Whether it's foreign conflicts, economic woes or political extremism, it's easy to feel a few steps removed from national security issues or that they're solely the federal government's responsibility. However, according to the Center for Security Policy (CSP), homegrown solutions can have the biggest impact.
CSP is a Washington, D.C.-based firm that provides expert analysis, solutions and education on a wide variety of security issues.
CSP CEO Tommy Wallar and Kyle Shideler, the Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at CSP, joined 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson recently on "1819 News: The Podcast" to explain how issues of national security are really local issues and how their firm helps provide local solutions.
"Let's take it back to the biblical sense of Ezekiel, Chapter 33 — the duty of the watchman on the wall. Right? If you don't sound the alarm, then the blood's on your hands," Waller said. "And so that's one service that we provide as a watchman on the wall…just the truth about what was threatening the Republic. And then that is going to be in both a foreign and a domestic perspective."
Waller and Shideler said that knowing your enemy and how they think is key to defending against them.
"Both foreign and domestic, the focus is…getting inside the minds of some of these people, these adversaries, and being able to understand how they view the world," Shideler said. "And if you understand how they view the world, you start to understand what they are really capable of and what they intend to do. And the reality is if you educate people about that, they usually will know, they usually will respond to that.
"So when we talk to local cops and we give them education on why it is that Antifa riots the way that they do. Why do they try to set up barricades and establish autonomous zones? What does that mean to them? Why do they do that? And how can you stop them from doing that? If you give them the information about who the enemy is and how the enemy works, you've got good cops here in Alabama, I've talked to a lot of them."
Among the domestic threats to national security, Antifa, a far-left, radical group that has been involved in many violent protests and riots, ranks high on the list.
"Their goal is to prevent people from engaging in normal politics so that they have no choice but to engage in revolutionary politics," Shideler said.
"So when, for example, parents are complaining about the things that they find in their schools, Antifa responds and calls those parents fascists. When people are trying to do things on the pro-life cause or they're trying to do something to address the gender confusion issue that we're dealing with, Antifa shows up to try to shut them down. And their goal is quite explicitly to prevent you from doing normal politics, from speaking, from voting, from rallying, from marching, from holding signs, all the stuff that everybody does in politics, to prevent you from doing that so that you have no choice but to meet them hand-to-hand. And that's when they feel like they've won."
To connect with the story's author or comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com or find him on X and Facebook.
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