April 7, 2025 • 18 mins
The sustained influx of fentanyl and other illicit drugs has had a profound impact on the lives of Americans. Louise Shelley, a professor emerita at George Mason University, discusses fentanyl, illicit trafficking networks and work on how criminal supply chains are being interrupted by scientific research.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This is the Discovery Files podcast
from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
A sustained influx of synthetic opioids,including fentanyl,
has resulted in a crisis in our country,with much of it originating
in foreign territories.
Recent actions have been takenat the executive level to address
the supply chain and flow of illicit drugsinto the United States.
(00:25):
We are joined today by Louise Shelley,distinguished University Professor
emerita, and Omer L.
and Nancy Hurst, chair emeritaat George Mason University.
Doctor Shelley is a leading expert
on the relationships between terrorism,organized crime and human trafficking.
Doctor Shelley,thank you so much for joining me today.
That's my pleasure to be here with you.
I want to startwith a real overview question,
because maybe some peopleonly hear the term
(00:47):
from news headlinesand that kind of thing.
But what is fentanyland why is it so dangerous?
Fentanyl is a synthetic chemicalthat is much more potent
than any of the natural drugsthat are out on the market,
and you can consume a tiny, tiny
bit of fentanyland die immediately from it.
What makes it so toxic?
(01:09):
It's the chemical construction of it.
It has just enormously powerful
chemicalsthat are destructive to the human body.
I understand it's kind of hard to tracequantities of it, like people are getting
it mixed in with other drugs.
Or they were maybe 5 or 6 years agowhen I was more
in the loop of how it's working.
(01:29):
But you can't really test it asa consumer, like on a street level, right?
The fentanyl is now being mixed
into legitimate drugs as well in Mexicoand being sold in local pharmacies
there, and makes itinto supply chains in the U.S..
So the fentanyl arrives
(01:49):
in this country in two primary ways.
One, it comes directly from China.
Two individualswho press it into pills in this country,
and they don't do any scientific testingof the potency.
And people who buy these on street cornersand others are the ones that are often
the fatalities in this, or peoplewho need to be rescued with Narcan.
(02:14):
But there's also a tremendous
shipment of these precursor chemicals,and there are other ones
that are even more potent than Sentinelthat are now being produced in China.
And almost all the production
of these precursor chemicals is in China.
And now they are traveling to Mexico,which they've been for a long time,
(02:37):
and they are being mixed into the fentanylthat is then shipped across the border.
Is it almost all international,or is any of it being manufactured
here in the States now?
The precursor chemicals are almostexclusively a Chinese production.
There's a little bitthat's going on in India.
(02:57):
The drugs that are being mixed for sale
are going on in factories and in the U.S.
and in small scale production facilities.
So there's a range,but we are still dependent on the import
of these precursor chemicalsfor the center to be produced.
How do you track these networks?
(03:18):
What is unique about the researchthat we have done under
our National Science Foundation fundingis that we have gone back to the source,
and we are lookingat the tens of thousands of websites
that are advertising fentanyl and citizens
(03:38):
for sale in the United States,and nobody else
in the research community and no one elsein the government has done this.
And we have discovered over 30,000web pages that are advertising this.
And each one of these web pageshas multiple
synthetic chemicalsthat they're advertising.
(04:01):
And then we are also findingthousands of companies
that are producing these chemicalsin China and exporting them.
Are these legitimate companies in theirhome countries or is it all underground?
No, that's what's wrong.
In most of the analysis.
These are licensed companies,
(04:21):
and often fentanyland other synthetic drugs
are just a piece of their production.
And we can't say exactly how
large these companies are,but they're not small companies.
Those that have been sanctionedare really large chemical companies.
Many of them are getting subsidiesfrom the Chinese government,
(04:44):
and that's why they're diversifying theirproduction from legitimate chemicals,
because they get a 13% subsidy
to produce these synthetic drugsfor export.
Do these synthetic drugshave any like, legitimate uses?
If you are going through an operation,
you may have a tiny bit of fentanylput into your anus.
(05:08):
The usual.
But there are five companies in Chinathat are registered to produce
medical uses of fentanylfor export for our anesthesia market,
and the 2400 companiesthat we've been identified
that are involved in this salehave no legal right to be doing this.
(05:29):
So often there aresome of these drugs are prohibited,
and they have a formula that's prohibited.
So they tweak with itwith one little chemical formula
that then they can say,well, we're not producing a name chemical.
Interesting.
But the consequence for the consumeris the same, right.
I understand you've introducedAI technology into your research.
(05:53):
How is this helpingyou understand supply chains?
What we're findingis that in the beginning we thought
we had many, many more companiesthan we actually did have.
And if you're looking at 30,000plus websites,
how do you connect the informationthat's in these websites?
How do you know that they have similaraddresses or similar telephone numbers?
(06:17):
That'swhat I helps us do is to do very large
scale data analytics very, very quickly.
For example,the Drug Enforcement Administration,
after a very lengthy and humanintensive investigations, came up
with 21 companies that they've identifiedas really serious problems.
(06:42):
And in two and a half months of our dataanalytics
using advanced engineering tools, AI,
we found 19 of those 21, and many of themwere on our list of key companies.
Just a little better tool for sortingthe data and connecting those dots.
It's the ability to find it so readily
(07:02):
and to find the associationsof these companies.
For example, one companymay have 30 companies associated with it.
So how does using this technologyto find these companies?
How does that allow youto help disrupt the process, the flow,
the importation of these things?
So it's absolutely key to know who'sproducing that, because if you don't know
(07:28):
who's producing them,you can't disrupt the supply chain.
And thereforeonly by going back to the source
can you get certain insightsthat you need to disrupt the supply chain.
And that's really key.
And almost all of the cases
that have been generatedof fentanyl prosecutions
(07:51):
in the United States have requiredgoing back to the source.
But unfortunately, the peoplewho are going back to the source
have very limited number of companiesthey've identified,
because they're not using this advanceddata analytics that we have
that allows youto find thousands of companies
(08:11):
and the associated web pages.
I know you've done a lot of workwith other kinds
of trafficking situations,like human trafficking.
Can you kind of comparehow those supply chains differ
or are the same as, say, a fentanyl supplychain?
That's a very interesting question.
So our first grantfrom the National Science Foundation
(08:32):
dealt with human traffickingand the largest human trafficking network
that was ever found in the United Statesand was prosecuted, involved
350,000 web pages
of advertisements and involved
locales in the United States, Canada,and Australia
(08:53):
that were operated out of China
using advertisements
and some of the techniques
to find this human trafficking networkwere generated by DARPA.
And so I had heard about this case.
I had written on it.
And so my understanding
how you can use images that repeator telephone numbers that repeat,
(09:19):
they were able to put togetherand understand and help dismantle
this largest human trafficking network
tied to one group of individuals.
And so that's a similar problem.
It all operates as a playbook.
And so you can see it inhuman trafficking.
During the pandemicwe worked on counterfeit PPE, you know,
(09:41):
medical masks that were going to hospitalsand emergency medical workers.
And we had a partnership with three.
And our research plan was thatwe were going to get data,
and they had the most data,and they didn't have data analysts.
And we had data analytical capacity.
And with a small team, within two months,we started disrupting these supply chains
(10:05):
because it workedaccording to this pattern
that had already been identifiedin human trafficking research.
And so as a result of that,we helped disrupt these networks.
And 60 million counterfeitmasks were confiscated all over the world,
30,000 web pages
(10:25):
were taken down, 30,000social media posts.
And I remember one time
the mask worked,transiting through a free trade zone
in an Asian country,and they were headed for Japan.
But there was a U.S.
customs officer, and he knew thatall three M production was
needed in the United States, and thereforeit could not be going to Japan.
(10:50):
So he halted the shipment.
And they the governmental authoritiessaid, but, you know, we're giving you
a very short period of timebecause this needs to transit.
And, you know,what are your grounds for this?
So he sent us the bill of lading.
And with that, we could see thatthis was the same artificial,
(11:11):
fictitious bill of lading in many other
counterfeit shipmentsthat had already been confiscated.
So within 24 hours,we were able to show him
what the criminal network was using.
I what the comparable dataand imagery were, what mistakes
there were in that page that revealedthat it was the same network,
(11:33):
and that shipment of 800,000 counterfeitmedical masks for Japan were stopped.
I assume you have studentsworking under you.
Do they get excited when they can seethat kind of difference being made?
So we produced this researchon a large scale on fentanyl
for the center report done by the HouseSelect Committee on China
and the Communist Party,
(11:55):
and they needed data very quickly.
So the only way we could doit was to partner
with the dataanalytics program at George Mason.
And we were assigned this capstone class
for the master's program,who just got into it and would spend,
you know, dozens of hours a weekcracking this problem
(12:17):
with such passion, such fascination,such devotion.
And the Hill Committee would say,
you know, we're just a bunch of patriotsworking like this to really begin
to understand the scopeand the elements of the problem,
because nobody inthe government has been doing it.
It's it's a piece of fundamental research.
(12:37):
We didn't know when we started outthat we'd be able to figure out
who were the producersby looking at a bunch of web pages.
So that'swhat fundamental research is about.
That's whatthe National Science Foundation is about.
And but nobody else was risking itbecause they wanted
to spend the money on finding criminals.
(12:59):
But if you find themfar down in the supply chain,
you may be helping one community,but you're not really disrupting
the whole supply chain, which is whatthis research allows us to do.
So how has NSF supportreally reinforced your research here?
I mean, without NSF support,we couldn't have done this research.
(13:20):
And it's been a faiththat there is really something rational
in not only understanding the supplychains, which engineers
have known for a long time,but of illicit supply chains
and being part of a communitythat is looking at these issues
in different sectorsis just a very intellectually reinforcing.
(13:44):
But this thing has enormouspractical applications.
It makes a real differenceto the average person on the street.
Ultimately, yes, family members alike.
How many people's family members,somebody you know, has been impacted
by this in the last decade,like the numbers are ridiculous.
And my own family as well,you know, extended family,
I mean, it's affected all of our society.
(14:07):
And I refer to thissometimes as dual use crime
because it does not only generates money,but it destroys communities.
And so this is just like
the opium warsthat the US were part of in China
in the 1840s, 1850s
(14:27):
helped undermine Chinese communities.
Then I had called thisthe revenge of the Opium Wars.
And that was the question that I asked.
Is there some element of stateinvolvement, justice?
There was in the sale of opium to China.
Heading towards
the end of our conversation here,I want to ask you about how approaching
(14:48):
trafficking from a scientific mindset,how does that make a safer America?
Oh my God, it's just incredibly important
because if you go after this problem
on a piece by piece
basis, like one network at a time, it'sjust like mushrooms
(15:08):
after the rain,you just eliminate one and others pop up.
But what you have to do is to
understand how the phenomenon works.
And it's absolutely keyfor law enforcement,
because you have to trace the money,the common wisdom,
and how to go afterillicit activity is follow the money.
(15:32):
But if you don't know who is generatingthe ads, then you can't follow the money
and therefore you can't understandwho is generating this.
And one of the people that we worked with,one of the chief investigators
of the House Select Committee,had done a case in northern Ohio in which
(15:53):
they managed to find the companythat was responsible for the deaths
in their jurisdiction,and they sanctioned the company.
And the company then complained
that they were going out of businessbecause they'd been sanctioned.
Now, that's exactly what you usesanctions for,
is to try and get after malicious actors.
(16:13):
That's why to understand thison a larger scale is key.
Also, if you want to prosecute,
prosecuting a caseis a very expensive activity and time.
So therefore you want to focus onkey nodes.
But how do you know who are the key actors
unless you do the dataanalytics as we're doing, and see
(16:39):
which companies are
most interconnected to other companies,and that then gives you a sense
of where you need to prioritize resources.
So understanding illicit supply chains
lets you know
what you should do,
where you allocate resources,
(17:00):
and where you can have most impact
in cutting off these devastating supplychains to the American public.
For my last question,what's next in your work?
What are you excited about in the future?
The next stage is to do more dataanalytics
that allows us to understandwho should be key targets.
(17:24):
How you stop the money flowsbecause part of
this is generating enormous profits,just like that
enormous human trafficking organizationgenerated profits from human exploitation.
So one of the ways of having largescale databases
is that it allows you to follow the moneymuch more effectively.
(17:48):
Taking the financial incentive out of it
is a very important way of goingafter the criminal activity.
So we're we're not there fully yet.
We're getting there.
And it's just an amazing experienceof understanding
how this can be used by peopleto save lives,
(18:08):
not by just injecting people with Narcan,but making sure that these pernicious
chemicals and the next even more harmfulvariants that we're seeing online
don't reach and destroy our citizensand our communities.
Special thanks to Louise Shelly.
For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
You can watch video versions
of these conversation on our YouTubechannel by searching @NSFscience.
(18:31):
Please subscribe wherever you get podcastsand if you like our program,
share with a friendand consider leaving your review.
Discover how the U.S.
National Science Foundationis advancing research at NSF.gov
This is the Discovery Files podcast
from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
A sustained influx of synthetic opioids,including fentanyl,
has resulted in a crisis in our country,with much of it originating
in foreign territories.
Recent actions have been takenat the executive level to address
the supply chain and flow of illicit drugsinto the United States.
(00:25):
We are joined today by Louise Shelley,distinguished University Professor
emerita, and Omer L.
and Nancy Hurst, chair emeritaat George Mason University.
Doctor Shelley is a leading expert
on the relationships between terrorism,organized crime and human trafficking.
Doctor Shelley,thank you so much for joining me today.
That's my pleasure to be here with you.
I want to startwith a real overview question,
because maybe some peopleonly hear the term
(00:47):
from news headlinesand that kind of thing.
But what is fentanyland why is it so dangerous?
Fentanyl is a synthetic chemicalthat is much more potent
than any of the natural drugsthat are out on the market,
and you can consume a tiny, tiny
bit of fentanyland die immediately from it.
What makes it so toxic?
(01:09):
It's the chemical construction of it.
It has just enormously powerful
chemicalsthat are destructive to the human body.
I understand it's kind of hard to tracequantities of it, like people are getting
it mixed in with other drugs.
Or they were maybe 5 or 6 years agowhen I was more
in the loop of how it's working.
(01:29):
But you can't really test it asa consumer, like on a street level, right?
The fentanyl is now being mixed
into legitimate drugs as well in Mexicoand being sold in local pharmacies
there, and makes itinto supply chains in the U.S..
So the fentanyl arrives
(01:49):
in this country in two primary ways.
One, it comes directly from China.
Two individualswho press it into pills in this country,
and they don't do any scientific testingof the potency.
And people who buy these on street cornersand others are the ones that are often
the fatalities in this, or peoplewho need to be rescued with Narcan.
(02:14):
But there's also a tremendous
shipment of these precursor chemicals,and there are other ones
that are even more potent than Sentinelthat are now being produced in China.
And almost all the production
of these precursor chemicals is in China.
And now they are traveling to Mexico,which they've been for a long time,
(02:37):
and they are being mixed into the fentanylthat is then shipped across the border.
Is it almost all international,or is any of it being manufactured
here in the States now?
The precursor chemicals are almostexclusively a Chinese production.
There's a little bitthat's going on in India.
(02:57):
The drugs that are being mixed for sale
are going on in factories and in the U.S.
and in small scale production facilities.
So there's a range,but we are still dependent on the import
of these precursor chemicalsfor the center to be produced.
How do you track these networks?
(03:18):
What is unique about the researchthat we have done under
our National Science Foundation fundingis that we have gone back to the source,
and we are lookingat the tens of thousands of websites
that are advertising fentanyl and citizens
(03:38):
for sale in the United States,and nobody else
in the research community and no one elsein the government has done this.
And we have discovered over 30,000web pages that are advertising this.
And each one of these web pageshas multiple
synthetic chemicalsthat they're advertising.
(04:01):
And then we are also findingthousands of companies
that are producing these chemicalsin China and exporting them.
Are these legitimate companies in theirhome countries or is it all underground?
No, that's what's wrong.
In most of the analysis.
These are licensed companies,
(04:21):
and often fentanyland other synthetic drugs
are just a piece of their production.
And we can't say exactly how
large these companies are,but they're not small companies.
Those that have been sanctionedare really large chemical companies.
Many of them are getting subsidiesfrom the Chinese government,
(04:44):
and that's why they're diversifying theirproduction from legitimate chemicals,
because they get a 13% subsidy
to produce these synthetic drugsfor export.
Do these synthetic drugshave any like, legitimate uses?
If you are going through an operation,
you may have a tiny bit of fentanylput into your anus.
(05:08):
The usual.
But there are five companies in Chinathat are registered to produce
medical uses of fentanylfor export for our anesthesia market,
and the 2400 companiesthat we've been identified
that are involved in this salehave no legal right to be doing this.
(05:29):
So often there aresome of these drugs are prohibited,
and they have a formula that's prohibited.
So they tweak with itwith one little chemical formula
that then they can say,well, we're not producing a name chemical.
Interesting.
But the consequence for the consumeris the same, right.
I understand you've introducedAI technology into your research.
(05:53):
How is this helpingyou understand supply chains?
What we're findingis that in the beginning we thought
we had many, many more companiesthan we actually did have.
And if you're looking at 30,000plus websites,
how do you connect the informationthat's in these websites?
How do you know that they have similaraddresses or similar telephone numbers?
(06:17):
That'swhat I helps us do is to do very large
scale data analytics very, very quickly.
For example,the Drug Enforcement Administration,
after a very lengthy and humanintensive investigations, came up
with 21 companies that they've identifiedas really serious problems.
(06:42):
And in two and a half months of our dataanalytics
using advanced engineering tools, AI,
we found 19 of those 21, and many of themwere on our list of key companies.
Just a little better tool for sortingthe data and connecting those dots.
It's the ability to find it so readily
(07:02):
and to find the associationsof these companies.
For example, one companymay have 30 companies associated with it.
So how does using this technologyto find these companies?
How does that allow youto help disrupt the process, the flow,
the importation of these things?
So it's absolutely key to know who'sproducing that, because if you don't know
(07:28):
who's producing them,you can't disrupt the supply chain.
And thereforeonly by going back to the source
can you get certain insightsthat you need to disrupt the supply chain.
And that's really key.
And almost all of the cases
that have been generatedof fentanyl prosecutions
(07:51):
in the United States have requiredgoing back to the source.
But unfortunately, the peoplewho are going back to the source
have very limited number of companiesthey've identified,
because they're not using this advanceddata analytics that we have
that allows youto find thousands of companies
(08:11):
and the associated web pages.
I know you've done a lot of workwith other kinds
of trafficking situations,like human trafficking.
Can you kind of comparehow those supply chains differ
or are the same as, say, a fentanyl supplychain?
That's a very interesting question.
So our first grantfrom the National Science Foundation
(08:32):
dealt with human traffickingand the largest human trafficking network
that was ever found in the United Statesand was prosecuted, involved
350,000 web pages
of advertisements and involved
locales in the United States, Canada,and Australia
(08:53):
that were operated out of China
using advertisements
and some of the techniques
to find this human trafficking networkwere generated by DARPA.
And so I had heard about this case.
I had written on it.
And so my understanding
how you can use images that repeator telephone numbers that repeat,
(09:19):
they were able to put togetherand understand and help dismantle
this largest human trafficking network
tied to one group of individuals.
And so that's a similar problem.
It all operates as a playbook.
And so you can see it inhuman trafficking.
During the pandemicwe worked on counterfeit PPE, you know,
(09:41):
medical masks that were going to hospitalsand emergency medical workers.
And we had a partnership with three.
And our research plan was thatwe were going to get data,
and they had the most data,and they didn't have data analysts.
And we had data analytical capacity.
And with a small team, within two months,we started disrupting these supply chains
(10:05):
because it workedaccording to this pattern
that had already been identifiedin human trafficking research.
And so as a result of that,we helped disrupt these networks.
And 60 million counterfeitmasks were confiscated all over the world,
30,000 web pages
(10:25):
were taken down, 30,000social media posts.
And I remember one time
the mask worked,transiting through a free trade zone
in an Asian country,and they were headed for Japan.
But there was a U.S.
customs officer, and he knew thatall three M production was
needed in the United States, and thereforeit could not be going to Japan.
(10:50):
So he halted the shipment.
And they the governmental authoritiessaid, but, you know, we're giving you
a very short period of timebecause this needs to transit.
And, you know,what are your grounds for this?
So he sent us the bill of lading.
And with that, we could see thatthis was the same artificial,
(11:11):
fictitious bill of lading in many other
counterfeit shipmentsthat had already been confiscated.
So within 24 hours,we were able to show him
what the criminal network was using.
I what the comparable dataand imagery were, what mistakes
there were in that page that revealedthat it was the same network,
(11:33):
and that shipment of 800,000 counterfeitmedical masks for Japan were stopped.
I assume you have studentsworking under you.
Do they get excited when they can seethat kind of difference being made?
So we produced this researchon a large scale on fentanyl
for the center report done by the HouseSelect Committee on China
and the Communist Party,
(11:55):
and they needed data very quickly.
So the only way we could doit was to partner
with the dataanalytics program at George Mason.
And we were assigned this capstone class
for the master's program,who just got into it and would spend,
you know, dozens of hours a weekcracking this problem
(12:17):
with such passion, such fascination,such devotion.
And the Hill Committee would say,
you know, we're just a bunch of patriotsworking like this to really begin
to understand the scopeand the elements of the problem,
because nobody inthe government has been doing it.
It's it's a piece of fundamental research.
(12:37):
We didn't know when we started outthat we'd be able to figure out
who were the producersby looking at a bunch of web pages.
So that'swhat fundamental research is about.
That's whatthe National Science Foundation is about.
And but nobody else was risking itbecause they wanted
to spend the money on finding criminals.
(12:59):
But if you find themfar down in the supply chain,
you may be helping one community,but you're not really disrupting
the whole supply chain, which is whatthis research allows us to do.
So how has NSF supportreally reinforced your research here?
I mean, without NSF support,we couldn't have done this research.
(13:20):
And it's been a faiththat there is really something rational
in not only understanding the supplychains, which engineers
have known for a long time,but of illicit supply chains
and being part of a communitythat is looking at these issues
in different sectorsis just a very intellectually reinforcing.
(13:44):
But this thing has enormouspractical applications.
It makes a real differenceto the average person on the street.
Ultimately, yes, family members alike.
How many people's family members,somebody you know, has been impacted
by this in the last decade,like the numbers are ridiculous.
And my own family as well,you know, extended family,
I mean, it's affected all of our society.
(14:07):
And I refer to thissometimes as dual use crime
because it does not only generates money,but it destroys communities.
And so this is just like
the opium warsthat the US were part of in China
in the 1840s, 1850s
(14:27):
helped undermine Chinese communities.
Then I had called thisthe revenge of the Opium Wars.
And that was the question that I asked.
Is there some element of stateinvolvement, justice?
There was in the sale of opium to China.
Heading towards
the end of our conversation here,I want to ask you about how approaching
(14:48):
trafficking from a scientific mindset,how does that make a safer America?
Oh my God, it's just incredibly important
because if you go after this problem
on a piece by piece
basis, like one network at a time, it'sjust like mushrooms
(15:08):
after the rain,you just eliminate one and others pop up.
But what you have to do is to
understand how the phenomenon works.
And it's absolutely keyfor law enforcement,
because you have to trace the money,the common wisdom,
and how to go afterillicit activity is follow the money.
(15:32):
But if you don't know who is generatingthe ads, then you can't follow the money
and therefore you can't understandwho is generating this.
And one of the people that we worked with,one of the chief investigators
of the House Select Committee,had done a case in northern Ohio in which
(15:53):
they managed to find the companythat was responsible for the deaths
in their jurisdiction,and they sanctioned the company.
And the company then complained
that they were going out of businessbecause they'd been sanctioned.
Now, that's exactly what you usesanctions for,
is to try and get after malicious actors.
(16:13):
That's why to understand thison a larger scale is key.
Also, if you want to prosecute,
prosecuting a caseis a very expensive activity and time.
So therefore you want to focus onkey nodes.
But how do you know who are the key actors
unless you do the dataanalytics as we're doing, and see
(16:39):
which companies are
most interconnected to other companies,and that then gives you a sense
of where you need to prioritize resources.
So understanding illicit supply chains
lets you know
what you should do,
where you allocate resources,
(17:00):
and where you can have most impact
in cutting off these devastating supplychains to the American public.
For my last question,what's next in your work?
What are you excited about in the future?
The next stage is to do more dataanalytics
that allows us to understandwho should be key targets.
(17:24):
How you stop the money flowsbecause part of
this is generating enormous profits,just like that
enormous human trafficking organizationgenerated profits from human exploitation.
So one of the ways of having largescale databases
is that it allows you to follow the moneymuch more effectively.
(17:48):
Taking the financial incentive out of it
is a very important way of goingafter the criminal activity.
So we're we're not there fully yet.
We're getting there.
And it's just an amazing experienceof understanding
how this can be used by peopleto save lives,
(18:08):
not by just injecting people with Narcan,but making sure that these pernicious
chemicals and the next even more harmfulvariants that we're seeing online
don't reach and destroy our citizensand our communities.
Special thanks to Louise Shelly.
For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
You can watch video versions
of these conversation on our YouTubechannel by searching @NSFscience.
(18:31):
Please subscribe wherever you get podcastsand if you like our program,
share with a friendand consider leaving your review.
Discover how the U.S.
National Science Foundationis advancing research at NSF.gov
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