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When the Netherlands hosted the Nuclear Security Summit in 2014, all the country’s special units were put in place to make the meeting as safe as possible. World leaders who came to The Hague included then US president Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel. Bas Smits, who at the time was chairman of a customer support group that included all the special units, said it was one of the biggest security operations the Netherlands had seen up until then. “The leaders all had their own security guards, and in the Netherlands, all conceivable security units were on high alert, such as the marines, the intelligence services and the military police,” he said. Smits had held his support group role since 2006, and so had extensive knowledge and experience. “When performing that role, I saw that hardly anyone thought about the communication between all the special units, both our own and those that accompanied the world leaders,” he said. Smits suggested to summit organisers that this had to change. Smits has worked with the ...