Field Notes: When the Threat Isn’t Physical

A Different Kind of Client

When I left the Bureau, one of my first clients was a tech founder whose company was gaining real traction. Their infrastructure technology had applications across the board: military, civilian projects, even space. With that kind of attention, he had a loyal following online, but just as many people who disliked him.

At the same time, governments had started to take notice. The Egyptian government invited him to speak at a conference in Cairo about smart city development. On the surface it looked like a great opportunity. But his team had concerns. His travel schedule had leaked online, and there was specific chatter about threats to his safety. That is when they called me.

Building the Picture

My assignment was to prepare him for the Cairo trip and keep him safe. That meant looking at everything: regional instability, terrorism, organized crime, political tensions, even cultural factors that could affect how he moved around. I dug into where he should stay, how he should get around, who to trust for drivers and security.

I coordinated with the U.S. Embassy’s Regional Security Officer, worked with vetted local security teams, and mapped out itineraries and routes. On the surface it was the standard protective intelligence playbook, the kind of work I had done many times before.

But buried in the prep, I found something that did not fit.

The Email That Stood Out

While combing through the team’s email traffic about the trip, I noticed one address that appeared once and then disappeared. It did not match the others. It was not a government domain, not a conference organizer, and had no obvious connection.

A little digging showed it belonged to a private, encrypted service with no footprint anywhere online. I had seen similar things during my counterintelligence work. To me, it looked like someone else was watching.

What It Meant

The most likely explanation was that a foreign intelligence service had taken an interest. Maybe they wanted to probe for recruitment. More likely they wanted access to the technology itself. And in a place like Egypt, where surveillance is constant, you have to assume that anything you carry can be compromised.

So we shifted the approach. Sensitive material never traveled on laptops or drives. The critical information was stored in secure cloud systems, only accessed through tightly controlled channels, and only in the context of the presentation. My client could show what he needed to show without risking a loss of data.

The Lesson

That trip reinforced something for me. Protective intelligence is not always about someone following you through a crowd or a car tailing you down the road. Sometimes it is an email address that does not belong, or a name that shows up once and then vanishes.

What I took from that experience is that you cannot only look for the obvious threats. The obvious ones you can usually see coming. It is the quiet ones in the background that can hurt you if you are not paying attention.

And it reminded me that good protective work is invisible when done right. My client went to Cairo, gave his talk, shook hands, and came home safe. He never saw the hours that went into building those guardrails. He did not need to. That is the job.