PREDATORY PREMONITION
Threat detection is a lot like playing chess. You have to know what to look for before you can look for it. It’s a way of weaponizing your senses. When you apply those honed instincts to the dangers and deceptions that occur every day, it offers insight into the proverbial “tells” and how to make a move before your opponent knows you’re onto their strategy. There’s a feeling we all get when behaviors such as body language, nervousness, and verbal articulation make that little voice in your head whisper, “Something ain’t right.”
Up until recently, Yousef Badou was a subject-matter expert only known and accessible to a select few groups. His forte is unique. While most of the population is oblivious to the onset of danger, Yousef knows what to look for. His specialty is calculating risk factors, recognizing the indicators of nefarious action, and undermining the manifestation of those potential threats to stop them in their tracks. His background has given him the ability to anticipate danger with such a stellar track record that he’s called upon by major companies, agencies, and government officials to help craft their proactive playbook.
In our “First Line of Defense” article elsewhere in this issue you’ll get a better idea of how after being inculcated with his wisdom, you begin to see the world through different eyes. There are certain elements indicative of impending danger that just can’t be ignored. Yousef is an instructor’s instructor. He’s a trusted resource who gets called upon to lecture and consult on situations that would keep most people up at night. Remember that little voice we mentioned — Yousef teaches the master’s degree of understanding how to sharpen those reflexes and act on them.
RECOIL OFFGRID: Tell us a little about your childhood and where you grew up.
Yousef Badou: My dad is Kuwaiti and my mom’s American. I was born a U.S. citizen. I spent much of my youth living in Kuwait City. I went to elementary and middle school there till about summer of ’98 when me and my mom moved back to the States. We have family in Michigan, so I actually went to high school in Michigan for four years. Close to the end of my time in high school, I enlisted in a military academy for my senior year because military was always kind of a thing for me.
We were in Kuwait during Desert Storm. I was about 7 or 8 when that happened. We got evacuated and smuggled out by Canadians, which is a whole other story. So the military is something I was very used to. We came back after the invasion and I lived there for several more years and was in the Boy Scouts. Because of the Army rotations in Kuwait, my Boy Scout troop leaders were basically all soldiers. I was pretty intimate with the military. All the friends I went to school with were American and British kids whose families had been stationed
