
[00:23:30] Kevin Uniacke: I’ll do a little bit more research.
[00:23:31] Kevin Uniacke: Yeah. What I would say too before and I will answer that question, is like the whole piece about AI, I think is super important, particularly in this space. And so to do it, they’re using whatever tool you wanna use, and hopefully you have a few because you wanna be leveraging different sources, is like how can I pull the thread to understand and have transparency what I’m using?
[00:23:52] Kevin Uniacke: So that way that sourcing? and then do you have a way to evaluate that sourcing when you do get there? Because oftentimes you’re just like, are we hallucinating or are we anchored in the appropriate sources? and if not, you at least want to be able to frame this appropriately then to my stakeholders that this is what this is based on, and I would have a low confidence level. And I think, which seem sexy and seem good, and they are good. Like, they do a lot of manual things very well, and they can help you get through what takes me hours of just writing an email and thinking about how I wanna structure. I’m like, “Maybe I just get something out there with AI and it’s gonna be good, and I can just edit it then.
[00:24:29] Kevin Uniacke: Thank you for doing that. You took away hours of tedious time.” Is like again it is dipping into? Because if you have that higher confidence analyst-driven data lake, you’re already operating at a level where you can move with decision speed at the rate of what you need to sometimes, which is like super quick.
[00:24:47] Kevin Uniacke: and So. It shouldn’t be a black box, you know, of anything that you’re using. and then you should be able to understand where the data is pulling into. And If it I would pause in this career field or really heavily caveat and have other tools to do so.
[00:25:04] Kevin Uniacke: I think. But that wasn’t the question you asked. I just wanted to say that. the question from a product standpoint you know, what are we delivering? I think again, it depends on the phases and who your stakeholder is.
[00:25:18] Kevin Uniacke: And so we have either light touch or heavy touch type products that we are providing. And so some of those are, you know, If the monitoring phase, and you have people out in the field, you typically don’t have time to consume, a text-heavy product, a PDF, an email.
[00:25:36] Kevin Uniacke: You just need something that are hopefully geo-fenced to the area that you’re operating or a proximity alert that can let you know what is going on over a certain threshold in that environment. And one of those would be like, “Oh, I’m seeing a spate of roadblocks leading north out of Guadalajara.”
[00:25:51] Kevin Uniacke: And that means, maybe we need to either reroute or I’m gonna, you know, kinda like shelter in place, for lack of a better term, and wait for that environment to kind of just shift.
[00:26:01] AJ Nash: For that, here we might think of law enforcement or traffic. In Mexico, that probably means the cartel has set up shop. That’s why you’re talking about diverting, right? So it does, again, nations matter. If I were outside of Toronto, I’d be like, “All right, well, we should probably route.
[00:26:15] AJ Nash: There’s an accident.” If I see roadblock issues in Mexico, yeah, shelter in place becomes an option, right? It’s understanding the environment because who’s blocking the road and why is pretty important. you know, in Chicago, it’s probably a traffic jam. In Guadalajara, it could be a much more sticky situation.
[00:26:33] Kevin Uniacke: Yeah. And in Vancouver it could be an activist-driven thing targeting.
[00:26:36] Kevin Uniacke: A headquarters of a company that has put a stance that’s a little bit contentious on some sort of current geopolitical issue. And
[00:26:42] Kevin Uniacke: You’re like, way different, peaceful and not violent versus frustrating and time-consuming for you as a traveler versus, like, you might lose your money and your life.
[00:26:53] Kevin Uniacke: And so. There’s the light touch version of getting products out and you want those like geographically anchored to where that lived experience is. But I would also say, if similar to like what I would do supporting your mobility command pre-mission briefs or pre-travel briefs or maybe something that’s going to the mayor, like you mentioned, of one of these hosting venues, those are gonna probably be in the lead up to the event, very deep and context-driven, more text.
[00:27:18] Kevin Uniacke: But also I think you need something that can help you visually,
[00:27:22] Kevin Uniacke: see things. Like, there needs to be some sort of geospatial element to what you’re providing. You need to be able to heat map events and understand and see, like, everyone loves pictures, whether you’re, a general officer who wants to see some sort of, cool map with or a stoplight chart with indications and warnings, or maybe it’s in the private sector where you’re looking at a map and being like, “Oh, I can understand within the city center where most of the unrest activities are.” People need to visualize that because what I say in intel anyways is like we’re fundamentally teachers.
[00:27:52] Kevin Uniacke: And we just need to speak at that level. And people also learn in all different ways. And so, like, do they consume information from an auditory, like audio perspective, or are they visual, or are they both? and Compelling visuals happen through data visualizations, and so you need a tool or the ability to really quickly generate those insights, with trend lines and graphics or pie charts that let you know, like, “Hey, unrest happens typically in June. It’s because people are out of school, and it’s a lot of youths on the street because unemployment’s high. And typically what we’re seeing is the weapon types involved are not actually firearms. It’s more like they’re gonna have bladed weapons.” And so those things will help then the mitigation aspect, when you’re sending someone out the door in advance and that should be like a longer type of product to me. And I think that that ebbs and flows throughout the life cycle of an event where you probably have the meatier, more deep dive things in advance. Real time, you just want the most salient. Give me the bluff, the TLDR. Don’t exceed an email. let’s be able to exit stage left super quick and make a decision, and that’s all anyone wants.
[00:29:05] Kevin Uniacke: And they want the contextualized nuance too. Like, tell me what. Please tell me the impact and so what.
[00:29:10] Kevin Uniacke: Otherwise you’re just giving me information. That’s not intelligence, right? And then after the event, which is something people don’t talk about, like you need, again, probably those beefier products where you can do lessons learned and dissect what went on because what happened in the Olympics in the US is setting the stage for what’s happened now, understanding like time has, has changed and, and variables change. But we don’t have too long until the 250th anniversary for the US on July 4th, which is gonna be mega events everywhere.
[00:29:40] AJ Nash: We have our own Olympics coming up. Exactly. Well, and, and you make a good point. You talk about after actions, right? It’s, I think generally speaking, the private sector, we do a terrible job, when it comes to this, right? People are in a hurry, everything’s quick, and when it’s done, they just move on. I will say, I think these large events happen to be an exception to that, the Olympics and the Super Bowl, because, they’re massive, first of all.
[00:29:58] AJ Nash: So they produce a lot of good content for after action, but they also feed the next thing, right? If you’re having a Super Bowl, there’s another city that’s gonna have one next year. If you have an Olympics, there’s another city that’s gonna have one in two years, and the same with the World Cup.
[00:30:09] AJ Nash: So there’s some feeling of responsibility to help that next group, because the IOC carries out throughout for the Olympics, or the FIFA carries out throughout, for the World Cup. So it’s the one area where I think I have seen some really robust after-action reporting on what worked, what didn’t, lessons learned, you know.
[00:30:25] AJ Nash: And ideally, right? This isn’t about saying, “This was bad. You did a bad job.” It’s not meant to grade people out, although organizations get graded when they’re vendors, ’cause you determine who’s gonna get the vendors contracts for the next Olympics and the next World Cup, because those are expensive deals.
[00:30:39] AJ Nash: But generally speaking, what did we do well? How do we improve? What happened that we didn’t expect? ‘Cause you have to have that. There will be the unexpected, good, bad, or indifferent. And so I here, and those tend to be pretty robust reports.
[00:30:53] AJ Nash: You made a good point that has to match the user, right? The person on the ground isn’t gonna read the 32-page PDF. if that’s today’s brief, that’s not happening. you talk about, bottom line up front, bluff reporting, right? I’m gonna read the first page.
[00:31:07] AJ Nash: Give me, give me what I need. I think different formats are really important. As you said, visualizations. I tell people all the time, I spent a lot of time building a lot of things in my career, obviously, and my little niche, I’m pretty solid with PowerPoint.
[00:31:19] AJ Nash: And people, and I’m like, “Well, ’cause I was Air Force,” so I obviously spent a lot of time doing that. Plus, officers really like shiny things. They’re great with pictures. And that was always a joke as an enlisted person, but there is a lot of value in quickly conveying information.
[00:31:33] AJ Nash: You know, you talked about being able to look at these charts, which is true, and I’m a huge fan, and this I don’t do particularly well, I’m starting to get better, but infographics are incredibly valuable to get a lot of information in front of somebody very quickly in a structured fashion. You can look at a solid infographic and have a whole briefing’s worth of information that matters to you layered right in front.
[00:31:51] AJ Nash: As much like shiny objects, the truth is efficiency matters. Especially when we’re doing security, we’re dealing with safety, we’re doing this intelligence. Efficiency matters. I think it’s really important to take the time to structure your content to match your audience.
[00:32:04] AJ Nash: Even when reporting, I generally talk about the bottom line up front. Give me an executive summary. Give me bullets, key findings, an executive summary, then more details and more still. And the more you’re reading down, that just means you had more time. That means you’re more of a, you know, you’re gonna be hands-on keyboard or hands-on ground, feet on ground.
[00:32:18] AJ Nash: The executives are gonna read the key findings, maybe that executive summary. Then they’re gonna know who to delegate the rest to and then move out, right? And that’s why we have to be able to produce that way. Somebody who skips those pieces, and I’ve seen rookies do that, and just go right into this diatribe, this long product, you’re like, “Ugh, listen, the executive’s not gonna read that.”
[00:32:33] AJ Nash: So, and now they’re either gonna dump it in AI and get a summary from AI, which hopefully will be good. but you really want it to feed that audience. We’ve talked a little bit about this, which is good, but, the World Cup is here basically, right?
[00:32:44] AJ Nash: We’re right, and you’ve done a lot of research on this topic. We’ve talked a little bit about what needed to be done in advance and some of the things going on now. But from what you’ve seen today, what is your best advice for people who are planning to attend any of the games in the US, in Canada, or in Mexico?
[00:33:02] AJ Nash: We got, obviously, but right now there’s a bunch of people that have got plane tickets making their plans to go places, that may or may not know much about the places they’re going to, right? So what about just the average person who’s planning on attending some of these games?
[00:33:16] Kevin Uniacke: I’m a little bit too simplistic, but, a sense where do some of your research and know where you’re pulling, the information from. and also, like, if you’re gonna put out assumptions, list those assumptions. because, even when I look at and think about Canada, right?
[00:33:30] Kevin Uniacke: Like, it is the most stable.
[00:33:33] Kevin Uniacke: And I know that some of the things that are coming out in the information space are, and I think the RCMP, like, the police forces, Canadian Anti-Fraud Center, they just issued a joint national warning. Like, a lot of fake tickets are coming
[00:33:46] Kevin Uniacke: Out, fraudulent travel packages, fake visa schemes.
[00:33:50] Kevin Uniacke: And so, you know, that’s a different threat than, like, a security threat, right? So, how could you understand that while Canada is per- they’re all permissive environments,
[00:33:59] Kevin Uniacke: You know, in the grand scheme. But, like, Canada’s threat profile is different in that sense, and that’s even, that’s just Canada at large.
[00:34:08] Kevin Uniacke: Whereas you look at Toronto, they saw one of their largest single day of demonstrations in, in Toronto history, not, I think it was in February. Three hundred and fifty thousand people for
[00:34:18] Kevin Uniacke: Iran solidarity, right?
[00:34:19] Kevin Uniacke: And that required from the Toronto Police than how they have protest zones or not, and spillover in geography and where that could happen will impact you as a traveler as you go up to Toronto.
[00:34:32] Kevin Uniacke: That could be way different, which has a lot of indigenous rights demonstrations instead, and it’s not attached to maybe a geopolitical issue. So, different environments there. That requires more work than maybe the venue-specific stuff that I would look at, in the U.S.
[00:34:47] Kevin Uniacke: One of the interesting reports I saw come out for MetLife is FIFA put, I think it’s a, I don’t know if it’s a ban, but no cars, no tailgating around MetLife Stadium.
[00:34:58] Kevin Uniacke: Jersey. Public transit only. Sure, they’re building a terminal, but if you attempt to drive and you’re not paying attention and trying to stay up to speed on what the new policies and what’s going on, you could be driving there for that match you saved up for and paid $1,000
[00:35:11] Kevin Uniacke: To and have nowhere to dump your car, or maybe you’re dumping your car then in a neighborhood where it might be on some cinder blocks when you come back, you know?
[00:35:19] Kevin Uniacke: And, that’s tough. and then Mexico, I mean, I think we talked a lot. You know, that does require the most specific preparation. One of the things that I appreciated when I went to OSAC just recently, the Department of State had their regional security officers there. A lot of people are worried about transit and organized criminal groups or cartel activity. And one of the things they said too is, like, Cartels in a sense, operate as big businesses. They are revenue-oriented, and they want to safeguard revenue and not draw undue attention from maybe stakeholders who would be willing to pursue them as threats if they disrupt and put at risk, in this sense, American lives if you’re an American citizen going down, right?
[00:35:58] Kevin Uniacke: One of the things that those RSOsat, incidents can’t happen and won’t happen in these travel corridors, but they’re like, A, pretty used to the amount of people going through the border, so we don’t anticipate as much issue there. But you’re probably not gonna see a lot of high-profile, intentional incidents as you go down to your venues, whether Mexico City or Guadalajara, I think is maybe a little bit more dynamic. Trying to put at ease, like did the risk environment change as we progressed. I guess what I would say, don’t be afraid to do your research. Check and validate your assumptions. Look to see where you can get expert, type of analysis to integrate in what you’re doing, and then have a plan when you go. because oftentimes, like we said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
[00:36:43] Kevin Uniacke: If you’re going to one of these big events, please do a site survey in advance and be like, “If something does go wrong, what’s my comms plan to talk to someone, a loved one or a company? Where is my bug-out location that I need to go to? How can I get there if maybe it’s no longer the metro?” Doing some advanced planning can just help you stay in a much better place, than not, and at least own some variables in advance, understanding the world is chaotic and dynamic,
[00:37:07] AJ Nash: No, 100%. I often talk to people about knowing your exit routes in advance, like a little recon. And I realize, by the way, I’m sure you do too, we’re weird when we do this. Like this is what life is like when you grow up in intel and the military, and then you’ve talked to people who aren’t and they just think, “God, you’re a horrible person.
[00:37:22] AJ Nash: Like how, you’re already thinking about bombs and where to run to? I just wanna go catch a game,” right? It’s like, well, if you don’t think about it in advance, you’re gonna panic when the time comes. It’s good to know, if you’re going out of the country, where’s the US Embassy? It would be a nice thing to know.
[00:37:32] AJ Nash: Where’s the closest embassy? What’s the contact info? It’s not that hard to put it in your phone in advance, right? Have a couple maps laid out Okay, maybe you don’t need it, maybe you seem paranoid, but when bad things happen, the people who are prepared come out better usually.
[00:37:43] Kevin Uniacke: Can I tell you one story on this preparation piece? And it’ll be pretty quick. But part of my Air Force job that I did, I was a security cooperation engagements officer. Basically, the portfolio was in Africa. We travel, work with foreign nations in the Department of State, build their capacity. So we do a lot of training. I was in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso has had an unfortunate, deteriorated security environment, a lot of coups. was doing some training there for a few weeks with a senior enlisted officer, and they had a coup. So the threat environment changed pretty quickly to where we couldn’t leave the environment.
[00:38:14] Kevin Uniacke: But as soon as… You, and you see a lot of people in trucks with machine guns on them, and you’re like, “What’s going on?” And I hear a knock at my door,
[00:38:23] Kevin Uniacke: And who had just come back from Afghanistan, so he was a little bit more oriented towards the threat environment and how to deal with it. I look at him, he’s got a backpack on, he’s got his running shoes on, he’s got a bulge in his sock, and I was like, “What is that, in your sock?” And he’s like, “Well, it’s my passport.” He’s like, “Things are going a little nuts. If we’re gonna leave, we need to probably leave now. We’re gonna go out the hotel this way.
[00:38:44] Kevin Uniacke: I, but we’re gonna go opposite of that threat environment. We’re gonna navigate there.” I had my cell phone in my hand ’cause I was setting my fantasy football lineup. I. I had no bag on, and it immediately to me was like, I didn’t have a plan.
[00:38:59] Kevin Uniacke: I, but it also was a good leadership point where I was like, I knew at that moment to defer to the expert, and I was like, “You’re in charge. We’ll have a different plan on how we do this. I’m gonna follow you tactically until we can figure out where we’re going, and we’ll move forward and deal with it then.”
[00:39:12] Kevin Uniacke: So it was an eye-opening experience to preparation, because…
[00:39:18] Kevin Uniacke: I was a captain, an O-III.
[00:39:20] Kevin Uniacke: So, you know, maybe I should have known. Yeah, yeah, you know? It’s, it’s planning. So If you, that would be my second piece of advice is, like, defer to someone who has the plan then. It doesn’t matter about or
[00:39:33] Kevin Uniacke: Any of that and worry about the rest later.
[00:39:36] AJ Nash: And that’s a very Air Force opinion, by the way, which I agree with. We’re one of the few branches… in a time of trouble, rank doesn’t matter. Who has the best idea? Who’s ready to go? Get behind them. Like, if you’re gonna stand on circumstance, you’re all gonna fall together.
[00:39:48] AJ Nash: Sometimes you just gotta recognize that person was more prepared, accept that, let’s go. we all wanna win, and we’ll figure it out later. and another point you made, I think that was really valid, you talk about the Mexican cartels. The nice thing about organized crime is that they’re organized.
[00:40:01] AJ Nash: They’re professionals. Like, as much as that seems silly, it actually is advantageous to know that as somebody who’s not a criminal, right? the chances of getting in harm’s way actually are much higher when you’re dealing with disorganized crime, random crime. Organized crime is a profession. It is a business.
[00:40:18] AJ Nash: you know, I have friends who live in Mexico and that’s one of the things they’ve said is, you know, the cartels, in some cases, I have friends who have lived in Mexico who said Actually, because I’m a, one– this person happens to be the only American in this little area, and it’s, there’s cartel-heavy area.
[00:40:31] AJ Nash: He said, “Actually, no, I learned very quickly there’s kids who watch out for me here and make sure I am safe, and if somebody messes with me, they go tell the cartel, ’cause the cartel doesn’t want something to happen to me. They don’t need the US military to come visit. They don’t need the US
[00:40:42] AJ Nash: government to get involved.”
[00:40:44] AJ Nash: They don’t need the US government involved in their operations down here. The Mexican government leaves them alone. The last thing they need is some American to show up dead on the street. and that’s an eye-opener when you realize they don’t want bad things to happen that are gonna cause them more trouble than it’s worth.
[00:40:57] AJ Nash: Cost-benefit analysis is a huge part of organized crime. And so not to say you should wander around in Guadalajara waving money around saying, “I’m an American.” That’s a pretty bad idea. But at the same time, it’s not this… The scenario’s just different, right? And it’s, I think you are more likely to find yourself in bad trouble if you end up on the wrong side of a US city at the wrong time of night than you are in some of the areas that are known for cartel, because the randomness of desperate crimes of unprofessional criminals, is harder to predict.
[00:41:27] AJ Nash: They have less cost-benefit concerns and they don’t worry as much about consequences. They’re more desperate. Things are just different. So not to say that US cities are dangerous inherently, ’cause they’re not. But I think it’s a good point, when you’re gonna travel to these places to understand what the environment is, and to know your location, to know, like you said, the right numbers to call and the right organizations to visit, and your escape routes, and then just don’t panic, right?
[00:41:48] AJ Nash: That’s an easy thing, hard to do. But I always tell people, victims tend to be the people who look like they’re gonna be victims, unfortunately. If you look like you belong, and you act like you belong without being a jerk, chances are people are just gonna leave you alone, and you’re gonna go about your business.
[00:42:01] AJ Nash: And that comes from being prepared, from having the confidence to know that if something happens, you feel like you’re gonna be able to get where you need to go, which goes all the way back to intel requirements and planning a direction and knowing things ahead of schedule and then being able to pivot as time, comes up, ’cause that does happen, right?
[00:42:17] AJ Nash: There’s no perfect answer. I think it’s preparation and situational awareness. watch the news. As you said, keep track all the way up to the day you’re gonna go to that stadium. See what’s going on in the news, see what’s going on in the traffic reports, and be prepared to adapt, leave early, all those good things.
[00:42:32] AJ Nash: It’s complicated, but people do this. Every four years there’s a FIFA World Cup and millions of people show up and generally have a pretty good time. Listen, obviously. These are huge events. We could go on and on.
[00:42:41] AJ Nash: I think we should probably wrap thank you, for taking the time, Kevin, to come and talk about this. I’m sure there’s gonna be more discussions about this going forward, and then we’ll see what the after actions look like.
[00:42:53] AJ Nash: I’m gonna close out, but are there any last thoughts you have for the audience, about either the topic today or about Cirrus, what you guys are working on? Anything that you wanna drop as a last piece before we check out today?
[00:43:05] Kevin Uniacke: I appreciate that. It’s always good conversations, right? Continue to have conversations. you know, interrogate the intelligence you’re getting and ask for transparency.
[00:43:15] Kevin Uniacke: You shouldn’t be having a black box of information you’re pulling from. and then know how to assess and evaluate any tool you’re using, so that way you can tap into, the expert analysis that can give you deep context to something that can help you out day of, like what we talked about when things are just changing very quickly ’cause you can’t get to the stadium anymore ’cause there’s a protest. So no, I don’t think I have anything else to say. I look forward to watching some of the matches from afar. unfortunately won’t be able to go to any of them, and I guess I will leave with one, Air Force little mantra, “Flexibility is the key to air power.” So hopefully it’s the key to World Cup power and safety as well, to be corny. But, no, it was great and, appreciate the time today.
[00:43:52] AJ Nash: I think you’re absolutely right, the key to air power.I think that last piece you were mentioning there about your sources is really important, right? I think we have a tough time is-dis and malinformation, people don’t know who to trust and what to trust.
[00:44:03] AJ Nash: You know, there’s been a large push to denigrate expertise somehow, and try to balance opinion with expertise as being the same, and they are not. And people who do that, do that at their own peril. You know, these are serious things. If you wanna talk about travel, you know, the State Department, the Five nations all have something similar to that.
[00:44:20] AJ Nash: It’s worth checking out, you know, if you’re gonna deal with traveling overseas. and there’s local enforcement to look at and DHS, et cetera. So I think it’s important to look at experts at times like this. It’s nothing to do with politics for those who are curious.
[00:44:30] AJ Nash: We simply need to get the best information to the right people because we all wanna be safe and have a good World Cup and a good life, right? So I think you make a great point there about transparency, right? If you read something on the internet, it doesn’t mean it’s real. If AI told you something, it doesn’t mean it’s real.
[00:44:44] AJ Nash: Check your sources. Double-check them. If it just came from somebody on Facebook randomly, it’s probably not something you wanna bet your life on. I think that’s a really valid piece to close on, and just understand this is complicated stuff that professionals are working really hard on, and more than likely, we’re gonna have a really good series of events and prepare yourself.
[00:45:00] AJ Nash: And then, you know a little bit of their own security posture as it turns out. So listen, with that in mind, again, thank you for being here. For everybody who’s listening and watching, thank you for taking the time to check out the podcast. If you like it, please feel free to like and subscribe and provide all that feedback.
[00:45:13] AJ Nash: You can check us out. You can check us out, that’s authentic and the number eight.com, and It’s /needlestack to check out the podcast or you can check out the company and the blog and the website and all those good things. you can find us on social media of course.
[00:45:25] AJ Nash: Please do give that feedback out, what people think. The show isn’t about me or Authenticate. It’s really about guests and the audience and making sure that we’re providing interesting, informative content so everybody’s a little bit safer, every day.
[00:45:36] AJ Nash: And that’s what we’re always hopingThank you to everybody out there. With that, I’m gonna go ahead and close out today’s show. This has been another episode of Needlestack.
