As South Korea prepares to host the 2018 Winter Olympics just a short drive from its border with North Korea, we sit down to discuss security at the games in this episode of the podcast.
From heightened political tension with North Korea to the ongoing security threats facing every iteration of the games, Stratfor Chief Security Office Fred Burton shares his experience working security at the Olympics during his time with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. He’s joined by Stratfor Worldview contributor Austin Duckworth, a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Duckworth’s work focuses on the intersection of security, international politics and sports.
Related Reading
Korea’s Place in History by Rodger Baker
Who Will Protect the Next Olympics From North Korea by Austin Duckworth
Threat Lens 2018 Annual Forecast - An Excerpt
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Transcript
Emily Hawthorne [00:00:02] I'm Emily Hawthorne, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at Stratfor, and this podcast is brought to you by Stratfor Worldview, the world's leading geopolitical intelligence platform. Individual, team, and enterprise memberships are available at worldview.stratfor.com/subscribe.
Fred Burton [00:00:30] You cannot expect the South Koreans to protect everything so those venues outside of the protective umbrella, those are the kinds of places that if I was sitting in the South Koreans' chairs, I would be worried about.
Ben Sheen [00:00:55] Welcome to the Stratfor podcast focused on geopolitics and world affairs from Stratfor.com. I'm your host, Ben Sheen. With the 2018 Winter Olympic Games coming up, along with the fact that the games are being held a relatively short drive from the border with North and South Korea, we wanted to sit down and discuss security. In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by Stratfor Chief Security Officer Fred Burton who has firsthand experience working security at past Olympic games from his career with the US Diplomatic Security Service. Also with us is Austin Duckworth, a doctoral student of the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas in Austin. Duckworth's also a Stratfor Worldview contributor who examines the intersection of security, international politics, and sports. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Austin, Fred, thank you so much for joining me here today to talk about the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.
Fred Burton [00:01:51] Thanks for having me Ben.
Austin Duckworth [00:01:52] Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.
Ben Sheen [00:01:54] Now gents, as we know, South Korea's hosting the 23rd Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang and they're going to be running from 9th of February to the 25th this year. Now clearly things are a little tense in the Korean Peninsula. From a security perspective, how do we think the International Olympic Committee is going to handle the buildup to the games in terms of making sure that everyone's safe?
Fred Burton [00:02:14] From my end Ben, having worked Olympic events, I was in Atlanta when the bomb went off I'm afraid, at Centennial Park while we were protecting the Olympic athletes there. Times have changed significantly and the international liaison, as you and I were chatting in the break room earlier today, the State Department, specifically the Diplomatic Security Service, works hand in glove with the FBI National Special Events teams. You have tremendous liaison amongst the Five Eyes countries to ensure that the world is scraped for any kind of potential terrorist threat that could possibly surface and impact the Games. And then for several months behind the scenes, the State Department through the Regional Security Office in Seoul has been working with the South Koreans to ensure that they have all the intelligence and security support that they possibly could have so this venue site and the outlier events that I used to wring my hands about and these kinds of special events, they'll be locked down. And with the world's attention on this event I have no doubt that the intelligence community of many nations will ensure that we have a safe and secure Olympic Games.
Ben Sheen [00:03:35] And it's interesting how, that we've reached this state of affairs today where such an emphasis is placed on security for the event for the athletes, because it wasn't always that way was it? I know for a long time the IOC, they had this conviction that politics and sports shouldn't mix so there wasn't really much consideration given to security. And then obviously 1972 with Munich, the incident that occurred there really changed a lot of people's minds. What do you think about that Austin?
Austin Duckworth [00:04:00] Basically '72 is that moment for people watching, the Olympic Games and politics still mix. For the IOC, they actually take about another decade or so to really take any real consideration about how security should work, what their role is, what responsibility do we have to liaise, as Fred was just talking about, with other nations to try and prevent an attack? Basically their policy was, we don't handle security, countries handle it by themselves. That's the big change that you've really seen over the past 30-ish years is that the IOC actually takes a role and tries to handle as much as it can with not having any real security arm, to prevent something from happening.
Fred Burton [00:04:45] One of the more interesting aspects that takes place, it's been my experience behind the scenes with these events, Austin and Ben, are for example, when we were in Atlanta for the Olympics we had a tremendous amount of political pressure placed upon us by the government of Israel to ensure that the Israeli athletes were protected to a extraordinary measure to prevent those Munich events. And the Israelis were quite good at reminding us of Munich which you know, any student of terrorism history understands and that certainly was a game changer. And one of our duties was to ensure the Israelis, specifically the Shin Bet, that look, we've got every t crossed and i dotted here, and rest assured we're not going to let anything happen to the Israeli athletes as well. Behind the scenes there's always little spats between the different nations as to making sure that their athletes are covered, but I have faith in the process, I have faith in the system, and with the renewed focus of making sure in today's post-9/11 world that all these kinds of special events, especially the Olympics, come off without a hitch and I have no doubt this one will too.
Ben Sheen [00:05:58] And you mentioned a key point earlier Fred about the coordination and cooperation that goes on between nations to share their intelligence and security assets when it comes to preventing an attack. I know that certainly what will be on everyone's minds is the fact that the location of the event where it's being held is right about 100 miles away from North Korea. I mean clearly Kim Jong-un and his antics with his missile development program, that's got a lot of people's hackles up. So what extent do we think that that spectre is going to loom over this Olympic Games?
Fred Burton [00:06:28] I would look at it as certainly a protective intelligence challenge if I was saddled to be out there for this event. Let's face it, you know from your days in the British military that governments like to have contingency plans. Literally one of the things I would be thinking about is God forbid there's some sort of skirmish or outbreak that starts to unfold, how are we going to either hunker down or evacuate the athletes from the Olympic Village? Those are the kinds of things that will be gameboarded out from a worst case scenario with failure points looked at to make sure that they have the resources in place and quietly behind the scenes. And that includes to prevent things such as hostage takings that might take place. Who's going to deconflict that? Who's going to take the lead on that? Because it's one thing that I've learned in looking at and investigating and managing international terrorism events, whenever you have events whether it be such as an Achille Lauro hijacking or like we had at Centennial Park in Atlanta with the bombing, you have international visitors that potentially could be hurt. Every nation state is worried about the protection of their citizens so this falls down upon a host government responsibility. At the end of the day it's the South Koreans but the South Koreans are getting a tremendous amount of support behind the scenes.
Ben Sheen [00:08:01] We'll get back to our conversation about security at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in just one moment. But the intersection of security and geopolitics is a field we dedicate a lot of attention to at Stratfor Worldview. And even more so with Stratfor Threat Lens, our enterprise level service to help global organizations identify and mitigate threats to their people, assets, and interests around the world. Threat Lens just published its forecast for key security trends in 2018 and Vice President of Tactical Analysis Scott Stewart highlighted a few key points from the forecast in a recent briefing. Here's a quick excerpt looking at a few of our core trends from our Threat Lens team and what they'll be watching for this coming year.
Stratfor Threat Lens Team [00:08:43] As we're looking at many of the things that are going to happen in this next year, there are some things that we believe that are going to impact businesses and really individuals and consumers themselves. In the realm of really cyber threats, one of the things that we're looking for in this coming year is not only a trend that we talked about last year in the continuation of really very very targeted fishing and ransomware attacks. But we also believe that this year we're going to see the emergence of cyber criminals really attacking the smart speaker home assistant type devices. You know, the Alexas and the Google Home type devices. There's been a strong pattern over many years of hackers targeting devices as they become more ubiquitous and more common and certainly last year was the year of these things being introduced and we believe this year is going to be the year of them being exploited. This brings in a lot of really severe consequences for families who are going to have these things in their homes that are going to basically equate to the internet of spy devices instead of the internet of things. Another trend that we're looking at in this coming year is really the globalization of the drone threat in terrorism. We have seen the Islamic state and even the PKK and some other groups attempting to use drones on the battlefield with limited success. Really these drones, even in war zones, have been of more propaganda value and scare value than actual tactical utility. Still, we believe that we're going to see drone attacks attempted in the West,
Stratfor Threat Lens Team [00:10:33] probably places like Europe, the US, Australia, and it doesn't necessarily just have to be Jihadists either. We don't think that these drone attacks are going to be very successful. We see them again, being more of a shock item or a scare item than an actual efficient weapon system at this point. Another thing that we believe is going to happen this year, well we know that there's going to be the World Cup in Russia in 2018 and we believe that holding the World Cup in Russia is going to provide the Russians and Russian cyber criminals with just a field day for espionage activity both traditional espionage in the terms of the Russian government, but also industrial espionage and even cyber crime targeting attendees and companies that are going to be over in Russia for the World Cup. We're really recommending that any of our listeners and clients who are going over for the World Cup really practice very very careful cyber hygiene as they're going to Russia. Obviously don't take anything you don't need to take and perhaps even consider taking burner phones and devices as you go.
Ben Sheen [00:11:47] If you'd like to learn more about Stratfor Threat Lens' broader forecast for key security trends in 2018, we'll include some links in the show notes. Now, back to our conversation with Stratfor's Fred Burton and Austin Duckworth about security at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Austin, do you think there are any other ways in which North Korea could actually attempt to disrupt the Games?
Austin Duckworth [00:12:14] Yes and no. One of the fears that they've had in the past was that North Korea won't attack the Games because they cannot risk their international standing, especially if they have close allies competing at the Games. So what could they potentially do? Something that they worried about around Seoul in '88 was basically what they called terrorism by proxy, having another group with North Korean funding or aid going in and attacking the Games and it basically accomplishes what North Korea wants which is taking away from South Korea having a successful Games and maybe looking good, and it gets North Korea away from the international approbation. I've not seen anything recently that makes me think that will happen now. There was mention of a recent cyber attack on something around the, I think it was the Olympic Village, but other than that it's been so focused on will North Korea actually compete, there hasn't been much discussion over the non-North Korean threats.
Fred Burton [00:13:17] I would like to add Ben, to Austin's comments. Along that line is that when you have these kinds of backdrops take place at these events, whether it be an Israeli-Palestinian peace process or Bosnian-Serb kind of problems in years gone by, all the agents that are there, all the protective teams that are there, they look at those different athletes from those nation states that are potentially politically sensitive. In this case let's say the North Koreans send a half a dozen athletes and there will be specific threat assessments written for each country. For example, you're going to have the tracking and the matrix from a threat assessment perspective to say, "Okay, we have the North Korean at a venue that also has an Israeli that also has a Russian." And that's the kind of granularity that does take place behind the scenes to ensure that for example, the South Koreans, the last thing they want is anything to happen to the North Korean athletes on their watch or on their patch, on their turf. The Americans are always viewed as high-threat behind the scenes, the British athletes. You will have renewed focus on venue sites where all of these countries might comingle and mix because you're also worried about that outlier, you're worried about that mentally disturbed phenomena that could potentially pose itself. Someone perhaps, God forbid, trying to set themselves on fire, protesters trying to disrupt events that take place, so the athletes from these kinds of controversial or geopolitically sensitive countries
Fred Burton [00:14:58] during this time period, will have laser-focused attention by the special agents assigned to guard them.
Ben Sheen [00:15:03] And it's important to mention as well, we exist in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, and there's a multitude of threats out there not just across the border in North Korea looking at potentially expanding their nuclear missile capability, but also in places like Iraq where you have the gradual breakdown of the Islamic State, and again one of Stratfor's long-term trends here is that you will see lots of splinter groups break out and possibly form a proliferated diverse threat there. There's a lot to keep the intelligence and security specialists awake overnight.
Fred Burton [00:15:33] Without a doubt, I mean I can vividly recall from Atlanta and I hate to keep harping on that one but it's the one that's most vivid in my mind, I can't remember if it was the night before the opening ceremonies but we had the plane crash of TWA 800 out of New York which of course, the reaction from Washington was this had to be terrorism, this had to be somehow timed to disrupt the Olympic Games. The IC, the intelligence community of the Five Eyes nations will be looking at this, looking for those kinds of signals as well. And the one thing I learned from a tactical takeaway in Atlanta is you cannot expect the South Koreans to protect everything. Those venues outside of the protective umbrella like Centennial Park in Atlanta was outside of our protective umbrella, those are the kinds of places that if I was sitting in the South Koreans' chairs I would be worried about, meaning hotels, bars, restaurants, because a splinter group could carry out potentially some sort of disruption or attack that then would captivate the media's attention.
Austin Duckworth [00:16:46] Fred, in Atlanta, did you work with other international intelligence agencies to help with security?
Fred Burton [00:16:55] No, and that's a very good question, meaning the only intelligence agencies that made a strong push to ensure that their athletes had special attention was the Israelis. But what we did Austin, behind the scenes obviously, is the State Department, the CIA, the FBI put together a good threat assessment looking at all the different variables. But post '88 we learned a lot of lessons after the Centennial Park bombing and now you have a whole group of special event managers, not only within the State Department but at the FBI and the Secret Service. This is much like all the three of us on this podcast today. We are working on the next Olympics as soon as the last one is over. Literally for years now behind the scenes there's been contingency plannings and meetings and offers of help so that's why I'm much more confident that times have changed to the point that they've got everything well in hand.
Ben Sheen [00:18:01] That's a good place to wrap up. Before we do, Austin I'd like to ask you do you think the North Koreans will be participating this year and if they do, are there any events you'd expect them to be particularly strong in?
Austin Duckworth [00:18:12] The only one they've qualified in is ice skating and I believe it's pairs ice skating, it's a man and a woman. The latest news coming out in the last day or so has been that they are actually trying to figure out how the cheerleading squads are going to work, if they're going to cheer together or separately.
Ben Sheen [00:18:33] Well that's certainly something to look forward to. Austin, Fred, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Austin Duckworth [00:18:38] Thank you Ben.
Fred Burton [00:18:39] Thank you Ben and Austin.
Ben Sheen [00:18:45] That's all the time we have for this episode of the Stratfor podcast. If you'd like to learn more about security dynamics and concerns of the upcoming Olympic Games in South Korea, or even about our 2018 annual forecast from Stratfor Threat Lens, we'll include links to related analyses in our show notes. You can also find a complete interactive transcript of this conversation on our podcast page at Stratfor Worldview. That's at worldview.stratfor.com/media/podcasts. And if you're not already a Worldview member, be sure to click on the subscribe button to learn about individual, team, and enterprise level access. Worldview members can also contribute to this conversation and engage with Stratfor's analysts, editors, and contributors in our members-only forum. We also enjoy hearing your feedback on the podcast. If you have a comment or an idea for a future episode of the podcast, drop us an email at podcast@stratfor.com or give us a call at 1-512-744-4300 extension 3917 to leave us a message. If you have a moment, we'd also love it if you could leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. We appreciate your feedback and those reviews help others discover the podcast. Thanks once again for joining us, and for more geopolitical intelligence, analysis, and forecasting that reveal the underlying significance and future implications of emerging world events, follow us on Twitter @Stratfor.
