Detect, Deter, Defeat: ☕ with Frank Figliuzzi

Is the U.S. more vulnerable now than before 9/11? Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi thinks so.

“What we’re dealing with now is an internal, potentially external threat to our democracy,” Figliuzzi said when describing our most serious threats. “As a generic bucket, I would say it’s the cyber threat. And then let’s move to, which is something we never talked about when I was the head of counterintel, let’s talk about the domestic threat and combine the two, that foreign intel services are actually helping with propaganda and disinformation and misinformation. They’ll do it in a big way in the midterms. And trying to shape the minds of Americans and how we think, we are still our greatest concern right now. And that’s a sobering thought.”

Frank joins Grounded to dissect those current security vulnerabilities, cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure, a staffing exodus at the FBI, and more.

“What we think we know is that between 3,000 and 5,000 FBI employees are now gone, and that's just recently happened,” Figliuzzi said. “The categories for those include those who are literally walked out of the building because they happened to work on January 6th cases or some Trump case.”

Plus, the concerns over China as we monitor the developments in Iran. There’s a lot to learn in this episode! Don’t forget to follow Frank on his channel!

Thank you Caro Henry, Jason Gael, LeftieProf, Susan DRENNAN GABRIEL, Laura A. Drury, and many others for tuning into our live video with Frank Figliuzzi!