In this episode of the Alongside: Future Thinking mini-series from NorthStandard, Mike Salthouse is joined by Brendan Moore, CEO of SynMax.

SynMax is a Houston-based satellite analytics and intelligence company which uses its latest technology to track vessels that turn off the Automatic Identification System (AIS).

Mike and Brendan discuss the challenges facing authorities in tracking and countering efforts by vessels to avoid detection. 

Welcome, Brendan. Perhaps you could start by telling us a little bit about the weaknesses in the technology that's currently used to break sanctions and how the CINMAX product attempts to address those.

This is very, this vessel is very likely to be doing X, but can you take the action needed? Can a government sanction based on that? Can you take away that, um, that the insurance for that vessel really putting that company and the insurance company into a terrible position if you're found to be wrong? It almost doesn't matter how.

the level of certainty until you get to about 100%. It's kind of irrelevant. Um, and that's where we come in. So even where you get that single tip and cue where you, where you get given an image, it's told this is, this is the vessel doing something bad. Is that vessel definitely an image of your vessel? So if you're ingesting something, The, the imagery and running analytics over it every, every day of the year, constantly, you are tracking that vessel nonstop using imagery and every vessel across millions of square kilometers.

We, you don't just give that single tip and cued image. You're going back. Well, yes, this is the image of your vessel here. And here it is two days before in the port that we know with the, you know, it was, and three days before in the area, you know, it was four days or five days or six days. So you're giving 50, 60 images.

really telling the story of what happened with that vessel. When did it start spoofing or when did it go dark? When did it do the bad thing and why did it do it? And that's the kind of evidential narrative that's needed.

[00:02:43] Brendan Moore: No, absolutely. We've seen, um, both AIS and radio frequency manipulation and going dark. Um, it really started, it's been fascinating. In the space of just over two years, day one for CINMAX, it was very much going dark is the big problem. Vessels are going darker all over the place. What are they doing? Now, very quickly, bad owners essentially realized.

That going dark is like sending off a firework to those looking at AIS. It's, yes, we don't know where you are at this minute. We can predict it, but we do know you're doing something bad. So that very quickly moved on to spoofing. Initial spoofing and some spoofers still to this day are quite rudimentary.

So a 300 meter vessel that doesn't leave a 30 meter box for two weeks. Or goes in a perfect circle for a month. You know, the, this, when you're looking at a IS it, yes. If you have an alert set up to tell you if they're going dark, it doesn't trigger that alert. But a decent analyst or some decent algorithms can, can find it out pretty, pretty well.

What we're seeing is the evolution going from there. So at the moment, we're seeing a massive uptake in what we call, uh, state level spoofing, where the vessel will be light for quite a lot, uh, long way. Then it will spoof, but the path. off beautifully from its real path. They both go in different, very realistic, uh, directions, and then they come back and it perfectly joins up again.

And that is very, very difficult to tell if you're looking at us, um, on some of them, I would say. impossible. We are seeing a massive uplift in that. We have seen a rude one, a few rudimentary attempts to avoid, uh, us essentially with repainting the vessel, but repainting a 300 meter vessel takes a long time.

So for us, we just watch it being repainted. And, uh, that, that was quite, that just provides some comedy to us, really.

Where do you think that that balance has got? Does the initiative fly with the the super clever sanctions breakers and obviously, they've got some big states behind them now. These are, these are sophisticated people, uh, behind that or, or, or people in your industry? Do you feel you're sort of starting to, to get on top of it?

But that would very likely be with a capability that they couldn't then publicize. So it's one thing having that awareness that, oh, Vessel X and Vessel Y and Vessel Z are breaking sanctions. It's altogether another one to put that into the public domain. I think they are definitely ahead, um, of the commercial world in terms of being able to get away with it.

There's definitely an awareness that it's happening on a large scale. I think the actual scale is far larger than anyone else realizes to be, to be very frank. But what they are very good at is skirting that line of, you think, you know, we're doing something, but you can't prove it. And, and that's where we are at the moment.

[00:06:34] Brendan Moore: I think that question comes down to tactical and strategic. So tactically about an individual vessel they're interested in. They, they could very likely know whatever they want. If they tasked an asset, the commercial sector has got very, very good at tracking light vessels and vessels that have a little bit of tradecraft.

Milit navies and governments are very, very good at tracking other navies and other government vessels on a very narrow scale. The problem nowadays is that these, these gray fleets have grown and it's not, it's not just sanctions breaking, illegal fishing, research vessels that are doing things to undersea infrastructure.

All of these user cases are taking up huge resources and need a broad strategic view. When what navies and government's been asking for for a few decades is higher resolution, closer, closer, give me constant tracking of that of one vessel, two vessels, 10 vessels. But suddenly it's spread out to thousands and that's where the kind of breadth comes into it really, where you've got to have both the, the evidential output that the governments normally get with the breadth that the commercial side normally gets.

And that's the kind of space we're inhabiting at the

Assets, um, they rely on good practice within, within industry. Now, is, is it reasonable to expect somebody who's doing their best really to sort of pick up all the sort of sanctions breaking that that that's going on

And that level should always be rising because it is it is an arms race on both sides. That level should be rising and it should be what is feasible for, um, I'm under no doubt. you know, doubt that it's about what's the commercial side, uh, can pay mixed with what the government expectations are mixed with what is out there at the moment and that kind of blend needs to be agreed by all.

[00:09:14] Brendan Moore: As Simmac CEO, I'm going to be, I'm going to be saying Thea, which is our capability that's in just million square kilometers, but it's, it's really. Every intelligence, uh, every intelligence problem, and this is an intelligence problem. The solution is almost always intelligence fusion. It's never about taking one single, uh, narrow capability and getting every, uh, every ounce from it.

It's about blending them together. So you're getting all, all the aspects, uh, as one, one offering.

[00:10:17] Brendan Moore: Excuse me, another good question. Um, being honest, uh, We're seeing that the best are only getting better. I know that's a depressing, depressing statement. Essentially, the movement of commodity under sanction as well is, is becoming a shell game. So it's not just that a vessel goes dark or spoofs and goes to somewhere it shouldn't and then comes back.

It's that a vessel spoofs, goes somewhere it shouldn't, then passes off to another vessel. And that part of the vessel passes off to another vessel. And then the third vessel in the row is picking up a commodity that, That's, that's owner, whoever's, whoever's doing that, very likely has no idea. And Unless you're using something that mass that looks across all thousands of vessels at the same time and gathers that evidential, uh, evidential material and all of them, it's almost impossible to say no to that commodity because the vessel before you definitely didn't go to that country.

The vessel before that. Didn't even go to that country. And so I do, I completely agree with you. It's unfeasible using most of the capabilities out there to know where the beginning was. And I think that's where government, the commercial sector and, uh, providers do have to work together on what is financially viable and how can we stop that happening because what we can't have is those breaking sanctions, essentially just making it uneconomic to catch them.

[00:11:55] Brendan Moore: So seven of my 18 years in government was in cybercrime, and I see where we are now almost as the beginning of, not right, I wasn't involved right at the beginning, but at the start of the path that cybercrime went along. So at first, uh, companies were, well, you have to look after yourselves. Um, and I think we're, we're, we're past that now in the maritime environment, the government.

The the the treasury and sanctions officials are definitely looking to how can we better coordinate. I agree with yourself We're not there. We're not at the right place yet, but they're definitely looking to get there It's not a bullish attempt to pass the buck completely over to the commercial sector in my in my opinion um But it feels like a much less mature environment than we were in cybercrime, where essentially the commercial sector and government agencies such as the NCSC in the UK and various others across Five Eyes and NATO all come together in a much more coherent way.

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