Shawnee Delaney Speaking Topics

• The Human Factor: What Working in Espionage Taught Me About Behavior, Trust, and the People Around You

  Alternate title: What Recruiting Spies Taught Me About Human Behavior and Trust

  Before someone will betray their country, they must trust you completely.

  Shawnee Delaney spent nearly a decade as a clandestine case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency recruiting and running spies in denied areas, hostile environments, and combat zones. Her job wasn't just gathering intelligence. It was engineering trust under the most adversarial conditions imaginable, with people who had every reason not to trust anyone.

  What she learned is that trust isn't a feeling. It's a system. And the same psychological principles that drive an asset to hand over classified information shape every high-stakes relationship in business

  • with your team, your clients, your board, and your adversaries.

  In this session, Shawnee decodes the operational science behind human connection: how intelligence professionals identify what drives a person, establish influence without manipulation, and build relationships that hold under pressure. You'll walk away understanding how trust is actually constructed, where it breaks down, and what it costs you when it does.

  This isn't soft skills. This is tradecraft.

• The Human Factor: A Spy’s Guide to Social Engineering and Insider Threats

  Before Shawnee Delaney protected secrets, she stole them.

  As a former clandestine case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Shawnee's job was to identify vulnerable insiders, exploit their motivations, and turn them into sources. She was, by definition, an insider threat — and she was very good at it.

  Now she's on your side. And she's here to tell you the threat you're most worried about isn't coming through the firewall. It's already sitting at a desk down the hall.

  In this high-stakes, story-driven keynote, Shawnee brings the case files to life — the kinds of incidents that sound impossible until they land on your desk. A nun embezzling $835,000 to fund a gambling habit. An airline technician who weaponized his own security badge. Drawing on her investigations and the real-world cases she's tracked throughout her career, Shawnee shows you what insider betrayal actually looks like — and why it almost never looks the way you'd expect.

  Insider threats are not just a cybersecurity problem. They're a human problem. And with the average data breach now costing organizations $4.45 million, and IP theft draining the U.S. economy of up to $600 billion a year, the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher.

  Drawing on her intelligence career, her deep expertise in behavioral science, and the Critical Pathway model used to predict insider risk, Shawnee maps the journey from frustrated employee to full-blown threat — and shows you what to look for before it's too late.

  What you'll walk away with:

  • The Three Faces of Insider Risk — Negligent, Compromised, and Malicious insiders each carry a distinct profile, different motivations, and a dramatically different price tag. Knowing which type you're dealing with changes everything about your response.

  • A Spy's Targeting Playbook — Foreign intelligence services, criminal networks, and competitors use the same techniques: elicitation, shoulder surfing, social media profiling, and the careful exploitation of trust. Shawnee reveals exactly how you and your employees are assessed, groomed, and recruited, and how to shut it down.

  • The Psychology of Betrayal — What pushes someone from disgruntled to dangerous? Through the lens of real cases and the Critical Pathway model, you'll understand the personal predispositions, life stressors, and behavioral red flags that converge into a crisis — and why organizations so often miss them until it's too late.

  • Fraud, Espionage, Sabotage and Physical Threats — This isn't a talk about phishing emails. It covers the full spectrum: the financially desperate employee diverting funds, the scientist quietly handing trade secrets to a competitor, the IT administrator who holds a company hostage with a password, and the contractor with physical access who weaponizes it.

  • How YOU Become a Target — Every attendee leaves knowing exactly how social engineers and intelligence officers identify and exploit human vulnerabilities — and what behaviors, habits, and organizational gaps make someone an irresistible mark.

  • Building the Program That Actually Works — From onboarding to offboarding, Shawnee maps the employee lifecycle and the critical touchpoints where insider risk spikes — giving security leaders a practical framework for designing programs that protect people and data without turning the workplace into a surveillance state.

  This isn't a compliance training. It's a wake-up call told by someone who has sat on both sides of the table, delivered with the candor, dark humor, and hard-won insight that only a real spy can bring.

• Inside the Shadows: A Spy’s Guide to Understanding Espionage and Protecting Your Organization

  Alternate title: The Art of Espionage: Mastering the Fundamentals of Spycraft

  Espionage is not just the stuff of thrillers—it’s a very real and growing risk for organizations of all sizes. Think you’re too wary to be recruited into the world of spies? Think again. Shawnee Delaney, a former Case Officer, pulls back the curtain on the sophisticated methods spies use to identify, target, and recruit insiders across industries—from casual chats in airport lounges to high-stakes surveillance operations.

  In this eye-opening keynote, you’ll delve deep into the secrets of espionage tradecraft and discover how these tactics threaten your organization every day.

  What You’ll Learn:

  • The Human Intelligence Recruitment Cycle: Understand how adversaries spot, assess, and slowly recruit people just like you—turning access into advantage.

  • Elicitation Defense: Identify subtle conversational tells that leak secrets and learn simple, effective counters to shut down espionage attempts.

  • The Power of Motivation: Grasp the critical role of personal vulnerabilities and motivations insiders may have—and how threat actors exploit them.

  • The Spectrum of Espionage: Explore the many faces of espionage—from industrial sabotage and corporate spying to foreign intelligence—with vivid case studies spotlighting financial stakes and recruitment tactics.

  • The Espionage Toolkit: See how traditional spy methods fuse with modern cybersecurity strategies to create a formidable defense.

  This keynote will illuminate the shadowy tactics used by hackers, nation-states, and organized crime groups—revealing how espionage remains alive and evolving. Arm yourself with clear, actionable takeaways to detect, deter, and defend against both human operatives and cyber threats targeting your organization.

• Spy vs. AI: Defending Against AI's Threats to Your Life, Loved Ones & Livelihood

  What happens when the tradecraft of a spy meets the speed of artificial intelligence? In this riveting keynote, former Defense Intelligence Agency case officer Shawnee Delaney reveals how the same manipulation techniques she once used to steal secrets in war zones are now being automated by AI — at a speed, scale, and precision that no human operative could ever match. Drawing from real-world cases — a cloned voice that fooled a grandmother at 2 a.m., North Korean operatives hired through LinkedIn, a deepfake that nearly duped a Ferrari executive, and AI-powered romance scams running 200 victims simultaneously, Shawnee exposes how attackers weaponize trust to socially engineer and target individuals, families, and businesses alike.

  With $40 billion in AI-driven fraud losses projected by 2027 and 82% of phishing emails now AI-generated, the threat isn't theoretical, it's happening right now. But this isn't a doom-and-gloom talk. Shawnee arms audiences with the same counterintelligence instincts that kept her alive in the field: practical detection techniques for deepfake audio and video, behavioral red flags that work whether the attack is AI-generated or old-fashioned manipulation, and simple protocols that can stop a scam in its tracks. Equal parts intelligence briefing, cautionary tale, and survival guide, Spy vs. AI leaves every audience member (from C-suite executives to parents) with one unforgettable rule: prepared people don't get played.

• Watched, Tracked, and Hacked: How Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Controls Your Life (and What You Can Do About It)

  Surveillance isn’t coming. It’s already here.

  From smartphones and smart homes to vehicles, workplace badges, and children’s devices, data is constantly collected, analyzed, and monetized. What feels like convenience is often continuous exposure.

  In this keynote, Shawnee Delaney pulls back the curtain on Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS) and explains how everyday technologies quietly influence privacy, security, and decision-making.

  Drawing from intelligence tradecraft and real-world targeting tactics, she translates complex surveillance ecosystems into practical, understandable insights for leaders, parents, and professionals alike.

  Attendees will learn:

  • How common technologies double as intelligence collection platforms
  • How metadata is leveraged by criminals, corporations, and foreign adversaries
  • Why convenience has become one of the greatest modern vulnerabilities
  • How surveillance subtly reshapes behavior and increases risk

  Participants leave with clear, practical steps to reduce exposure, regain control, and make informed decisions in a world where data has become currency.

• Under Pressure: The Hidden Link Between Stress and Insider Threats

  No one wakes up and decides to become an insider threat. But pressure changes people.

  In this keynote, Shawnee Delaney unpacks what most organizations miss: stress is not just a wellness issue. It’s a risk multiplier.

  Burnout. Financial strain. Job dissatisfaction. Lack of support. These are not just HR concerns. They are precursors to mistakes, policy violations, data leakage, and in some cases, malicious action.

  Drawing from real insider cases, behavioral science, and her experience recruiting vulnerable insiders as a former intelligence officer, Shawnee shows how pressure quietly erodes judgment and increases susceptibility to manipulation, coercion, and poor decision-making.

  This session will help leaders:

  • Recognize behavioral shifts before they become incidents

  • Understand how stress increases vulnerability to recruitment and compromise

  • Identify early warning indicators across teams

  • Build cultures that reduce risk without creating paranoia

  Because insider threats rarely begin with espionage. They begin with pressure. If you want to prevent the breach, start by understanding the human behind it.

Read More +