Attack of the Drones

Hello and welcome back to Communication Breakdown, a new podcast from the Observatory on Corporate Reputation. Thanks for joining us. I'm Steve Dowling in Silicon Valley. And I'm Craig Carroll in New York City. Each week Steve and I take a look at strategies companies are using the shape headlines and sometimes save their skins. It's a post game show for PR Pros. And this week, mysterious objects hovering over the skies of New Jersey. And they ain't reindeer.

No, they're drones, lots of them apparently. Over the past few weeks, skygazing citizens from Massachusetts to Virginia have reported over 5,000 sightings of dancing lights of unknown origin. Many are presumed to be drones authorities now say, although with so many people nervously looking skyward, many sightings were probably planes or helicopters.

At first, the drone spotting public had reasonable questions about whether these drone overflights were somehow related or if they might pose a safety threat. Some officials publicly worried it could be a run or China directing the drones. A lack of answers from local authorities, from states, even the federal government left a lot of room for speculation and finger pointing and just a dash of panic. And that's when things started to get weird.

The governor of Maryland tweeted a picture of what he described as dozens of large drones over his house and he slammed the federal government for its negligent response to the crisis. But that constellation of lights he saw turned out to be an actual constellation, Orion, to be precise, the one with the three stars that make a little belt. And when local ABC affiliate broadcast images have an object shining brightly overhead, it was later determined to be the planet Venus.

And then President-elect Trump weighed in on the drones. "The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don't want to comment. And I think there'd be better off saying what it is, our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense. Something strange is going on.

And some reason they don't want to tell the people and they should." Craig, last we forget, it's been about 90 years since Orson Wells told his radio audience that Martians had landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. And apparently a lot of folks believed him. Now we have a government explanation that a lot of people don't seem to want to believe and federal agencies are stuck trying to prove a negative. They're pretty sure there's no foreign power behind these sightings.

There are no serious claims of a cover-up. But there are a million drones registered in the United States with some 8,000 flights a day, according to Homeland Security. And last year, the FAA changed its rules to allow more nighttime drone activity. But these answers all came a day late in a dollar short local officials say, and people seem to want some kind of action. Though it's not clear exactly what. Couldn't this whole mess have been avoided? Well, could have been avoided?

Well, I would say probably not entirely, but it probably could have been managed better. In a situation like this, what you don't say is just as important as what you do say.

And here, this is that the federal government didn't give very clear timely answers and that's left a speculation to feel. So I'm going to say there's three things they could have done. Timing, transparency, and tone. So first of all, just for timing, they waited till I got to acknowledge the public's concern and then let speculation to spiral out of control. So early acknowledgement, I think, basic facts probably could have helped fill the vacuum.

I think that was actually part of the problem because they did acknowledge here and there, but what they failed to do, I believe, is bring everything together and provide a timely and comprehensive answer. It was like they were constantly playing whack-a-mole and were unable to get ahead of it. So I agree with you on timing. It's easier said than done a lot of times, right? But to get ahead of it, but I feel like you're right.

You needed to wrap their arms around it and provide one central source of information than they could be answering all the questions right there. Timing is a part of transparency, but I think it's a larger issue. They needed to clearly state what they knew, what they didn't know, and what they're going to do to find out more.

And bigger statements like, oh, we're investigating this, can sound a little dismissive or even evasive, which I think is only going to add to speculation here on the part of the public. Yeah. This skill here is in recognizing when just acknowledging the problem or in this case, the phenomenon is enough. This whole, we're working on it line.

And we heard over and over again from government officials, federal government officials, that they were investigating, that they were applying resources to it versus when that's just not enough to satisfy the audience, customers, constituents. And I think there's probably a function of how long things went on and sort of got out of control. We should talk about how that happened. But people clearly wanted resolution or policy change or something. We want action.

And that's what we see in these calls to just shoot them down or whatever, which I think is pretty widely regarded as just a bad idea. Yeah. I think, what about the last part, you know, tone? I think we spent too much time in media talking about the tone of articles without really getting into the substance here.

But here, there's something that tone feels like, okay, it's real important, you know, the messaging felt a little too bureaucratic and a little reactive when it needed to be empathetic and confident and literally should be addressing people's anxieties directly and showing that they understand what the stakes are and that they were, well, saying control the situation. Nobody's ruling control the situation here, but at least being calm and study, you know, during this point.

So these are the same principles from crisis, right, that we talk about here. Absolutely. And, you know, projecting confidence and projecting command, if you will, of the situation is one, even if they don't have control. And I think that's something that people were not getting. And you heard it from constituents. You heard it from local officials. You heard it from members of Congress talking about the federal government that they just felt like the answers were not complete.

And they weren't seeing the response that they wanted. But broadened the conversation about tone for a second because if we look at tone in the response, I think we should talk about the tone sort of of the concerns in the minute because there are some interesting confluence, I think, of what factors that made this such a big story. But let's take a look at the tone of some of these answers that government officials, and there's a contrast here.

And this is all, I think, way too late in the process. But listen to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He was on ABC News the weekend of December 15th. And he was asked a bunch of very direct questions. And these are not indirect answers, but the direct question was, do, are you saying that Americans have nothing to worry about?

Look, it is our job to be vigilant in the federal government with our state and local partners on behalf of the American public, and we can assure their safety by reason of that vigilance. We've deployed personnel, technology, and if there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly. Right now, we are not aware of any.

If we become aware of any, we will communicate accordingly and take appropriate action. So, it might take away there was that is not an answer that instills a lot of confidence. Way too many ifs. And it's, there's no doubt that they're taking it seriously. I just don't come away from an answer like that saying these guys are totally on top of it. The definitive answers that you want are not there.

Contrast that, and these are not answers to the same question, but just in approach and Craig to your point, tone. There's transportation, secretary, Pete Buttigieg on the radio with the Breakfast Club radio show with Charles LeMaine, the God, and he's asked, is this an alien invasion? Isn't an alien invasion? I mean, no disrespect to New Jersey when I say that I think is very unlikely that an alien invasion would begin. Watch them out. We lived in, I know, but he put down.

You know, look, I got to ask you about that, right? So we know that the government underestimated the issue tapping into cultural anxieties, right? Fear the unknown, mistrust of authority. And certainly, right, fascination with UFOs or concern over foreign threats. What would you do here to address these cultural touch points in a way that kind of reassures people that you're hearing their concerns without, certainly not, I guess, without dismissing them.

Pete was a little bit dismissive there, but people were feeling this drone panic, even when the evidence was not, you know, very, very strong in the, certainly not that there was some alien invasion. I look at it as a confluence of factors. And we talk about tone like you have this mistrust in government and a general anger among the electorate as others have pointed out as a factor in this. People are just not happy with their leadership right now.

And that, that taints, I think, a lot of the earnest answers that you might have heard from government officials. Then you have this hyper-excelerant of social media where you can end up with these conspiracy theories about some Iranian mothership off the coast that's launching drones and being able to knock down those rumors definitively. I mean, that's one where the Pentagon actually did have to come out and say, nope, there isn't, but to let it get to that point, that's the mistake.

That's why I say the skill here is recognizing when you can just say we're on top of it versus when there's enough concern that you have to show some action. And the maddening part of this whole episode is that it does, when you look at it, feel like it was just happening like a slow-motion train wreck. You keep watching this conversation going. And the federal government is not saying enough or not addressing things directly. And you end up where you have this borderline hysteria.

And the last factor I would suggest is this timing.

We're still in this sort of post-election news vacuum, even though there have been big stories in the past month. This one has this large footprint and this element of mystery or conspiracy. And I think, again, in the wake of the election with the holidays upon us, I think people probably just got caught off guard and they weren't addressing it as directly definitively as they could have in the beginning.

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly, the media here, both traditional and social media were amplifying the drama with local stories, snowballing and the national panic. Kind of reminds me of some of the early mass-com research going back to the 30s and 40s a little bit here. One of the issues here is how we think about the media landscape here and just how fragmented it is right now and how different narratives can accelerate. We just have to be ready to interject facts earlier under the storyline here.

And part of it is that with this being fueled by social peer-to-peer sharing and social media amplification, it just makes the speculation spread far more than facts. I know we need to be monitoring social media channels and be ready to respond in real time and deploy rapid response messaging to counter misinformation. But there's so much here we still don't know. And I say this as I'm packing drones and to my suitcase that I bought for family members for it.

I just gave away by Christmas presents too early. But yeah, I would tell you this made me a little nervous here, right? I'm thinking, should I be traveling with this given how little we know about, you know, I mean, there's so little legislation about drones. And you know, drone regulation, countermeasures are still evolving and the government is not doing a very good job of helping us here.

But you know, communicating with what is being done within the existing legal frameworks and emphasizing progress on new legislation to address public safety concerns. I know personally, I'm scared of Google. Am I okay to travel with these things? Yeah, I think one of the major factors here is fragmentation. It's a hard year point.

Everybody's monitoring social media and it's, but it's not because the, there's a fragmentation of where people are getting their information and also where they are expressing their concerns. This is how we're seeing stories snowball because they're not getting, they're not getting shut down. And the fragmented nature of the, of social media now. And even, you know, more mainstream media, it's allowing if not encouraging this kind of rampant speculation.

Generally speaking, from the public perspective, you know, how to drone operate, who uses them? What can you expect? Where do you buy them? Should they be available publicly? Little things like that for most people are part of the puzzle here that I've not really, those pieces have not really been put in place.

It's interesting because we heard a number of times from the federal government and those supporting those efforts that the federal government wants, you know, to give states more authority over these drones. The federal government wants to, wants to increase controls in that way. And but I didn't hear a lot of specifics.

So when you hear about resources, when you hear about, you know, we're on top of it, or specifics in that way, even a proposal that people might find objectionable, might have concentrated the response and snapped people out of this mania. Yeah. I heard that actually was a very good proposal to ground all drones for 48 hours or 72 hours. Right?

Yeah. Well, you might say, maybe in, excuse me, commercial drones would be the exception, but that's an action that people would have had one of two reactions to, I think, a few, yes, great ground, ground them all so that we can understand what's actually up there because if we know it's not a drone or two, oh, whoa, wait a second. Don't ground the drones. And now you get forced people to say, oh, well, maybe drones up there isn't the worst thing in the world.

And maybe I'm not as concerned about it as I might have otherwise been when there was a lot of uncertainty. So I feel like this is one of those crisis situations where number one, you need to look at it and have somebody hopefully in the organization puts their hand up and says, hey, folks, this could get out of control really quick, right? And one of the factors, by the way, that I would have applied to this is that this happened in the Northeast corridor.

And I think more than anywhere else in America, a local story there has a potential fast track to national news just because of population density, you know, it's where the media is concentrated. And you know, something like this, if the same thing had happened in San Francisco or Los Angeles, I don't know that it would have, you know, blown up into the national and political issue that it has.

But I think that that is the skill for communications organizations is to identify something even though it's not the number one thing on social media yet or an issue that you're hearing in huge amounts like having a nose for news and looking at this and saying, yeah, this is one we'd better be ready to address or we'd better get out in front of and start addressing.

What do you think about what companies should be thinking about in terms of like if something like this were to affect them, right? I mean, drones flying over their parking lots or flying over company facilities or is there any unique response or anything to the situation we might think about from a company perspective? Well, I mean, you know, corporate espionage is real and whether drones are a part of that,

I mean, it's just this is the problem is it's very easy to consider a drone innocuous because most of them are, but this is one for corporate security and understanding where they were drones launch from, I think is a is a really important one. Sure. Are these coming from far away? Is this a hobbyist or an enthusiast who is just, you know, in the parking lot next door?

I think that just like folks are being told on the East Coast right now, taking matters into your own hands on drones is not a good idea. I've seen some pretty wild contraptions in the past of like, you know, launching some sort of like net that will capture a drone or whatever. I would not I would not encourage anybody to go shooting down drones or trying to interrupt drone traffic. It could be just the the is just too dangerous of a prospect. Bad idea. Well, okay.

Yes. So I think there's also some things here that we think we can think about though from a company perspective. One is a drone certain new thing and we certainly need to understand more about them. I don't know enough about them yet. I'm giving them way for holiday gifts, but for companies here, I think, you know, we got to understand, okay, what is this going to mean? Like, you know, what what type of drone activities going on in your operational areas?

Are you going to need to implement or upgrade drone detection systems to monitor the airspace over your headquarters or your your critical infrastructures? You know, we also have to think about security protocols. I know right now a lot of companies are thinking about cybersecurity, but this is this is another matter, right? This is about your airspace.

And so, you know, just making sure you security measures are up to up to date to deal with drone related threats or, you know, unauthorized surveillance or data collection, tie to your facilities. Companies, you know, they also need to be, you know, hand in tow with government officials. I know right now there's a lot of jockeying back and forth among politicians.

But, you know, companies are still going to have to work with federal and local law enforcement agencies to if they're going to make sure that timely updates are received and see guidance on how to manage drone related incidents. You see, old rule of thumb that's popularized in New York.

If you see something, say something like bringing bringing these to the two authorities, if you're worried about someone spying on your building, your parking lot, it's the data collection, I think that drones enable that is the risky part for companies. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if a few companies update their response plans or crisis plans to, you know, include procedures for reporting signings or mitigating potential threats. I don't know.

It's just literally adding another dimension to the security concerns that companies already have to deal with. Yeah. Probably still end on the same note we began, right? The main thing is you have to anticipate the vacuum if you're not being proactive with getting your message out there. Others are going to feel the silence. And when they do, it's really going to be the narrative that you want.

So you've got to be aware of how the spread of rumors can quickly speculate, take your life on its own. And so you need to make sure that you offer what perspective you can earn the process. You should not agree more. And that is our show for this week. We want to thank Shawn P Neal and the PeopleForward Network for making our podcast possible. If you'd like to tell us what you think or if you have a topic you'd like to suggest for our show, we would love to hear from you.

Our email address is podcast@ocrnetwork.com. Communication breakdown is a production of the Observatory on Corporate Reputation. Have a happy holiday, Craig and our producer, Shawn, and wish you safe travels. I'm Steve Dowling. And I'm Craig Carroll. Thanks for listening. Our next episode will be pre-recorded for the holidays. Then we'll be back in January with a new topic, old discussion. See you in the new year. [MUSIC]