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PROJECT UPDATES

What we’ve been doing, where we’ve been travelling, and what’s next.

Welcome to 2025!

New World Order

Like many of you, I'm coming to grips with the realities of a second Trump presidency. As someone who is not directly impacted by his domestic policies, what worries me the most is the rapid erosion of US hard and soft power around the world. Stepping back from global climate and health programmes is a key concern, and restrictions on US foreign aid are going to have a huge impact. While Trump denigrates America's historical allies, it's hard not to see the axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea emerge stronger and more emboldened. Dangerous times.

Helping clients to understand and navigate this new world order is going to be a key task for many of us in this profession. I forecasted exactly this scenario in the "Shifting Powers" workshop that's part of our Strategic Futures programme.

Contingency Planning

I'm back in Taiwan this month to continue to develop contingency plans. This trip follows an earlier trip in March 2023, which focused on surveying cross-island routes and the east coast. This time around, my focus is on the west coast.

At the end of 2024, I completed a comprehensive update of the Contingency Planning Workspace for Taiwan. I've also completed two new Contingency Planning Workspaces for South Korea and Japan. The Japan workspace incorporates a detailed plan for responding to a major earthquake.

These contingency plans are extremely detailed, covering every aspect of planning and preparation. I've also spent a significant amount of effort on decision-making frameworks, ensuring organisations can take the appropriate actions at the appropriate time. The response plans take you through each phase of the response, step by step. Exactly what you'll need in an escalating crisis.

If your organisation has operations in Taiwan, South Korea or Japan, I'd be happy to provide an online demo of the workspaces. Get in touch and we can set up a time to chat.

Crisis Simulation Exercises

We have started taking bookings for crisis simulation exercises for 2025. We already have bookings in May and November. If your organisation is interested in conducting a crisis simulation exercise in 2025, please reach out.

TRAINING

Training workshops and customised training solutions.

Information Security for Travellers

Our Practical Information Security for Travellers workshop is one of our most interesting workshops. It focuses on practical strategies travellers can apply to secure their devices, communications, and data in autocratic or higher-risk countries.

Late last year, I overhauled the workshop in response to evolving threats and changes to technology.

If your organisation would be interested in conducting this workshop for your executive teams or frequent travellers, please let me know.

View our other training workshops here.

PUBLICATIONS

We’ve published a number of books on crisis management, travel security and security evacuations.

The Crisis Response Handbook

The Crisis Response Handbook encapsulates more than two decades of crisis management experience. It is a comprehensive and practical guide to navigating the challenges of crisis response and building a resilient organisation.

I completed a cover to cover update of this book at the end of last year (now version 3).

Learn more and download a sample here.

View all our publications here.

Buy copies for your team

Several highly regarded organisations (and one prestigious university) have purchased copies of our books for their teams. If your team would benefit from the knowledge and experience contained in our books, please reach out. We'd be happy to provide a discount for bulk orders.

STATION XV

Updates on our in-house gear, sharing a behind-the-scenes look at our design and manufacturing processes.

The end of year period saw strong sales for Station XV bags. The best news is that I'm seeing customers return to buy additional bags themselves, as well as bags for friends and family. I also had the opportunity to meet up with several customers who happened to be passing through Singapore, which is always great.

I've been continuing to field test new bags, adjusting the designs based on real world use and abuse.

Check out the full range of Station XV bags and accessories here.

APPLICATIONS

Updates on our applications.

Whistler

Whistler is a simple and secure whistleblowing application that enables organisations to receive and manage confidential reports from whistleblowers. We launched Whistler 10 years ago. Last year, we updated the application to version 2.0, increasing the level of encryption and adding case management tools, amongst a host of other improvements.

Pricing for organisations starts at $19 a month.

If you're looking for a simple and secure whistleblowing solution for your organisation, you can learn more here.

Incident Manager

Incident Manager is the first application that's focused on team performance during an incident. Major incidents are already inherently challenging. There's no point in adding an additional layer of complexity by forcing teams to use software that increases cognitive load and only serves to make the situation more difficult to manage. Incident Manager doesn't get in the way of teams. Instead, it makes them more effective at managing complex incidents.

Please reach out if you'd like a demo.

Exercise Manager

Exercise Manager is a unique application that makes it easy to plan and deliver crisis exercises and monitor team performance across your organisation. After using this application for our own exercises, we're making Exercise Manager available to our clients as well.

Please reach out if you'd like a demo.

Tenacio

Tenacio is a project management application designed for people like me who are juggling a diverse range of projects. Tenacio cuts through the myriad of projects and tasks and tells you what you need to work on next. It does this based on the deadlines you set and your preferences for when you like to work on different activities.

I've been using Tenacio to manage my own projects for the last 4 months and it's already bringing some much-needed order to the chaos. If you'd like to try Tenacio, get in touch.

READING LIST

Links to interesting articles worth your time.

How China turns members of its diaspora into spies. America is on the hunt for these non-traditional agents. But its efforts risk backfiring (The Econonomist). Read here.

Tracking Putin’s Most Feared Secret Agency—From Inside a Russian Prison and Beyond. The spy unit that arrested a Wall Street Journal reporter is leading the biggest campaign of internal repression since the Stalin era (The Wall Street Journal). Read here.

What it’s like to run an airline in a war zone. Middle East Airlines has been operating out of Lebanon for nearly 80 years, whatever the conflict of the day. Venerated staff insist they’re just doing their job (The Times). Read here.

Conflicts to Watch in 2025. Preventive Priorities Survey Results (Council on Foreign Relations). Read here.

How to Exorcise Russia’s Ghost Fleet. (CSIS). Read here.

Independent Thinking: What will be the flashpoints of 2025? (Chatham House). Read here.

China’s Growing Influence in Latin America. For more than two decades, China has developed close economic and security ties with many Latin American countries, including Brazil and Venezuela. But Beijing’s growing sway in the region has raised concerns in Washington and beyond. (Council on Foreign Relations). Read here.

The Consensus on Havana Syndrome Is Cracking. After long denying the possibility, some intelligence agencies are no longer willing to rule out a mystery weapon. (The Atlantic). Read here.

The New Rasputins. Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe (The Atlantic). Read here.

How to Slay a Giant: Reviving the South China Sea Arbitration. (CSIS). Read here.

Inside the Black Box of Predictive Travel Surveillance. Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat (Wired). Read here.

Three Stories From the Night the Syrian Regime Collapsed. A month after Assad’s fall, citizens from different areas of the country recall complex emotions — and lingering fears (New Lines Magazine). Read here.

China’s Top Drone Maker Removes Security Features at a Very Weird Time. DJI has ended enforced no-fly zones in U.S. markets (Foreign Policy). Read here.

The new Trump administration could herald a remaking of the international order. How should the world respond? If Trump’s activity is meant to bend existing alliances to US advantage, Europe should deal. If he genuinely intends to undermine national sovereignty, a tough line will be necessary (Chatham House). Read here.

In Sri Lanka, the Army Is Engaging in a New War on Drugs. Rising criminalization of substance abuse has been heavily criticized in the island nation (New Lines Magazine). Read here.

The Powerful AI Tool That Cops (or Stalkers) Can Use to Geolocate Photos in Seconds. (404 Media). Read here.

Three interconnected risk clusters reshaping insurance. Swiss Re Institute chief stresses proactivity in "age of polycrisis" (Insurance Business). Read here.

What to Make of Russia’s New Security Agreements. The treaties with Iran and Belarus are different from the one Russia reached with North Korea, and there has been no attempt to link any of them (The Diplomat). Read here.

Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral. The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership (404 Media). Read here.

That’s it for this month, folks.

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there.

Grant Rayner

Spartan9