How to Talk To a Terrorist at the InfowarCon Event

Business Wire, July 24, 2007

WASHINGTON -- On September 19-21 in Bethesda, MD at the 2007 InfowarCon (www.infowarcon.com) international conference on Information Warfare and Cyberterrorism, Ms. MacNulty, will continue her work in teaching government how to get inside the minds of terrorists.

"Seek first to understand" is success principle #5 of Stephen R. Covey's runaway best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

He probably didn't ever fathom the U.S. government would be applying his advice to combating terrorism.

The latest thinking of cyberwarfare experts is that to truly defeat adversaries we must first deeply understand them.

Christine MacNulty, President & CEO, Applied Futures, is one of those experts. "Not only do we not understand our adversaries, we don't really know what we are communicating. The result," MacNulty says, "is conflict. Pure and simple."

MacNulty says, "Western naovete is evident because we do not understand the influence that cultural backgrounds have on the ways both we and our adversaries think and make decisions. We do not know what motivates us, let alone them."

Winn Schwartau, the founder of InfowarCon, recruited MacNulty to instruct at this year's event. "I have had the good fortune to see Christine at work in the U.S. and in Europe, and she has a startling ability to cut to the core of this issue. The principles she now teaches are more germane than ever, and need serious study."

At InfowarCon Information Warriors from around the world will examine Sensors, C4ISR systems, Foreign Media Analysis and other forms of data collection. They can tell us What people are doing, How, Where and With whom. "But," Schwartau says, "they cannot tell us Why." MacNulty will pull that all together for a wide audience from government, private sector and more than 30 countries. He praises MacNulty's pioneering work that can help us anticipate what the bad guys will do next.

"InfowarCon's attendees are amongst the best and brightest minds from around the world. I'm excited to share my work on these fundamental issues so they can be applied by governments worldwide," said MacNulty.

InfowarCon Advisory Board: Dr. Dan Kuehl, National Defense University; Amit Yoran, NetWitness; Howard A. Schmidt, Former White House Cybersecurity Advisor; Mark Rasch, FTI; Dorothy Denning, DoD; Freeman Mendell, InfraGuard; Richard Forno, Infowarrior.org; Lars Nicander, CATS

InfowarCon Partners Include: Mandiant, Netwitness, Purifile, Tec Sec, DC3, Homeland Defense Journal, Government Security News, Homeland Defense Week, Officer.com, Continuity Insights, Infraguard, ISSA NOVA, Terrorism Research Center and National Defense University.