The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams

October 7th was not simply an intelligence failure. Israel had warning, surveillance, military power, and years of experience watching Hamas. What it lost was enough doubt about whether its own assumptions could be wrong.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, I look at the lessons from October 7th that go well beyond Israel. We examine how complacency shaped intelligence assessments, how Hamas studied and attacked Israel’s dependence on technology, why warning indicators were missed, and what happened when the national response became overwhelmed and the fight turned local.

I also look at the broader threat environment around Hamas, including training and relationships outside Gaza, and why intelligence services have to understand the enemy they actually have, not the enemy they remember. Most importantly, this episode is about what the United States can learn from those failures before someone tests the same weaknesses here.

Complacency does not always look like laziness. Sometimes complacency looks very sophisticated.

I’m doing something a little different on The Watch Floor and sharing what is currently on my reading list.

I’m reading Rooftop Korean by Tony Moon now, a firsthand account of the 1992 Los Angeles riots and what happened when communities suddenly found themselves responsible for their own safety.

I also have five newer releases on my radar covering Cold War counterintelligence, warning intelligence, jihadist terrorism in Spain, practical preparedness, and protective security.

These are not five books I am pretending I have already read and reviewed. They are simply books that caught my attention because they deal with many of the same issues we discuss here: recognizing threats early, understanding what can go wrong, and being better prepared before it does.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Rooftop Korean: A Memoir of the 1992 L.A. Riots by TonyMoon - https://a.co/d/08YLqD8O

The Defector by Richard Kerbaj - https://a.co/d/03Oj815h

Predictive Intelligence for Tomorrow’s Threats edited byErik J. Dahl and David Strachan-Morris - https://a.co/d/0hKOBlKv

Understanding Spanish Jihadist Terrorism: The Ideology Behind the Metaphors by Carlos Yebra López - https://a.co/d/04S9x9K5

Common Sense Preparedness: Building Resilience for Uncertain Times by Laurie Neverman - https://a.co/d/08tIh7go

The Protector’s Edge: Leadership Through Strategy and Actionby Charles Randolph, Jonathan Wackrow, and Fred Burton - https://a.co/d/07ZSqWw9

On September 17, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency released its annual report on foreign efforts to acquire sensitive U.S. technology from the cleared defense industrial base. DCSA received more than 22,000 suspicious-contact reports during fiscal year 2025 and identified roughly 2,900 incidents involving foreign entities seeking U.S. information or technology. The leading method was the exploitation of experts.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, I break down what that targeting can actually look like. It may begin with a consulting request, conference invitation, peer review, recruiting approach or research discussion. The interaction can look completely legitimate while giving someone access to the people who understand a technology, its limitations, its supply chain and where development is headed next.

We also look at elicitation, front companies and intermediaries, why unclassified knowledge can still have intelligence value, and the warning signs experts should pay attention to when an ordinary professional relationship begins moving in another direction. The episode also covers why former government, intelligence, aerospace and defense personnel remain valuable targets long after their access or clearances are gone.

Sometimes the most valuable technology is not sitting inside a secure computer system. It is sitting inside the head of the person who spent twenty years learning how that system works.

Before dawn on September 24, Ecuadorian police launched a major counter-narcotics operation against a cocaine-trafficking network. More than 320 Ecuadorian police took part, but this raid was different. About 50 personnel from U.S. Southern Command and the Drug Enforcement Administration joined the operation, with images showing U.S. personnel wearing Marine Raider insignia.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, I break down why that matters, what the U.S. brought to the operation, and how the American role in Ecuador appears to be changing. We look at the raids in Samborondón and other areas, the use of drones, night vision, communications equipment and rapid exploitation of seized devices, and the broader effort to disrupt trafficking networks moving cocaine through Ecuador’s ports.

The key question is whether this was a one-off operation or the start of a more direct U.S. role alongside Ecuadorian forces against transnational criminal organizations.

The FBI is investigating a breach tied to FBIJobs.gov and the possible exposure of employee personally identifiable information. Hackers connected to ShinyHunters claim they stole terabytes of data covering current and former FBI personnel, applicants, medical information, background investigations, and other sensitive systems.

Some of those claims remain unverified. But reporters have already reviewed thousands of records containing names, home addresses, Social Security numbers, family contacts, employee identifiers, and details pointing to sensitive FBI assignments involving China, Russia, human intelligence, surveillance, cartels, and other national security work.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams breaks down what is actually confirmed, what the hackers are claiming, how the breach may have happened, and why this is much more than an identity-theft problem. When personnel records can be combined with family information, assignments, travel indicators, and other breached data, they can become a map of an organization and a valuable counterintelligence tool.

We also look at the comparison to the 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach and the biggest unanswered question: who else may already have this information?

Utah Valley University released its independent after-action report on September 25, 2026, examining the September 10, 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk. The report identifies a number of security failures, but the biggest lesson is broader than any single missed rooftop or breakdown in communication.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, I walk through what the report says about venue selection, elevated positions, the missed joint security walkthrough, camera monitoring, mutual aid, emergency messaging and protective intelligence. The focus is not on hindsight for the sake of criticism. We look at after-action reports to understand what failed, what should have happened differently, and how to keep the next team from making the same mistakes.

The central lesson is simple: reacting to individual security concerns is not the same thing as running a protective-security operation. Security has to work as a system.

Writing

“See something, say something” leaves out the hardest part: what are you actually looking for?

In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams explains the behaviors that can appear before an attack, from repeated surveillance and security testing to unusual questions about access, possible preparation near home or work, and warning signs at an airport. She explains why context and patterns matter, what details make a report useful, and whom to tell when something needs attention.

A Russian intelligence-linked network allegedly recruited people already inside the U.S. to surveil a prominent Russian dissident in the Washington, D.C., area. The price was up to $1,500 for photographs and videos. The offer to carry out the murder was $40,000.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams breaks down how the operation moved from Russia through Cuban and Venezuelan intermediaries to a Brooklyn resident, why the completed surveillance matters, and how the same network was allegedly tied to assassination and sabotage operations across Europe.

The plot reveals a model that is cheaper, harder to trace, and designed to place distance between the Russian government and the person closest to the target.

The assassination was not carried out. The pre-operational surveillance was.

Artificial intelligence is moving from answering questions to taking actions. In controlled tests, advanced AI models have deceived operators, attempted blackmail, concealed information, recognized when they were being evaluated, and taken steps researchers describe as self-preservation behavior.

Those findings have produced extraordinary warnings about where AI may be headed. But a warning is information. It is not a conclusion.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, Sarah Adams walks through four questions: What can these systems actually do? Can we reliably control them? What is driving companies and countries to move so quickly? And if there is a problem, who gets to decide what the response looks like?

We look at the emerging AI threat picture, the difference between capability and intent, the race for technological advantage, the national-security competition with China, and the competing concern that AI safety could also become a justification for concentrating enormous technological power in the hands of a small number of companies and institutions.

The goal is not to tell you what to think about AI. It is to separate the warning from the assessment, understand what the evidence actually shows, and ask better questions about what comes next.

For fourteen years, most of the Benghazi debate has focused on what happened after the attack began. This episode looks at what happened before.

In May 2026, Dave “Boon” Benton and I returned to Benghazi, where we were briefed on a completed Libyan investigation into the terrorists and networks behind the 2012 attacks. One part of that investigation followed a German terrorist cell that moved from Europe through Turkey and Egypt into eastern Libya.

Twenty German citizens reached Libya as part of the network. Fourteen members of the cell ultimately participated in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate and CIA Annex. Some of the same terrorists later surfaced with ISIS.

In this episode of The Watch Floor, I break down how they got there, what their movement tells us about the networks behind Benghazi, and why the story of an attack has to begin long before the first shot is fired.

Read the full investigation: The Hidden History of One Benghazi Cell: The German Terrorists Who Joined the Attack at SOFREP.

https://sofrep.com/news/the-hidden-history-of-one-benghazi-cell-the-german-terrorists-who-joined-the-attack/