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
