Executive Q&A with Dale Buckner: Security at the Olympics and Global Unrest
Aside from an arson attack that sabotaged France’s high-speed train lines hours before the Opening Ceremony, the Paris Olympics took place this past summer without any high-profile security incidents or cyberattacks.
An unprecedented international force of law enforcement and experts in physical and cyber security were in France, which likely sent a message to terrorists and hackers that security officials were prepared for numerous scenarios.
McLean, Va.-based Global Guardian, a firm that provides security services and emergency response in the U.S. and more than 130 globally, played a vital role in keeping its client safe during the Olympic games. CEO Dale Buckner made news this past summer when he went on BBC and talked at length about security concerns at the games before declaring the Olympics would be safe.
At GSX 2024, Buckner talked with SecurityInfoWatch about his company’s work at the Paris Olympics, and the need for the security industry to focus not only on technology but the importance of planning and emergency response.
Q: Your company was very active providing security services for numerous companies and families at the Paris Olympics. Tell me what the experience was like with the dynamic threat environment security leaders are currently facing.
Buckner: We had about 18 total corporate clients and nine family clients that all went to the Olympics. We provided medical evacuation, day-to-day medical services, executive protection agents and drivers that would literally go in the events with them. There are badge requirements to get in and certain levels to get through, so we had to have all the badges. You get as close as you can, then you escort the client into the event. And if there's a security issue, medical issue and or any kind of issue, your agent is there.
When you think about a stadium event, when you're inside of it you’re under the control of the authorities. On the outside of the event is our value. When you think about a couple hundreds of thousands of people entering, we equate it to going through security at the airport. On the outside is where your risk is at. Once you get through the x-ray machines and security, your material risk goes down and you're under the control of the airport.
All of the clients, which included multiple CEOs from the Fortune 500 going to multiple events, dinners and cocktail parties, required a lot of logistics because you have roadblocks. One day a road is closed, another day it's open. So it's having the team do the reconnaissance in advance to ensure a particular route is open and it's the most efficient path.
There were a lot of people saying the inconveniences caused by the high security was terrible. Yes, it's annoying and disruptive to your schedule. But in the grand scheme of things, the Olympic opening ceremony was executed without a hitch and there was major stress about that. Nobody died and nobody was injured.
I also went out and publicly stated the Olympics are safe. The counter-drone technology is there, the physical presence is there. Yes, the Russians are going to mess around in the cyber digital world and try and make (French President Emmanuel) Macron look bad because he’s supporting Ukraine openly in the public sphere. There's a cyber war and physical war going on, but the French and the international community in general was prepared.
The Olympics, in my opinion, were brilliantly executed. I think the French should be given massive amounts of credit. The West and NATO countries banded together for the cyber war in a big way. Make no mistake, the U.S. intelligence community and the military were there, and multiple agencies brought in police and military to support the French. This was a well-coordinated, well-executed event in front of the world.
Q: Would you say that cooperation in the Paris games was unprecedented compared to previous games?
Buckner: If you think of the Olympic games at Sochi and South Korea, we were at both. At Sochi, we had U.S. naval assets just out in the ocean. This was much better integrated, a much bigger footprint. And now the challenges are materially different. When you think about drone attacks, you're watching warfare change in real time.
Right now, Ukraine is a test bed. The world is watching. And if you think about what the NFL, what Formula 1, what all the soccer leagues are facing with this drone threat, it's real. This was the most technologically advanced Olympic games ever. The utilization of facial recognition, cameras and intelligence was at an unprecedented scale.
And now, every four years the Olympic games will get harder and more expensive, and we’ll need more intelligence and technology because the threat is changing materially. The lone wolf will always be the hardest thing to defend at an event like this, whether it's a knife, gun, vehicle or bomb.
Q: The Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles in four years. Will the Paris Olympic Games be a good blueprint as far as security collaboration goes?
Buckner: It will be the template for Los Angeles. And make no mistake, LA is playing catch up right now. It’s a three-year build for day one with the opening ceremony. Getting all the local, federal agencies and all the technology synchronized really matters.
Societal issues are a huge problem there. It's not Russia where you can just clean out all the homeless. You can do whatever you want against criminal groups there, right? But this is America and you’ve got civil rights and legal issues, and how do you do that thoughtfully and legally? They will have to treat with kid gloves because of the way we live and the way our laws are framed. But in the end, they'll be ready.
Q: You participated in a panel discussion at GSX this week about planning, preparing and responding to workplace violence. What were two or three of the salient points you made to the security industry assembled in Orlando?
Buckner: You look at this show floor (at GSX), and everywhere you look is technology. You hear a lot that AI is going to save the day. But technology is only half the solution. No matter how good the technology is, you must have a physical response to a real threat. It's great that we can identify whether a person has a gun or is on a be-on-the-lookout list or they trip a sensor.
But once that person who jumps over the fence is on drugs, once that person is in the middle of Ukraine or the middle of Afghanistan when it falls, or in the middle of the fires in Maui, or we're in a hurricane in Louisiana, it comes down to execution.
The show floor is loaded with people that will tell you what the problem is, but they won't solve the problem. And as fast as technology is moving, there still what we call the “so” question: ‘I know there's a threat. I know there's a hurricane. I know, I know, I know. What are you going to do about it?’ Technology alone cannot solve that problem. There must be a physical execution capability to answer the global threats. If you can't do that, then all this technology and intelligence and alerts don't mean anything. I think that lesson just keeps getting relearned.
How quickly we forget. If you look at the amount of disruption -- whether it's Maui, whether it's Florida hurricanes, whether it's the Turkey coup, whether it's the Israeli war starting, you see that we as security professionals and as a society of human beings, forget fast. The Russians roll tanks into Ukraine and all the sudden it normalizes Hamas attacks into Israel.
The simple reality is there will be another mass shooting, there will be another war zone. There will be another hurricane, there will be another flood, there will be another fire. But as we sit here today, everybody's kind of comfy and not thinking like it's going to happen again. And yet it just keeps happening, and at a greater frequency because the conditions of the world. It's just human nature and breaking that cycle and telling your organization it is going to happen and it's going to happen tonight. It's going to happen next month. It's going to happen next year. That mentality must permeate throughout this industry.
