What Is Human Trafficking?

Human trafficking is a crime that typically involves sex trafficking, forced labor or domestic slavery. Organ harvesting and forced marriages may also be a part of human trafficking.

Human trafficking is a prolific problem around the world. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are an estimated 40.3 million people forced into human trafficking globally, and it is a $150 billion industry.

Human Traffickers Commonly Exploit the Weak and Vulnerable

Often, human traffickers exploit the vulnerabilities of their victims; for instance, they look for poverty-stricken people or runaway children. Although anyone can become a victim of human trafficking, traffickers often target women and children, according to the United Nations.

Human Trafficking in the United States

Human trafficking is not just an overseas problem. It exists across the United States; cases of human trafficking have occurred in every state.

Human traffickers are in both metropolitan areas and rural communities. Organized crime groups, gangs and other criminals have turned to human trafficking due to its profitability.

With drug trafficking, for example, the product can only be sold one time. In order to make another profit, a drug trafficker must go out and acquire more product to make a new sale, which increases the risk of an arrest and costs money.

But with human trafficking victims, the “product” can be sold over and over to earn a sizeable profit. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, a victim can be sold for anywhere from $4,000 to $50,000.

Sadly, human trafficking profits are large and the risk of getting caught is low. As a result, the victims of human trafficking suffer greatly, especially the victims of sex trafficking.

According to the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, the average age for a child to become a sex trafficking victim is 12 years old. Any child under the age of 18 who is engaged in commercial sex is considered a human trafficking victim.

RELATED: Everyone Has a Role in Identifying Human Trafficking

How Do Sex Traffickers Find Their Victims?

Sex traffickers lure their victims into exploitation through false promises. Commonly, they seek victims through social media sites, schools, bus stations and shopping malls.

Human traffickers often groom their victims. The grooming process involves befriending a vulnerable person and gaining that person’s trust.

The trafficker feeds the victim’s ego by expressing feelings of caring and interest in the victim’s wellbeing. Once the victim lets his or her guard down, the trafficker encourages a face-to-face meeting.

The victim is then grabbed and taken to a location the trafficker chooses. The victim’s personal items, like phones and wallets, are taken away to prevent escape. The victim is then forced into sex trafficking or another form of trafficking through physical harm or threats of death.

Recognizing Trafficking Victims

One of the advantages of the National Human Trafficking Awareness Day is that it raises awareness of what trafficking looks like, which can help the public to identify and report it. Common indicators that someone is a human trafficking victim include:

• Bruises at various stages of healing
• Another person coaching them on what to say
• An inability to leave a current living situation
• Someone who is not a family member or friend caring for a runaway
• Tattoos on the legs, neck, lower stomach, back or arms that indicate the victim belongs to a specific trafficker
• Excessive work hours without adequate pay
• Higher-than-normal security measures to prevent victims from escaping from their living quarters

If you suspect that someone is a human trafficking victim, report your observations to the Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. It is manned 24/7 and is available in over 200 languages. Reporting indicators of human trafficking is vital; it enables law enforcement to be aware of and monitor a victim’s situation to determine if he or she is in danger.

RELATED: Using Technology to Combat Human Trafficking

Human Smuggling Can Lead to Human Trafficking

Currently, the southwest border of the U.S. is seeing unprecedented numbers of undocumented migrants gaining entry. Many of the migrants have joined caravans and experienced long trips from their home countries, seeking a better life in America.

Some migrants have even resorted to using criminal organizations to make an illegal entry into the United States. The numbers are staggering: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested 2,150,370 illegal immigrants in 2022, according to Congressman Chuck Fleischmann. Fleischmann also notes that the southwest border of the U.S. has “become overwhelmed with human and drug trafficking and cartel activity.”

However, the number of illegal immigrants only reflects Customs and Border Protection encounters, not the undocumented migrants who made it into the United States by evading capture. For those who came in illegally and without government detection, they may have used the services of criminal organizations such as cartels and human smuggling organizations.

According to the New York Times, the fees that smugglers charge range from $4,000 for migrants who come from Latin American countries and up to $20,000 for those coming from Africa, Eastern Europe, or Asia. Human smuggling is different from human trafficking because human smuggling is transportation-based. An undocumented person or their family pay a smuggler to be transported across the southwest border of the U.S. without detection.

The New York Times also says that human trafficking organizations have teams who specialize in surveillance, stash houses and accounting. Revenues from these illegal human smuggling activities have reached up to an estimated $13 billion, the New York Times notes.

But sometimes, a smuggler may increase the price beyond what the illegal immigrant can afford. Some of the reasons for an increase in price might include changes in transportation costs due to law enforcement activities, delays or unexpected problems.

What happens when migrants cannot afford the increased transportation costs? They are more likely to be forced into human trafficking to pay off this debt.

Powerful Mexican cartels have control over the smuggling routes. According to NBC News, these cartels are heavily involved in human trafficking; it is believed that human trafficking is the third-largest criminal activity in Mexico behind drugs and guns.

Migrants may be forced into human trafficking either in Mexico or the United States until either their debt is paid or they die. It is another strong reason why our southwest border needs better monitoring.

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day Is a Vital Educational Opportunity

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day is an educational opportunity and should be a chance for all of us to learn about the scope of human trafficking and how it impacts communities throughout the United States. In addition, law enforcement agencies nationwide should receive training on preventing human trafficking, and citizens should report human trafficking when they observe its signs.

From a young age, stories inspired graduate Storm Young to work on her writing skills. Growing up in Friendly, West Virginia, Storm spent most of her time with her father and grandfather.

Storm says, “Those two wonderful men taught me how to always fight for the things I wanted in life. Looking back at my life, I believe my younger self would be proud of the person I am becoming. I hope that every year, I keep progressing and getting better at my writing.”

A Writing Career Takes Off

When Storm was little, her grandfather would tell her wild, improvised stories. She aspired one day to tell stories of the same quality.

After Storm did well on a writing assignment in middle school, one of Storm’s teachers advised her to pursue a career in writing and consider authoring a book. This compliment from her instructor was the inspiration she needed to continue writing.

In 2021, Storm began writing a novel called, “The Pen Pal: A West Virginia Mystery.” After finishing her first draft, she sent it to a few friends and asked for their critiques. After reassurance from her friends, Storm sought out other authors for their guidance on the publication process.

Storm credits those other authors for their mentorship and guidance, noting that having a strong network is essential to anyone’s success. She says, “After gaining that support and doing my research, I decided to self-publish.”

In Storm’s first novel, her main character, Shiloh Ray, is a military wife, new mother, and college student suffering from postpartum depression and loneliness. She encounters a pen pal, Penelope, who mysteriously vanishes later on in the novel, and Shiloh travels to West Virginia to find out what happened to her friend.

The success of the first book led to a second novel, “The Final Secret,” which was published on October 31, 2022. For this novel about family secrets, Storm was inspired by her grandfather’s habit of daily journaling.

RELATED: Literature: What’s the Point of Reading and Studying It?

Being Nominated for the Ann Kathryn Flagg Artist of the Year Award

In the fall of 2022, Storm won the Ann Kathryn Flagg Award, according to Tyler Star News. This prize is a prestigious award from The West Virginia Women’s Commission.

Storm has also been selected as a finalist for best author in the Best of West Virginia Living Contest. The winner will be announced in the 2023 winter issue West Virginia Living magazine.

Developing a Passion for the Law and the Environment

In addition to a love for writing, Storm is interested in the law and the environment. At her husband’s recommendation, she enrolled in American Military University (AMU) and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in legal studies in 2022.

Storm’s favorite class was environmental law. The research for the class also helped her as an author because it taught her how to conduct thorough, proper research for each of her books.

That same class inspired her to sign up for a master’s degree in environmental policy and management. She notes, “I love this school; all the professors and the staff here truly care about the students and their education. Plus, it is super affordable!”

RELATED: How You Can Avoid the Various Pitfalls of Academic Writing

Encouraging Other Authors to Perfect Their Writing

Storm’s message for future authors is “Write a lot and read a lot! You can learn tons from other writers.” Also, Storm says that “Your first book will never be perfect. But with each book, you will learn more and get better every time.”

Storm’s future goals include finishing her master’s degree, having at least one of her books converted into a movie and writing one book every year.

About the Author

John Robert Morton is a Student & Alumni Affairs Liaison and has been with the University for 13 years. His bachelor’s degree in European history is from Troy University in Troy, Alabama. He also completed master’s degrees in political science and sports management from American Military University. As a liaison, John Robert enjoys helping students and alumni to achieve their personal and professional goals.

About Our Department

The AMU and APU Alumni Affairs Office is dedicated to sustaining lifelong relationships with university alumni by providing engaging opportunities to stay involved and connected. We work closely with a variety of stakeholders to strengthen the alumni experience and to offer a variety of benefits, services, activities, and events throughout the year.

As a team, the Alumni Affairs team works to build and sustain relationships with alumni along their personal and professional journeys. We actively look for ways to recognize and showcase alumni, telling their stories to motivate and encourage students in the pursuit of their goals.

If you are a member of the alumni community and are looking for ways to remain actively involved, please contact [email protected] and speak with a member of the team.

The cybersecurity field is finding it difficult to build the workforce it needs to protect businesses and individuals. In this episode, AMU’s Dr. Nicole Drumhiller explores the intriguing aspects of cybersecurity with Andre Slonopas.

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Read the Transcript:

Nicole Drumhiller: Hi everyone. My name is Nicole Drumhiller, and I’m in the School of Security and Global Studies at American Public University System. With me today is Andre Slonopas, also within the School of Security and Global Studies. And today we’re here talking about the interdisciplinary nature of the global security job market. Unlike some saturated career fields, as I understand it, the cybersecurity field lacks qualified workforce members. Is that correct, Andre?

Andre Slonopas: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Nicole. And thank you for doing this podcast as well. That is correct. As a matter of fact, something like 30 to 33% of the cybersecurity positions are currently unfilled.

Nicole Drumhiller: Wow. And so where do you see the need for growth in most of this field? Are there specific areas within cybersecurity that are hurting the most?

Andre Slonopas: I think that’s a great question. Cybersecurity itself is very diverse. There’re so many routes, there’s so many areas that you could pursue, everything from even physical security is going to be a proportion of the cybersecurity. If somebody can have access to your physical hardware, to your server, to your rack, it doesn’t matter what passwords you put in there, they can clean out your server and then reset and then wreak havoc. So, there’s that component of it. But also, you have the virtualization, you have the automation, you have the cybersecurity, the entire cybersecurity onion. You want to put in these layers and layers and layers and layers of cybersecurity to make your system more resilient. And you want to be a little bit better than your neighbor. You want the attackers to go after your neighbor, not necessarily you.

Nicole Drumhiller: So, can you break that down for me when you’re talking about the different components of the onion, so to speak, what does that look like? Can you talk a little bit more about those layers?

Andre Slonopas: Yeah, I think this is a great question. The analogy would be the defense in depth. And I’m going to use military terminology here because I think military can relate to a lot of this. You put in an obstacle, then you put in an anti-tank obstacle, then you put in some mine fields, then you put in some anti-personnel concertina wire, then you put in some triple strand and so on. And you really want to build out that really deep defensive line.

And so, the idea behind it is that somebody penetrates through the first line of defense, well great, now they have another 25 to go. And then they penetrate through the second one and the third one and the fourth one. But each time it takes a little bit more resources, a little bit more commitment, a little bit more time and energy consumption and resource consumption and funding consumption. And so eventually, by the time they get to your seventh or eighth or ninth line of defense, hopefully they realize that onion could go on for much longer and they kind of move on to a softer target.

So, the cybersecurity world, obviously you’re not going to be putting mines like in the cyber field or digital concertina wire, but really the way it would look is you would have your edge router. Now on the edge router you would put in all sorts of firewalls. Stateful firewalls, artificial intelligence, something that will actually establish some sort of a threshold of what the normal communication looks like. So, anything outside of the normal is going to be dropped. Then behind that, you actually don’t put in your real network, you put in some sort of a DMZ, demilitarized zone. So essentially it’s going to be a small little network that’s actually going to be facing the big bad Internet. Then behind that, you put another server that’ll actually have some sort of another firewall. They’ll only filter the traffic that comes in from the DMZ to your internal network.

And then on the internal network, what prevents you from putting in five or seven internal networks, four or five of them can be fake, but only one of them could be real. So now even if somehow these malicious actors get through all of those lines of defense, they actually don’t know who you are in reality. You may have an office space that will have all sorts of corrupted false data, and that person, the malicious actor, could just knock themselves out for hours and hours digging through data that isn’t real. So that’s what you want to build out. You want to build out this very resilient network and in the last line of defense sort of virtualization, make your network look so much more than it really is. For the most part the majority of the people aren’t that interesting for somebody to commit years of their life to compromise their networks.

Nicole Drumhiller: So, it’s really interesting. I think it’s funny when you say you want to be just a little bit better than your neighbor. It reminds me of people having their wireless networks named so that people can see them publicly.

Andre Slonopas: You bring up a really great point because why is that happening? This was very, very common. It was just drive-by Wi-Fis essentially. And so, a lot of this was done for research and it was done actually at the, I want to say Stanford has done a lot of this, Berkeley has done a lot of this work. But essentially a professor or researcher would put a Wi-Fi puck on his bike or on his car and just drive through San Francisco just to see how many people would actually hook up. But what he would do, he would say free Wi-Fi San Francisco, that’s the way he would actually name his SSID. And so, a lot of people naturally assume free Wi-Fi from San Francisco, hundreds of thousands of people would hook up. But in reality, it was a researcher who was actually collecting data unwitting. But imagine if this could be done by a malicious actor. You go to Starbucks, and it says free Wi-Fi Starbucks. I mean, is it really? We don’t know.

Nicole Drumhiller: Right? Or even the airport, right? The airport seems to be an amazing place to collect that kind of stuff. If you were a researcher wanting to check that out, that’s one thing that I can just think about doing just as a layperson seeing that I’m traveling through this airport and I need to get some work done, so let me connect to the Wi-Fi and go from there. And then that puts me at risk, right?

Andre Slonopas: That is absolutely correct. And if it’s a malicious actor, how many people are checking their bank accounts and their emails and everything else? You could collect a lot of information just putting up this fake Wi-Fi that people connect to, and you can name it airport.

Nicole Drumhiller: What would you recommend as the alternative option just for that? I know we’re getting a little bit off topic, but let’s just bring this home for our listeners.

Andre Slonopas: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think one of the best recommendations that I have out there, and especially with the way the laws are being structured on Internet now, I would highly recommend some sort of encryption. VPN, virtual private network. It’s a plug and play, download and play type of a solution. You can get a lot of the free VPNs out there, they’re available, or you can pay the $2 a month, get your VPN, install it. It’ll encrypt all of your network. So even if you hook up to a Wi-Fi somewhere in Starbucks or airport or whatever be the case, all of your communication is going to be encrypted and chances are your neighbor is not encrypting their communication.

So, a malicious actor it’ll take him months to break through the encryption, years even in some cases, he’s not going to do that. That person will probably move on to an easier target. So, a VPN, there’s some really good ones out there. They’re really good ones out there. They’re actually headquartered in places like Panama and Virgin Islands and other countries that don’t have very strict cyber laws. They don’t store any of your information, and that’s an easy solution to protect your data.

Nicole Drumhiller: Oh, wonderful. Thanks for wrapping that up just for lay people like myself, just to make sure that we’re doing all that we can to be a little bit better when it comes to protecting our own information. One of the things that I always find fascinating is that unlike physical structures, the world of cybersecurity is always changing as people find new techniques for overcoming security measures. And these issues are not specific to any one field. And I know we need to take a little bit of a break, but when we come back from our break, let’s talk about some different notable hacks that have occurred across government, business and education sectors.

We are going to start talking about some different notable hacks that have occurred across government, business and education sectors. So, to kick us off, Andre, the US government has been faced with cyber-attacks in the past. One exercise that comes to mind is Operation Eligible Receiver where the NSA hacked the Department of Defense network using only publicly available techniques and equipment. What prompted this exercise? How did this situation really unfold?

Andre Slonopas: Yeah, I think that’s a great question and I think that’s a great scenario that actually sort of evolved right as we were hitting the digital revolution. Human beings, we’re so set in our ways and very often it’s so difficult for us to change the way we do things. And for so many centuries, millennia, we have done things in an analog way. You write things on a piece of paper, you mail it, and you kind of communicate that way. Once we hit the digital revolution, our communications really went over the wire, over these Wi-Fi, over these electromagnetic waves around the world. Trying to change a lot of the decision makers have been doing things one way, in an analog way, and trying to have them understand the importance of digital security was extremely difficult.

And so, what ended up happening is NSA sort of coordinated this operation, the whole thing was reviewed by JAG and make sure everybody stayed within their legal limits, but they called it Operation Eligible Receiver. And so, the stipulation behind these operations that NSA will actually hack Department of Defense, the Pentagon, but they will only use tools that are available out there in the wild on the Internet, tools that anybody can download and sort of leverage. They weren’t actually using any of their highly specialized tools. And the idea behind it was to actually show the power, I guess, of offensive digital attacks, that’s one of it. But also, to get the DOD finally behind the cybersecurity. And that’s essentially what ended up happening. That’s sort of the idea and how this exercise evolved and initially took place in ’97 and there was a repeat in 2003.

Nicole Drumhiller: Well, that’s really interesting. I always like hearing about that since I know there’s been a number of interesting things that have come about as a result of that situation. Let’s move on and talk a little bit about some of the things that have occurred in business. One business or energy business hack that comes to mind is Colonial Pipeline. For those of you in need of a refresher, this story broke around the time that the Colonial Pipeline, which is a 5,500-mile-long pipeline that moves oil across the East coast, was compromised. When the story broke, the headlines seemed to focus on how this was an act of possible state aggression to disrupt the energy supply. What really happened in this situation?

Andre Slonopas: Yeah, thank you, Nicole, another great case. I think there’s a lot of ways we could actually tie what happened on the Colonial Pipeline with actually what Eligible Receiver demonstrated. So, the Eligible Receiver demonstrated that you can really wreak havoc on an organization using a lot of the stuff that is actually available out there. The simple solution is to simply take information and delete it, but a lot of that information can restore. We keep backup files. Everybody has an external hard drive where they back up their pictures or whatever else they do. What if that data was actually corrupted? And so, in the operation Eligible Receiver, that’s actually one of the things that they have done is they didn’t just delete the data. No, they corrupted the data. So, the meeting places were changed, the rooms were changed, the floors were changed, the emails themselves were corrupted. Important information was taken out, information was added and so on.

So, in the end, the Pentagon shut down, not because they didn’t have communication, it shut down because nobody could trust anything. There was just destruction of trust. And that’s essentially what happened also in another operation that took place in Natanz’s nuclear processing plant out in Iran, the Stuxnet, the infamous Stuxnet case where a lot of the information was corrupted. So how do you purify uranium if you don’t know how fast your centrifruges are working and so on. And so, in the Colonial Pipeline, sort of similar things began happening. Although from my understanding at least, I was not involved in this directly, but my understanding is that these malicious actors actually did not go out to the control systems, they began to compromise a lot of the RTUs, or remote terminal units that are out there in the field. A lot of the sensors and actuators or whatever else was there.

And once this attack actually transpired, what ended up happening is Colonial Pipeline decided to shut down the whole thing because they didn’t know how far the compromise went. But this malicious group, they called themselves The Dark Side, they actually made a comment. They said “we are apolitical” and I’m quoting here – “We are apolitical. We do not participate in geopolitics, do not tie us with defined government and look for other motives. Our goal is to make money and not create problems for society.” So at least they’re saying they’re not working for a government. And also, they’re saying they’re not here to create problems for society, but sure enough they did.

There’re some closures with some of the gas stations and the energy transportation portion was also disrupted. So, you do have these very persistent, malicious actors out there, and they are focusing on these really interested and unique critical infrastructure components. They claim that they’re not working for a government. The ones and zeros, they don’t necessarily align themselves with a nation, if you will. Then there’s a lot of obfuscation that goes around, trying to track things through the big Internet around the world is also extremely difficult. So, I think we’re left to wonder, at least into the foreseeable future, what really happened and who these guys were.

Nicole Drumhiller: Yeah, no, it’s absolutely another fascinating case because it does show you some of the different things that are possible and the destruction that it can cause. Another fun one that is kind of, it’s gaming oriented, still kind of hits on the business side of things, is the Manfred story. This one is really interesting to me since it’s about a guy who’s into playing what are called massive multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG, but then when he gets bored with the game itself, he goes and starts looking for bugs in the game. So, on the surface, to me it seems pretty harmless since he basically would find loopholes in the games that would give him an edge over others. But what do you see as the implications of this?

Andre Slonopas: For the first time, arguably first time in the history, the Manfred story was so phenomenal because it actually showed that you can make a lot of money doing something that really seems pretty harmless on the surface. So, I’ll give you an example of some of the themes that actually Manfred was doing. But he actually played this game called EverQuest, and it was a multiplayer online role-playing game. And basically, he realized that it took him a very long time to run around as this character, fighting all these different monsters. So, what he did, he actually programmed a bot that would actually just fight these monsters 24/7 nonstop. He came back a couple days later just to see if the bot is still fighting. Sure enough, after about a week or so, he had one of the most advanced characters in the game, and then he realized that he could actually essentially defeat the entire competition by not just playing the game, but by having his bot essentially playing on his behalf. And then he just comes in and collects a reward.

But then he started explaining a little bit more. And so, we had to realize a little bit on how the computers work. The computers are in these bits. So, we have the eight, the 16, the 32, the 64, the 128, and so on bits. So, these first games, like the EverQuest, they were operating in this 16 or maybe even the 32 bit. So, these packets were fairly small. What he would do is he would essentially take a packet that would go from his computer where he was playing the game into the Internet into the game server, but he would actually capture these packets before it left his house. So go from his computer to the computer where he was intercepting these packets. He would change the packets and then send them to the game server. But the game server never actually checked where the packets are coming from. So now once he actually captured those packets, he could change them in whatever shape he wanted to change them into.

So, for example, if you can think of a clock, a clock will show 1 PM. Now if you subtract one second away from the clock, you actually get 12:59. So you actually get a much bigger number. You started with a 1 PM, you subtract one second, now you have what, 12:59. You have a much bigger number. It’s the same thing that he tried with his packets. He would take a packet that was 0000, so he had zero game currency, but he would subtract one from it. Well, now he just got basically the maximum amount of currency that he could have. Let’s say he took a weapon, whatever it was, a sword, subtract a one from this very basic sword, which would max it out. So, he was doing what was called a buffer overflows. He was maxing himself out, not by playing the game, but essentially changing these packets before he would actually send them out. So, people started complaining obviously and what ended up happening is he would always get kicked out.

Nicole Drumhiller: That’s wild that there’s a market for these types of things. That’s something that I would never think about. But then when I start thinking about how games can be monetized, now you have a whole bunch of more possibilities.

Andre Slonopas: And that is correct. And in many ways, I mean this guy was an entrepreneur. He figured out you could actually make a lot of money selling things that aren’t really real, but to a gamer they are, because they’re digital things that the gamer values. And a lot of these companies, so why actually Manfred ended up going out of business? Because a lot of the companies realized that they’re competing against this, I don’t know, shadow market, whatever you want to call it, where these malicious actors were selling digital items for their games. So, the companies themselves began selling digital items for a lower value and they didn’t do it on eBay, they actually did it in the game itself. And so, Manfred eventually had to go out of business because now he was competing against the company itself who was under bidding him in a video game and the company didn’t have to do anything about it.

Nicole Drumhiller: Right, and he had to force that market to adapt because of what his actions were.

Andre Slonopas: But I think he actually helped out the video game industry, which actually blossomed because he showed what can be done. And at some point in time the way the packets move around the world, sometimes so difficult to actually know where they are from. But there was a report about North Korean hackers who actually picked up on the Manfred story as well. And so, they realized that they could actually compromise a lot of the video games and make money for the North Korean government by selling these things on eBay. So, in many ways this gentleman also helped North Korea circumvent a lot of the sanctions.

Nicole Drumhiller: Or at least spawn some ideas. I mean, you can get good ideas and turn them into something nefarious in pretty much any kind of situation. Yeah, it’s fascinating. I don’t recall, was he one that would also send in tips to the different companies telling them how to fix bugs? That could be another case that I’m thinking about. Since it’s a very human side of things there are examples where people will find a bug, report it to a company, and then the company gets mad at them for bringing this to their attention.

Andre Slonopas: He did report, he does talk about reporting a bug in one of the games. The bug essentially was that the game would not check whether your house was built over the ground or under the ground. So, he would build these houses under the ground and anybody who walked in, he would essentially rob these people walking into his house, even though the people didn’t know that the house was there because he would build them under the ground. So, he actually reported this bug to the video game company through the game manager, the GM. Well, the game manager reported it to the cybersecurity team, and the cybersecurity team accused the game manager of actually working with hackers to compromise the video game and they actually fired the gentleman. It’s an unfortunate case that Manfred was trying to help somebody, and it eventually cost that person a job.

Nicole Drumhiller: So, we’ve talked about government, and we’ve talked about some of the business hacks. I definitely don’t think the education field is immune to hacks by any means. And so, when we think about notable hacks specific to universities, what comes to mind for you?

Andre Slonopas: And academia is definitely not immune to compromise. As a matter of fact, that .edu domain was one of the favored domains, the endings, by malicious actors for a very long time. There’re several reasons for that, but the .edu, they try to be fairly open. It’s all about research, collaboration, which actually makes them a little bit more susceptible to attacks. So that’s why there was a period of time, I want to say from like 2008 to maybe like 2016-17 where a lot of the .edu websites were actually blocked by a lot of the companies. And the reason for that is because malicious actors would use .edu domain names as a pivot point. So, remember how we talked about, it’s so difficult to actually track somebody through the Internet because that person will come in one network and then from that network they’ll actually execute their attack. So that’s called the pivoting. So essentially the malicious actor, I don’t know, in North Korea, will use a .edu in United States and then they’ll pivot, and they’ll do their attack.

So, universities and academia in general sort of attracted attention to themselves because they do have these open networks and they try to be fairly transparent. And so, one of the maybe more humorous cases that actually end up happening is the Washington State University compromise. And my understanding is it was actually one of the disgruntled students and he ended up compromising the network, in the middle of a classroom the projector would go down, it would turn on, and there would be some video of this student talking about how Washington State University is not a great place. There was a compromise that happened and there was a lot of data that was leaked out from that. It showed the vulnerability that a lot of the faculty, the staff and the student body actually could be exposed to. Washington State University ended up settling for 4.7 million in the data breach lawsuit that actually followed.

So, as you can see, nobody’s actually immune to cyber-attacks. Sometimes people think that the malicious actors have a big heart, and they’ll never attack a hospital. That’s not true. A lot of the hospitals have been compromised. As a matter of fact, hospitals are also arguably some of the biggest targets, same with the universities. And the cost associated with a data breach or any type of a compromise, we’re talking in millions. A single compromise will bankrupt about 60% of the small businesses. So, if a small business is compromised, they have about a 60% chance of failing within the next couple of years. Just think about that. A lot of the small businesses actually end up going underground because they cannot pay these exorbitant fees and associated damages that they have to pay out. Cybersecurity is a very, very serious matter.

Nicole Drumhiller: One of the things that all of these cases seem to have in common is that human element or that human gatekeeper. And given this, I would imagine that there is a lot of need for having educational roles within the cybersecurity field. And specifically, people that just don’t do the tech-heavy part, but then also provide cybersecurity education, but would need to be able to translate that to different types of individuals with different types of learning styles and things like that, if you will. So, what kind of roles do you see are available in the cybersecurity industry for somebody that’s not necessarily tech focused?

Andre Slonopas: And cybersecurity is so much more than technology. Technology is extremely important, but if the management of the company is not on board with the digital security, then the techies are going to have a really hard time making a very robust, good cybersecurity posture for the company. A great example of it is the Pentagon. People who’ve been working for the government for decades, they did not see a need for digital security. And so inevitably Eligible Receiver brought it to their attention and the Pentagon and the government in general, they changed, started in late 1990s. Well, it’s the same thing within any type of entity. What you have to have, you’re going to have to have somebody who’s not necessarily technical, but somebody who understands the strategy of the company, who can write out the policies, the standards, the guidelines, the procedures, and hold people accountable to them.

And it’s extremely important to have that connection between the technical person who’s actually doing a lot of the programming and the information assurance manager, the management person who may not be as technical, but who nevertheless needs to have a very good understanding on the cybersecurity posture and the technical posture that their company needs to have. So, cybersecurity is a lot more than just people sitting in their basements on a computer hacking video games. Cybersecurity is also a lot of the management. A lot of the strategies are developed not necessarily by the technical people, it’s actually being developed by people who have a vision of how they want to see their company grow, how they want to actually maintain the data, data protection.

And also, you need to train both. Having purely technical people or having purely management people on the information assurance, both are going to be a failure. You have to intertwine the two and you have to make sure that they actually understand each other. And you have to make sure that the policy that people write can actually be implemented and translated into the technical world, because otherwise you’re kind of working in vain. Overall, I think there’s a lot of opportunities for cybersecurity people to grow, even if you start on the technical side, grow into the management. There’s a lot of opportunities like that.

Nicole Drumhiller: Wonderful. And so, I know I want to be respectful of your time as we kind of wrap up our chat today, but if there’s any one key takeaway that you’d want somebody to take from this conversation today, what would that be?

Andre Slonopas: If you’re looking for a great career field, something to get into, something you could stay with for the next 30, 40 years of your life, cybersecurity is great. Cybersecurity is sticking around. We’re not going back to analog. As a matter of fact, cybersecurity is only going to grow. Cybersecurity jobs are predicted to grow at 15% annually over the next 10 to 11 years. We already talked that 32% of the jobs are actually unfilled at this time. The cybersecurity product sales are going up over 13, 14% annually. The organizational cybersecurity budgets are increasing. The salaries in the field of cybersecurity are increasing. So, if you’re looking for a great career field to get involved with, I think cybersecurity is it.

Nicole Drumhiller: Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today. Again, thank you for joining us, listeners. My name is Nicole Drumhiller, and Andre Slonopas, it was a great chat and I look forward to doing more of these in the future.

I have provided training and conducted research involving law enforcement officers from agencies around the United States, Central America, South America, and Europe. Misconceptions of law enforcement are common all around the world. The public often underestimates or doesn’t understand the amount of dedication, compassion toward others, and hard work officers put forth on a daily basis to mitigate crime for law-abiding citizens and maintain public safety.

Working in Law Enforcement Takes an Emotional Toll on Police Officers

Unless someone has a friend or family member in law enforcement, the public often does not see the emotional toll that a police officer experiences on a daily basis. This stress comes from responding to horrific crime scenes, responding to calls where children have been neglected or abused, traffic fatalities, and many other 911 calls for service.

Holding Perpetrators Accountable

The vast majority of police officers are ethical; they have genuine care and concern for the local people that they protect and serve in the line of duty. When people are victims of crime, officers inherently want to help by providing immediate aid and holding perpetrators accountable for the harm that they have brought to crime victims and their lives.

During the coronavirus pandemic, local law enforcement officers across the country continued to serve their communities by being willing to risk their own health and wellbeing on service calls. They accept the risk of physical harm that comes with the job of being a police officer and inherently run toward danger while most people run away from the threat.

[Related article: Effective Police Leaders: A Vital Component of Law Enforcement]

January 9 Is National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day

Each year, January 9 is National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. This event recognizes the sacrifices dedicated police officers make on a daily basis to keep everyone safe. According to the U.S. Census, there are over 900,000 people in law enforcement. 

The Elk Valley Times notes that National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day began in 2015 to enable our nation’s citizens to thank officers nationwide for the daily sacrifice law enforcement officers make to keep us safe. There are different ways that a community can display support for its law enforcement officers, including:

• Displaying respect toward police officers in personal encounters
• Volunteering for police programs such as citizen academies, crime stoppers programs or neighborhood watch programs
• Visiting local police agencies and talking with officers during community/police events, such as the National Night Out program

Yet another good way to gain a deeper understanding of criminal justice is through education. The University offers several online criminal justice programs, including:

• Associate of Arts in Criminal Justice
• Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice
• Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice
• Master of Arts in Criminal Justice

Getting to know local law enforcement during events such as National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day is essential. Meeting police officers face-to-face builds trust between a community and the officers who maintain order in the community. It also helps local citizens to gain a deeper understanding of the people behind the badge and learn more about community safety programs.

Ironically, her platform of “Trussonomics” is comparable to “Thatcherism” – the term used to describe the platform (and legacy) of one of the longest-tenured Prime Ministers in recent UK history.

Truss’s demise was the result of the “Growth Plan,” informally referred to as the “mini-budget,” proposed by Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng on Sept. 23, 2022. According to the BBC, the mini-budget proposal included:

• A large cut to taxation
• Getting rid of the 45% top income tax rate while cutting the basic rate of income tax
• Abandoning increases in national insurance contributions (the equivalent of U.S. Social Security contributions)
• Cancelling rises in corporate tax
• Abolishing the proposed Health and Social Care Levy
• Cutting stamp duty

All of these policies were set to be funded by government borrowing – which would have increased the already astronomical UK national deficit.

Bank of England Steps in to Divert a Major Economic Crisis

Kwarteng, in his speech announcing the mini-budget, gave the reasons for cutting taxes as “to boost growth.” But according to the government’s own website, cutting taxes to such a degree would have “reduced Treasury Revenues by around £45 billion by 2026-2027.”

Unfortunately, these tax cuts were completely unfunded and caused the value of the British pound to plummet. The Bank of England had to intervene to stabilize the market and prevent the decimation of UK citizens’ pensions.

Kwarteng’s Departure and Financial Panic

The mini-budget of Truss and Kwarteng also led to panic within the financial sector, resulting in Kwarteng’s dismissal on October 14, 2022. His replacement, Jeremy Hunt, did a U-turn on the mini-budget to the relief of many people and the eventual stabilization of the British pound.

However, it was not enough to save Liz Truss’s position as Prime Minister, and she was forced to resign shortly thereafter. So what was Truss’s goal with this mini-budget, and why was it so roundly rejected?

[Related article: Simple Economics: Fewer Job Applicants Mean Higher Wages]

The Institute of Economic Affairs Contributed Ideas to the Mini-Budget of Truss and Kwarteng

Many of the ideas put forward in the mini-budget came from right-wing think tanks, particularly The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

According to the IEA’s website, it is an “educational charity” whose goal is to “improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analyzing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.” However, others see the organization’s stated goal a little differently.

For example, Adam Bychawski of Consortium News recently described the IEA’s mission this way: “To evangelize and convert politicians to the doctrine of free market economics – a mission it has had remarkable success with. At [the IEA’s] peak in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher credited it for ‘creating the climate of opinion which made our victory possible.’”

The IEA has never disclosed who funds it. However, journalists have uncovered donations from oil giants like BP – along with tobacco industry companies, according to The Ferret.

Truss Seen as a Return to Thatcherism

Many see Truss’s allegiance with the IEA as a return to the days of Thatcherism because the Thatcher years (1979-1990) saw the last time the IEA had a true believer of its policies living in 10 Downing Street. Truss’s elevation to PM is seen as the culmination of the IEA’s move toward reliving its Thatcherism past by having both a PM and a Chancellor of the Exchequer loyal to the organization’s doctrine. Along with attempting a “Thatcherism” reboot, Truss has been derided by many as a Thatcher tribute act, with everything – even her fashion choices, according to The Independent – imitating the former PM.

Liz Truss and Her Proposed ‘Libertarian Utopia’

The IEA champions free-market libertarianism (low taxes as well as low regulation), which effectively lets the markets police themselves. The dangers of this way of thinking – and of trying to convert an economy into this kind of “libertarian utopia” all at once – should be obvious, but that did not stop Truss from trying to implement her plan.

The Problem with Trickle-Down Economics

However, the concept that encouraging profits and high wages in the upper classes will help everyone through trickle-down economics has many flaws. As Australian economist H.W. Arndt wrote in a 1983 Economic Development and Culture Change article, “No reputable developmental economist ever, implicitly or explicitly, entertained any such theory in any of its alleged versions.”  

Money and benefits only “trickle down” if CEOs and other highly paid individuals allow the money to flow back into the economy. This effect can occur not only through taxes, but also by simply spending the money and allowing it to re-enter the economic cycle.

The UK’s Conservative Party – which has been in power for 30 of the last 43 years, including the last 12 years – has recently become a notorious tax haven. For instance, Amazon paid virtually zero taxes on its 2020 operations in the UK, Charged Retail notes. Simply put, the money can’t trickle down as it remains watertight in the accounts of the already wealthy.

Employment, Improved Distribution and Reduction of Poverty

The idea of minimal tax and uncapped bonuses only helps people already at the top of the economic ladder. Effectively, the government fell into the trap of – as Arndt put it – focusing on “overall growth of per capita income” while giving no thought to “direct social objectives” such as “employment, improved distribution and reduction of poverty.”

To put Arndt’s statement another way, the current UK government is focusing on the increase of upper-class wealth at the expense of the lower classes. This accusation has been leveled at the Conservative Party for a long time, and two infamous videos of new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak enforce this idea.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Seems to Favor the Wealthy

One of these videos shows a young Sunak cheerfully saying, “I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class,” before adding “well, not working class.” The other video shows Sunak seemingly feeling proud of “diverting funds from deprived urban areas.”

Some have hoped that the volatility following Truss’s mini-budget in September – and her promotion of right-wing and libertarian ideals – may encourage the next government to reduce the influence that think tanks have on the UK’s overall economic policies. It appears likely that the next government will be led by the Labour Party.

Time will tell, but several members of the IEA are members of Prime Minister Sunak’s new cabinet. Consequently, the influence of this economically flawed system may still be felt during Sunak’s tenure as PM.

Sunak Has an Uphill Battle to Remain Prime Minister Thanks to Liz Truss

With recent polls suggesting the Conservatives face being wiped out at the next general election, UK citizens clearly view Liz Truss – and her disastrously short tenure and attempt to break the UK economy – as a permanent stain on the party’s history.

Sunak has an uphill and arduous task ahead of him if he wants to remain Prime Minister after the next general election. And for that, he can thank Liz Truss and what many saw as “Thatcherism – Part 2.”

The preceding article was written by Arran Appleton – Special Contributor to Edge.

On Feb. 8, 2008, the charred remains of Judy Petty were found by her father in the cellar of an outbuilding on her family’s property in rural West Virginia. Judy had been missing for two days, and law enforcement officials and her family still don’t know how she ended up on her family’s property, 13 miles from where she lived in Parkersburg. 

Consulting with Arson Expert Alan Haskins

Our team contacted Alan Haskins, Fire Science Program Director and an instructor at Black River Technical College in Pocahontas, Arkansas. Alan is a long-term firefighter and former paramedic; he also has an extensive career, spanning 30 years, in firefighting and arson investigation. We shared the photos of Judy’s crime scene, autopsy and original fire investigation reports with Alan to obtain his insights.

The Original Fire Investigation

In 2008, officials conducted two separate fire investigations. The Wood County Fire Investigative Team handled one investigation and state fire marshals conducted the other.

At that time, investigators were unable to identify any specific burn patterns due to the extreme damage to both the house and the outbuilding at the Petty farm. The reports mentioned that the fuel consumption of both fires was total, and no items susceptible to fire remained.

In addition, investigators observed that the ground vegetation between the outbuilding where Judy’s remains were found and the Petty house was intact. The distance between the two structures measured 32 feet, which led them to the conclusion that someone set multiple fires and that the original fire did not travel to other structures.

The teams were unable to determine the point of origin where the fire(s) began. They could also not determine whether the fires were purposeful or accidental.

The Location of Judy’s Remains Provides Important Clues

The outbuilding cellar in which Judy’s remains were found measured 12 feet in width, 15 feet in length and 6.5 feet in depth. The cellar is situated in a north to south direction.

Officials recovered Judy’s remains in the southeast corner of the cellar. According to reports, Judy was lying in an east to south orientation, with her head towards the east and feet towards the south.

The positioning of Judy’s body led Alan to conclude that someone placed her there. He believes her killer dragged Judy Petty to the location where her body was found. The killer likely would have grasped Judy’s body under her armpits and walked backward down the stairs in order to drag her to the cellar. Gravity assists when moving a body downstairs.

Alan found it highly unlikely that Judy was killed in the cellar, because the position of her body indicates she was dragged down the cellar stairs. She was found right at the bottom of the stairs, so the killer essentially took the easiest method necessary to hide the body and destroy it.

Alan considered the scenario that Judy’s killer could have placed her body on the ground (upper) level floor of the outbuilding and her body dropped into the cellar as the fire destroyed the outbuilding. However, he explained that the positioning of Judy Petty’s body does not support this theory.

Fire officials noted that they removed a great deal of debris from the top of Judy’s remains. There was no note of debris being found under her, which would be expected if her body dropped from the outbuilding’s upper floor.

Was an Accelerant Used to Start the Fire at the Petty Farm?

With any case of suspected arson, a key question is whether someone used an accelerant to start a fire. Alan believes the killer poured an accelerant on the southeast area of the cellar and possibly on Judy’s body. He noticed marks on the floor by Judy’s remains that indicate the use of an accelerant.

On the east and south walls of the cellar, Alan pointed out areas of spalling, a phenomenon that occurs in structure fires where the surrounding area is constructed with concrete. Concrete contains moisture so when a structure’s internal temperature exceeds 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the boiling point of water, it converts the moisture in the concrete to steam. As a result, the concrete in that structure cracks and can even break.

Alan feels the fire burned longer in the particular area of the outbuilding where Judy’s father found her body, based on the visual evidence. The point of origin of a fire is usually where the fire burns the longest. In this case, that’s the location where Judy’s body was situated.

Analyzing the Toxicology Report of Judy Petty

Alan explained that when someone dies in a structure fire, they usually die from inhaling toxic gases and smoke, not the fire itself. When this type of death occurs, a toxicology analysis of the victim’s blood or tissue can provide proof of inhalation of those gases and smoke. Red blood cells absorb carbon monoxide more quickly than oxygen, so the inhalation of carbon monoxide is readily apparent in a toxicology analysis.

In Judy’s case, part of her liver was recovered at the scene, and the medical examiner tested her liver tissue for the presence of drugs, alcohol, and carbon monoxide. Her carbon monoxide level was 3%, well below the toxic level. Victims who die as a result of a fire generally exhibit a carbon monoxide level of 60-70%. Alan concluded that Judy Petty did not die as a result of the fire and was dead prior to when the fire started.

Could Judy Petty Have Died in an Accidental Fire or from Suicide?

I asked Alan his opinion on whether Judy Petty died as a result of an accidental fire. He explained that if she’d started a fire that accidentally got out of control, her natural response would be to flee the scene and seek help from a neighbor and authorities. Her body was found by the cellar stairs, so she had an escape route no matter where the fire started in the outbuilding.

If Judy had started a fire and then suffered a medical emergency, she’d have inhaled the toxic gases and smoke, and the evidence of that would have been in her toxicology report. Therefore, according to Alan, an accident of this nature was very unlikely.

We also discussed the possibility of Judy starting a fire and then committing suicide. In my previous article, I mentioned that a weapon such as a gun or knife is often used in suicide, but no such weapon was recovered from the cellar.

There is a small possibility that Judy found a way to hang herself in the cellar and the fire destroyed the evidence of a hanging device. But her body position does not support that theory.

Additionally, unless Judy died almost instantaneously after setting the fire and hanging herself, the toxicologist would have found a much higher carbon monoxide level in her tissue. Consequently, her manner of death being a suicide is highly improbable.

How Long Did the Outbuilding Fire Burn?

In analyzing the fire set that destroyed Judy’s remains, I was curious as to how long the fire had to burn in order for Judy’s body to become as charred as it was. This information could help narrow down the timeframe during which the perpetrator set the fire.

When a body is legally cremated in a crematorium, the average temperature reaches 1,800-2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. A body takes one to two hours to be completely burned up in a crematorium, but the large bones still remain. These bones usually include the skull, feet, femur, vertebrae and the pelvis, which are the nearly the same set of bones retrieved in Judy’s case.

After studying the reports, Alan believes the fire reached 1,800-2,100 degrees Fahrenheit in that general location of the cellar. He explained that as the fire consumed the building, the contents from the upper floor of the building fell downward onto Judy’s body. The corrugated metal roof collapsed on top of all of it, further containing the heat and fire.

The entire fire was all contained in the pit of the cellar, which would cause it to burn longer. When the fire burnt itself out, it smoldered for many hours, which took an additional toll on Judy Petty’s body.

The Fire’s Point of Origin Was Likely in the Cellar

Alan strongly believes one fire was set in the cellar, either on or near Judy’s body, and then the fire spread to the main house. The general guideline fire departments provide homeowners who want to burn brush or build a firepit is to ensure they do so at least 50 feet from any structure.

Having a fire inside that 50-foot circumference can easily transfer enough radiant heat and flaming embers to a nearby structure and cause it to ignite. He does not believe multiple fires were set, but rather the one original fire spread to other areas.

Did Judy Petty Suffer from Blunt Force Trauma?

According to experts from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who analyzed Judy Petty’s remains, only 30%-40% of her skull was recovered after the fire. Alan explained that human bones will twist and fracture in a fire due to their internal moisture.

However, a fire will not cause a human skull to shatter into pieces too small to be recovered. Alan cannot rule out the possibility that Judy’s killer struck her in the head, and Judy had a fractured skull prior to the destruction of her body by the fire.

Final Conclusions

After analyzing the investigative reports and photos, Alan feels certain that Judy was killed prior to the fire. After the killer dragged her body down the cellar stairs and left it on the floor, the killer likely poured an accelerant on and around her body, then created a trail up the cellar stairs (so he/she wouldn’t be trapped in the cellar) and ignited the fire.

The most probable reason someone would go to the extent and risk of killing Judy Petty was to cover up a crime and destroy the evidence. If Judy’s body had been found intact, the specific cause of death could likely have been determined by the medical examiner. In turn, that would have likely provided clues about her killer.

Readers Can Assist in Finding Judy’s Killer

Readers can follow our progress on Judy Petty’s case and help our investigative team by joining our Facebook group dedicated to finding who killed Judy Petty. The group administrators regularly post updates on the case and discussion topics; also, readers are welcome to provide their input and ideas. In addition, you can listen to Season 1 of Safe Haven, an investigative podcast that covers our team’s real-time investigation into Judy Petty’s homicide.

If anyone has information about Judy Petty’s death, they can email our confidential tip address at [email protected] or call the team’s tip line at 224-225-5208. Readers may also contact Doug Sturm, investigator for the Wood County Prosecuting Attorney’s office at 304-424-1776. All tipsters are guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity if they request it.

Britannica also notes that the Marine Corps is within the Department of the Navy. It specializes in amphibious landings, conducts land and air operations, and provides detachments for service onboard Naval vessels.  

The Marines are also involved in the maintenance of physical security for embassies and consulates. According to the U.S. Department of State, Marine Corps security guards have provided protection for staff, property, and sensitive information at embassies and consulates around the globe for the past six decades.  

In addition, the Marines participate in humanitarian and reconnaissance operations. For example, in December 2022, Marines from Camp Lejeune in the 2nd Marine Division engaged in “Continuing Promise 2022,” according to the Marine Corps website. They provided humanitarian support in the Caribbean, Central America and South America. 

[Related Article: In Reshaping the Force, Marines Let Officers Skip Promotion Boards]

History of the Marine Corps 

According to Military.com, the Marine Corps was initially established in 1775 to support naval forces in the Revolutionary War. Its headquarters was in Philadelphia, now considered the birthplace of the Marine Corps.  

However, the Marine Corps was abolished at the end of the Revolutionary War for economic reasons. Military.com also notes Congress recreated the Marine Corps on July 11, 1798, under the Secretary of the Navy, which is where it is located today.  

The Marines have always played an essential role in defending our nation. Marine Corps University states that Marines were part of the naval operations in the War of 1812. Their work included defending George Washington at Bladensburg, Maryland, and fighting alongside Andrew Jackson to defeat the British in New Orleans.  

In the Mexican War of 1846-1848, Marines seized enemy seaports along the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coasts, according to Marine Corps University. To this day, the Marines play an active role in global conflicts. 

Today’s Marines

Currently, there are around 177,000 actively serving Marines, according to ABC7. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Marine Corps meets the complexity of the modern-day battlefields by being a highly trained force. Over time, the Marine Corps has changed from an industrial-age model to an information-age model that focuses on: 

1. Creating training that involves critical thinking and decision-making
2. Strengthening practical judgement under pressure
3. Expanding of the use of wargaming and force-on-force training
4. Using live-virtual constructive training
5. Incorporating the use of more naval training and education

Knowing Military History Is Essential to Understanding the Nature of War  

The Marine Corps is an important part of our nation’s armed forces, so it is essential to know its history and the history of other service branches. For students who are interested in military history, military theory and concepts, military trends, and other related topics, the University offers an online master’s degree in military studies.  

Human trafficking is a billion-dollar industry and the second largest criminal activity in the world. In this episode, hear from doctoral student, Isabelle Vladiou, about her work educating people about how to identify human trafficking and safely report it. Also hear how human trafficking includes more than commercial sex and forced labor—it can include forced begging, organ trafficking, forced marriage and more.

Listen to the Episode:

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Read the Transcript:

Leischen Kranick: Welcome to the podcast. I’m your host Leischen Kranick. Today, I’m joined again, by one of our outstanding doctoral students, Isabelle Vladoiu. Isabelle is currently enrolled as a doctoral student in the university’s Global Security program. In a previous episode, I talked to Isabelle about her work as the founder of the U.S. Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights, work that led to her being awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award by President Biden. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode, I highly recommend you go back and check it out. And I want to welcome once again, Isabelle, thank you so much for being with me.

Isabelle Vladoiu: Thank you so much for the invitation.

Leischen Kranick: For this conversation, I want to talk specifically about the issue of human trafficking and what your organization does to address, what I consider, and many consider, a global epidemic. Can you start by just sharing a little bit about your work in addressing human trafficking and how it ties to your organization?

Isabelle Vladoiu: Thank you so much. At the U.S. Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights, we are a think tank. We tackle human trafficking from different perspectives. One of them, which is the most permanent at our organization, is educating people about human trafficking, and specifically, how to early spot the signs of human trafficking to prevent themselves or their family, their loved ones, from being trafficked.

Another aspect of that, it’s also on the preventional aspect, is making sure that people are aware of regular people who don’t come to the training necessarily, but working in collaboration with governmental institutions, with corporates to implement human trafficking prevention and awareness programs.

For example, we work with flight attendants training them. We work with hotel industry to train their staff to spot human trafficking. And then, the third part is doing a lot of research and also advocating. In the U.S. Congress, there are several bills every single year, that try to get adopted in terms of preventing human trafficking. We work also on that, advocating for bills to pass, and that’s the span of our work.

Leischen Kranick: For those listeners who may not really know much about human trafficking, can you talk a little bit about where you’re seeing this issue? I think people think, “Oh, this is a problem that happens in far off countries,” and the reality is that this is happening everywhere, including our cities and towns. Can you just talk about of the prevalence of human trafficking?

Isabelle Vladoiu: Certainly. I always go out there and I do myth busters. A lot of the people don’t realize human trafficking is much more permanent and it happens every single day, next to us, without us realizing it, in America, and everywhere around the globe. As a matter of fact, human trafficking and slavery, is four times greater than in the 1800s. Human trafficking is a billion dollar industry, which is actually the second largest criminal activity in the world, after drug trafficking. The third one is weapon trafficking. As you can see, trafficking in human beings, it brings perpetrators much more wealth, than trafficking guns.

Then one other thing that people, when they hear the word human trafficking, they only think about what they’ve seen probably in movies, that there is a van stopping and kidnapping somebody, grabs it, puts it into the van, and then the family never sees that person ever again, which is not true.

Most of the cases, actually 90% of the cases of human trafficking do not include any type of violence, especially in the beginning. Most of the time, human trafficking happens in the family. Most of the time human trafficking happens with a lover-boy concept, where there is a person that promises another person, through fraudulent means, obviously, that they’re going to help them get a better life.

Also, another myth buster that I often struggle in explaining to people is, when you hear the word human trafficking, a lot of us think about commercial sex or forced labor, but there are actually many other types of human trafficking. Some of them recently started to grow more and we need to bring more awareness. Organ removal, it’s still human trafficking; forced begging: human trafficking; child soldiers: human trafficking; forced marriages: human trafficking. Here’s a couple of examples of human trafficking instances or examples where some people would not even think that, that’s human trafficking.

The need is to make you more aware of how human trafficking happens around you, to not believe in the movies necessarily, that human trafficking only includes violence and be able to help people around you make yourself and your family safe as well.

Leischen Kranick: That’s fascinating. I actually hadn’t thought of things like organ harvesting and things like that, as human trafficking, but you’re right, all those examples, and this is an issue that I thought and know quite a bit about, so that’s new to me. Thank you for sharing that.

I want to talk a little bit, obviously your organization focuses on training people to educate others out in the world, and you mentioned earlier that you focus on specific industries like the travel industry and hospitality. Can you talk about just how you specialize in that training? Are there specific things that, for example, you see in hospitality that’s different than what you might see in the travel industry?

Isabelle Vladoiu: Not necessarily. I was just providing a couple of examples. I focus on educating everyone, but I also give a special attention to industries where human trafficking happens, more prevalent. Whereas tourism, there’s human trafficking. Obviously, where there’s a lot of movement of people in hotels, in airports, in public transportation, there’s always human trafficking.

One other example is the forced begging. Some people don’t realize that you see somebody asking for money, you want to help that person, when in fact you don’t know that person is being forced out there to stay and beg. And what you’re doing, in fact, you encourage in a part, human trafficking or you are helping the perpetrators.

A lot of the people are not aware on the signs, the early signs of human trafficking and the reason why victims continue to be victims of human trafficking, let me give you an example, with the doctors. Girls, let’s say that are trafficked, they are often brought to the emergency room and then they usually have another person with them that speaks for them.

If I focus on training doctors and I focus on training nurses, they don’t even have to engage necessarily with the perpetrator or engage with the victim, they can just provide an anonymous tip at the National Human Trafficking Hotline and then they will handle it from there.

To give you another example, one of my students, a couple of years back, after she completed one of my trainings in human trafficking prevention, she was just at a hotel where she noticed a girl that was not dressed for the season, was followed by another man. And then she didn’t engage, she just was trained enough to spot the early signs of human trafficking that the victim was presenting, and she provided an anonymous step to the Human Trafficking Hotline.

The Human Trafficking Hotline let us know in about three weeks after the incident happened that an entire ring of human trafficking was taken down because of that anonymous tip. People won’t realize the power of knowing how to spot human trafficking, would actually change your life.

Every day I have students of mine and professionals who now are trained how to spot, and then they come back and say, “Oh my God, I did not even realize I took a train to this location and I just spot and I just figure out that’s traffic.” I had actually students coming to my training and saying, “By the end of the training, I was human trafficked.” They didn’t even realize up until that point where I educated them enough about this, that they themselves were human trafficked at one point. That goes to say a lot about the lack of awareness on how human trafficking happens nowadays.

Leischen Kranick: And that’s amazing that just to have that kind of influence in a way, just reporting one small detail can really, like you said, bring down an entire network and just having people aware of just how much of this is such a huge issue.

I wanted to talk, kind of shift from the signs and indicators of human trafficking and talk to you from a big-picture perspective. You mentioned some legislation and bills that you were working on or helping to assist with. Can you just talk about, where’s the big gap? Are there just not enough laws that specifically address human trafficking? Are there issues with those laws that prevent prosecuting these traffickers? What are you seeing from a legal big picture?

Isabelle Vladoiu: Back in 2018, I was part of an advocacy group and project where we helped pass the SESTA-FOSTA laws, which those laws specifically were targeting websites. So, technology moves much faster and then the legislators are not able to move as faster, but the perpetrators and the criminals are. They found inventive ways on how to post announcements, on announcement boards’ website, on trafficking people. And then there was no legislation in place and then nobody was liable, not the server, not the website owner, not the user who was posting the announcement because you couldn’t find anyone.

In 2018, we passed the SESTA and the FOSTA law, which are the correspondent in Senate in the U.S. Congress of the bills, which now websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, they all had to change their entire structures to not allow human trafficking anymore to be present on their platforms.

At the same time, one of these websites, Backpage.com was entirely shut down. Their owners are in jail because they were actually found to be involved seriously in human trafficking. That’s one example on some of the problems I see right now.

The second thing is every year in the U.S. Congress, there are a lot of bills that focus on helping victims, victims’ assistance, victim housing, and there are many organization and NGOs that focus on that as well, which is very important because those girls, those boys, that have been trafficked, they really need a support out there. However, there’s much need also on the preventional aspects. A couple of years back, there was a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress by a sheriff in Texas, that wanted to create a program for all law enforcement in America to be able to spot easily human trafficking.

Unfortunately, that law didn’t pass, and this is some of the initiatives we are continuing to support and try to get passed, because we need our legislators and our people who run the country, to understand that there’s much need also on establishing protocols of preventing.

To move it a bit from the U.S. necessarily to international world. When the war in the Ukraine started, my team and I, we went in Romania, which is the neighboring country to help 1 million refugees understand and train them on human trafficking prevention. Some of the authorities were overwhelmed of, obviously, the wave of refugees, and they didn’t know how to reach out to them to help them protect. Eastern Europe was an area where human trafficking was prevalent before, but even now more than ever because of the war happening in Ukraine. A lot of the girls who we were trying to help come to the refugee centers, they were afraid to do that because they’ve had human trafficking incidents in the past.

That shows also a need of spreading out the word better, rather than just posting some signs on a law enforcement website. And, honestly, if you’re a refugee and you’re in transit, who has time to check the internet? What are some of the ways that governments or administrations on the ground, local governments, can come up with to post or to raise awareness on human trafficking?

I was recently in New York and I was staying at one of the hotels there and they had human trafficking stickers with some of the top signs of human trafficking and where to reach from for help in the bathroom on the mirrors. Is that maybe a good solution? I don’t know. It will have to take some time to start implementing and changing laws to allow more of the spreading of the awareness on human trafficking.

Leischen Kranick: Interesting. I bet that warmed your heart so much when you saw that in the bathroom of your hotel. I’ve seen that on the inside of the stalls too before that they have some information, which you got to get it where people can see it and understand it. Really great work, it’s obviously such a huge issue and I know when we talk about some of the legislation, in the past, there’s been a lot of jurisdictional problems, where an incident happens in one jurisdiction, but human trafficking rings travel around, and so it’s really hard from a law enforcement perspective to identify where the incident actually happened. I hope that in the near future, there is really a massive shift in trying to identify these human trafficking rings because as you indicate, it’s a big problem. It’s an online problem and it just doesn’t seem to be getting better necessarily. We keep seeing a lot of these rings get busted up and that’s great, but, obviously, they’re out there, so more needs to be done to address the issue of human trafficking.

Isabelle Vladoiu: I want to acknowledge you necessarily for that and the faculty obviously for, because it’s going to take podcasts such as this one and bringing awareness to people, in general, that’s part of educating people about this issue because I bet some of the listeners right now who are just listening to this, they just had some realization. Maybe they didn’t think it from that perspective. If we are able to reach out more people with education programs such as this one, it’s going to be wonderful.

Leischen Kranick: Well, anything else that you want to add about either your work on human trafficking or your insight into it?

Isabelle Vladoiu: Human trafficking is a problem that exists and it’s going to exist, unfortunately, for the near future. Our focus should be on how we can prevent it from expanding and without putting us in harm’s way. One of the things that I always encourage, and I want to send the message to the listeners here too, even if you see something, don’t necessarily actively engage with the perpetrator, the victim or anyone, because that can put you yourself in dangerous way. There are methods, especially in the U.S. where you can provide, as I provided the examples with an anonymous tip at the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

You don’t know what that is? Just Google it and you’ll find it. In the U.S. there are many programs. You go to the DMV session, there are the Blue Campaigns that the U.S. government has. They give you free cards that you can put in your wallet, and you actually, anytime you need that information, just keep it out there in your wallet. I encourage all my consultants and all my trained students to keep one of those in their wallets. They are for you to be out there as part of the U.S. government’s effort to actually help people be aware of some of the methods of reporting.

Leischen Kranick: Well, thank you. If you’re interested in learning more about Isabelle and her work, you can check out her organization. It’s called the U.S. Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights at usidhr.org. And Isabelle, I just want to thank you so much again for taking the time to talk to me about this important issue. I really appreciate it.

Isabelle Vladoiu: Thank you so much again. I really enjoyed this session and thank you for bringing such an important issue forward.

Leischen Kranick: Wonderful. And thank you again to our listeners for joining us. Be well and stay safe.

The Army is not alone in missing its recruitment goals. According to CBS News, the Coast Guard reported to a congressional committee in July that it would likely to miss its recruitment target by more than 1,000 recruits.

CBS News also added that the Coast Guard missed its recruitment goals during the last four years by an average of 20% per year. Other military branches, however, were able to make their recruiting targets.

Why Is There a Military Recruitment Shortage?

There are several reasons why the military is struggling with low enrollment. One challenge to military recruitment is the strong civilian job market. Another challenge is finding recruits who are properly qualified to enlist in the military.

Other challenges to military recruitment include age restrictions and the criminal history of recruits. Indeed says that each branch of the military has minimum and maximum age limits for recruits, and Military.com adds that certain crimes disqualify recruits from the military, while other crimes require a waiver.

Financial Incentives to Improve Military Recruitment

Recruitment challenges require innovative strategies to increase the number of enlistees. One strategy that the Navy has implemented is the use of sign-on bonuses. According to the Navy, future sailors or prior servicemembers from the Navy or another military branch may be eligible for up to $115,000. The Navy would combine the current maximum enlistment bonus of $50,000 with the maximum loan repayment of $65,000.

The Coast Guard is also taking a proactive approach at increasing its recruitment. For the first time ever, the Coast Guard has offered to pay its current civilian employees, active duty servicemembers and reserve members a financial incentive of $500 if they can persuade a friend or family member  to join the Coast Guard.

According to the Coast Guard, the $500 recruitment incentive program will be in place through fiscal year 2023. Also, there is no limit on the number of referrals one can make to receive the bonus.

This program is great because actual Coast Guard servicemembers can be the best advocate for why the Coast Guard is a good choice. Other military service branches may want to consider this personal referral approach.

RELATED: Military Mentors: Helping New Recruits Adapt to Their Units

Other Strategies to Increase Military Recruitment

To encourage recruitment, potential recruits should be informed about how the military experience can support their long-term professional goals. For example, the military offers a ton of valuable training in both hard and soft skills such as teamwork and conflict resolution; this training can be highly useful after servicemembers leave the military.

Recruiters should also provide an accurate and full overview of what recruits can expect if they join the service. There are often public misconceptions of what daily life is like in the military, and recruiters can help to ease any concerns recruits may have.

Military servicemembers are also eligible for different benefits such as educational opportunities, according to Military One Source. These educational opportunities include tuition assistance and vary by branch.

RELATED: How to Ensure You Are Prepared for Military Deployments

Military Leaders Will Need to Use Innovative Thinking

While military recruitment remains an ongoing problem, it will be necessary for military leaders to try different strategies to determine which strategies prove the most successful. Ideally, military leaders and recruiters must adopt an innovation-focused mindset to raise the number of military recruits.

and J. J. Marra
Faculty Member, School of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)

Currently, the human species burns fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate to satisfy our energy needs. This practice produces greenhouse gases, which are causing a significant change to our global climate on a scale that has created catastrophic consequences all around the planet, according to the United Nations.

In response to this crisis, we have begun to shift away from fossil fuels. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions notes that we are slowly developing alternative “renewable” energy production technology, such as wind and solar power. However, these technologies can be expensive and inefficient, and they are barely putting a dent in the global warming problem at our current rate of development.

RELATED: Using AI to Make More Improvements to Our Environment

California Experiment in Nuclear Fusion Hints at a Promising Future for Clean Energy

For decades, some scientists have contended that controlled nuclear fusion – if it could be achieved – might solve the world’s energy predicament, according to CNN. This type of nuclear fusion would involve a highly efficient nuclear reaction that produces heat energy, but without any greenhouse gases, radioactive waste or the threat of nuclear meltdown. Unfortunately, many skeptics have argued that controlled nuclear fusion was an unachievable fantasy, according to Fortune.

But on December 5, 2022, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California, proved the naysayers wrong. According to a press release, LLNL researchers conducted an experiment, which demonstrated that controlled nuclear fusion is feasible. The importance of this breakthrough cannot be overstated; it carries the potential to revolutionize energy production around the world.

But for the layperson, some fundamental questions emerge in reaction to this news, such as:

• What is nuclear fusion, anyway?
• We’ve had nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants for ages now, so how is this form of power any different?
• Why should we care about nuclear fusion?

RELATED: Climate Change: Practical Steps That We Can Take Today

An Interview with a Nuclear Physics Expert at the University

I am by no means a nuclear physics expert. But luckily, I have a colleague – Mr. J. J. Marra of the University’s School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) – who is. And I was fortunate enough to be able to chat with J.J. in order to have him explain what this news means and why this recent breakthrough is so important to the future of energy on Earth.

Gary Deel: What is nuclear fusion?

J.J. Marra: Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more nuclei “fuse” together. The resulting reaction produces energy in the form of heat and radiation. There are many types of reactions that could result in nuclear fusion, but the reaction that researchers are currently working on for commercial power applications is the deuterium-tritium or “D-T” reaction.

In this reaction, deuterium and tritium (two isotopes of hydrogen) fuse together to produce a helium atom, a neutron, and residual energy in the form of heat. This is the same reaction that occurs in the Sun. This particular reaction is of interest to scientists because the fuel is readily available or producible, and the temperatures required for the reaction are achievable.

Gary Deel: How does nuclear fusion differ from nuclear fission and the kinds of nuclear power that are used in today’s nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs?

J.J. Marra: The reaction that is used to power the world’s nuclear power plants is nuclear fission. In nuclear fission, the nucleus of an atom is split. Similar to nuclear fusion, this reaction also produces energy in the form of residual heat. Fission reactions that are used to power nuclear reactors are specifically chosen to be self-sustaining reactions.

Commercial power plants use enriched uranium for this reaction. Enriched uranium is made by increasing the amount of uranium isotopes best suited for a chain reaction from the uranium that is most commonly found naturally on Earth.

In these power plants, uranium atoms are bombarded with neutrons, which results in the production of two smaller elements, energy (in the form of heat), and neutrons. Those neutrons then interact with other uranium in the reactor core, releasing even more energy and neutrons. And so the chain reaction continues.

The reaction is controlled by “poisons” – elements like boron that absorb the neutrons so that they are not available to bombard the uranium. At some point, the uranium is no longer in the form where it is capable of this self-sustaining reaction. The resulting material is considered waste, but its radioactivity makes it a challenge to dispose of and store.

The fission reaction that occurs in nuclear power plants is the same reaction that occurs in atomic bombs. According to Science Direct, the reaction is slow and controlled in a power plant. But in atomic bombs, the fission reaction occurs almost in an instant, and all of the energy is released at once.

However, we also have hydrogen bombs, which rely on a fusion reaction between hydrogen atoms. But in hydrogen bombs, the fusion reaction is uncontrolled, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The key breakthrough with this newest D-T fusion experiment is the apparent ability to control the fusion reaction for regulated and sustained energy output.

Gary Deel: What does nuclear fusion mean for future energy production?

J.J. Marra: Nuclear fusion is a great option – maybe the best option – for clean energy to meet worldwide energy demands. And this is for three main reasons. First, the process produces a large amount of energy from a small amount of material. The Department of Energy says that the “D-T” reaction using the deuterium from a single gallon of seawater can produce as much energy as 300 gallons of gasoline.

Tritium is also needed for the reaction. But in many fusion reactor designs, it’s believed that tritium can be produced from lithium in the fusion reaction itself.

Second, the reaction is environmentally friendly.  Unlike fission, the reaction itself doesn’t produce any radioactive nuclear waste. And unlike conventional power plants, it doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases, because the heat from the reaction is used to power a turbine that runs on steam.

Finally, the fusion reaction doesn’t carry any of the risk of a nuclear accident – like the events in Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima. This decreased risk is because the fusion reaction is not a chain reaction like fission. It’s easy to envision energy from nuclear fusion as abundant, reliable, clean and safe.

Gary Deel: Why is this breakthrough in nuclear fusion such a big deal?

J.J. Marra: Fusion reactions – and specifically the “D-T” reaction – have been pursued as a potential for commercial power applications since the 1920s. The World Nuclear Association says that advancements in fusion over the decades have included combined use in nuclear fission weapons and various concept demonstrations – all necessary to validate the theory and achieve the environmental conditions necessary for the reaction.

The recent discovery made at LLNL is significant in that scientists were able to create a “D-T” fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain – an event that is referred to as “fusion ignition.” According to LLNL, scientists used lasers to create the environment necessary for the reaction, and the resulting energy output was about 50% greater than the energy input.

The reaction was accomplished on a very small scale – a small amount of fuel produced a small amount of energy and for a very short duration. But this accomplishment is a major breakthrough and was the culmination of decades of work and billions of dollars of scientific research to advance this technology. It holds the promise that someday, this technology might be scaled up and industrialized to provide safe, clean power throughout the world.

Mr. J. J. Marra is a faculty member in the School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. He holds M.S. degrees in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. J.J. teaches natural science and engineering courses for the University.