OUR PICKSRethinking ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ | Nightmarishly Efficient Future of Drone Warfare | Updating Critical Infrastructure Security, and more

Published 23 November 2022

··Jewish Community Security Organization in UK Says It Discovered N.Y. Synagogue Threats
British organization that tracks antisemitic incidents key to foiling N.Y. synagogue plot

··Rethinking ‘Run, Hide, Fight’
Our mass-shooting guidance may be woefully out of date

··America’s Federal Government Has Ruthlessly Crushed Organized Crime
But there are some unintended consequences of this success

··The Tiny and Nightmarishly Efficient Future of Drone Warfare
Russia’s war on Ukraine has given us just a peek of the world to come

··Manchester Arena Terrorist Attack Report Shows Why Emergency Service Staff Must Be Well Trained
Public inquiry report makes for depressing reading

··5 Ways to Update Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Policy in an Era of Strategic Risk
Adversaries now threaten U.S. critical infrastructure

··What’s in the Commerce Department’s Recent Export Controls on Technology Bound for China?
China is denied access to advanced semiconductors, supercomputers, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment

··UN Counterterrorism and Technology: What Role for Human Rights in Security?
Preventing the exploitation of ICT and related technologies for terrorist purposes

Jewish Community Security Organization in UK Says It Discovered N.Y. Synagogue Threats  (Bridget Johnson, HSToday)
The Community Service Trust (CST), a British organization that tracks antisemitic incidents, says it discovered and passed to their American counterparts the online threats that led to the arrest of two men charged with threatening New York synagogues.
Christopher Brown, 21, of Aquebogue, N.Y., and Matthew Mahrer, 22, of Manhattan were arrested Saturday by MTA police at Penn Station.

Rethinking ‘Run, Hide, Fight’  (Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic)
“Run, hide, fight” has been the guiding principle in my profession—security—for decades. Running is preferred; hiding if it is the only response possible; fighting if there is no other choice. The motto describes the active-shooter-response training that has emerged for populations as diverse as high-school students, office workers, and those who are out partying on a Saturday night. No active-shooter situation is the same, so it isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, of course. Younger children, for instance, are subject to controversial lockdown training instead.
When it comes to general safety, this is what I tell my children, who are now teens and young adults: If somebody tries to grab your purse or bike, let them. No material thing is worth a potentially violent escalation. If you’ve partied too hard, call me for a ride—no questions asked. If you are in an active-shooter situation, run as fast as you can, hide if you must, and, as a last resort, fight. That’s what the experts have told parents to say: Don’t be a hero. Run. Just please, run. Get out of there.
But shootings like the one at Club Q add to a sense—neither conclusive nor absolute—that fighting is indeed a viable option to stop a massacre in progress. If we are to be guided by facts, and consider our safety training based on the available evidence, then we need to further assess whether, in an age when so much damage can be done so quickly by guns that should not be on the street, “Run, hide, fight” is still the correct public messaging. With killers having the capacity to end the lives of so many people so fast, neither running nor hiding may be the best first option. It is our reality. I don’t love it; I don’t even like it.