On November 17, 2023, Perry Center Professors Boris Saavedra and Celina Realuyo conducted a webinar titled “The Cyber Threat in the Present and Future in Our Hemisphere and Transnational Threats” for the Ecuadoran Ministry of Defense. Dr. Saavedra addressed the challenges of cyber governance, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G, and critical infrastructure protection in his lecture. Professor Realuyo explained how transnational organized crime is diversifying into synthetic drugs and expanding into cyberspace in the Western Hemisphere; she stressed the importance of leveraging financial and digital intelligence to better detect, detain and dismantle illicit networks and the need for more interagency and international cooperation to counter transnational organized crime.

Later that day, Professor Realuyo covered similar topics with 70 army majors in the Masters in Defense and Security Program at the Ecuadorian Army War College.