Brains, Balls & Infrastructure

Dr. Vanessa Neumann shares her views on what it would take for Latin American to rise up and compete with global superpowers for its share of global prosperity. Dr. Neumann is an authority on Latin American politics and security, as well as on crime-terror pipelines, particularly on stemming illicit trade as a counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency strategy that supports businesses. She is the author of a book on crime-terror pipelines, Blood Profits: How American Consumers Unwittingly Fund Terrorists (St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan). Dr. Neumann is also the co-author of The Many Criminal Heads of the Golden Hydra (Asymmetrica and Counter-Extremism Project, May 2018), an extensive analysis of illicit trade and corruption in the Tri-Border Area, that has been covered by more than 75 media outlets and forced Paraguayan troop movements, as well as the denial of a US visa to the former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartés. Dr. Neumann has served four years on the OECD’s Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade (since its inception) and on their Advisory Group. She holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Columbia University, and fellowships at Yale University, Columbia University and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Her company Asymmetrica is a member of the Global Counter Terrorism Research Network (GCTRN) for the United Nations Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Notably, Dr. Neumann was the academic reviewer for USSOCOM’s ARIS Series teaching manual on counterinsurgency (COIN) in Colombia. She is a widely sought speaker to media, academia and governments.