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Terry Gerton Well, 2026 is going to be a big year for the United States. It’s our 250th national birthday. But at the same time, we’re hosting the FIFA World Cup — and some people might think that’s more important. What makes all of that integration of those events so challenging from your perspective?

Carl Ghattas Well, Terry, as you know, 2026 is actually the start of the U.S. hosting a number of what are called “mega events.” And you alluded to two of them a second ago — the World Cup, and then followed by America’s 250th birthday. And then after that, the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Rugby World Cup and so on and so forth. So, in the next few years, the U.S. will be on center stage in front of the entire world, hosting all of these events. And these events are going to draw, obviously, fans from across the globe who want to attend and cheer on their teams, who want attend and  cheer on their particular athletes that they root for, and who want come to the United States and enjoy the sporting events, enjoy what the United State has to offer and engage in fan-related activities. And so all of that is great for the United States from an economic perspective and reputational perspective. But as you noted, it raises a number of challenges for the United states, not the least of which are challenges that U.S. law enforcement are going to have to face: law enforcement at the local level, at the state level, and certainly at the federal level. And all of these law enforcement agencies are going to be charged with protecting and securing these events and making sure that fans are secure and safe, making sure that the players and athletes and their families are safe, and making sure they are ahead of any types of threats that may come about that may imperil the games or individual athletes or teams. So we see great opportunity in terms of these events, but there’s also great risk. And law enforcement and homeland security are involved in identifying these risks and mitigating these risks. The challenges are you’ve got, as I noted, you’ve got law enforcement departments at the local level, at the state level, and the federal level all collecting threat information, potentially, about these events and all attempting to identify ways to secure these games. So that threat intelligence is going to be coming from each of the law enforcement departments at the state, local, and federal level. It could be coming from international law enforcement and intelligence partners, could be coming from attendees or participants in the events. So all of that has to be synthesized in an effort to protect the games and mitigate the threats that might come from external sources.

Terry Gerton Well, the threat environment has changed quite a bit since the last time we did any of these big events, maybe except for the Super Bowl. What are the big threats now and what are the biggest challenges to that integration of detection and response?

Carl Ghattas So the threats come from a variety of different angles, if you will. The threats can come from average criminals who are going to potentially target individual participants, everything from petty theft to batteries to assaults, those types of criminal acts. Threats could come in the form of cyberattacks. Malicious groups, either domestically or internationally, may be looking to disrupt the games, the events. And they may rely upon various cyber-related tactics to disrupt communication grids, transportation grids, whatever the case may be, and disrupt the flow of the games for their own malicious intent. Threats may also come from domestic terrorists or international terrorists. Those who are trying to make a statement or create chaos, with respect to the events, may be planning malicious events that could cause harm, as I said earlier, to the participants, the players, the venues themselves. And so the threats come from a variety of different vectors. And the challenge becomes, how do you collect all of that information? From where do you collect it? How do you collected it lawfully? And then how do you get that information to the officers and agents on the street so that they can act upon the information, disrupt the malicious actors, and prevent those attacks from happening — or if it’s too late and the attacks have happened, how do you arm them with the data and the information they need to identify the perpetrators? This process actually starts well in advance of the events. So there is a great deal of planning and preparation going on by the U.S. government for all of these events that we talked about. State, local, and federal law enforcement are, as we speak, looking at how to prepare for these events and preventing some of these malicious acts from occurring. And they’re collecting data, some of the data that I’ve talked about, to try to identify gaps and mitigate those gaps to prevent those threats from occurring. And so the integration of all of that information is absolutely critical to their success.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Carl Ghattas, he’s senior VP of law enforcement and homeland security at Booz Allen. You mentioned integration of all of that information and an integrated response, but these agencies often operate on disconnected networks. How do you create a common operating picture for all of the different levels of response and different agency responses so that there is kind of a unified picture?

Carl Ghattas That’s an excellent question. And you have state, local and federal law enforcement that operate on different systems. And so the technology exists to be able to put all of those players, all of those officers and agents on the same network, if you will, so that they can communicate with one another. Communicating with one other is absolutely critical. So they have to have the ability, and the technology exists, to allow these officers and agents to communicate with another in audio format, to transmit pictures across this network, to ingest data from CCTV coverage, which is ubiquitous in the United States, to ingest data from satellite imagery, to ingest data from drones that are flying overhead above some of these venues and some of fan sites that we’re going to see with these events, and to take all of that information and present it to the officers and agents on the street so they have that common operating picture. And just as importantly, the technology exists to provide that common operating picture to the command posts that will be stood up in each of these host city venues for the World Cup. So the World Cup is going to be held in 11 different cities across the United States. And each of those host cities is going to need that common operating picture that includes data that is ingested from all of those sources, so that those people sitting in the command post can have a common operating picture and a view of what’s going on on the streets. So they’ll be able to see where the officers are positioned. They’ll be to see where barricades are in your stadiums. They’ll able to where traffic is flowing around some of these venue sites. They’ll be able to see the pedestrian flow around some these venue sites. They’ll even be able to see pictures of potential weather events that might impact these venues and these events. So, as a former FBI agent who has spent a lot of time sitting in command posts during the course of my decades in law enforcement, I always wanted and I always needed to have that common operating picture. I needed to be able to look up at a screen or set of screens and see where all my people were, see where the venues were that we were protecting, identify potential malicious actors and redirect my resources towards those malicious actors. I spent most of my time in Washington, D.C. as a law enforcement officer, and we were always involved in national special security events, or NSSEs, like inaugurations, like Fourth of July celebrations, things of that nature. We in the Bureau, along with the other interagency members, were charged with protecting the public and securing these venues. And so it was exceptionally valuable to have the technology that would show me, as the head of a command post, where all those threats were coming from and where they were going to potentially be impacting people who were fans, people who are parts of the team and so forth, so that we could redirect our resources and interdict those threats before they materialize.

Terry Gerton I noticed in that, in your last response, you kept saying the technology exists, but not that the technology has been deployed. And so I’m curious, with less than a year to go, what really needs to happen to make sure that the folks who are on the ground, who are planning, who are going to be in those operations centers have the tools and the technology that they need to help make this as seamless as they possibly can?

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Carl Ghattas Terry, that’s another great question. The technology, in fact, has been deployed. We have deployed similar technology that I’m talking about in a variety of mega events that have already occurred. For example, like the last Fourth of July celebration in 2025 in Washington, D.C., like the last presidential inauguration in D. C. in 2025, and like the Super Bowl in 2023. So the technology that I’m talking about has been employed in its components in those mega events — those events that draw huge crowds and also huge amounts of risk. And so the technology to interconnect officers and agents on the street and help them communicate with one another has been deployed successfully in those three examples. And the technology to allow them not just to communicate with one other but to have access to critical data that allows them to understand where the threats are coming from and move resources to interdict those threats and prevent those malicious actors from being successful in what they’re trying to accomplish. The technology has also been deployed that ingests data from a variety of sources that are available in that particular city or in that particular venue. So the technology that was deployed was able to take in satellite imagery or imagery from CCTV and provide that to the law enforcement leaders or the military leaders so that they could see that one common operating picture to give them an overall understanding of what is going on with the venues on the streets that they’re charged with protecting. So that’s tried-and-true technology and it has been successfully deployed and successfully used by law enforcement officers on the street.

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