We Need to Be Ahead of That Threat

Host: Brittany Greco, Senior Communications Specialist, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

Guest: Saadat Laiq, Program Manager, Air, Land and Ports of Entry Program, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

[00:00:00] Saadat Laiq: It’s a loaded question. It’s the threats at the airports versus the threats at the Port of Los Angeles, container coming in from Asia on a vessel, and that ship, let’s say, needs to stop for whatever reason. It stops in a country that is a sanctioned country. We’re all going to get concerned now.

[00:00:20] Dave DeLizza: This is Technologically Speaking, the official podcast for the Department of Homeland Security, Science Technology Directorate, or S&T, as we call it. Join us as we meet the science and technology experts on the front lines, keeping America safe.

[00:00:37] Brittany Greco: Hello everyone and welcome to Technologically Speaking. I am one of your hosts, Brittany Greco. And with me today I am very fortunate to be joined by Saadat Laiq, our program manager for the Air, land and Ports of Entry program here at S&T. Saadat, welcome.

[00:00:49] Saadat Laiq: Uh, thank you, Brittany. It’s great to be here.

[00:00:52] Brittany Greco: Let’s kick things off. Border security is a big issue these days. and I just want to talk broadly before we get into specifics, but what is S&T’s role at DHS when we talk about border security?

[00:01:03] Saadat Laiq: The United States has a large border. It’s nearly 12,000 miles long. Now, the entire border is not 12,000 miles long, but the areas that Homeland Security has to defend is that size. So, it’s a large mission.

[00:01:20] Brittany Greco: Huge.

[00:01:21] Saadat Laiq: Huge mission, right? You’ve got deserts, mountains, the type of problems at both sides of the border. You pick your side, right? The north versus the south. The type of threats that are coming in are so diverse. And then as you compare the north and the south to what’s happening on the west coast and on our eastern shores, we have issues that we need to deal with there as well, right?

[00:01:42] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:42] Saadat Laiq: So maritime issues. S&T is there for our components. We’re there for Customs and Border Protection. They’re one of the components that reaches out to us, for all types of issues. And then we also deal with our smaller components, right? So, the issues are vast and, S&T has a major role.

[00:02:02] Brittany Greco: So, when we look at those big, like you mentioned, these huge operational environments where you’ve got rugged terrain, extreme climate, broad areas where there’s no people around. It’s a lot of different challenges, like you said. So, when we’re talking to one of the components like customs and border protection, what are those conversations like, how do you figure out what they need?

[00:02:24] Saadat Laiq: It’s a conversation like the one we’re having right now. There’s a lot of listening. And those are the guys, right? The agents are out there in the field, they’re in the area of responsibility. So we have to be extra attentive. We sort of have to imagine, visualize, what’s happening out there in the field. Recently there was a reach out to us and this is related to the Rio Grande. I’ve never been to the Rio Grande, and, um, there’s a certain type of foliage that’s out there, a certain type of cane and folks coming in from South America, Mexico, other parts of the world, as they’re migrating into the United States, they’re cutting through these, dense large cane fields. I had to go online. to look at what this cane looks like.

[00:03:14] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:03:14] Saadat Laiq: So there’s a lot of listening, and with that listening, we have to ask questions, right? And no shame in asking questions. It’s not one conversation we have, we have many conversations, and we need to have conversations with the agents. We need to have conversations with the supervisors, as well as the agencies, the entities that are working alongside, for example, Customs and Border Protection. And there are many flavors of CBP. There are other elements of DHS that are out there working alongside CBP, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Homeland Security Investigations, in some cases FEMA. So, a lot of listening.

[00:03:50] Brittany Greco: Thinking back to how those conversations get started, so you mentioned there’s a lot of ongoing dialogue between S&T and the components, how does the conversation get started? Like, how do they know to come to S&T?

[00:04:00] Saadat Laiq: So, there’s an organizational structure that they rely upon, they reach out to, through their command chain.

[00:04:08] Brittany Greco: Okay.

[00:04:08] Saadat Laiq: To our command chain. There is an introduction that is made, and often we end up having a conversation with the executive officers at the component, and oftentimes we find ourselves having conversations down at the agent level, right?

[00:04:27] Brittany Greco: Oh okay.

[00:04:27] Saadat Laiq: So, we take a look at all the different perspectives. And you have to, you talk to 10 different people, you’re going to get 10 different answers, right?

[00:04:36] Brittany Greco: Because that agent has a perspective that their boss may not have from being on the ground.

[00:04:40] Saadat Laiq: That’s right. Yeah, depending on what the issue is.

[00:04:44] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:44] Saadat Laiq: Right? Depending on the complexities, you may think that you have a solution, perhaps technology can solve it, but sometimes it’s not technology. Right?

[00:04:52] Brittany Greco: Sure.

[00:04:53] Saadat Laiq: It’s a regulatory matter. There are legal considerations that we need to think about,

[00:04:59] Brittany Greco: and that’s when we step aside and we’re like, you need to go this route instead.

[00:05:02] Saadat Laiq: That’s right, and we pull in other folks, right? And bring them to the conversations.

[00:05:06] Brittany Greco: Okay. So thinking about, you’re talking to an agent and you really wanna get a feel for the problems that they’re dealing with, what perspective, what questions do you ask them to really get at the heart of not just is there a device that they’re thinking of, but is there a capability that they’re missing? Some broader, is there a bigger solution that we can provide, beyond, let’s say, they think they want a widget and we know what they actually need is something a little bit different. How do you lead those conversations? How do you get into figuring out what they actually need?

[00:05:36] Saadat Laiq: So it begins with, “Tell me what’s going on?” In the case of folks attempting to cross the Rio Grande River, you go into your discovery phase, and as part of that process, you are interested in what’s not working right now. Clearly this didn’t start today, right? It’s been going on for a while.

[00:05:55] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:05:56] Saadat Laiq: So are you looking at thermal cameras? Are they working, are they not working? If they’re not working, why aren’t they working? What have you tried? So we take a look at what they’ve tried. we’re looking at the technologies that they’ve used. We’re looking into the manufacturers, we’re taking a look at the sensitivities of the sensors, and we’re thinking outside the box. Recent engagement, in a recent engagement, we’re discussing having sensors out there.

[00:06:26] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:27] Saadat Laiq: Will tip and cue drones, in this particular case, small drones, so, an individual steps on a sensor, trips over a sensor. It could be a physical contact with the sensor. It might be the sensor listening. hears a sound that’s out of place. It tips, the drone takes off, goes in the direction of the trip, does a surveillance of it, captures the data, and sends it back to a location, right? Now that’s a concept. Now imagine we have multiple drones.

[00:06:58] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:06:58] Saadat Laiq: For a larger area. So that’s something that we are currently having conversations about.

[00:07:04] Brittany Greco: Can you us tell more about those drones?

[00:07:06] Saadat Laiq: Absolutely. So, many considerations, right?

[00:07:08] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:07:08] Saadat Laiq: Weather. What if it rains?

[00:07:10] Brittany Greco: Sure.

[00:07:11] Saadat Laiq: The drone is exposed to the elements. So how do we protect the drone? Does the drone take off on a day when we have the tipping and cueing going on? And you’re in the middle of a thunderstorm, and there’s lightning, right? There’s technology out there already, right? There are many types of drone-in-the-box solutions out there, but we need to get these solutions to talk to each other. It has to be an integrated solution.

[00:07:33] Brittany Greco: Yeah, and they all talk to each other.

[00:07:35] Saadat Laiq: They all talk to each other, right? It’s doable. We’ll need to get the drones out there. The drones will need to be protected. We’ll need to sprinkle some artificial intelligence on it, a little bit of machine learning, some LLM, large language models. So, why do we need to do that? Often the folks that are at the tip of the spear, they know how to apprehend the individuals, right? But they might not be the folks that are doing the analytical reasoning.

[00:08:02] Brittany Greco: Sure.

[00:08:03] Saadat Laiq: They might not be statisticians, right? And this is where artificial intelligence comes in. Just imagine the amount of data that you’re collecting? They might be picking up, they might be doing facial recognition. That facial recognition will need to be compared against a repository. There might be sounds that are picked up out there in the field right? Those sounds will need to be compared against, let’s say, a library of known sounds. So, it could be anything.

[00:08:30] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:31] Saadat Laiq: And timing, right? So all of that information needs to be fused. All of that information helps us with a pattern of life.

[00:08:40] That information helps us with, predicting what will happen in the future. And it also gives us a glimpse into, where these individuals might be coming from. And once the technology’s up and running in a particular area, guess what happens? The bad guys know that there’s technology out there, and now they will pick a different part of the border and penetrate them. So it’s always keeping up. Keeping ahead of that.

[00:09:05] Brittany Greco: Yeah. constant changes and challenges.

[00:09:06] Saadat Laiq: That’s right.

[00:09:07] Brittany Greco: And that’s something, I’m struck by, especially in border security, how, we talk a lot at S&T about, evolving threats, but this is an area where it’s constantly in flux, ’cause it’s not just, even talking about, the land border on the southern United States, but it’s also at ports of entry. Going through an airport or passing through one of the seaports on the coast where every moment of every day there are new challenges, there’s new drugs to be interdicted, there’s new explosive materials to be detected. It’s a never-ending challenge. How do start tackling that piece by piece?

[00:09:41] Saadat Laiq: It’s a loaded question. It’s the threats at the airports versus the threats at the Port of Los Angeles. A container coming in from Asia on a vessel, and that ship, let’s say, needs to stop for whatever reason. It stops in a country that is a sanctioned country. We’re all going to get concerned now. Why did that ship stop? Eventually, it makes it to Los Angeles right? And this is where our technology is working, right? The tipping and cueing is going on. And let’s say that there’s an anomaly, and the anomaly might be that the ship had turned off the transponder. Why did the transponder go off?

[00:10:23] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:10:24] Saadat Laiq: When that ship docks CBP, they’re going to be ready, as well as some other folks, maybe HSI, ready to board that ship. Yeah, are we concerned about fentanyl coming in? Human trafficking is a big one, right? All types of human trafficking is going on, counterfeit items. They board the ship, they open up a container, they’re looking inside, and the items don’t match the manifest. Again…

[00:10:48] Brittany Greco: Suspicious.

[00:10:49] Saadat Laiq: Suspicious, get more curious. So that’s classic. The science and Technology, the solutions that we’re providing, they’re not limited to human trafficking, and drugs, and weapons coming in, or going out. It’s also, we’re looking at the data to strengthen our DHS position, right? Making sure that we have the right manpower, the right skill sets, at the ports to respond to these threats.

[00:11:14] Brittany Greco: Because it’s never about replacing the human element. right. It’s about augmenting what they can do and what they understand in the moment.

[00:11:23] Saadat Laiq: Right. So, shifting from the seaport, right? And let’s go to the airport, or airports. You’ve got folks coming in with seeds. Maybe there’s a certain vegetable that they cannot find at the local market here. Right?

[00:11:36] Brittany Greco: Sure.

[00:11:37] Saadat Laiq: So they bring in the seeds, or they bring in certain animal products. Sometimes they bring in live animals, plants, it happens, and we need to be ahead of that threat. So, the bags go through a variety of baggage scanning machines, and we’re looking at what these items might be, against threat libraries that have.

[00:11:56] Brittany Greco: And that threat library is growing constantly.

[00:11:59] Saadat Laiq: That’s right.

[00:12:00] Brittany Greco: Yeah. In mean it feels that sometimes like you’re trying to eat an elephant one bite at a time. How do you view the challenge of trying to stay ahead of these constantly changing threats?

[00:12:08] Saadat Laiq: That’s a tough one, right? The reason it’s tough is some of the hardware is old and you may have the threat library, right? And to your point, you’re always building, you’re making the library better and better, right? The machines are only as good as they can see.

[00:12:22] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:12:23] Saadat Laiq: So, if their vision really isn’t that good, they can only see so much. and the investment is already out there. So here we’re taking a look at, okay, what’s already deployed? What was the investment that we’ve made? How long did we expect this investment to remain, right? And what, at what point, are we going to replace it? So the conversations that we are having are, hey, is there anything that we can do? Can we work with the OEMs, the original equipment manufacturers? Perhaps we could advance certain elements of the machine to make it smarter. Replace the eyes, right?

[00:12:59] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:13:00] Saadat Laiq: It gets better vision. And we do that, and we’ve done that with airport technology, right? Like the different scanners that you’ve used when you travel.

[00:13:11] Brittany Greco: Absolutely. So, it sounds like there’s a big part of improving what’s already there. And that’s a very, it’s a very behind-the-scenes operation where, you know, that sounds like it’s a software update. Maybe it’s a hardware update, but you know how much of your work is, let’s say you’re building a drone versus you’re updating software capabilities so that these machines, these screening machines at the airport operate better.

[00:13:31] Saadat Laiq: It’s a combination of both, hardware and software. it is a challenge, right?

[00:13:37] Brittany Greco: So what do you like to do outside of work that helps you wind down?

[00:13:40] Saadat Laiq: Glad you asked. Two years ago, I started cycling.

[00:13:44] Brittany Greco: Oh.

[00:13:45] Saadat Laiq: It is the best thing I have done in my life.

[00:13:48] Brittany Greco: Right on! Cool! What do you like about it? 

[00:13:49] Saadat Laiq: It’s the feeling, after. After cycling 60 miles. Now I’m new to it, okay, I’m not the fastest, okay? But I’ll get there.

[00:14:00] Brittany Greco:  Yeah.

[00:14:00] Saadat Laiq: Last week I did 60 miles. Yeah. After doing 60 miles, that feeling that you have, you’re tired, but just the feeling is so worth it. So later this year, I will be trekking from Germany to the UK as part of a larger cycling team.

[00:14:18] Brittany Greco: Wow.

[00:14:19] Saadat Laiq: And it’s going to take us five days.

[00:14:22] Brittany Greco: Oh my gosh.

[00:14:23] Saadat Laiq: And I don’t even want to think about the number of miles that we’re going to do.

[00:14:26] Brittany Greco: I was going to say, not a geographer but those are quite a ways apart.

[00:14:30] Saadat Laiq: That’s right. So we’ll be passing through a few different countries.

[00:14:32] Brittany Greco: Hmm. So, will you be biking the whole way? Obviously, you can’t bike across…

[00:14:38] Saadat Laiq: Across the channel.

[00:14:38] Brittany Greco: Right? Yeah, famously, bikes don’t…

[00:14:39] Saadat Laiq: We can give it a try, see what happens.

[00:14:42] Brittany Greco: So, will you start and stop along different routes or like…

[00:14:44] Saadat Laiq: Yeah, so between work and all this other stuff between the work life, and the cycling, I am leaving the, the logistics and all that planning to our lead.

[00:14:55] Brittany Greco: Smart.

[00:14:56] Saadat Laiq: Right? So I need to check in with him. I should get curious, right? Good question.

[00:15:01] Brittany Greco: Just outsourced that for now, right?

[00:15:03] Saadat Laiq: But it, but it is outsourced for now, that’s right. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Brittany Greco: Very cool. So I want to get into each of the domain spaces that we’ve kind of talked about, about land borders, the air. We’ve talked about, air and land. Let’s talk about ports of entry, but getting into a little bit of the details in those. So, when we look at, let’s say, the southern or northern borders, we’re looking at the land there, what types of solutions is S&T developing to support, security efforts there? Can you give us any specifics?

[00:15:33] Saadat Laiq: We have a program called Big Wing.

[00:15:35] Brittany Greco: Okay.

[00:15:36] Saadat Laiq: The aircraft fleet is owned and managed by Customs and Border Protection. S&T is engaged in evolving the MQ 9. That’s the platform, that’s the drone, the MQ 9. The reason we gave it the name Big Wing, because it has large wings.

[00:15:55] Brittany Greco: I’m sorry. I’m…

[00:15:58] Saadat Laiq: But here’s the, here’s the thing.

[00:15:58] Brittany Greco: This is from the same organization that named something like PANTHR, which is a great and wonderful acronym, and we were like this project…Big Wing, it’s got big wings.

[00:16:06] Saadat Laiq: It’s got…It’s got big wings.

[00:16:07] Brittany Greco: I love it.

[00:16:08] Brittany Greco: Okay, so what was S&T’s role?

[00:16:09] Saadat Laiq: The drone is more than big wings.

[00:16:11] Okay? Why the big wings?

[00:16:13] Brittany Greco: We’re all wondering.

[00:16:14] Saadat Laiq: We’re all wondering. we can go further.

[00:16:16] Brittany Greco: Okay. Yeah.

[00:16:18] Saadat Laiq: You can have bigger fuel tanks. The fuel tanks are in the wings.

[00:16:22] Brittany Greco: Oh, I didn’t know that, okay.

[00:16:23] Saadat Laiq: So that, that’s why the big wing, right? Not just because the fuel tanks, you get efficiency, with the larger wings—larger fuel tanks, more fuel. Now we can get to locations where we need to be so that we can do the ISR, which is the intelligence gathering, the surveillance, and the reconnaissance activities.

[00:16:43] Brittany Greco: Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:16:44] Saadat Laiq: And once we’re out there, we want to be on station, where the activities might be taking place, where the bad guys are, on the ground doing bad guy things. So, we want to collect as much as we can and we want to be able to make it back. That’s right.

[00:16:58] Brittany Greco: Historically Speaking.

[00:16:59] Saadat Laiq: Exactly. So that’s the deal with, Big Wing. But what we’ve done is we’ve taken the DoD-, Department of Defense-produced MQ 9 aircraft and we’ve adapted it to a homeland security purpose. And that adaptation involved, again, increasing the sizes of the wings. A certain agency had a propeller that, let’s just say, works better.

[00:17:25] Brittany Greco: Okay.

[00:17:26] Saadat Laiq: It doesn’t make, so much sound. Right? Other technologies from a different agency, we took those technologies and integrated it into the big wing. So, it’s this, I don’t like to call it Frankenstein’s monster.

[00:17:38] Brittany Greco: I prefer Voltron.

[00:17:39] Saadat Laiq: Voltron?

[00:17:40] Brittany Greco: Right. We’re building a new Voltron.

[00:17:41] Saadat Laiq: So it’s a lot of cool stuff that, that makes a whole lot of sense for DHS. A better camera, a quieter propeller.

[00:17:49] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:50] Saadat Laiq: A deicing system, because we want to be able to move the wings once we’re up at that altitude right.

[00:17:54] Brittany Greco: Yeah! It’s really adapting what’s the technology that’s there but making sure that it works for this specific mission, for the DHS mission.

[00:18:02] Saadat Laiq: That’s right, that’s correct.

[00:18:03] Brittany Greco: It’s something that S&T does really well. Are there any other examples of projects where you’ve taken a technology from this other mission space, maybe in the government, or from this other organization, and you’ve thought, hey, we can improve on this, we can make this really work for our components here at DHS?

[00:18:17] Saadat Laiq: I think for us it’s going to be the Big Wing.

[00:18:19] Brittany Greco: Okay.

[00:18:19] Saadat Laiq: It’s the, there are crafts that are coming in from South America, right? Semi-submersibles…

[00:18:25] Brittany Greco: Ooh.

[00:18:26] Saadat Laiq: Filled with cocaine. So, the Big Wing with the sensors that we have on it, from high up, we’re able to identify these, again, tipping and cueing occurring. Last year we were able to apprehend, I believe the number is about 140 or so individuals that were involved, and we seized, 22,000 pounds of cocaine.

[00:18:53] Brittany Greco: Oh my gosh.

[00:18:54] Saadat Laiq: So, over a hundred million dollars of street value.

[00:18:58] Brittany Greco: Wow.

[00:18:59] Saadat Laiq: So that’s the kind of impact that S&T is making for our components.

[00:19:03] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm. okay, I want to talk about ports of entry some more. And are there any examples of technology that S&T has helped create to better screen for things either coming in on container ships or travelers as they’re passing through? What can you tell us about, where S&T has made improvements to those systems? To the extent that you can.

[00:19:22] Saadat Laiq: On the land border side, we have the high energy portals as well as the low energy portals, and I’m sure you may have heard of those.

[00:19:29] Brittany Greco: Our audience may not have, what can you tell us about those?

[00:19:32] Saadat Laiq: Sure. Yeah. Commercial traffic, we need to take a look at what’s inside the containers. Yeah the high energy portal enables our component CBP to take a look at both the inside of the cab of the truck entering as well as the trailer.

[00:19:47] Brittany Greco: Oh.

[00:19:47] Saadat Laiq: It uses the right dosage of, I’ll say radiation…

[00:19:51] Brittany Greco: It sounds a little spooky.

[00:19:52] Saadat Laiq: it’s a lower radiation.

[00:19:53] Brittany Greco: Okay, good.

[00:19:54] Saadat Laiq: When, when we’re hitting the cab, but we can see inside the cab, the driver does not have to come out. So we’re doing it at the speed of commerce, little bit of a line, but not too bad.

[00:20:03] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:20:04] Saadat Laiq: It’s certainly better than the traffic that I had this morning coming into work. So, I’ll take border traffic any day. I got a chance to visit a few different locations last year. One of the locations was, Laredo, and the imagery is fantastic. It’s crisp.

[00:20:20] Brittany Greco: And why do we need that imagery?

[00:20:21] Saadat Laiq: We need to be able to see the contents. We need to be able to see what’s inside the container, right? So, when the manifest says. we’ve got lawn chairs, right? And humans inside, we got a problem.

[00:20:32] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:20:32] Saadat Laiq: It happens.

[00:20:33] Brittany Greco: It’s building that either training regimen to say, now I recognize what this new, let’s say, object looks like, versus, you can recognize an ax versus a gun, let’s say.

[00:20:43] Saadat Laiq: That’s right.

[00:20:44] Brittany Greco: To use an example. But also training those large language models we were talking about. Training the AI on what those different images look like so that those systems can be in place to help flag that for a person to verify.

[00:20:55] Saadat Laiq: That’s right, yeah, that and the pattern, right? How was that container loaded? Who loads the container in that way? So, if we are taking a look at the vast amount of trailers coming into the country and they’re loaded in a specific way, can we take that data and point that to someone, or some place or some organization.

[00:21:16] Brittany Greco: Oh, I see.

[00:21:17] Saadat Laiq: That’s where I’m going with that.

[00:21:17] Brittany Greco: Trying to attribute intent if we can recognize a pattern, a signature of some organization.

[00:21:20] Saadat Laiq: A pattern of, that’s right, an organization, some organization. Exactly. Right. What’s up with these lawn chairs?

[00:21:25] Brittany Greco: I’m always saying, what’s up with these lawn chairs?

[00:21:27] Saadat Laiq: Right? Data is so important these days.

[00:21:30] Brittany Greco: Yeah. It’s everything. And it’s something that I think S&T, in our position within DHS, we’re helping guide these conversations with the components about how do you use that data? Because it’s one thing to say, all right, we’re getting this data, we’re gathering all of it, but then what? You have to be able to do something with it. So in those conversations that you have, I don’t know. Is there a recognition of we have all this great data, or are you the one saying like, you guys, you have all this.

[00:21:56] Saadat Laiq: You’re onto something. And so what you’re referring to is fusing the data together.

[00:22:01] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:01] Saadat Laiq: The data that you gather at the land ports, the data that you’re gathering at the seaports, airports, right? All the different ports, right? As well as other data. You want to be able to fuse it together. There might be commercial data that you’re pulling. You might be pulling data from our local partners, local, state, county. So, if we’re able to ingest that data, there are some interesting connections that we can make.

[00:22:26] Brittany Greco: Have there been examples where you’ve thought, okay, I know we can apply this to this other challenge that we’re facing with another conversation with another component? How do you find those efficiencies within DHS to say, we’ve given you one solution and we know that it’s actually going to work really well in this other environment or for this other purpose?

[00:22:44] Saadat Laiq: Sure, yeah. Biometrics has been working well at the airports, yeah. There are many different types of biometric solutions. There are a few that come to mind. Is there a way that we can expedite the passenger traffic coming into the United States? Right? So could we do biometrics at range and also at speed? So, let’s say a vehicle coming in, could we take a scan of the individual and say, this is John Smith, and we get quick responses back. And maybe he’s not a good guy. He might be on a watch list, perhaps. So, we can have the right folks waiting for him. Perhaps we need to take him to secondary screening, and then the powers that be do what they do. So it’s a challenge. We’re looking into it.

[00:23:27] Brittany Greco: I know we’ve had a previous episode where we’ve talked about, passenger screening, with biometrics at the airport and making sure that you maintain very high security standards. But, always with the goal of like, how do we get people through security quickly and effectively? So, I know it’s something that we’ve worked on in a lot of different avenues.

[00:23:44] Saadat Laiq: Right, yeah. So, I want you to think about, so we’ve talked about aircraft and biometrics and, non-intrusive inspection technology, right? Taking a look at what’s inside the trailers of the trucks and all that, right? So consider that, all the sensors, it’s all ISR technology, right? It’s all intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance technology. And the idea, it doesn’t matter what technology, right? The technology’s already out there. It’s built. Where we are now is how do we take advantage of artificial intelligence? How do we take advantage of machine learning? How do we take advantage of the large language models and get them to work for us. That’s where we’re going.

[00:24:22] Brittany Greco: Are there any technologies that you’ve seen or that are on the horizon that you’re excited to see how they might be applied to the border security effort?

[00:24:32] Saadat Laiq: Ontology is interesting, which is you have disparate sets of data, that if you or I were to take a look at it, it would make absolutely no sense to us. It wouldn’t. Like there’s a coffee cup and I’ve got my microphone here. What do they have in common? Doesn’t appear that they have anything in common. But when you’re able to take these data sets that have no rhyme or reason, right? Like they don’t belong in the same space, but you’re able to ingest all that and you have the computer, right? You have AI and ML, containerize all that data, and begin to connect the dots. That is what interests me. So it’s interesting and it’s also a little frightening.

[00:25:13] Brittany Greco: Yeah.

[00:25:14] Saadat Laiq: Both at the same time, and this is where we have to strike a balance, right?

[00:25:18] Brittany Greco: Saadat, I want to ask a little bit about you. How did you come to S&T? What was your path here?

[00:25:24] Saadat Laiq: My background is in engineering and electrical engineering.

[00:25:28] Brittany Greco: Oh, wow.

[00:25:28] Saadat Laiq: Yeah.

[00:25:29] Brittany Greco: Very cool.

[00:25:30] Saadat Laiq: And years of industry background and experience, managing large complex programs. I got involved in, government work as a contractor, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Soon after I deployed to some very tough locations and stood up, meaningful programs out there…

[00:25:52] Brittany Greco: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:53] Saadat Laiq: …that I’m proud to have been a part of. Built, designed solutions that, that protected our men and women that were deployed, all across the central command. One project led to the next and it opened up, many doors. The community that we work in, it’s a small community.

[00:26:15] Brittany Greco: Awesome.

[00:26:15] Saadat Laiq: Yeah.

[00:26:16] Brittany Greco: Well Saadat thank you so much for being here today. This was a wonderful conversation.

[00:26:19] Saadat Laiq: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

[00:26:21] Brittany Greco: And thank you all for listening to Technologically Speaking. We’ll see you next episode.

[00:26:24] Dave DeLizza: Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you’ve heard in this episode, check out the show notes on our website, and follow us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and on social media at DHS SciTech. D H S S C I T E C H. Bye!