December 10, 2024 • 53 mins
C4ADS- Center for Advanced Defense Studies- is a nonprofit that works to uncover illicit networks that threaten global peace and security through deep-dive investigations and intelligence analysis on data that may be publicly available, but hard to find. Through their investigative work, they’ve been able to map out secret business and real estate networks designed by corrupt military leaders in Sudan and unravel the multilayered supply chain enabling forced labor camps of Uyghurs in China.
Varun Vira is the Executive Director of C4ADS. He spoke with Designated host Yaya Jata Fanusie about how his nimble organization is at the forefront of using open-source intelligence to shine the light on global networks trying to keep their dealings of dirty money and illicit operations in the dark. C4ADS’s investigations have made a significant and material impact and the targets of their investigations have taken notice. And although their efforts have become more necessary than ever, they come with tremendous risk.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's program is supported by K two Integrity. K two
is the premiere global risk advisory firm in an ever
changing world filled with uncertainties and risk. K two helps
clients with better insights, better solutions, and better decisions. K
two Integrity Believe in Better. I'm yaya Jata FINUSSI the
(00:34):
Center for Advanced Defense Studies. It's also known as C
four a DS. I'm sure that most of you have
never even heard of it. C four a d S
is a nonprofit that works to uncover illicit networks that
threaten global peace and security. They do this rather quietly
through deep dive investigations and intelligence analysis on data that
(00:57):
may be publicly available but hard to find. For example,
through their investigative work, they've been able to map out
secret business and real estate networks designed by corrupt military
leaders in Sudan and unravel the multi layered supply chain
enabling forced labor camps of wigers in China, supply chains
that often have links to US products you have on
(01:19):
your shelf. Varung Vira is the executive director of C
four ADS, where he started as an analyst A decade ago.
We spoke about his time partaking in investigations on the
ground internationally and how today his nimble organization is at
the forefront of using open source intelligence to shine the
(01:40):
light on global networks trying to keep their dealings of
dirty money and illicit operations in the dark. It's time
to get designated with varun Verra on the illicit edge network.
I want to start with the organization that you're with
sefour A tell us, I mean, what does four ADS
(02:04):
do and how do you do it?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah? No, absolutely so C for ADS or the Center
for Advanced Defense Studies. We're a nonprofit organization with a
mission to defeat transnational listed networks. Now that's obviously quite
a mouthful. So in simpler terms, we as an organization
we go after bad guys. We go after bad guys,
we go after the networks. And those bad guys include
(02:28):
everything from wildlife traffickers to North Korean nuclear smugglers, to
arms merchants in Africa to opioid traffickers in Central America.
And so we do this in three core ways. We
produce cutting edge analysis that can be used for things
like sanctioned seizures other enforcement actions. We work across the public,
(02:50):
private and civil sectors. We bring them together for actions
and for campaigns that are more powerful than what each
of them could do independently. And finally, by providing the
concept by equipping others, we also kind of prove that
in today's interconnected world, small supercharged organizations can create really tangible,
real world impact outside and beyond the government focus model.
(03:13):
So that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So you produce reports, you do investigations. You know, who
would you be using these four who would be using
them not you don't have to name names, but the
type of audience.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So I mean, it's what I said. I think a
lot of our work is very broadly kind of applicable
in different ways. So the core, we're kind of producing
evidence right off different issues. So we have government actors,
so that's the public sector, so government actors in the
United States and our allied friends and countries who are
using this often for enforcement but also for policy. We
(03:53):
have the private sector, so everything from you know, we
particularly focus around logistics that the bad guys need, so
systems of finance, transport, communications, trade so banks, insurance companies, others.
They find the data very useful for de risking, for screening,
for compliance. And then the civil sector civil society, media, academia,
(04:17):
others are often using the data, partnering with us in
different ways to either go after issues they're interested, to
build their own capacity to be able to do these things,
or to have the data and the evidence to kind
of support a lot of the evidence in policy and
legislative work that they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So then what really sets you all apart from from
a government agency, government actor, or for even academia, What
do you all do or have that is different.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I think it's three things, right, Like, first and foremost,
we have a mission. Were nonprofit organization with a mission,
so where say the private sector is kind of profit driven,
where the government sector is driven by the needs of today.
We have a mission. So we're laser focus and trying
to detect to defeat these networks that are causing global harm.
(05:09):
So that's sort of one piece. I think the second
piece is our access. We have really powerful partnerships again
across those sectors I was talking about, but I think
most importantly we have this unique ability where we can
work across them. I think a lot of people work
in sort of the silos, can work with government of
the work government can work within government, we're able to
work across all of them to bring these government, private sectors,
(05:33):
civil society communities kind of together for sort of impact.
And then finally, I think it's our innovation, you know,
being a nonprofit being unchained from some of these things,
we have the ability and we do our best to
try to bring together the best people with the best data,
with the best technology. And then I think most importantly
like unchain them, unchained them to be able to innovate,
(05:55):
to be able to experiment, to be able to find
new ways of doing things and create unique impact. So
I think those maybe the three things that kind of
distinguish us is our mission, our access, and our innovation.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So what about your role, So your executive director, you
know of an organization that, again I mean is doing
a lot of great things, But what's your origin story
in terms of your career and how you ended up
leading the organization.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think, more than anything else is luck. I think
I've been really lucky to be kind of in the
right place at the right time to be able to
find something I'm extremely passionate about, and that kind of
builds upon some of the things that I've learned that
have kind of shaped my philosophy, right, So I think
the first and foremost is I grew up kind of
moving around the world. So my dad was a banker,
(06:49):
so we jumped around the world every few years. So
I always knew I wanted to do something with global impact.
I think second, you know, just like all of us,
I came up through sort of the standard academia world.
I learned what every student of international relations kind of learns, right.
What I now see is a bit that old state
centric like pre data kind of world of way of
(07:12):
seeing the world. And then finally, like I worked in
a few other places, I experienced that standard what i'd
call like a DC reward pyramid where you kind of
have to grow to become this senior graybeard before anybody
takes your ideas kind of seriously. Right. So with all
of that, you know, I found cy for IDs ten
years ago. Was a really small organization of like five
(07:32):
or six people, and I think over the years, more
than anything else, it's given me a platform. It's given
me like a platform to build. So I started as
an analyst, kind of came up through the ranks. I
done almost every role in the organization to executive director today,
but throughout, I think in each of those roles, because
I've kind of grown with the organization, the organization has
(07:54):
grown with me. It's given me a platform to, I think,
build around those three sort of principles. Right Like, I
think we're doing something that has global impact. I think
we're doing something that hopefully modernizes kind of what's possible
with our national security, with our foreign policy, and I
think kind of personally important for me, and then gives
(08:15):
me a platform to try to build a workplace where
talented young people can come in have opportunities create impact
from day one. That's kind of the story.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's where we.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Kind of are, and I think there's a lot more
story to tell. I think we're at really an exciting
point with the organization where I think we're growing rapidly
and I think we're going to continue to do so
for a little while and that's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So I mean, as executive director who was once an analyst,
I mean, you know what it's like to be on
the ground, to be actually I guess collecting data. Can
you bring us back to before you were, before you
were you know, the executive director, when you were someone
on the ground walk us through something that you did
(09:04):
maybe overseas, where you had to be the person getting
the data that others used.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So I mean, I think the world has also changed
over the last ten years, right, Like a lot of
the data sets that weren't as easily accessible back then
are now increasingly available. But I think one of the
joys of being at c Foyds is that chance to
kind of travel to meet partners around the world to
kind of work with them to find ways to you know,
find new data sets, find new solutions for the problems
(09:32):
you guys want to go after together. So the one
I remember is we've done some work on mass atrocities
in South Sudan, So one of these countries that it
just had terrible, terrible civil wars, like millions of debts,
and we were really looking to understand kind of the
war economy behind some of these so how the generals
(09:53):
are kind of profiting from the wars. So a lot
of that that money that we is held outside South Sidan,
places like Kenyon, places like Uganda, in places like Ethiopia.
So when I was an analyst kind of working this,
a lot of that was kind of going to these countries,
sitting down with local journalists, with local activists, with local
(10:14):
just informed members of the population and quite literally going
around right Like I remember sitting around with like taxi
drivers and like driving from like house to house to
house to like document to take the photos, to document
the house, to then go to the corporate registrar and
to go to the land registrar and pull the records
(10:35):
ourself and all.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Of that of who the houses of who.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Then the generals, So you have the South Sudanese generals
who would kind of earn in the country, right they're
like looting, their pillaging, their whatever corrupt contracts, whatever sort
of else they're earning in South Sudan. Then they take
the money to say, you know, an upscale neighborhood in Nairobi,
and they're buying like the nice houses, they're buying, the
(11:01):
nicest cars, they're buying, you know, all of the good
stuff basically, but that's outside the country. So it requires
kind of documenting all of that to firstly find, you know,
where these houses are that they've kind of bought, to
document that they are in fact the owners of these houses,
and then to kind of present that in a way
where both the South Sudese population as well as everybody
(11:24):
trying to make change can see this, can see this evidence,
can use it. That's really the goal of what we're
trying to do, right, Like, we're to run provide the
hard evidence that is not easily available otherwise on which
others can kind of build.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So then walk us through an investigation. I mean, you know,
if you go to the C four ADS site there,
there's so many reports that you all have done over
the years. I've used the data that you've used that
you all have have put together in your analysis in
some of my later work. But take us give us
an example or two of an investigation where you all
(12:02):
had to do this collection and analysis and what the
impact was.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, let's think. I mean, maybe we'll pick a report
from a couple of years ago called breaking the Bank.
So that was a report on Sudan. I was talking
about South Sudan. This is Sudan and again kind of
similar dynamics. So like when we're thinking about what we
wanted to do there. So firstly, since twenty nineteen in
(12:28):
Sudan again, one of the world's most violent conflicts is
playing out. There's kind of genocide happening again in Darfur,
there's famine kind of sweeping across the country, and there's
almost total state collapse quite literally. There's been you know,
heavy battles, heavy fighting in the capital in Khartoum, where
you know, buildings at the central bank, all of that
are in like literal collapse. But I think what's important
(12:51):
when people kind of look at issues like this and say, oh,
you know, what can we kind of do is that, firstly,
it wasn't always the case. There was like this brief
period between twenty nineteen in twenty twenty three where there
was like a huge amount of hope. I got to
travel to Sudan a bunch of times. It was a
huge amount of hope that there was an actual pathway
out of dictatorship, out of all of that towards like
(13:12):
a democratic, civilian led government that represented the whole country.
And so then in twenty twenty three, it like all collapses,
there's a coup that leads to like full out war
between basically the country's two armies, the Sudan Armed Forces
and what this is paramilitary army called the Rapid Support
Forces the RSF. They go to full out war with
(13:33):
each other, and what I'm talking about happens, genocide, famine,
all of that. But I think what was important is
from our perspective, like the reason why it all collapse,
The reason why all of this happened is because of
a fight for power, and ultimately it was a fight
for money. It was a fight for the control of
the levers of the country that generate the money that
(13:54):
consolidates the power.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So in this report, which came right after the WHO,
that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to really
expose kind of the heart of the conflict, the reason
for why all these hundreds of thousands of deaths are happening,
explain that sort of through the money, and hopefully, through
that process also share the data that would enable people
in the government and elsewhere to kind of pressure the
(14:19):
key players to hopefully end the conflict. So that's what
we're trying to do with that report.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And so you have this going on when you all
start to start on this investigation, what did your team do,
what did the analysts seek, and what did they collect?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, so again you know, when we're focused on evidence,
right as an organization where non partisan, where data driven,
we're focused on evidence, and evidence often means like getting
the unique data that tells that sort of story. So
in this case, and again this report was kind of
the continuation of some work that we've been doing. So
it was right after the coup. A lot of the
(14:56):
data that we got for this came through our partnerships.
So the first thing we wanted was a data. The
first place we relied on was our partners We've been
working on Sudan for quite a while, as was saying,
particularly in that period of hope, and so we've done
a lot of work with the civilian government, with local activists,
with all those organizations, and so through those partnerships we'd
(15:17):
been given access to pretty unique data. So in particular,
we had all of the records that were held by
the Ministry of Finance and by what was called the
Regime Dismantlement Committee, this kind of like special financial investigation
sort of unit that was set up to like dismantle
the old dictatorship and create democratic institutions. So we had
(15:38):
all of the records held by them on all of
the state owned enterprises in Sudan, and these are the
companies that are really at the heart of the economy.
Sadan's been like a state controlled economy for a long time.
So these are the companies that like the heart, this
is where the money is, this is what that power
we're talking about is sort of concentrated. So those are
the records, that's where we kind of started. That's the
(15:59):
core of what we use for the analysis. But again
just to that point you were kind of making earlier, right,
these like static snapshots and stories even today, like we're
regularly working with a lot of these partners in the ground,
Like a lot of Sudan's like institutions, a lot of
their heritage, a lot of their history is quite literally
right now being held on like little hard drives that
(16:21):
are being like shuffled around the country. So we have
cre for ideas. We're trying to play a role to
help kind of preserve that data, preserve those institutions, and
where relevant, kind of use it to explain how the
system is working and create the structures hopefully that can strengthen.
I believe there will be a democracy to come. I
truly believe that, So we're also setting up for that future.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You know, so when you're helping people understand, you know,
how the systems, how the system works, you're also you know,
I guess connecting the dots right to use that phrase
because people don't really know, Okay, well, where is the
money come from? And how do they hold it? How
do they hide it? So you know, what sort of
connections did you find that would you know, sort of
(17:07):
enlighten the person who doesn't know much about Sudan.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, I mean there's a couple of different ways to
answer that question, right, Like one is like what did
we uncover and what sort of interesting and the others
like the kind of like the methodological the technical way
we sort of went about it, right, Like, I'll answer
maybe the what we found and if it's interesting, we
can get into like how we kind of did it,
but onlike the what we found. So firstly, at like
(17:32):
the highest level, as we kind of mapped out these
these state owned enterprises I'm talking about like who they are,
what their subsidiaries are, who owns them, what the like
shareholding structures behind them are, which is by the way,
data that nobody knows, you know, these giant companies that
own all of the economy. Nobody knows who actually are
the companies and the people sort of behind them. So
(17:55):
at the highest level, what we kind of uncovered is
we built I think one of the most detailed public
maps of how that economy works, who the people are
sort of behind it, and therefore kind of for today's context,
who the key players in the conflict are and what
they're sort of fighting over.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Varun can I just step in to ask though, if
this info is not known, so no one knows, so
then how do you figure out who's behind these companies?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, maybe I should be more precise, like very few
people have known, right Like, That's that was kind of
the point, Like we had access to these partnerships, were
given access to these records, and quite literally, I mean
I went to Sudan, I went to these places where
these records used to be held. They're like literally like dusty,
old like warehouses and rooms that like nobody has kind
(18:44):
of gone into for years, but they've been like heavily controlled.
Right Like if we kind of pivot back to that
example I was using for South Sudan, like the Corporate
Registry of the Country in South Sudan, which by the way,
in the United States is like the DMV you know,
you go down, you get a ticket, you go in line,
is protected by the Intelligence Ministry and it's protected by
(19:05):
the Intelligence Ministry because they understand what this information holds,
like what it would mean to the people, and like
what risks it would prevent present to their dictatorship back
in the day, you know, coming back to Sudan.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So it's like if the d m V was run
by the CIA.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I mean it's quite literally in South Sudan, it is
quite literally the d m V is run by the CIA.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And clarify, I just want to clarify in case someone
takes the clip, the d MV is run by the CIA.
We don't want any misinformation. But I'm saying so, yes,
you all would be able to uncover this, get those
documents and build a map and then and then what
do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
So I mean there's a lot that you can do
with that, right, Like coming back to what I was
kind of talking about before, I mean again, we like
to think of like zoom back out right to like
that kind of framework I was talking about. The evidence
we create can be used by the public sectors, so governments.
It can be used by the private sector, so banks,
insurance companies, all of those, and it can be used
(20:12):
by the civil sector, media, academia, activism, all of that,
and they all use it in sort of different ways. Right,
So in Sudan, for example, a lot of this work
was used by like policymakers working in the US, working
in the EU to understand, you know, where age should go,
how they should conduct their diplomatic negotiations, what types of
policies they should create for the private sector. It was
(20:35):
a lot of like here, finally, you know, it's nice.
People tell us we have to comply with sanctions, we
have to comply with sort of regulations, but nobody ever
gives us that data. They leave it to us to
do this very complex investigation. So here's actually a map
of like several hundred, I think a few thousand sort
of companies in this case that you can actually screen
for that you can de risk, you can make sure
(20:56):
as a bank, as an insurance company you're not banking
those companies, is you're not ensuring those companies whatever else.
And then for the civil society, and again I think
local civil society in this case is kind of the
most important for the Sudanese people.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
The glimmer of hope I was talking about twenty nineteen
to twenty twenty three, It started on the backs of
like I forget the exact days, but like a twenty
year dictatorship. I thinks it's like nineteen eighty nine whatever
that is, so like a twenty plus year dictatorship. And
it broke because of a revolution, because of a revolution
(21:30):
led by the youth, led by the people who basically
kind of said enough is enough, right, and to kind
of galvanize that action, you need information. You need to
know how people are corrupting your country, corrupting your society,
corrupting your community to bring sort of people together. So
I think some of the best impact from this report was,
(21:52):
you know, a lot of the sort of civil society
groups in Sudan that we respect, a lot of the
media organizations in Sudan that are working in like extreme conditions,
they seem to find it extremely valuable. They amplified it,
they used it quite a lot, and I think that's huge.
So that's a type of impact it had.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well, you know, let's talk a little bit about another
part of the world. On this show. We've talked a
little bit about China, but we haven't really done much
of a deep dive. And I noticed one of your reports.
I think it's called long shadows, and I found that interesting.
Could you tell us what were you what problem were
you trying to solve with this case, and explain it
(22:34):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, So again, like Sudan, I think it's kind of
useful to just zoom out for a second, right, because
you go pretty deep into some of these issues. So, firstly,
the Chinese Communist Party in China has conducted what is
one of the largest mass imprisonment, largest repression campaigns against
the weaker population in Sinjong in the twenty first century.
(22:56):
It's probably one of the most serious crimes against humanity
and one of them all like scaled crimes of humanity
that we've seen in the last you know, few decades.
They did this specifically in Synjrong against the Wigurs by
not just like you know, brute force of the power
of a gun, like repressing people, but they created like
(23:18):
a whole repression economy. They created a whole economy of
factory staff by forced laborers taken from these prison camps,
from these detention sites that were producing raw materials, goods
such as cotton, tomatoes, other products that are then sold
around the world, contributing to the Chinese economy. Using an
(23:41):
entire population that's been imprisoned on the basis of their
ethnicity and kind of martial towards this sort of work. Right,
So that's the problem we were trying to solve, and
if you take it out a step on, you know
how it matters for all of us sitting here in
DC or in America. I mean quite literally. At the
end of some of these investigations, we found like tomato paste,
(24:03):
you know, the tomato paste you're putting in your pasta
from Whole Foods in their grocery aisles, that was tracing
back to the suppliers, to the factories that were using
this forced labor. So now there's a lot of regulation,
there's a lot of attention on this issue. But again,
like everything we're kind of dealing with, the problem is
always the data. People want to do something about it,
(24:25):
but who are the companies, who are these suppliers, Who
are these people? That's the problem we're trying to solve.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So when you had an analyst who was looking at this, right,
they're starting with, Hey, there's this whole machine going on,
but I can't see in it, right, I don't know.
I don't know all the business connections, So walk us
through what that analyst had to do, what was there
step by step to then map this all out.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah again, kind of tying back to something I said earlier.
I think that's one of the cool things about sef IDAs, right,
Like we allow people to find their own paths to
these investigations. We encourage kind of new innovative techniques to
go about this. So maybe actually we can pivot back
in a little bit. But kind of the methodologies that
we used on this investigation are actually very different from
(25:15):
what we did for like that Sedan work I was
talking about for example, right, So on this one, it
was more of like a big data type of investigation.
We were using a lot of our access to like
Chinese corporate records. We're using some of these intelligence tools
like Palanteer to kind of create again the same thing
at the end, a map of these companies, tracing out
(25:37):
all the key players in this repression economy. But we
did it in sort of a different way. So for
this Long Shadows report, we started with what's called like
the XPCC, the Sinjong I think it's Snjong Production and
Construction Core, which is now sanctioned but state owned quasi
military quasi civilian entity that is essentially at the heart
(26:01):
it organizes a lot of these repression activities. I was
talking about everything from the forced labor to the education
programs to the prison systems themselves. But also the XPCC
is a major, a very significant commercial entity in its
own right. It's like, you know, like the Unilever of
China in a way. So to kind of map out
(26:23):
this giant sort of enterprise, we kind of began with
the xpcc's first layer. They're thirty two like top subsidiary entities.
So we took those two, those thirty two entities, and
then we took all these Chinese corporate records that we have,
all these other records that we have, and we identified
every single company in which these thirty two companies had
(26:46):
more than a fifty percent ownership stake in, so a
majority stake in. And then we kind of rinsed and repeated.
We took all of those companies that those thirty two
had a fifty percent stake in, and we identified kind
of downstream all other companies that they owned that they
had more of a fifty percent or more sort of
stake in. So essentially we're kind of building out downstream
(27:06):
this chain of all the companies that the XPCC beneficially
either beneficially controlled, either directly or indirectly. And that took
us from you know, this one XBCC at the top,
these thirty two companies right below it. It took us
to two eight hundred and seventy three companies. And so
then when we had this sort of map, we then
(27:29):
kind of took those twenty eight hundred companies and we
kind of merged and matched them against different types of records,
so all the trade records, so bills of lading from
global shipping companies that we have access to to map
out kind of all the trade networks for each of
these companies, so not just who owns them, but now
who all are they supplying to, who all are they
trading with? And so as we kind of did that,
(27:51):
we were able to kind of build out not just
you know, like a network, but we were able to
kind of map out that entire sort of system. Right.
And so as we're doing that, we're finding, you know,
a whole range of American companies. It's just like I
was talking about whole foods earlier, right, We're finding American companies.
We're finding European companies, We're finding Japanese companies, all these
companies that are kind of sourcing products, most of them unwittingly,
(28:15):
maybe some of them wittingly, but most of them unwittingly
sourcing products from this company that is at the heart
off like the prison labor system in Sinnjong. And by
the way, just you know, last sort of point here
is that's not uncommon. You know, we've been doing this
Sinnjong work for quite a while. This Long Shadows report
is just one of you know, a lot of work
(28:35):
that we' kind of done on the issue. So a
few months ago we released a companion report that was
really focused on the pharmaceutical industry in Sinnjong because Sinnjong
is actually a very significant supplier of all of the
pharmaceutical ingredients and products that go into like medicine that
we use. And for this report, we had so many
exposed you know, American European companies that we had quite
(28:58):
literally just two full pages in the report that is
nothing but just like tiny logos of those companies just
to give you a sense of how many. And these
are big multinational companies, big suppliers that you probably know
the names of that are kind of exposed to these systems.
It just gives you a sense of not only is like,
you know, the the amount of damage that's being done
(29:20):
kind of on the ground to imprison like millions of
people and put them to kind of work in ways
that obviously they don't want to, but also the ways
that that labor, that forced labor, connects to just all
the things you're using, the medicine you're using, the tomato
paste you're using, the cotton that's in your t shirt,
all of these things you are unwittingly supporting this repression
(29:44):
system that China is using.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Today's program is supported by K two Integrity, the premiere
global risk advisory firm. In today's world, threats can arise anywhere,
at any time, threats to your organization's operation, financial stability,
or reputation. K two offers a better way to counter
the threats facing your organization and provides critical intelligence and
(30:09):
actionable strategies to uncover the truth, make decisions, and reduce risk.
K two helps you face critical challenges within experienced team
and the ability to navigate the most complex issues to
arrive at better outcomes. That's why clients partner with K
two to help them thrive in an ever changing world
(30:30):
filled with uncertainties and risk by providing better insights, better solutions,
and better decisions. K two integrity believe in better vern
I don't want you to necessarily give away the secret sauce,
right in terms of how you do all of this,
(30:51):
But you mentioned so much about data. I'm sure there's
you know, countless there's just so many data points. What
sort of technology allows you to go from that top
layer to these to this very detailed map.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, So again, I think this is some of the
joy of working at c Fords because, like, innovation is
kind of the heart of what we're doing, right, So
we have a whole bunch of different ways we can
kind of connect to new data sets, to emerging technology
as it kind of emerges. So a we have our
own in house teams. We have data engineers that are
data engineers data scientists that are embedded with the analytical teams.
(31:28):
A lot of synergy, a lot of value in those
two kind of coming together. We have our own in
house software engineering team, so we kind of build things
that we can't get on the market, but that ties
to the other side, right, Like because of what we do.
We also have the ability to acquire in the market,
just like anybody else is able to do. We can
access the same data sets that are available for free.
(31:48):
We can source our own data directly. But also we
have partnerships. We work with a lot of you know,
really great emerging technology companies, you know, Palunteer, plan At, WinWord,
lots of these others, these great, great companies that are
providing great sort of solutions that were able to kind
of bring into our stack, right, And that kind of
(32:11):
ties back if I was talking about like that Sudian example, right,
A lot of what we use the data that I'm
talking about, you know, sounds very clean, sounds very easy,
but a lot of it was like paper, you know,
paper documents in handwriting in Arabic. How do you kind
of extract this and kind of use it at scale?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So for that, a lot of the work we were
doing in Sudan, we're doing things like we're collecting you know,
these paper records, but we're ocring them. We're digitizing these
records with technology ocry.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Optimal I'm sorry, optical character recognition.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yep, yeah, I think that's it. But then we're using
things like NLP natural language processing to kind of do
like to do like bulk translation, or to use like
entity extraction tools to kind of pull out you know,
that data from the paper into you know, csvs and
excel sheets that we can kind of use easier. So
(33:09):
I think the core of this, and again technology is
constantly changing. We're also thinking kind of for the future.
All this will evolve as it kind of goes forward.
But we're kind of applying the technology solution to the
problem rather than trying to fit problems to technology solutions, right,
So that's how we think about it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So when you you know, do these reports, I mean
you just talked about how you're uncovering networks that some
people don't want you to uncover. How did the people
you're reporting about respond?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, So I mean you're byway sort of answer this.
So I mean at the highest level, Look, there's always
cost a free speech, right, so we shouldn't be surprised,
but we have faced like the full gamut of risks.
We faced everything from law suits you know, companies associated
with like Putin's oligarchs for example, their companies trying to
(34:07):
sue us in US court to stop our publications, to
stifle our free speech. We've faced, you know, cyber intrusion, attempts,
we've faced even attempts at like physical intimidation all of that.
So we're not going to you know, speak to our
specific processes, but I think we had we're very fortunate,
we are very strong network of experts, of partners inside
(34:27):
and outside the government that are we're able to kind
of work with to to mitigate these risks, to kind
of keep ourselves safe. And that's included everything for Long
Shadows for example, or some of the work that we've
done where you know, foreign governments have taken sort of
notice of some of the work that we're doing. But again,
all of this, I think it's important to say, you know,
(34:47):
as much as I can kind of talk about C foyds,
I think in context we have it really easy compared
to a lot of other people in our field. Like
C foyds has the resources, we have, the network, we have,
the partnersh to protect ourselves. But for a lot of
others that we work with, our partners on the ground,
the investigative media organizations that you know do a lot
(35:08):
of this type of work. The you know, we're talking
about SID in the organizations on the ground in places
like darfour, there's just nowhere near the same level of protection, right,
so from everything from like legislation to protect journalists to
like the tools and technologies of the private sectors building
that can be adapted to protect you know, at risk communities.
(35:31):
I think there's like a huge amount to be done
because I think our sector adds an enormous amount of impact,
but it's not protected the same way the government sector
or the private sector is protected.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
M Have you ever had a government target individuals through
their sort of legal, legal or economic power.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, so, we mean we've had a former analyst to
work with us who's been sanctioned by the Chinese government
for example, and you know, completely frivolous. But these are
the types of things you know, you can't control the
actions of others again, you know, pivoting to other organizations.
There're folks like Bell ANDCAT for example, that are doing
(36:18):
great work in like the open source investigations field. They
have quite literally, I think for one of their directors,
you know, Russian intelligence agents kind of showed up at
their doorstep or showed up at their parents' doorstep in
places like that. So there's a lot of Again there
can be a lot of risks that comes with it.
You know, we're very fortunate to live in a country
(36:38):
where this speech is protected, where we have the advantages
off you know, a strong legal and judicial system. But
again a lot of our partners don't. And even here
in the United States, there are a lot of gaps
that allow foreign adversaries to to come after and not again,
(36:59):
not our activities necessarily, but to come after you know,
communities in which we kind of work, and you know,
examples of that. Again, again, we're privileged to be in
America where it's stronger than a lot of other places.
For example, there's a reason why the United Kingdom, you know,
our great friends and allies, are the kind of legal
(37:22):
jurisdiction of choice for a lot of oligarchs to sue
to try to stifle free speech, to bring cases forward
because they're defamation protections. You know, laws like we have
here in the US, what's called like the slap statute,
are not available in these other places. So our adversaries
are also learning how to use these systems against us.
(37:43):
You know, the Chinese government is is getting pretty notorious
for not just using intimidation abroad but also using tools
like lawfare to go after actors that it doesn't like.
And I think we as a government, we as a
community have to strengthen I think what makes our country
great right to strengthen that those free speech protections, to
(38:04):
strengthen those protections for those defenders otherwise, I mean, this
is the cost.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Varun you know, just thinking about the protections we do
have and the ability to do this work here in
the United States. How have things how have let's say
changed the administrations over time? Because you've been a C
four ADS has been around for a decade decade plus,
how have you been affected by different administrations?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah? I think the honest answer is not that much.
And it's I think it's because of a couple of reasons.
I mean, firstly, C for DS as an organization, we're
a non partisan, right, so we're quite literally, we're eager,
we're keen to work with whoever the American people kind
of choose this to represent them, right, So I've been
through multiple different administration changes in both sides of kind
(38:56):
of the aisle. But I think more importantly, forget the organization,
I think the issues that we tackle are truly nonpartisan.
You know, I think regardless whether you're on this side
or that side, I think all of us care about
some of the issues that we tackle right like the
feneryl epidemic, the role of the cartels, the role of
Chinese suppliers in the federl epidemic, the opioid epidemic in
(39:19):
the United States. We all care about that, you know,
growing Chinese military cyber power and how it's using the
economy and lawfare and things like this to intimidate the
global system. We all care about this, and even issues
such as wildlife trafficking. You know, I think at least
from what I've seen, both parties have shown interest in
(39:41):
stopping these issues because we recognize this is a threat
to our way of life, you know, the global peace
and security that we're trying to sort of build. So
I think the bottom line is c FORYYDS will work
with whoever is trying to make positive change in kind
of the world. We have an advantage in that we
(40:01):
work across these different sectors. We're not dependent on the government,
we're not dependent in the private sector, we're not dependent
in civil society. We can work across all of them.
We want to work across all of them. But change
creates opportunity. So we'll kind of see how a lot
of this sort of unfolds. But I hope, I really hope,
(40:23):
I truly hope on a lot of the issues that
we're working with there will be a lot of continuity
because I think it's good for America, it's good for
the world.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And I like your approach, and it echoes my thoughts
that countering illicit finance never should be partisan. All right,
It shouldn't be a partisan every everyone wants to stop it,
so it should not be. If it becomes partisan, there's
something wrong exactly. I do want to touch on one
(40:53):
just technological question which is on my mind. Maybe you've
talked about it before, but AI you all deal with data,
So how is AI changing your work?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, so even before I kind of come to AI, right,
like tech innovation more broadly, that's really at the core
of what we do right like we have we kind
of we were birth at this sort of like this
frontier of open data of emerging technologies that's almost in
not almost that is in our mission statement, using emerging technologies,
(41:25):
using open data to defeat transnational illicit networks. So tech
innovation data innovation is very much kind.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Of at our core.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I have like a couple of thoughts sort of
around this, right, Like the first is like your data,
your tech, your stack sort of call. It has to
kind of evolve and grow with your needs. Right. So
again I think I said it sort of before, but
our philosophy and technology is you build around kind of
the need. You build around the problem. You don't try
to fit the problem to the technology, right. So technologies
(41:57):
will come, technologies will go, data sets will open, data
sets will close. You have to think about sort of
the problem and the tech stack that you are growing
to address those sort of problems. So we like to
kind of onboard new technology, off board new technology as
sort of needs sort of emerge. And then secondly, I
think kind of related to what I was saying there
(42:19):
is we think it's extremely important to this this term, right,
like keeping the human in the loop, to build around
your people, to build around your analysts, not to build
around technologies. So again it comes back to for us,
what will help the analyst be super charged to make
great analysis, to make great decisions. Because I mean coming
(42:42):
back to AI in a second, like I believe technology
is a great thing. I think it can really supercharge
what we are all able to do, what we as
humans are able to do. But I don't think technology
alone is a solution. I think it's really about like
technology will never at least in our field. And you
don't want wanted to to make, you know, life of
death decisions, to make decisions around who is guilty and
(43:06):
who is not. You don't want minority report, right, So
you need kind of humans in the loop to make
those decisions, to to interpret the data, to to harness
and steer and guide the technology towards sort of the
problem that you're trying to address. And so AI I
think fits within that sort of understanding. I think it's
really cool. I think you can do a lot of
(43:27):
things really well, but there's also a lot of things
it can't do well, certainly not yet. So we are
trying to incorporate in a whole bunch of places. Where
can it can you improve our writing, Where can it
automate kind of wrote investigative processes that take up a
lot of analytical time. Where can it help us kind
of extract data better or process data sort of better.
(43:50):
But we're not trying, at least right now, with where
the technology is, we're not trying to put it in
a position where it's making decisions that we think humans
should be making. It can bring them to that point
sort of quicker, but we keep our humans in the loop,
and we think that's a core piece of what makes
our capability powerful and what makes it rigorous and what
(44:12):
makes it impactful.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I love that idea, keeping humans in the loop, and
very happy to hear that there's no sky neet behind
one of those consoles that you all are working on,
so that that's great news, you know. I just want
to ask, maybe before before you leave, since you all
investigate so many things, can you share with us maybe
(44:37):
an issue that you think deserves more investigation, something that
you're really interested in looking into more.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, that's a really good question. Really a hard question, too, bro,
the hardest one you've asked, because I mean, every day
I get like so many great ideas kind of coming
up from our analysts that you know, I think are
important issues that need attention that we can do a
lot sort of about. So sorry, I'm not going to
give you one. I'll give you I'll give you three,
(45:05):
and that's I think the best I can do. Right now.
There's three that I'm like really interested in right now
that I think are are important for a variety of
different reasons. Like one is what they call like critical
minerals or strategic minerals, those supply chains. I think that's
kind of like the frontier for some of these great
power competition that's kind of happening right now. So that's
(45:28):
actually a really good question. It depends because again, there's
a whole bunch of critical minerals, there's a whole bunch
of strategic minerals, and they're all in different places, but
some of the key ones are so a in China.
China holds some of these key materials that are important
in like defense production and things like that, like hypersonics
and stuff like that. There's some key materials that are
(45:52):
concentrated in places like China, although we are also being
found sort of elsewhere in the world, so those sort
of points will become key points for competition. I think
there's others that are concentrating in places like Africa. So
the DRC, the Democratic Democratic Republic of Congo is really
going to become a frontier for a lot of this competition.
(46:14):
So there's some of these like frontier markets, but there's
also some of these allied markets, like Australia is a
major supplier of major medals, metals and minerals, and they're
facing a different threat right like where in the d
r C, it's about like capture off that these Chinese concessions,
Chinese companies coming in to kind of scoop all of
this up, corrupt the government control these supply chains. In
(46:37):
places like Australia, it's more like infiltration, you know, it's
disguised attempts at like mergers and acquisitions where the the
beneficial owner uh several steps down, is like a Chinese
state owned enterprise like they had that happen with like
Darwin Port for example, you know, a key strategic resource
that was bought by Chinese companies. So it's more like infiltration.
(47:02):
So again, critical minerals I think is one of several,
but I think an important frontier of this competition. And
I think mapping out things like what we do mapping
out these supply chains, understanding kind of the risks attendant
with their extraction, all of this I think is critical,
like decision data that's going to be needed to understand
what policy needs to evolve. I think the other two
(47:25):
just very quickly i'd kind of mentioned would be spyware
or the growth of like digital repression tools. Again not
the tile back to China. I mean, there's a lot
of other countries that are major players in this as well,
but like there is kind of like a coalition of
adversaries starting to kind of build around the world, or
(47:47):
a coalition of you know, I don't want to use
like or you know, rogue actors whatever you want to
kind of call them, or repressive states, dictatorships that are
all starting to call less around technology all of their
to come back to the thing of you know, the
South Sudanese CIA watching the Corporate Registry, it's kind of
the same thing. Like the digital technology tools they're using
(48:10):
to monitor, to repress, to uh, to investigate their populations
are often stemming out of these these same companies in
same places, from places like China. So I think the
growth of this has like really like major implications for
like global human rights, for the safety and freedom of
you know, Americans to travel and all of that. So
(48:32):
spyware and digital repression tools, I think is something that
I certainly am keeping close attention to and then the
third one is just one that's always close to my heart,
is like the wildlife kind of work. You know, not
to put too fun a point on it, but there
was a point in twenty thirteen where just for like elephants,
we all love elephants. It was something like poaching and
(48:52):
trafficking was was deci decimating is the word was killing
something like ten of like global population like annually. Now
granted that was like the peak of that crisis, but
just think about that, right, like ten percent population reductions
kind of happening year on year on year. That's like,
that's that's catastrophic, right, That's like that's not even a genocide.
(49:14):
That's on like a different level. So like when we're
talking about wildlife in these populations and these habitats we
want to protect. I think people forget again that the
reasons that these are under threat is not just population
growth and all of that is because trafficking has become
a business, Like the trade in ivory is a business.
(49:35):
It is a multi billion dollar business that creates incentives
for guys on the ground to be paid a dollar
a day to go out and shoot an elephant. Right,
So again, I think things like wildlife have like a
really important role to play in this ulicted finance system
that we're trying to build, and I think we as
a community have a really important role to play in it.
(49:58):
So critical mineral spyware and wildlife. And that's what the
gun you just point to put to my head because
I got like ten more out of that.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Well, I mean there's there's much more. You all are
doing so much, and I hope folks can actually track
and follow what you all are doing. Where should people
go to learn more about all your stuff?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, I think go to the website more than anything else.
There's a good amount of work kind of on the
website www dot c four ads dot org. Go check
out some of their reports, Go check out things like
that will give you a sense of what we're doing.
But then I think most importantly like reach out info
at cfour ads dot org. If you send the message there,
(50:42):
like we will read it, we will respond to it.
If you don't know who to reach out to in
the organization, that's the easiest place to kind of go.
And again we're talking to you know, everybody who watches
and listens to your podcast Yaya from the companies that
they represent to the you know, the campaigns they're trying
to run reach out. We've we're covering like forty different
(51:03):
issue areas at this point. It's very very likely that
we're doing something or the other that is directly relevant
to your business or to your issue area, and we
want to partner. I think at the I didn't talk
about this as much as I probably would have liked to.
But at the core of cfoyds is this idea that
we want to partner, we want to share. We cannot
(51:25):
create this change, we want to create a loan. There's
a limit. There will always be a limit to the
amount of investigations we can do. You know, whatever else
we can kind of run by ourselves. So the heart
of z Foyds is democratizing this stuff. Everything we've built,
we want to share with other people. We want to
give you that capability, that knowledge, that data, whatever else
(51:46):
that we've kind of collected so that you all, you know,
whether you're representing a bank, or you're representing a government,
or you're representing a media organization, so that you all
can take this capability and can help us scale it.
Because the end of the day, if we want impact,
we call it like ecosystem impact, like global scalable sustainable impact.
(52:09):
It can't be one organization or others. It has to
be kind of a community. And so that's why we
don't just produce products. We try to bring people, bring
communities together and supercharge them to be able to do this.
So it's a very long winded way of saying, please
reach out.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Speaking with Varun, Vera fortifies the notion that the world
of illicit finance investigations no longer belongs solely to the
US government. With technology, creativity, and some tenacity, small nonprofit
organizations like C four ADS can tap into hard to
reach business registries and real estate records to uncover financial
(52:47):
links that are often hiding in plain sight, and Varun's
examples show that such investigations really do make a significant
and material impact. The targets of these types of investigation
are taking notice, and the type of analytic work exemplified
by Varun has become more necessary than ever in the
effort to combat illicit networks, and it all comes with
(53:11):
tremendous risk. Financial crime fighters come in many forms. They're
not all holding a gun and a badge. Some like
Varun and his colleagues at C four ads are equipped
with tools attached to a keyboard. I salute them for
their increasingly important work. I'm Yaya Jata Finussi and this
(53:33):
is designated on the Illicit Edge Network
Today's program is supported by K two Integrity. K two
is the premiere global risk advisory firm in an ever
changing world filled with uncertainties and risk. K two helps
clients with better insights, better solutions, and better decisions. K
two Integrity Believe in Better. I'm yaya Jata FINUSSI the
(00:34):
Center for Advanced Defense Studies. It's also known as C
four a DS. I'm sure that most of you have
never even heard of it. C four a d S
is a nonprofit that works to uncover illicit networks that
threaten global peace and security. They do this rather quietly
through deep dive investigations and intelligence analysis on data that
(00:57):
may be publicly available but hard to find. For example,
through their investigative work, they've been able to map out
secret business and real estate networks designed by corrupt military
leaders in Sudan and unravel the multi layered supply chain
enabling forced labor camps of wigers in China, supply chains
that often have links to US products you have on
(01:19):
your shelf. Varung Vira is the executive director of C
four ADS, where he started as an analyst A decade ago.
We spoke about his time partaking in investigations on the
ground internationally and how today his nimble organization is at
the forefront of using open source intelligence to shine the
(01:40):
light on global networks trying to keep their dealings of
dirty money and illicit operations in the dark. It's time
to get designated with varun Verra on the illicit edge network.
I want to start with the organization that you're with
sefour A tell us, I mean, what does four ADS
(02:04):
do and how do you do it?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah? No, absolutely so C for ADS or the Center
for Advanced Defense Studies. We're a nonprofit organization with a
mission to defeat transnational listed networks. Now that's obviously quite
a mouthful. So in simpler terms, we as an organization
we go after bad guys. We go after bad guys,
we go after the networks. And those bad guys include
(02:28):
everything from wildlife traffickers to North Korean nuclear smugglers, to
arms merchants in Africa to opioid traffickers in Central America.
And so we do this in three core ways. We
produce cutting edge analysis that can be used for things
like sanctioned seizures other enforcement actions. We work across the public,
(02:50):
private and civil sectors. We bring them together for actions
and for campaigns that are more powerful than what each
of them could do independently. And finally, by providing the
concept by equipping others, we also kind of prove that
in today's interconnected world, small supercharged organizations can create really tangible,
real world impact outside and beyond the government focus model.
(03:13):
So that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So you produce reports, you do investigations. You know, who
would you be using these four who would be using
them not you don't have to name names, but the
type of audience.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So I mean, it's what I said. I think a
lot of our work is very broadly kind of applicable
in different ways. So the core, we're kind of producing
evidence right off different issues. So we have government actors,
so that's the public sector, so government actors in the
United States and our allied friends and countries who are
using this often for enforcement but also for policy. We
(03:53):
have the private sector, so everything from you know, we
particularly focus around logistics that the bad guys need, so
systems of finance, transport, communications, trade so banks, insurance companies, others.
They find the data very useful for de risking, for screening,
for compliance. And then the civil sector civil society, media, academia,
(04:17):
others are often using the data, partnering with us in
different ways to either go after issues they're interested, to
build their own capacity to be able to do these things,
or to have the data and the evidence to kind
of support a lot of the evidence in policy and
legislative work that they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So then what really sets you all apart from from
a government agency, government actor, or for even academia, What
do you all do or have that is different.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I think it's three things, right, Like, first and foremost,
we have a mission. Were nonprofit organization with a mission,
so where say the private sector is kind of profit driven,
where the government sector is driven by the needs of today.
We have a mission. So we're laser focus and trying
to detect to defeat these networks that are causing global harm.
(05:09):
So that's sort of one piece. I think the second
piece is our access. We have really powerful partnerships again
across those sectors I was talking about, but I think
most importantly we have this unique ability where we can
work across them. I think a lot of people work
in sort of the silos, can work with government of
the work government can work within government, we're able to
work across all of them to bring these government, private sectors,
(05:33):
civil society communities kind of together for sort of impact.
And then finally, I think it's our innovation, you know,
being a nonprofit being unchained from some of these things,
we have the ability and we do our best to
try to bring together the best people with the best data,
with the best technology. And then I think most importantly
like unchain them, unchained them to be able to innovate,
(05:55):
to be able to experiment, to be able to find
new ways of doing things and create unique impact. So
I think those maybe the three things that kind of
distinguish us is our mission, our access, and our innovation.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So what about your role, So your executive director, you
know of an organization that, again I mean is doing
a lot of great things, But what's your origin story
in terms of your career and how you ended up
leading the organization.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think, more than anything else is luck. I think
I've been really lucky to be kind of in the
right place at the right time to be able to
find something I'm extremely passionate about, and that kind of
builds upon some of the things that I've learned that
have kind of shaped my philosophy, right, So I think
the first and foremost is I grew up kind of
moving around the world. So my dad was a banker,
(06:49):
so we jumped around the world every few years. So
I always knew I wanted to do something with global impact.
I think second, you know, just like all of us,
I came up through sort of the standard academia world.
I learned what every student of international relations kind of learns, right.
What I now see is a bit that old state
centric like pre data kind of world of way of
(07:12):
seeing the world. And then finally, like I worked in
a few other places, I experienced that standard what i'd
call like a DC reward pyramid where you kind of
have to grow to become this senior graybeard before anybody
takes your ideas kind of seriously. Right. So with all
of that, you know, I found cy for IDs ten
years ago. Was a really small organization of like five
(07:32):
or six people, and I think over the years, more
than anything else, it's given me a platform. It's given
me like a platform to build. So I started as
an analyst, kind of came up through the ranks. I
done almost every role in the organization to executive director today,
but throughout, I think in each of those roles, because
I've kind of grown with the organization, the organization has
(07:54):
grown with me. It's given me a platform to, I think,
build around those three sort of principles. Right Like, I
think we're doing something that has global impact. I think
we're doing something that hopefully modernizes kind of what's possible
with our national security, with our foreign policy, and I
think kind of personally important for me, and then gives
(08:15):
me a platform to try to build a workplace where
talented young people can come in have opportunities create impact
from day one. That's kind of the story.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That's where we.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Kind of are, and I think there's a lot more
story to tell. I think we're at really an exciting
point with the organization where I think we're growing rapidly
and I think we're going to continue to do so
for a little while and that's really exciting.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So I mean, as executive director who was once an analyst,
I mean, you know what it's like to be on
the ground, to be actually I guess collecting data. Can
you bring us back to before you were, before you
were you know, the executive director, when you were someone
on the ground walk us through something that you did
(09:04):
maybe overseas, where you had to be the person getting
the data that others used.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So I mean, I think the world has also changed
over the last ten years, right, Like a lot of
the data sets that weren't as easily accessible back then
are now increasingly available. But I think one of the
joys of being at c Foyds is that chance to
kind of travel to meet partners around the world to
kind of work with them to find ways to you know,
find new data sets, find new solutions for the problems
(09:32):
you guys want to go after together. So the one
I remember is we've done some work on mass atrocities
in South Sudan, So one of these countries that it
just had terrible, terrible civil wars, like millions of debts,
and we were really looking to understand kind of the
war economy behind some of these so how the generals
(09:53):
are kind of profiting from the wars. So a lot
of that that money that we is held outside South Sidan,
places like Kenyon, places like Uganda, in places like Ethiopia.
So when I was an analyst kind of working this,
a lot of that was kind of going to these countries,
sitting down with local journalists, with local activists, with local
(10:14):
just informed members of the population and quite literally going
around right Like I remember sitting around with like taxi
drivers and like driving from like house to house to
house to like document to take the photos, to document
the house, to then go to the corporate registrar and
to go to the land registrar and pull the records
(10:35):
ourself and all.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Of that of who the houses of who.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Then the generals, So you have the South Sudanese generals
who would kind of earn in the country, right they're
like looting, their pillaging, their whatever corrupt contracts, whatever sort
of else they're earning in South Sudan. Then they take
the money to say, you know, an upscale neighborhood in Nairobi,
and they're buying like the nice houses, they're buying, the
(11:01):
nicest cars, they're buying, you know, all of the good
stuff basically, but that's outside the country. So it requires
kind of documenting all of that to firstly find, you know,
where these houses are that they've kind of bought, to
document that they are in fact the owners of these houses,
and then to kind of present that in a way
where both the South Sudese population as well as everybody
(11:24):
trying to make change can see this, can see this evidence,
can use it. That's really the goal of what we're
trying to do, right, Like, we're to run provide the
hard evidence that is not easily available otherwise on which
others can kind of build.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So then walk us through an investigation. I mean, you know,
if you go to the C four ADS site there,
there's so many reports that you all have done over
the years. I've used the data that you've used that
you all have have put together in your analysis in
some of my later work. But take us give us
an example or two of an investigation where you all
(12:02):
had to do this collection and analysis and what the
impact was.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, let's think. I mean, maybe we'll pick a report
from a couple of years ago called breaking the Bank.
So that was a report on Sudan. I was talking
about South Sudan. This is Sudan and again kind of
similar dynamics. So like when we're thinking about what we
wanted to do there. So firstly, since twenty nineteen in
(12:28):
Sudan again, one of the world's most violent conflicts is
playing out. There's kind of genocide happening again in Darfur,
there's famine kind of sweeping across the country, and there's
almost total state collapse quite literally. There's been you know,
heavy battles, heavy fighting in the capital in Khartoum, where
you know, buildings at the central bank, all of that
are in like literal collapse. But I think what's important
(12:51):
when people kind of look at issues like this and say, oh,
you know, what can we kind of do is that, firstly,
it wasn't always the case. There was like this brief
period between twenty nineteen in twenty twenty three where there
was like a huge amount of hope. I got to
travel to Sudan a bunch of times. It was a
huge amount of hope that there was an actual pathway
out of dictatorship, out of all of that towards like
(13:12):
a democratic, civilian led government that represented the whole country.
And so then in twenty twenty three, it like all collapses,
there's a coup that leads to like full out war
between basically the country's two armies, the Sudan Armed Forces
and what this is paramilitary army called the Rapid Support
Forces the RSF. They go to full out war with
(13:33):
each other, and what I'm talking about happens, genocide, famine,
all of that. But I think what was important is
from our perspective, like the reason why it all collapse,
The reason why all of this happened is because of
a fight for power, and ultimately it was a fight
for money. It was a fight for the control of
the levers of the country that generate the money that
(13:54):
consolidates the power.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So in this report, which came right after the WHO,
that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to really
expose kind of the heart of the conflict, the reason
for why all these hundreds of thousands of deaths are happening,
explain that sort of through the money, and hopefully, through
that process also share the data that would enable people
in the government and elsewhere to kind of pressure the
(14:19):
key players to hopefully end the conflict. So that's what
we're trying to do with that report.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And so you have this going on when you all
start to start on this investigation, what did your team do,
what did the analysts seek, and what did they collect?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, so again you know, when we're focused on evidence,
right as an organization where non partisan, where data driven,
we're focused on evidence, and evidence often means like getting
the unique data that tells that sort of story. So
in this case, and again this report was kind of
the continuation of some work that we've been doing. So
it was right after the coup. A lot of the
(14:56):
data that we got for this came through our partnerships.
So the first thing we wanted was a data. The
first place we relied on was our partners We've been
working on Sudan for quite a while, as was saying,
particularly in that period of hope, and so we've done
a lot of work with the civilian government, with local activists,
with all those organizations, and so through those partnerships we'd
(15:17):
been given access to pretty unique data. So in particular,
we had all of the records that were held by
the Ministry of Finance and by what was called the
Regime Dismantlement Committee, this kind of like special financial investigation
sort of unit that was set up to like dismantle
the old dictatorship and create democratic institutions. So we had
(15:38):
all of the records held by them on all of
the state owned enterprises in Sudan, and these are the
companies that are really at the heart of the economy.
Sadan's been like a state controlled economy for a long time.
So these are the companies that like the heart, this
is where the money is, this is what that power
we're talking about is sort of concentrated. So those are
the records, that's where we kind of started. That's the
(15:59):
core of what we use for the analysis. But again
just to that point you were kind of making earlier, right,
these like static snapshots and stories even today, like we're
regularly working with a lot of these partners in the ground,
Like a lot of Sudan's like institutions, a lot of
their heritage, a lot of their history is quite literally
right now being held on like little hard drives that
(16:21):
are being like shuffled around the country. So we have
cre for ideas. We're trying to play a role to
help kind of preserve that data, preserve those institutions, and
where relevant, kind of use it to explain how the
system is working and create the structures hopefully that can strengthen.
I believe there will be a democracy to come. I
truly believe that, So we're also setting up for that future.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You know, so when you're helping people understand, you know,
how the systems, how the system works, you're also you know,
I guess connecting the dots right to use that phrase
because people don't really know, Okay, well, where is the
money come from? And how do they hold it? How
do they hide it? So you know, what sort of
connections did you find that would you know, sort of
(17:07):
enlighten the person who doesn't know much about Sudan.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, I mean there's a couple of different ways to
answer that question, right, Like one is like what did
we uncover and what sort of interesting and the others
like the kind of like the methodological the technical way
we sort of went about it, right, Like, I'll answer
maybe the what we found and if it's interesting, we
can get into like how we kind of did it,
but onlike the what we found. So firstly, at like
(17:32):
the highest level, as we kind of mapped out these
these state owned enterprises I'm talking about like who they are,
what their subsidiaries are, who owns them, what the like
shareholding structures behind them are, which is by the way,
data that nobody knows, you know, these giant companies that
own all of the economy. Nobody knows who actually are
the companies and the people sort of behind them. So
(17:55):
at the highest level, what we kind of uncovered is
we built I think one of the most detailed public
maps of how that economy works, who the people are
sort of behind it, and therefore kind of for today's context,
who the key players in the conflict are and what
they're sort of fighting over.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Varun can I just step in to ask though, if
this info is not known, so no one knows, so
then how do you figure out who's behind these companies?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, maybe I should be more precise, like very few
people have known, right Like, That's that was kind of
the point, Like we had access to these partnerships, were
given access to these records, and quite literally, I mean
I went to Sudan, I went to these places where
these records used to be held. They're like literally like dusty,
old like warehouses and rooms that like nobody has kind
(18:44):
of gone into for years, but they've been like heavily controlled.
Right Like if we kind of pivot back to that
example I was using for South Sudan, like the Corporate
Registry of the Country in South Sudan, which by the way,
in the United States is like the DMV you know,
you go down, you get a ticket, you go in line,
is protected by the Intelligence Ministry and it's protected by
(19:05):
the Intelligence Ministry because they understand what this information holds,
like what it would mean to the people, and like
what risks it would prevent present to their dictatorship back
in the day, you know, coming back to Sudan.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So it's like if the d m V was run
by the CIA.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I mean it's quite literally in South Sudan, it is
quite literally the d m V is run by the CIA.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And clarify, I just want to clarify in case someone
takes the clip, the d MV is run by the CIA.
We don't want any misinformation. But I'm saying so, yes,
you all would be able to uncover this, get those
documents and build a map and then and then what
do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
So I mean there's a lot that you can do
with that, right, Like coming back to what I was
kind of talking about before, I mean again, we like
to think of like zoom back out right to like
that kind of framework I was talking about. The evidence
we create can be used by the public sectors, so governments.
It can be used by the private sector, so banks,
insurance companies, all of those, and it can be used
(20:12):
by the civil sector, media, academia, activism, all of that,
and they all use it in sort of different ways. Right,
So in Sudan, for example, a lot of this work
was used by like policymakers working in the US, working
in the EU to understand, you know, where age should go,
how they should conduct their diplomatic negotiations, what types of
policies they should create for the private sector. It was
(20:35):
a lot of like here, finally, you know, it's nice.
People tell us we have to comply with sanctions, we
have to comply with sort of regulations, but nobody ever
gives us that data. They leave it to us to
do this very complex investigation. So here's actually a map
of like several hundred, I think a few thousand sort
of companies in this case that you can actually screen
for that you can de risk, you can make sure
(20:56):
as a bank, as an insurance company you're not banking
those companies, is you're not ensuring those companies whatever else.
And then for the civil society, and again I think
local civil society in this case is kind of the
most important for the Sudanese people.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
The glimmer of hope I was talking about twenty nineteen
to twenty twenty three, It started on the backs of
like I forget the exact days, but like a twenty
year dictatorship. I thinks it's like nineteen eighty nine whatever
that is, so like a twenty plus year dictatorship. And
it broke because of a revolution, because of a revolution
(21:30):
led by the youth, led by the people who basically
kind of said enough is enough, right, and to kind
of galvanize that action, you need information. You need to
know how people are corrupting your country, corrupting your society,
corrupting your community to bring sort of people together. So
I think some of the best impact from this report was,
(21:52):
you know, a lot of the sort of civil society
groups in Sudan that we respect, a lot of the
media organizations in Sudan that are working in like extreme conditions,
they seem to find it extremely valuable. They amplified it,
they used it quite a lot, and I think that's huge.
So that's a type of impact it had.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well, you know, let's talk a little bit about another
part of the world. On this show. We've talked a
little bit about China, but we haven't really done much
of a deep dive. And I noticed one of your reports.
I think it's called long shadows, and I found that interesting.
Could you tell us what were you what problem were
you trying to solve with this case, and explain it
(22:34):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, So again, like Sudan, I think it's kind of
useful to just zoom out for a second, right, because
you go pretty deep into some of these issues. So, firstly,
the Chinese Communist Party in China has conducted what is
one of the largest mass imprisonment, largest repression campaigns against
the weaker population in Sinjong in the twenty first century.
(22:56):
It's probably one of the most serious crimes against humanity
and one of them all like scaled crimes of humanity
that we've seen in the last you know, few decades.
They did this specifically in Synjrong against the Wigurs by
not just like you know, brute force of the power
of a gun, like repressing people, but they created like
(23:18):
a whole repression economy. They created a whole economy of
factory staff by forced laborers taken from these prison camps,
from these detention sites that were producing raw materials, goods
such as cotton, tomatoes, other products that are then sold
around the world, contributing to the Chinese economy. Using an
(23:41):
entire population that's been imprisoned on the basis of their
ethnicity and kind of martial towards this sort of work. Right,
So that's the problem we were trying to solve, and
if you take it out a step on, you know
how it matters for all of us sitting here in
DC or in America. I mean quite literally. At the
end of some of these investigations, we found like tomato paste,
(24:03):
you know, the tomato paste you're putting in your pasta
from Whole Foods in their grocery aisles, that was tracing
back to the suppliers, to the factories that were using
this forced labor. So now there's a lot of regulation,
there's a lot of attention on this issue. But again,
like everything we're kind of dealing with, the problem is
always the data. People want to do something about it,
(24:25):
but who are the companies, who are these suppliers, Who
are these people? That's the problem we're trying to solve.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So when you had an analyst who was looking at this, right,
they're starting with, Hey, there's this whole machine going on,
but I can't see in it, right, I don't know.
I don't know all the business connections, So walk us
through what that analyst had to do, what was there
step by step to then map this all out.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah again, kind of tying back to something I said earlier.
I think that's one of the cool things about sef IDAs, right,
Like we allow people to find their own paths to
these investigations. We encourage kind of new innovative techniques to
go about this. So maybe actually we can pivot back
in a little bit. But kind of the methodologies that
we used on this investigation are actually very different from
(25:15):
what we did for like that Sedan work I was
talking about for example, right, So on this one, it
was more of like a big data type of investigation.
We were using a lot of our access to like
Chinese corporate records. We're using some of these intelligence tools
like Palanteer to kind of create again the same thing
at the end, a map of these companies, tracing out
(25:37):
all the key players in this repression economy. But we
did it in sort of a different way. So for
this Long Shadows report, we started with what's called like
the XPCC, the Sinjong I think it's Snjong Production and
Construction Core, which is now sanctioned but state owned quasi
military quasi civilian entity that is essentially at the heart
(26:01):
it organizes a lot of these repression activities. I was
talking about everything from the forced labor to the education
programs to the prison systems themselves. But also the XPCC
is a major, a very significant commercial entity in its
own right. It's like, you know, like the Unilever of
China in a way. So to kind of map out
(26:23):
this giant sort of enterprise, we kind of began with
the xpcc's first layer. They're thirty two like top subsidiary entities.
So we took those two, those thirty two entities, and
then we took all these Chinese corporate records that we have,
all these other records that we have, and we identified
every single company in which these thirty two companies had
(26:46):
more than a fifty percent ownership stake in, so a
majority stake in. And then we kind of rinsed and repeated.
We took all of those companies that those thirty two
had a fifty percent stake in, and we identified kind
of downstream all other companies that they owned that they
had more of a fifty percent or more sort of
stake in. So essentially we're kind of building out downstream
(27:06):
this chain of all the companies that the XPCC beneficially
either beneficially controlled, either directly or indirectly. And that took
us from you know, this one XBCC at the top,
these thirty two companies right below it. It took us
to two eight hundred and seventy three companies. And so
then when we had this sort of map, we then
(27:29):
kind of took those twenty eight hundred companies and we
kind of merged and matched them against different types of records,
so all the trade records, so bills of lading from
global shipping companies that we have access to to map
out kind of all the trade networks for each of
these companies, so not just who owns them, but now
who all are they supplying to, who all are they
trading with? And so as we kind of did that,
(27:51):
we were able to kind of build out not just
you know, like a network, but we were able to
kind of map out that entire sort of system. Right.
And so as we're doing that, we're finding, you know,
a whole range of American companies. It's just like I
was talking about whole foods earlier, right, We're finding American companies.
We're finding European companies, We're finding Japanese companies, all these
companies that are kind of sourcing products, most of them unwittingly,
(28:15):
maybe some of them wittingly, but most of them unwittingly
sourcing products from this company that is at the heart
off like the prison labor system in Sinnjong. And by
the way, just you know, last sort of point here
is that's not uncommon. You know, we've been doing this
Sinnjong work for quite a while. This Long Shadows report
is just one of you know, a lot of work
(28:35):
that we' kind of done on the issue. So a
few months ago we released a companion report that was
really focused on the pharmaceutical industry in Sinnjong because Sinnjong
is actually a very significant supplier of all of the
pharmaceutical ingredients and products that go into like medicine that
we use. And for this report, we had so many
exposed you know, American European companies that we had quite
(28:58):
literally just two full pages in the report that is
nothing but just like tiny logos of those companies just
to give you a sense of how many. And these
are big multinational companies, big suppliers that you probably know
the names of that are kind of exposed to these systems.
It just gives you a sense of not only is like,
you know, the the amount of damage that's being done
(29:20):
kind of on the ground to imprison like millions of
people and put them to kind of work in ways
that obviously they don't want to, but also the ways
that that labor, that forced labor, connects to just all
the things you're using, the medicine you're using, the tomato
paste you're using, the cotton that's in your t shirt,
all of these things you are unwittingly supporting this repression
(29:44):
system that China is using.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
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I don't want you to necessarily give away the secret sauce,
right in terms of how you do all of this,
(30:51):
But you mentioned so much about data. I'm sure there's
you know, countless there's just so many data points. What
sort of technology allows you to go from that top
layer to these to this very detailed map.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, So again, I think this is some of the
joy of working at c Fords because, like, innovation is
kind of the heart of what we're doing, right, So
we have a whole bunch of different ways we can
kind of connect to new data sets, to emerging technology
as it kind of emerges. So a we have our
own in house teams. We have data engineers that are
data engineers data scientists that are embedded with the analytical teams.
(31:28):
A lot of synergy, a lot of value in those
two kind of coming together. We have our own in
house software engineering team, so we kind of build things
that we can't get on the market, but that ties
to the other side, right, Like because of what we do.
We also have the ability to acquire in the market,
just like anybody else is able to do. We can
access the same data sets that are available for free.
(31:48):
We can source our own data directly. But also we
have partnerships. We work with a lot of you know,
really great emerging technology companies, you know, Palunteer, plan At, WinWord,
lots of these others, these great, great companies that are
providing great sort of solutions that were able to kind
of bring into our stack, right, And that kind of
(32:11):
ties back if I was talking about like that Sudian example, right,
A lot of what we use the data that I'm
talking about, you know, sounds very clean, sounds very easy,
but a lot of it was like paper, you know,
paper documents in handwriting in Arabic. How do you kind
of extract this and kind of use it at scale?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So for that, a lot of the work we were
doing in Sudan, we're doing things like we're collecting you know,
these paper records, but we're ocring them. We're digitizing these
records with technology ocry.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Optimal I'm sorry, optical character recognition.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yep, yeah, I think that's it. But then we're using
things like NLP natural language processing to kind of do
like to do like bulk translation, or to use like
entity extraction tools to kind of pull out you know,
that data from the paper into you know, csvs and
excel sheets that we can kind of use easier. So
(33:09):
I think the core of this, and again technology is
constantly changing. We're also thinking kind of for the future.
All this will evolve as it kind of goes forward.
But we're kind of applying the technology solution to the
problem rather than trying to fit problems to technology solutions, right,
So that's how we think about it.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So when you you know, do these reports, I mean
you just talked about how you're uncovering networks that some
people don't want you to uncover. How did the people
you're reporting about respond?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, So I mean you're byway sort of answer this.
So I mean at the highest level, Look, there's always
cost a free speech, right, so we shouldn't be surprised,
but we have faced like the full gamut of risks.
We faced everything from law suits you know, companies associated
with like Putin's oligarchs for example, their companies trying to
(34:07):
sue us in US court to stop our publications, to
stifle our free speech. We've faced, you know, cyber intrusion, attempts,
we've faced even attempts at like physical intimidation all of that.
So we're not going to you know, speak to our
specific processes, but I think we had we're very fortunate,
we are very strong network of experts, of partners inside
(34:27):
and outside the government that are we're able to kind
of work with to to mitigate these risks, to kind
of keep ourselves safe. And that's included everything for Long
Shadows for example, or some of the work that we've
done where you know, foreign governments have taken sort of
notice of some of the work that we're doing. But again,
all of this, I think it's important to say, you know,
(34:47):
as much as I can kind of talk about C foyds,
I think in context we have it really easy compared
to a lot of other people in our field. Like
C foyds has the resources, we have, the network, we have,
the partnersh to protect ourselves. But for a lot of
others that we work with, our partners on the ground,
the investigative media organizations that you know do a lot
(35:08):
of this type of work. The you know, we're talking
about SID in the organizations on the ground in places
like darfour, there's just nowhere near the same level of protection, right,
so from everything from like legislation to protect journalists to
like the tools and technologies of the private sectors building
that can be adapted to protect you know, at risk communities.
(35:31):
I think there's like a huge amount to be done
because I think our sector adds an enormous amount of impact,
but it's not protected the same way the government sector
or the private sector is protected.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
M Have you ever had a government target individuals through
their sort of legal, legal or economic power.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, so, we mean we've had a former analyst to
work with us who's been sanctioned by the Chinese government
for example, and you know, completely frivolous. But these are
the types of things you know, you can't control the
actions of others again, you know, pivoting to other organizations.
There're folks like Bell ANDCAT for example, that are doing
(36:18):
great work in like the open source investigations field. They
have quite literally, I think for one of their directors,
you know, Russian intelligence agents kind of showed up at
their doorstep or showed up at their parents' doorstep in
places like that. So there's a lot of Again there
can be a lot of risks that comes with it.
You know, we're very fortunate to live in a country
(36:38):
where this speech is protected, where we have the advantages
off you know, a strong legal and judicial system. But
again a lot of our partners don't. And even here
in the United States, there are a lot of gaps
that allow foreign adversaries to to come after and not again,
(36:59):
not our activities necessarily, but to come after you know,
communities in which we kind of work, and you know,
examples of that. Again, again, we're privileged to be in
America where it's stronger than a lot of other places.
For example, there's a reason why the United Kingdom, you know,
our great friends and allies, are the kind of legal
(37:22):
jurisdiction of choice for a lot of oligarchs to sue
to try to stifle free speech, to bring cases forward
because they're defamation protections. You know, laws like we have
here in the US, what's called like the slap statute,
are not available in these other places. So our adversaries
are also learning how to use these systems against us.
(37:43):
You know, the Chinese government is is getting pretty notorious
for not just using intimidation abroad but also using tools
like lawfare to go after actors that it doesn't like.
And I think we as a government, we as a
community have to strengthen I think what makes our country
great right to strengthen that those free speech protections, to
(38:04):
strengthen those protections for those defenders otherwise, I mean, this
is the cost.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Varun you know, just thinking about the protections we do
have and the ability to do this work here in
the United States. How have things how have let's say
changed the administrations over time? Because you've been a C
four ADS has been around for a decade decade plus,
how have you been affected by different administrations?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah? I think the honest answer is not that much.
And it's I think it's because of a couple of reasons.
I mean, firstly, C for DS as an organization, we're
a non partisan, right, so we're quite literally, we're eager,
we're keen to work with whoever the American people kind
of choose this to represent them, right, So I've been
through multiple different administration changes in both sides of kind
(38:56):
of the aisle. But I think more importantly, forget the organization,
I think the issues that we tackle are truly nonpartisan.
You know, I think regardless whether you're on this side
or that side, I think all of us care about
some of the issues that we tackle right like the
feneryl epidemic, the role of the cartels, the role of
Chinese suppliers in the federl epidemic, the opioid epidemic in
(39:19):
the United States. We all care about that, you know,
growing Chinese military cyber power and how it's using the
economy and lawfare and things like this to intimidate the
global system. We all care about this, and even issues
such as wildlife trafficking. You know, I think at least
from what I've seen, both parties have shown interest in
(39:41):
stopping these issues because we recognize this is a threat
to our way of life, you know, the global peace
and security that we're trying to sort of build. So
I think the bottom line is c FORYYDS will work
with whoever is trying to make positive change in kind
of the world. We have an advantage in that we
(40:01):
work across these different sectors. We're not dependent on the government,
we're not dependent in the private sector, we're not dependent
in civil society. We can work across all of them.
We want to work across all of them. But change
creates opportunity. So we'll kind of see how a lot
of this sort of unfolds. But I hope, I really hope,
(40:23):
I truly hope on a lot of the issues that
we're working with there will be a lot of continuity
because I think it's good for America, it's good for
the world.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And I like your approach, and it echoes my thoughts
that countering illicit finance never should be partisan. All right,
It shouldn't be a partisan every everyone wants to stop it,
so it should not be. If it becomes partisan, there's
something wrong exactly. I do want to touch on one
(40:53):
just technological question which is on my mind. Maybe you've
talked about it before, but AI you all deal with data,
So how is AI changing your work?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, so even before I kind of come to AI, right,
like tech innovation more broadly, that's really at the core
of what we do right like we have we kind
of we were birth at this sort of like this
frontier of open data of emerging technologies that's almost in
not almost that is in our mission statement, using emerging technologies,
(41:25):
using open data to defeat transnational illicit networks. So tech
innovation data innovation is very much kind.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Of at our core.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I have like a couple of thoughts sort of
around this, right, Like the first is like your data,
your tech, your stack sort of call. It has to
kind of evolve and grow with your needs. Right. So
again I think I said it sort of before, but
our philosophy and technology is you build around kind of
the need. You build around the problem. You don't try
to fit the problem to the technology, right. So technologies
(41:57):
will come, technologies will go, data sets will open, data
sets will close. You have to think about sort of
the problem and the tech stack that you are growing
to address those sort of problems. So we like to
kind of onboard new technology, off board new technology as
sort of needs sort of emerge. And then secondly, I
think kind of related to what I was saying there
(42:19):
is we think it's extremely important to this this term, right,
like keeping the human in the loop, to build around
your people, to build around your analysts, not to build
around technologies. So again it comes back to for us,
what will help the analyst be super charged to make
great analysis, to make great decisions. Because I mean coming
(42:42):
back to AI in a second, like I believe technology
is a great thing. I think it can really supercharge
what we are all able to do, what we as
humans are able to do. But I don't think technology
alone is a solution. I think it's really about like
technology will never at least in our field. And you
don't want wanted to to make, you know, life of
death decisions, to make decisions around who is guilty and
(43:06):
who is not. You don't want minority report, right, So
you need kind of humans in the loop to make
those decisions, to to interpret the data, to to harness
and steer and guide the technology towards sort of the
problem that you're trying to address. And so AI I
think fits within that sort of understanding. I think it's
really cool. I think you can do a lot of
(43:27):
things really well, but there's also a lot of things
it can't do well, certainly not yet. So we are
trying to incorporate in a whole bunch of places. Where
can it can you improve our writing, Where can it
automate kind of wrote investigative processes that take up a
lot of analytical time. Where can it help us kind
of extract data better or process data sort of better.
(43:50):
But we're not trying, at least right now, with where
the technology is, we're not trying to put it in
a position where it's making decisions that we think humans
should be making. It can bring them to that point
sort of quicker, but we keep our humans in the loop,
and we think that's a core piece of what makes
our capability powerful and what makes it rigorous and what
(44:12):
makes it impactful.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I love that idea, keeping humans in the loop, and
very happy to hear that there's no sky neet behind
one of those consoles that you all are working on,
so that that's great news, you know. I just want
to ask, maybe before before you leave, since you all
investigate so many things, can you share with us maybe
(44:37):
an issue that you think deserves more investigation, something that
you're really interested in looking into more.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, that's a really good question. Really a hard question, too, bro,
the hardest one you've asked, because I mean, every day
I get like so many great ideas kind of coming
up from our analysts that you know, I think are
important issues that need attention that we can do a
lot sort of about. So sorry, I'm not going to
give you one. I'll give you I'll give you three,
(45:05):
and that's I think the best I can do. Right now.
There's three that I'm like really interested in right now
that I think are are important for a variety of
different reasons. Like one is what they call like critical
minerals or strategic minerals, those supply chains. I think that's
kind of like the frontier for some of these great
power competition that's kind of happening right now. So that's
(45:28):
actually a really good question. It depends because again, there's
a whole bunch of critical minerals, there's a whole bunch
of strategic minerals, and they're all in different places, but
some of the key ones are so a in China.
China holds some of these key materials that are important
in like defense production and things like that, like hypersonics
and stuff like that. There's some key materials that are
(45:52):
concentrated in places like China, although we are also being
found sort of elsewhere in the world, so those sort
of points will become key points for competition. I think
there's others that are concentrating in places like Africa. So
the DRC, the Democratic Democratic Republic of Congo is really
going to become a frontier for a lot of this competition.
(46:14):
So there's some of these like frontier markets, but there's
also some of these allied markets, like Australia is a
major supplier of major medals, metals and minerals, and they're
facing a different threat right like where in the d
r C, it's about like capture off that these Chinese concessions,
Chinese companies coming in to kind of scoop all of
this up, corrupt the government control these supply chains. In
(46:37):
places like Australia, it's more like infiltration, you know, it's
disguised attempts at like mergers and acquisitions where the the
beneficial owner uh several steps down, is like a Chinese
state owned enterprise like they had that happen with like
Darwin Port for example, you know, a key strategic resource
that was bought by Chinese companies. So it's more like infiltration.
(47:02):
So again, critical minerals I think is one of several,
but I think an important frontier of this competition. And
I think mapping out things like what we do mapping
out these supply chains, understanding kind of the risks attendant
with their extraction, all of this I think is critical,
like decision data that's going to be needed to understand
what policy needs to evolve. I think the other two
(47:25):
just very quickly i'd kind of mentioned would be spyware
or the growth of like digital repression tools. Again not
the tile back to China. I mean, there's a lot
of other countries that are major players in this as well,
but like there is kind of like a coalition of
adversaries starting to kind of build around the world, or
(47:47):
a coalition of you know, I don't want to use
like or you know, rogue actors whatever you want to
kind of call them, or repressive states, dictatorships that are
all starting to call less around technology all of their
to come back to the thing of you know, the
South Sudanese CIA watching the Corporate Registry, it's kind of
the same thing. Like the digital technology tools they're using
(48:10):
to monitor, to repress, to uh, to investigate their populations
are often stemming out of these these same companies in
same places, from places like China. So I think the
growth of this has like really like major implications for
like global human rights, for the safety and freedom of
you know, Americans to travel and all of that. So
(48:32):
spyware and digital repression tools, I think is something that
I certainly am keeping close attention to and then the
third one is just one that's always close to my heart,
is like the wildlife kind of work. You know, not
to put too fun a point on it, but there
was a point in twenty thirteen where just for like elephants,
we all love elephants. It was something like poaching and
(48:52):
trafficking was was deci decimating is the word was killing
something like ten of like global population like annually. Now
granted that was like the peak of that crisis, but
just think about that, right, like ten percent population reductions
kind of happening year on year on year. That's like,
that's that's catastrophic, right, That's like that's not even a genocide.
(49:14):
That's on like a different level. So like when we're
talking about wildlife in these populations and these habitats we
want to protect. I think people forget again that the
reasons that these are under threat is not just population
growth and all of that is because trafficking has become
a business, Like the trade in ivory is a business.
(49:35):
It is a multi billion dollar business that creates incentives
for guys on the ground to be paid a dollar
a day to go out and shoot an elephant. Right,
So again, I think things like wildlife have like a
really important role to play in this ulicted finance system
that we're trying to build, and I think we as
a community have a really important role to play in it.
(49:58):
So critical mineral spyware and wildlife. And that's what the
gun you just point to put to my head because
I got like ten more out of that.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Well, I mean there's there's much more. You all are
doing so much, and I hope folks can actually track
and follow what you all are doing. Where should people
go to learn more about all your stuff?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, I think go to the website more than anything else.
There's a good amount of work kind of on the
website www dot c four ads dot org. Go check
out some of their reports, Go check out things like
that will give you a sense of what we're doing.
But then I think most importantly like reach out info
at cfour ads dot org. If you send the message there,
(50:42):
like we will read it, we will respond to it.
If you don't know who to reach out to in
the organization, that's the easiest place to kind of go.
And again we're talking to you know, everybody who watches
and listens to your podcast Yaya from the companies that
they represent to the you know, the campaigns they're trying
to run reach out. We've we're covering like forty different
(51:03):
issue areas at this point. It's very very likely that
we're doing something or the other that is directly relevant
to your business or to your issue area, and we
want to partner. I think at the I didn't talk
about this as much as I probably would have liked to.
But at the core of cfoyds is this idea that
we want to partner, we want to share. We cannot
(51:25):
create this change, we want to create a loan. There's
a limit. There will always be a limit to the
amount of investigations we can do. You know, whatever else
we can kind of run by ourselves. So the heart
of z Foyds is democratizing this stuff. Everything we've built,
we want to share with other people. We want to
give you that capability, that knowledge, that data, whatever else
(51:46):
that we've kind of collected so that you all, you know,
whether you're representing a bank, or you're representing a government,
or you're representing a media organization, so that you all
can take this capability and can help us scale it.
Because the end of the day, if we want impact,
we call it like ecosystem impact, like global scalable sustainable impact.
(52:09):
It can't be one organization or others. It has to
be kind of a community. And so that's why we
don't just produce products. We try to bring people, bring
communities together and supercharge them to be able to do this.
So it's a very long winded way of saying, please
reach out.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Speaking with Varun, Vera fortifies the notion that the world
of illicit finance investigations no longer belongs solely to the
US government. With technology, creativity, and some tenacity, small nonprofit
organizations like C four ADS can tap into hard to
reach business registries and real estate records to uncover financial
(52:47):
links that are often hiding in plain sight, and Varun's
examples show that such investigations really do make a significant
and material impact. The targets of these types of investigation
are taking notice, and the type of analytic work exemplified
by Varun has become more necessary than ever in the
effort to combat illicit networks, and it all comes with
(53:11):
tremendous risk. Financial crime fighters come in many forms. They're
not all holding a gun and a badge. Some like
Varun and his colleagues at C four ads are equipped
with tools attached to a keyboard. I salute them for
their increasingly important work. I'm Yaya Jata Finussi and this
(53:33):
is designated on the Illicit Edge Network
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