After a lifetime in the protection business, the one constant in Washington that I’ve learned is that it takes tragedy to force change. The January 6 Capitol riot is not an enigma. This was a clear protective intelligence failure. The key finding of Retired Army LTG. Russel Honore’s report reviewing how the pillar of U.S. democracy could have been so easily infiltrated is that the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) must better integrate intelligence into its operations through improved awareness, assessment, sharing, and response capabilities. We can look at effective protective intelligence as a three-part story: Act I is identifying threats; Act II is building those threats into a cohesive profile; Act III is sharing and acting on that information in order to make nothing happen. Applying this framework to January 6 helps us understand how we can and must do better and provides important takeaways for corporations.

The aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol has led to the emergence of a new broad, anti-government conspiracy theory spreading on social media that is dovetailing with anti-vaccination and anti-public health extremism, according to a new report by Rutgers’ Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience.