LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 72 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Pfizer Vaccine is FDA Approved! LPRC IMPACT is going Virtual! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including China recovers faster than other countries from COVID, Companies with Trillion Dollar Value listed out, and T-mobile Personal Information was Leaked. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series. We've got joined by our co-host Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to be going through a little bit about, you know, the world and start off again, as we have during this weekly series about the pandemic and the idea that Delta, Delta Plus, Lambda, and presumably some other yet to be labeled variants are in circulation. Delta, though, just seems to be so highly transmissible

that it's overpowering even Lambda that's been spotted in the United States now in Texas, California, and possibly other places where they are sequencing those that are infected, sequencing their viral particles to determine what variant it might be. to determine what variant it might be. But it just seems that the Delta is so powerful. And we've seen places like Israel that were highly, highly vaccinated, all of a sudden be overwhelmed. We've seen places like Russia that is very thinly vaccinated, be overwhelmed by Delta.

So China by Delta. So it's obviously highly, highly transmissible, not on the order of some things, but, you know, like measles, but much more transmissible than other viruses. And certainly more than the initial native brand or whatever it was that we first got, and then the alpha variant and so on. And so we see that there was a recent test, a random sampling of UK residents that indicating that 94% of adults in the UK exhibited some COVID-19 antibodies. So somehow they'd been exposed at some point. You know, not much clarity beyond that, were they, was this a clear infection that led to disease or

whether they were vaccinated or not, but what that meant. And again, we see a lot around the vaccines about these were always designed to help us deal with serious disease. And we talked about systemic versus localized infection. The COVID-19 disease is localized. And so the vaccines that we got were designed to protect us from serious disease from that infection, excuse me, not from becoming infected. But to reduce that, we're seeing that. So what Delta variant, again, we're seeing why is it so transmissible, certainly of critical interest, you know, the viral load that is expelled from us when we cough, breathe, sneeze, talk is much higher than if we're infected with another type or an earlier variant or the original. So that's part of it, replication speed, though, once we onboard a larger dose inoculum of the viral particles that replicates much more rapidly, they believe, in our bodies, particularly, obviously, in our mouths, nose, and in our respiratory system. The spike attachment, again, may be more effective in this one, so it's more likely for a cell to be infected by the Delta variant than potentially other. These are hypotheses that they're looking at based on some of their initial data,

but to be more rigorously tested. But it's just helping us understand, again, the masking. That's why masks always had some limited utility because blocking the particles coming out of one person and going in and then blocking them going into another person because there's so many viral particles. That's why they are saying, you know, that the N95, the KN95, the surgical that's doubled up and things like that are clearly much more effective way to stop the spread from the viremic person that's shedding the particles through our respiration, the aerialized particles, the droplets, and so on. And then the same thing on the receiver end. It's blocking on that end much more effectively. The cloth may be decoration. It may have some limited effect.

It just depends, again, on the load that's coming our way and how deep a breath we take, presumably, It's coming our way and how deep a breath we take, presumably on the receiving end. So they are seeing that children are getting it. It's still very, very low rate of disease, evidently, but that many and particularly less than three year olds. And I've got a little two year old granddaughter, Lily, but are more prolific spreaders, it looks like, than teens. So more to come on, why would that be? We've also seen data around the plastic barriers and the plexiglass barriers and things like that. The key is to be outside or as close as possible replicating the outside environment where there's a large airflow exchange. We're not rebreathing the same air and certainly not rebreathing somebody's air that's full of their viral particles that they've expelled. Those are washed away or at least are diluted, right?

There's not as many viral particles, so we may not become infected or at least not get disease from the infection. aeroparticles so we may not be become infected or at least not get disease from the infection so that's part of what's going on where with some of these uh plexiglass or other barriers if they're not done properly and most evidently may not be according to some of the research that i've been looking at that blocks that airflow that reduces the air exchange in fact beyond where it was reduces the dilution maintains the heavier load or inoc, beyond where it was, reduces the dilution, maintains the heavier load or inoculum of the particles, which is not what we want. So stay tuned for that. Is there any better guidance? But again, it's science. Science is logic and observation. And the sounder the logic model and the larger, more rigorous the data collection or observation, the better study

we've got. But then again, we continue to study and learn and study and learn and that adjusts what we know and how we know it. And we all see that in everything, what we know about space or earth, biology, everything continues to evolve human behavior as more and more research is done. And that's, that's the way it should be. It's iterative. You know, we have a hypothesis, we collect data to see what it's, does it support or not support, or does it change the hypothesis in some way? And then we report what we find and it just keeps going. So that's why we feel like

we're being jerked around. And we've talked about this over the year and a half now. Let me see, there are now 99 other vaccine candidates in human trials. We update on phase one, 43 in phase two, and 32 in the large scale, 12 in emergency use authorization. But we had this week, we obviously know that the Pfizer BioNTech, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, the one that I actually got in all my family, an extended family, has now received full official FDA approval. The drug was not experimental after the phase three trials, even though people have been labeling these as experimental vaccines, but in fact, had gone through multiple phase one, two, and three trials around the world on top of the natural studies, the surveillance studies of those that have been vaccinated and so on. The most surveillance in history, that's why you've heard little possible side effects being reported here and there because everybody that's

vaccinated and everybody that's been through these human trials have been tracked. The human trials one have been tracked. And so with so many phase one, two, and three trials around the entire world, with such rigorous follow-up and tracking of those that participated in those trials, they were able to uncover and look at and then find that they are very, very, very, very, very low risk compared to the benefit and move on. And so these vaccines, again, are some of the most rigorously, if not the most rigorously and extensively and exhaustively tested in the history of the world.

They just came about faster because they adapted existing technology and ramped up production of the vaccine and distribution much, much, much faster. In fact, in parallel with the development. So that's where we are right now. The vaccines, again, are designed to boost the specific, you know, mouth and nasal antibodies, and then also generate some cellular response. So that we have the T cells and killer T cells, helper T cells, the B cells, and so on, so that our body's ready to go into action much faster to clear viral particles from our mouth and nasal and so on before it even gets into our body if possible. So we can become infected, but it's helping to clear that infection

and then also keep us from getting symptomatic disease or if we do less symptomatic. That's what they're designed to do. In Israel, one of the most heavily vaccinated, but studied, they found that as cases have continued to surge, but that the unvaccinated were nine times, nine times more likely to have serious disease than the unvaccinated, I'm sorry, than vaccinated people. And that the vaccinated people, again, were typically over 60, in fact, much older than 60, had comorbidities, and so on. So we see the same thing over and over. I just saw a report last night from the University of Florida UF Health in Gainesville and Jacksonville, as well as North Florida Regional, In Gainesville and Jacksonville, as well as North Florida Regional, reporting again that their ICU beds were becoming full or were overwhelmingly over 60 or 70 with comorbidities, some with very serious comorbidities.

So we see this again continues as a pandemic of the unvaccinated in so many ways. And just like we saw before we had vaccines, this was a pandemic of all of us that were the unvaccinated. saw before we had vaccines. This was a pandemic of all of us that were the unvaccinated. So looking and moving on to, we've got about 175 million Americans fully vaccinated at this point. That's at least 16 and above, in some cases, 12 and above. But the overall United States population is about 52% fully vaccinated now, and that includes children. So worldwide, there are now 2 billion humans that are fully vaccinated with a vaccine. We obviously need to continue to do that better. It's just more difficult and very rural environments in those environments that just don't have the medical or transport, certainly not the refrigeration

infrastructure. And that's why we go back to the idea of 99 more vaccine candidates coming along. In fact, including some of those that are already out there that just don't require that heavy duty refrigeration and administration. And even better, those are one dose instead of two or now possibly three doses. And there are some three-dose vaccines out there, by the way, that have been around the world that are being used. Some of the therapies, you know, they continue to look at. There's an anti-cholesterol phenophilibrate.

I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly, that destabilizes the spike protein. We talked about science being logic and evidence or logic and observation, logic and data. That's where the logic part is. What is the mechanism of action? is what is the mechanism of action? In this case, they're describing the mechanism is that destabilizes a spike protein. So that's not as readily capable of attaching and entering a human cell, right? So the vaccines don't go into nuclei. So they can't do these things that were the false narrative out there, but the coronavirus does. So just stay tuned that these things are different. does. So just stay tuned that they, these things are different. You know, again, they're putting out warnings on ivermectin, which our, our family for seven, eight generations in the state of Florida have used ivermectin and other anti, in this case, we use them as wormers with our cattle

a couple of times a year. We actually rotate the warmers that we use or the antiparasitics that we use so that they don't build up immunity, the parasites themselves. And so there must be some logic model that I did not look into about why ivermectin might work, but that the evidence right now is not supporting that it does, in fact, work better than random, right? We're always looking for better than random results. That's what we look for in statistical inference. Some interesting things out there too that are, Orlando is so besieged, Orlando, Florida, by the COVID-19 disease that,

and so many people are hospitalized, particularly in ICU or critical care units that require different types of oxygen. And so the people are hospitalized, particularly in ICU or critical care units that require different types of oxygen. And so the Orlando mayor and commission have come out pleading with and even now moving to possibly fining people for using water or using very much water. We're used to that during the ongoing hurricanes to the years and decades. the ongoing hurricanes to the years and decades, but with the diminishing water supply in the state of Florida anyway from such massive immigration into the state, population growth, that has a limited water supply anyway, which isn't going to last much longer,

but they use liquefied oxygen to purify the water in the system, liquefied oxygen to purify the water in the system. And so they need that oxygen to treat so many surging COVID-19 patients to keep them alive. So something that I had not thought about or heard about until now that's made world news. So some of the vaccine resistors, there's been more and more research, social behavioral research on that. Part of what's going on now in different communities, people of and not of color, but one thing that's happening is people attaching this high, very strong moral identity to a stance. And in this case, a stance has become vaccination against COVID-19 disease. And so how do you address that?

How do you help people understand that there's not really a moral identity to that? We're all putting seatbelts on and we wear pants and shoes into restaurants. thousands of things that we do every day to live with others, including taking vaccines for all kind of dreaded diseases, including this COVID-19 disease that's now killed close to 700,000 Americans. And I think I'm hopefully like everybody else, we want freedom to choose, We want freedom to choose, but we want to be able to make our own decisions. 19 disease that comes from the SARS-CoV-2 virus are not vaccinated because the immune systems were not activated and alerted to this so that they're ready to go when an infection occurs. So that's it try to I'll get off this high horse but I think like all of us we want to get out of this pandemic and the way to do that is to or if it it becomes endemic, in other words, it's here forever, like the flu and colds and RSV and other things that so many of us have been vaccinated and our immune system has been alerted to that, that we're not so affected by it. We have a supply chain summit coming up at LPRC, switching real quickly here.

We're excited about it. Good panelists, great data. We've got some past studies actually that we were looking at that are pretty neat that weren't ever put out en the results or to dig into a study. If we come out with a study, there are an incredible amount of results in there that just aren't even discussed. People, we will just talk about the highlights. So we're excited about the supply chain summit. We've already had the LPRC Violent Crime Summit and the Product Protection Summits, both of which we've posted into the LPRC Knowledge Center. So we're excited. The 2021 version of LPRC Impact now looks to be for safety reasons. And because so many major retailers are now not allowing their executives to travel for business or only for very, very restricted reasons, that we're going to go virtual on this.

We'll still have physical capabilities should things change. But right now we're looking at our main stage in learning labs, all being virtual. All of our incredible content, our speakers are all briefed and ready to go, whether it was physical or virtual. But what we're going to do is in our dry runs, we record those. But what we're going to do is in our dry runs, we record those. We also then will have many, many or not, if not most, will be live so that we can have interaction with participants. Last year, we had over 1,900, close to 2,000 LPRC impact participants. We normally have approximately 400 plus when we have impact physically on the University of Florida campus.

But what we're doing, though, is blending in and carrying things out. We have a program called Strategy App for what we call the ones and twos. In other words, the pyramid heads, the vice president or senior directors, directors that lead an LP or AP organization, and then one or two of their top people that get involved in strategy at where we curate some of the top, top content at a more strategic level for them. So that will be separate. We also always have kickoff in mid to late January. That conference, we have Ignite that we do late February, early March. We have the three summits I just mentioned, supply chain protection, violent crime, and product protection, anti-shoplifting, and ORC. Those three summits. And then again, we have webinars. So between this impact and next

impact in 2022, there will be at least six LPRC events. So what we'll be able to do is blend in and curate at some point a series of physical or in-person events so that our LPRC sponsors can sponsor and participate and engage with customers and prospects with fellow members as sponsors, as well as obviously all of our retailers can engage with each other. sponsors as well as obviously all of our retailers can engage with each other. So we're emphasizing 2021 impact is an amazing experience, learning experience, engagement experience in the same way that it was last year, but then blending and carrying things forward throughout 22 so that there'll be a lot of physical visits and engagements. And this week we've got LiveVue in, we've got Sensormatic in, putting in technologies.

Again, we had Bosch in, we've had Axios come in. We just, we have a full, we've got, we've had Endime and it just goes, the list goes on probably at least 30 or 40 companies have come in and put their latest, greatest technology into our engagement lab, plus a lot of technology now going outside in the overall block that we call Safer Places Lab that's around the UF Innovate building. So a lot going on, dozens of projects that are underway by McKenzie and Corey and Kenna. We've added new team members we'll talk about later as LPRC continues

to grow with new membership. So that's a lot and I'm going to now go over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony. Thank you very much, Reed, and yes, that was a lot and really appreciate the deep insights in terms of what's happening with COVID and where we're going next. So let me move on to some other data from around the world. And I'll start with building on the pandemic. There was an interesting infographic from Visual Capitalist this week looking at when will countries recover from the pandemic in terms of GDP per capita by country. So number one country to recover was actually China. They

recovered last year. They came out of the pandemic in Q2 2020. Surprisingly to me was Turkey recovered in Q3 2020. So they were early recoverers. In 2021, Lithuania was first in Q1 2020, In 2021, Lithuania was first in Q1 2020. In Q2 2020, and this is countries that returned to pre-COVID or 2019 levels on GDP per capita. So in Q2 2020, Ireland, South Korea, Russia, and USA recovered. Korea, Russia, and USA recovered in Q3 this quarter 2020, recovering are Chile, Finland, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, and Poland, and projected to recover in Q4 2020 are Denmark, Estonia, Germany, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Slovakia, and Sweden. Canada actually recovers later. They recover in Q1 2022. UK and Italy in Q2 2022, and Brazil and France in Q3 2022. The laggards, which again was surprising to me, are Spain, which is not expected to return to pre-COVID-19 levels until Q2 2023, and Mexico in Q3 2023. And at the bottom of the list

is Argentina. And this was a shock, but they're not expected to recover to pre-COVID-19 levels until Q2 2026. So a lot of work to do yet to recover from the pandemic on a global level. And it is a global pandemic. Shifting to a lighter note, also from Visual Capitalist this week, they listed the companies that have joined the Trillion Dollar Evaluation Club. So this is from data as of August 17, 2021. Number one is Apple, which is valued at an astounding $2.5 trillion. Number two is Microsoft at $2.2 trillion. Number three is Saudi Aramco,

valued at $1.9 trillion. Number four is Alphabet Google at $1.8 trillion. Number five is Amazon, which is valued at $1.8 trillion. Number five is Amazon, which is value at 1.6 trillion. Number six is Facebook at 1 trillion. The companies that are looming in the background at about $500 billion and rising that potentially could get to the trillion are Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, TMC from Taiwan, Tencent from China, and Visa.

Note from all these, the heavy presence of U.S. companies, especially innovation companies from Silicon Valley. So it's interesting how innovation is driving really, really high valuation. And I'm going to conclude this week with a summary of the just published new retail shrink survey from the NRF. This is U.S. retail shrink survey and security survey. And today I'll provide an audio summary of it. So according to their executive summary from the 2021 retail security surveys, participating retailers at the pandemic resulted in an increase in overall risk

in their organization. It also brought new areas of prominence as consumers had to find new ways of getting products and criminals new channels to exploit. Buy online, pick up in store and other multi-channel methods of shopping became ripe targets. This comes as the average loss per shoplifting

and robbery incidents has decreased. The increasingly risky environment has repercussions that extend well beyond the company's bottom line into actual trends against employees and customers, it is increasingly clear that greater support is needed from lawmakers and law enforcement, especially as it relates to organized retail crime. LP professionals, retailers are not sitting idly while all these changes occur. They have brought attention to the continuing increase in organized retail crime, cybercrime, which Thomas talked about a lot on this podcast, and shootings and other violent incidents in malls and stores.

They continue to invest in multiple resources. Half of the respondents said their organization were adding technology, resources, and capital compared to last year, but there's also a lot more focus on hiring additional personnel. As the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to evolve, one thing is clear, they concluded, the retail risk environment is more complex and more costly than ever. Despite the new avenues for shrink, the overall shrink remained relatively steady compared to 2019. While that seems to be good news, it's worth noting, as they do in the survey,

that 2020 was above the five-year average. The shrink rate also seems to be cut fairly a wide path across retailers, with fewer retailers reporting shrink rates below a half a percent. Health pre-professionals have a growing list of threats on their radar. When asked what areas are the greatest priority over the last five years, health pre- professionals were most likely to point them off and store violence alongside with cyber incidents and organized retail crime. More than two-thirds said the pandemic increased risk

for their organization. Topping the list was workplace violence at 61% and organized retail crime at 57%. At the same time, almost 1 in 5, 18%, said they actually saw a slight or significant reduction in threats this year. Employed theft was the largest area of reduction, with one-third saying that this had reduced slightly or significantly. Shoplifting also was a reduced threat for about 30% of the respondents. Cargo theft was the largest area which the pandemic had no impact, with almost 7 in 10 reporting no change.

Not surprisingly, compared to the previous year, more than twice of the respondents report that multi-channel sales were the fastest growing source of fraud. report that multi-channel sales were the fastest growing source of fraud. Overall, for employee apprehensions was down in 2020 compared to 2019, but about on par to 2018. Terminations were slightly lower than 2019. The number of apprehensions, prosecution, and civil demands all fell to new lows in 2020. Our possessions were down to 507 on average in 2020 versus 688 in 2019. About 69% of retailers said they saw an increase in organized retail crime over the past year. year, they cite reasons such as COVID-19, policing, changes in sentencing guidelines, and the growth of online marketplaces for the increase in ORC activity. Most alarming, retailers report these gangs are more aggressive and violent than in past years. 65% noted an increase in violence, while 37% said ORC gangs were much more aggressive than in the past. Half reported the organization were allocating additional technology resources, and another 50%

said they were allocating additional capital specifically for LP equipment. So a good place in summary to explore all this new technology that is being deployed is at LPRC. So I would encourage all of you to join us. So let me turn it over to Tom. T-Mobile hack. And I'm sure that if you read the news or follow the news, you probably saw one of the many articles that have been thrown out there. And the range is pretty significant of how the size and scope of this attack. I've seen articles that say 8.7 million customers, up to 100 million customers have been affected. What I see through all my research is it's roughly about 35 million customers. So it's a big number, but this is a unique breach in the sense that in this, you know, regardless of the amount, because it isn't confirmed yet, let's say that it is 35 million customers. There are really two things that are different than most breaches. One, this hacker or hackers seems to be there from Belarus or Russia,

and it's actually pretty easy to get in touch with and talking about this. And they're claiming that they have date of birth, unencrypted social security number, license, driver's license information, phone number, address, basically all of the pedigree unencrypted. But the uniqueness here is they also have full text pins, so an actual unencrypted pin, as well as an IMSI and IMEI number. So really, this is concerning because today, the bulk of folks that use two-factor authentication throughout the United States use two-factor authentication with SMS, meaning if I use two-factor authentication to get a password, I get a text message to my cell phone number. This vulnerability, in theory, could allow someone to actually go in and have their number changed to their SIM card to get that information.

Why I say in theory, because T-Mobile has, while they've not publicly addressed the specifics of the loss, they have said, if you're a T-Mobile customer, you can reach out and put additional controls in to make sure someone can't change your SIM. I actually worked with someone I know personally who has a T-Mobile account, and I was able to validate that for that individual, the information is available. All of those pieces of information are available with their permission. I just said, hey, can I use your telephone number to see what I can identify? And all of her personal information, including her PIN and IMEI was available for sale. So this actually, in some cases, really pushes the envelope on two-factor authentication. My recommendation to anybody that has a T-Mobile telephone number is to reach out to T-Mobile

and absolutely get those extra safeguards put in place. And then this might be the time to switch your two-factor authentication from an SMS based to an app based authentication methodology. So most major service providers allow you, Gmail, for instance, most banks allow you to use an authentication app. There are several out there. Microsoft has one, Google has one. And then basically, as opposed to getting an SMS text message with that little code to log in, you actually go to an app to generate that code. Certainly a more safe, secure way, because in

theory, someone would actually get your device or figure out a very complex algorithm. And today, these complex algorithms would take years to figure out. So that would be the safety net. Why I think this breach is concerning is because I believe, and Reid speaks about mass fatigue all the time, we're at a phase of breach fatigue. There are breaches that are announced almost weekly at this point,

sometimes a couple of times a week, and people have kind of accepted it as a new norm. And when I say that I'm making a general statement, but it isn't uncommon for you to get a notification that you have some sort of compromised data. It's kind of the norm. And I think we become desensitized to the risk that's associated with it.

So we often talk about the importance of using different passwords. I think this lays the importance of using different pin numbers. So your ATM pin number should not be the pin number for your cell phone carrier and vice versa because of the risk that this information, if it ever does get out, is there. And then additionally, while I certainly recommend two-factor authentication, if SMS is the only option to do that, this also kind of shows the weakness of SMS authentication.

And I do think that based on some of the things that I'm reading in the research, this will also lead to other legislation. It is completely unacceptable for a breach to have unhashed, unencrypted numbers, like pin numbers available. So there are laws, GDRP, the California Protection Act, there are a whole bunch of laws that protect PII, but I can tell you that when this goes and continues to go on, there will be a lot of changes throughout probably a legislation standpoint and also from an accountability standpoint as a corporation because the data was free and clear, meaning that it wasn't hashed and encrypted. was free and clear, meaning that it wasn't hashed and encrypted. All of this is somewhat anecdotal because although I was able to validate one person, I can't say with any certainty how big this breach is, but it's certainly in the millions and it certainly opens up the door for the importance of to not fall victim of breach fatigue and make sure that if you did get that notification,

go ahead and take whatever measures you can to keep yourself safe. The individuals or individual that did this, that was responsible for this breach is very, very talkative on Twitter. So it's not hard to find this person. And actually, if you have T-Mobile, you could even validate whether or not they have your information. So this is, I would equate this probably to the 2015 Experian breach for the level of exposure that it puts to folks. And to put some context, that breach in 2015, I believe, you know, 15 million people were applied for the protection piece of it. So it's a significant size breach if it's 36 million or more. Even if it was 10 million, it really puts us in danger. And I'll wrap up with, just to clarify, SIM swapping attacks, which is the methodology to get around an SMS two-factor authentication, have been on the rise for years,

but require a fair amount of social engineering. They require a fair amount of talking and phone conversations. With this added information, it doesn't require much engineering because all of that information is somewhat readily available. I do believe that we will see, similarly to some of these other breaches, a greater degree of law enforcement scrutiny to go after these individuals. And I think this individual that's very talkative on the internet about what his group or he did individually will actually probably at some point be apprehended because he's giving a lot of information and talking. If he's in Belarus or Russia, it may take some back channel government things to happen. But I definitely think that there's something that will come out of this if he continues, if he doesn't go dark,

if you will. There is no evidence to support that anybody's bought this data yet. But in theory, we may never know whether this data was distributed at this point. So switching gears a little bit to a topic that I don't think we've talked about in a lot of detail, but really related to ISIS. So in the news and through the central intelligence channels, and this was something that the news covered more about the Afghanistan situation and the risk of a terror threat on the airport in Kabul right now from a group called ISIS-K. I don't know that we've talked about ISIS-K on the podcast. I know we've talked about ISIS and some other things. This group has kind of emerged out of the Iran and Syria area. It's an offshoot group, and they actually, you know, very credible intelligence that they would make an attempt on the airport and either as a suicide bomber or a mortar attack. So from a geopolitical standpoint,

the risk here is this is a offshoot of ISIS. And while there are no direct threats to the United States, we have to be mindful of as this group becomes evident outside of the United States, there is risk. So we'll continue to monitor this situation. And the ISIS-K group is self-proclaimed branch of the terror group, so it's kind of an offshoot. It has been around in Syria, Iran, and Iraq for a while. for a while. While they are not directly affiliated with ISIS, they have the same ideological ideas and antics. Their relationship isn't really clear and it hasn't entirely been known what their relationship is to the ISIS that we all know, basically. The membership is small in relative to the other groups. But in some cases, the risk here is that when you think of these small offshoot groups,

they sometimes are more challenging. And I think Reid and I and Tony had talked about this back when these subset groups that don't, that they're ideological versus actually organized sometimes have more risk. So through the Central Intelligence Channel, all of the threats are directed towards US citizens outside of the United States. But I think it's important just to know that we'll continue to watch it. And if necessary, we'll add it to the fusion net. But as we're sitting here in the United States today, dealing with COVID and all these other things, there are some significant geopolitical things that are occurring that could potentially bubble up in the US and we'll continue to watch that. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Reid.

All right, well, thanks so much, Tom, for that excellent information. Thank you, Tony, as well. Good stuff. for that excellent information. Thank you, Tony, as well. Good stuff. So again, to everybody out there, please stay in touch, lpresearch.org, operations at lpresearch.org. Best way to get ahold of us. So stay safe, stay connected, and signing off from Gainesville. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only

and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.