Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. Today's interesting spy story for you. Let's
Speaker 1: see how you like it. It's called inside an intelligence
Speaker 1: dead zone. How government defeats by signals and drones. So
Speaker 1: imagine you're running surveillance against your Russian intelligence facility. Normally,
Speaker 1: an intelligence service has an enormous technological toolbox radio frequency surveillance,
Speaker 1: satellite imagery, electronic intercepts, remote sensors, drones, directional microphones, cyber collection.
Speaker 1: But as your surveillance approaches this particular compound, something strange happens.
Speaker 1: Radio signals disappear, electronic transmissions become inaccessible, and drones can't operate.
Speaker 1: Conversations also occurring inside cannot be remotely understood. If you
Speaker 1: remember the old show Homeland, the characters essentially describe this
Speaker 1: as a dead zone. Could something like that actually exist? Well,
Speaker 1: it does. There isn't one magical technology that creates an
Speaker 1: invisible intelligence bubble. Instead, governments can layer multiple counter surveillance techniques.
Speaker 1: Let's start with RF shielding. It means read frequency cell phones,
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, bluetooth radios and cantless other texts communicate using
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation. A highly secure facility can therefore be constructed
Speaker 1: significantly reduced radio frequency energy entering or leaving particular areas.
Speaker 1: One method is what's curled, creating what's called a fairy
Speaker 1: day cage. If fairy day enclosure uses conductive materials such
Speaker 1: as metal mesh, specialized wall materials, or conductive coatings to
Speaker 1: attenuate electromagnetic signals. So imagine putting your classified conference room
Speaker 1: inside an electric magnetic shell. Radio waves reaching that shell
Speaker 1: can be reflected or absorbed rather than freely passing through.
Speaker 1: I mean someone sitting outside the building may have greater
Speaker 1: difficulty detecting transmissions originating inside. But there is a problem.
Speaker 1: A shielded room still needs electricity. It may need telephone lines,
Speaker 1: network connections, ventilation pipes, doors. Every penetration through that protective
Speaker 1: boundary potentially becomes a vulnerability, and that's where signal filtering
Speaker 1: becomes important. Electrical cables can potentially carry unwanted high frequency
Speaker 1: signals across the secure perimeter. Specialized filters can therefore be
Speaker 1: installed on power and communication lines to attenuate or reduce
Speaker 1: the frequencies that aren't supposed to cross the boundary. Look
Speaker 1: at it as an electronic checkpoint. The system allows necessary
Speaker 1: electrical power or authorized communications through while suppressing unwanted signal
Speaker 1: components that could potentially provide a leak. Secure facilities may
Speaker 1: also use carefully designed cable routing, grounding, bonding.
Speaker 2: And shielding.
Speaker 1: This overlaps with another famous intel security concept, tepest. Tipest
Speaker 1: is associated with protecting classified information from compromise to unintended
Speaker 1: electronic emanations. A computer monitor, cable electronic device can generate
Speaker 1: electromagnetic energy simply by operating. So security isn't only about
Speaker 1: preventing someone from potentially transmitting classified information. It's also about
Speaker 1: preventing equipment from unintentionally radiating information to the surrounding environment.
Speaker 1: Now imagine we've defeated radio frequency surveillance, the spies outside
Speaker 1: aside to simply listen, and that's where acoustic isolation becomes important.
Speaker 1: Ordinary walls aren't designed to stop sophisticated surveillance. Sound is
Speaker 1: mechanical energy. When you speak, pressure waves travel through the
Speaker 1: air and can cause surrounding structures, walls, doors, windows, and
Speaker 1: other services to vibrate. Highly secure rooms therefore may incorporate
Speaker 1: specialized construction intended to reduce the transmission of those vibrations
Speaker 1: that can include multiple wall layers. Acoustic insulation, isolated structural assemblies,
Speaker 1: especially designed doors and seals, careful treatment of ventilation ducts
Speaker 1: and other openings.
Speaker 2: Windows deserve particular.
Speaker 1: Attention because glass can vibrate and response to sound occurring
Speaker 1: inside a room. Historically, INTEL services of investigated methods of
Speaker 1: detecting the extremely small vibrations remotely and attempting a reconstructed
Speaker 1: information from them. So a secure facility might eliminate exterior
Speaker 1: windows entirely, or employed designs intended to make that type
Speaker 1: of collection more difficult. Then we have what we call
Speaker 1: sound masking. Instead of relying exclusively on physical isolation, facilities
Speaker 1: can introduce control background noise designed to reduce the comprehension
Speaker 1: of conversations outside the protected space. So let's move outside
Speaker 1: the building. What happens when the CIA launches a drone?
Speaker 1: This is where the modern intel battlefield becomes especially interesting.
Speaker 1: Counter drone systems now exist and they're called counter uas systems.
Speaker 1: Radar can identify objects moving through protected airspace. Radio frequency
Speaker 1: sensors can search for communication links between a drone.
Speaker 2: And the operator.
Speaker 1: Electro Optical cameras can visually identify suspicious aircraft. Infrared systems
Speaker 1: may help detect them under certain conditions. Acoustic sensors can
Speaker 1: sometimes recognize characteristic drone sounds. Once a drone has been detected, However,
Speaker 1: stopping it becomes a separate problem. Many drones depend on
Speaker 1: radio frequency command link. Disrupting that link can potentially interfere
Speaker 1: with the operator's ability to control the aircraft. Another potential
Speaker 1: target is satellite navigation. Many unmanned aircraft relied heavily upon
Speaker 1: systems such as GPS for positioning and navigating. Interfering with
Speaker 1: the satellite navigation reception can therefore make some drones considerably
Speaker 1: less reliable. This is where you hear terms like jamming
Speaker 1: or spoofing into the intel VOCAB. Jamming overwhelms or interferes
Speaker 1: with a segment, well, spoofing attempts to provide false navigation
Speaker 1: information that causes the receiver to calculate into correct position.
Speaker 1: Neither technique creates a perfect anti drone force field. Some
Speaker 1: drones can still operate autonomous but autonomously. Others can use
Speaker 1: inertial navigation, visual navigation, and so forth. Some sophisticated military
Speaker 1: systems can incorporate anti jamming technology, so even how protect
Speaker 1: the compound faces a constant technological competition between surveillance and
Speaker 1: counter surveillance. That brings us to the biggest limitation of
Speaker 1: the homeland idea. You can shield the building and can
Speaker 1: isolate conversations, filter electrical signals, control electronic equipment, search for
Speaker 1: hidden transmitters, detect trones, and interfear with communications, but you
Speaker 1: still haven't made the facility invisible. Satellites can potentially observe
Speaker 1: the compound. Intel analyts can watch vehicles entering and leaving.
Speaker 1: They can identify employees, they can examine communications occurring outside
Speaker 1: the protected area, established patterns of life, and perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: recruit human sources. And that's where we get to human
Speaker 1: human intelligence and building dollar electronic security system doesn't help
Speaker 1: very much, and someone on the inside is squeakily working
Speaker 1: for your adversary. That's why a real intelligence dead zone
Speaker 1: isn't actually a place where intelligence collection becomes impossible. It's
Speaker 1: a place where the defender has systematically attempt to deny
Speaker 1: multiple forms of techno tech intel collection. So layer those
Speaker 1: systems together and you can create an extraordinarily difficult intel target,
Speaker 1: but never a perfect one.
Speaker 2: Espionage has always been a tech arms race.
Speaker 1: Every time someone builds a better wall, someone else starts
Speaker 1: figuring out how to listen through it, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: best solution isn't penetrating the wall at all.
Speaker 2: Let's find the person who already has the key.