Fighting terrorism — a problem for all of us to solve, especially those in Silicon Valley.
By Bilal Zuberi
I was at a soccer field yesterday with my kids when I read about a suicide bomber killing 20 (mostly kids) at a soccer stadium in Kabul, Afghanistan. And I was dropping my kids at their school this morning when I read about suicide bombers killing 70+ (mostly kids and women) at a kids’ park in Pakistan. And it has just been a few days since we all read about dozens dying in Brussels and Ankara when suicide bombers blew themselves up.
This keeps happening, again and again and again. We have now seen terrorists strike at soft targets all over the world: from Paris, Ivory Coast and San Bernardino to Nigeria, Tunisia, Peshawar and Boston. They are attacking our kids in parks, our schools, and innocent civilians in shopping malls and religious places. These are cowards, absolutely fucking cowards. And they will lose. But in the meantime it hurts very much.
It is difficult to be sad, angry and rational, all at the same time…but I have been thinking all day today about the future of physical security. The paradigm of security has shifted in a major way and as an investor in physical security related companies (among others) I think our strategies have not evolved enough to effectively counter the threat that is posed. We are exposed, we are paying the price for it, and we can do better.
The threats that face global centers of civilization today are highly distributed and specifically targeted at the most vulnerable. Taliban and ISIS are blowing up bombs, but so are many splinters groups from them, groups fashioned after them, and crazy individuals who follow the extremist ideologies online and become holy warriors on their own accord. Essentially wherever ordinary people can be found in larger than few numbers can become a potential target for these monsters…I don’t mean to scare, but to point out that the terrorist threat is distributed and hidden, and unfortunately our counter-terrorism activity is still largely centralized.
For example, take the example of airports: we installed expensive millimeter wave scanners and asked travelers to line up for scans, thinking that would put off terrorists. Instead, they just found a new target, outside the perimeter set up by the scanning machines and killed dozens in Brussels in the lobby of the airport. Do we just move the perimeter out and install more such machines? What about securing our places of worship, our stadiums, concert halls, schools, shopping malls?
I believe the current situation calls for a relatively distributed security infrastructure to be set up, utilizing the best-in-class internet connected mobile sensors, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and human-in-the-loop analysis to protect public spaces. Technology solutions will never be enough, but certainly hardware and software revolution of the last few years that has led to dramatic innovations in spaces like transportation to drones, home automation and virtual reality can now be utilized for physical security as well.
The need for a strong sense of personal security is so basic to humans that it almost equates the need for water, food and shelter. So far society has largely assumed security to be a responsibility of the government — that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies would remain on top of this and protect lives. However, truth is that (a) despite the best efforts of involved agencies it hasn’t been enough, and (b) in some countries agencies are likely themselves involved in the creation and feeding of this monster for alternative goals, and these are their own kin gone rogue.
The question then rises concerning the role of the private sector, working alongside or separately from government efforts. Should security be privatized wherever government has failed to provide it? Would we see more innovation flow into the sector if that were the case, if the industry was not stymied by federal budget cycles, bureaucratic red tape, and complex/murky procurement processes of the government system? For example, the rich in many countries already provide their own security to some extent — with private body guards and armored cars etc…but what those not able to afford that? Is there an Uberization of the black car industry needed here — leading to democratization of better security?
Silicon Valley (I mean to include the entire tech sector in this) companies are working so hard, and spending so much money on life extension technologies — is this not the simplest way to think about life extension for so many people around the world? I, unfortunately, have to report that the startup activity in this sector has been limited and disappointing. Post 9/11 saw a bunch of airport screening companies get funding, then came Palantir — an important company in the national security related software industry in the US, and then a few companies like DataMinr. We at Lux Capital are investors in an interesting company called Evolv Technologies (most of their work still stealth) and there are a few others — either indirectly related such as our drone company called CyPhy Works, mostly science projects on the hardware side funded via SBIR grants, or Washington D.C. based data analytics and intelligence services (largely classified work).
I am biased as an existing investor, but I truly believe there is tremendous startup and investment opportunity in this space. Technology has made such tremendous progress in the last few years, but we need to bring those advancements to this sector. From hardware systems to intelligence/AI, tech-enabled security and surveillance services, emergency services and communications, medical care of terrorism victims, management of PTSD (especially with kids), advanced prosthetics, reconstruction of community infrastructure in terror hit localities, and so much else.
For example would you pay for human-in-the-loop AI tools to personally monitor your physical space for your security as you moved about town? Would someone living in Karachi or Kabul pay for personal/mobile bomb sniffers? Would you pay $10, $100 or may be even $1000 per month if you were traveling abroad and a service could monitor all activity in a 1 mile radius around your GPS location for security threats — using intelligence signals & reports, tweets in the area, satellite and drone imagery, online chatter, and/or your own personal data to see if you are being tracked/followed? How about paying for such a heightened security system only when traveling abroad to Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, or Dubai? What about paying for such systems/service for your local mosques, synagogues, schools? These are just some random thoughts…
The unfortunate reality is that the threat of terrorism is not going away any time soon. But we have to fight back and we have to win. Technology is not the answer on its own, nor is the idea of providing something that works for the rich but not for others…but what is not appropriate is for the smartest minds in our country, and in our world, to sit back and not participate in finding solutions. This is not a problem for the government and law enforcement agencies to solve. This is a problem for all of us to solve. For one, I am all ears, and we are ready to invest.
