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The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
Welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain Show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing and resilient supply chains. I'm your host, Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories from some of the world's best business, government, and thought leaders protecting people, planet, and profits. Let's get in. Okay.
Justin:Morgan Chase recently paid $365,000,000 for helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic young women. The bank wasn't accused of directly trafficking anyone, but for fifteen years they processed Epstein's payments, ignored red flags, and kept taking their fees while he used their bank to fund his sex trafficking operation. The judge ruled that they either knew or should have known what Epstein was doing and that made them liable under federal trafficking law. That phrase should have known just cost them a third of $1,000,000,000. My guest has spent sixteen years on trafficking cases and knows exactly how prosecutors build these cases.
Justin:She is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan and the founding director of the law school's Human Trafficking Clinic. She just published groundbreaking research showing how her law students traced onions picked using forced labor from United States based farms that went straight to grocery store shelves using nothing but public records and laptops. She has also served as an expert witness on several major trafficking cases, including the one involving Jeffrey Epstein. For anyone working in procurement responsible sourcing, the legal standard has shifted under your feet. Bridget Carr, welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain Show.
Bridgette:It's a delight. I'm so excited to have this conversation.
Justin:Let's jump right into it. First of all, where am I finding you today?
Bridgette:Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Classes are over here, so we are beginning our summer once the weather catches up. Yeah. And we just wrapped a semester, so it's a nice time for me.
Justin:People don't get how magic magical summer in Michigan is. It's like
Bridgette:They don't.
Justin:Is it secret.
Bridgette:Let's cut this part. Like, don't put this part in. Right?
Justin:Yeah. No. It is summers in Michigan are absolutely, absolutely amazing. So well, good to have you here. So let's let's jump right into it.
Justin:We have been seeing a number of cases around human trafficking in relations to business over the last few years. And I'm I just have a straight question. You and I've been in a lot of the same conferences, a lot of same rooms over the years. We getting anywhere?
Bridgette:I think so. I mean, if you had asked me ten years ago on this podcast, would JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank and financial institutions ever be touched by civil liability for banking someone who was trafficking people, I would have said, no. We're not there. I I can't I can't conceptualize the case. What would that look like?
Bridgette:And that's real. Right? There wasn't you know, they didn't they weren't found guilty. They settled. But the idea that financial institutions are within the ambit of the trafficking act civil liability law is really wonderful.
Bridgette:Right? I mean, when I think about the trafficking law, what I love about it, I mean, what I love about being a lawyer, right, is that you're like a superhero that has, like, all these tools in your tool belt. And what I love about the trafficking tool is it's really recognizing that there are certain types of exploitation that exist within an economic ecosystem. And the trafficking law invites us to look at that ecosystem and say, hey. Who else kinda knew about this and said, I'm not gonna do anything.
Bridgette:I'm just gonna take my money off the top. And I love that invitation, as an advocate because so often the narratives around exploitation are a bad person did something, not an ecosystem enabled an environment of exploitation.
Justin:Okay. So obviously we're talking about the Epstein case. When people go into law and they wanna like change the world, like you've become the archetype of that. You've kind of I'm just gonna say it. You don't have to You know, you can just sit there and take it.
Justin:But like, really, like fighting crime, fighting for justice. I think people need to hear that the courts and the law sometimes do work and work well and as intended. This is encouraging news to see that this isn't about slowing down commerce. This is about ripping out the bad guys out of a commercial system. Am I correct?
Bridgette:Yes. And I think it's not yes. I was referencing the Epstein case. And but it's not just financial institutions. It's the settlement involving, you know, Olympic athletes.
Bridgette:It's recognizing that, you know, when people benefit financially off of bodies of athletes, right, when medals and money are on the table.
Justin:I don't think I don't think we know about that case. Tell us about that.
Bridgette:Yeah. So, there are a number of cases filed. Some were filed as sex trafficking claims about the sort of systematic sexual abuse of a number of athletes in lots of different sports. Mhmm. And, then there were labor traffic king claims added to these, and I believe there are labor trafficking claims.
Bridgette:Because because the idea is if you are an Olympic athlete, and you might not be an Olympic athlete, Justin. But if you are an Olympic athlete and you have a sport you've worked in, when it's time to go to the Olympics, you don't get to pick your coach or your trainer or your medical doctor or where you train. The US Olympic Committee decides those things for you. If you want a if you want a visa to the Olympics, you have to go through the systems they set up. Mhmm.
Bridgette:And so those cases, again, settled, no admission of guilt, like all all of the caveats of of the legal system. But there were settlements in those cases where the accusation was that there was their sexual abuse was part and part part and parcel of the working conditions for these athletes, that they had to accept the sexual abuse and that it was known and that people within the system knew about it and didn't do anything because they wanted to benefit financially off the body of these athletes. And the fact that sexual abuse was a part of the ecosystem was just something they had to accept. And that's a vulnerability. It doesn't look like the vulnerability that we traditionally think about in trafficking.
Bridgette:Someone has foreign national status or someone doesn't wants access to an education, but that's a vulnerability if you've trained for years and years and years. You're gonna accept a lot of things in a working environment to try to get access to this goal that that you've worked for. And so I think it's not just the Epstein case. You know, we're seeing really interesting things happening, with Mohammed Al Fayed and Harrods in The UK where the UK government has finally recognized that, what happened to the women there was human trafficking and not just the bad acts of one individual person. What happened then?
Bridgette:And so, it's a it's a complex case, but, Muhammad al it is alleged that Muhammad al Fayed and his brothers would use Harrods and other entities to identify women that they would then sexually abuse. Right? Using the HR processes and other things. And so, again, it's this idea, the more we can get away from there are these individual bad people and instead say, what incentives exist in ecosystems that facilitate the financial benefit off of exploitation? And that's really what I hope we can talk about in the trafficking world.
Bridgette:Right? Because so often we're just talking about Epstein. Right? But really, there's so many parts of the ecosystem he built that could have stopped the trafficking or at least disrupted it, something like that. And we're not doing enough talking, I think, about the rest of those pieces.
Bridgette:And that's what I really love about the civil liability provisions of the trafficking law because it says, like, it's not just about the person. It's about who else is there, who else is making who else is making a financial benefit.
Justin:Yeah. I think someone we both have a lot of respect for, and I don't think I'd have ever paid attention to forced labor and supply chains before, is journalist Nicholas Kristof, who has been covering this for a long time and is who recently said, Never in my twenty plus years of reporting on trafficking would I think that every time I open up The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or The Post or whatever it is, there is stories about trafficking. Never did he think that this would surface. We're now seeing trafficking find its way into the pivot that President Trump has taken on tariffs and using forced labor and supply chains as a way to enforce tariffs. So it's interesting how these issues that might feel quite, and are, quite moral, start becoming an issue of fairness and America firstness.
Justin:And it's interesting that mutate. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that.
Bridgette:Yeah. I think I'm still trying to process some of those moves and wondering how enduring they are. I mean, I agree with Christophe that it is amazing that every time we open The Times or whatever journalism we're looking at, that we are seeing cases about trafficking. But I still worry about how they're framed, and I also still worry that the spotlight is over indexed on sex trafficking. Not that sex trafficking isn't important.
Bridgette:It I mean, it's important to fight sex trafficking. But I I do worry that we're still over indexed on that. Yeah. And, because and and I get it. Right?
Bridgette:If we really were to come to grips with labor trafficking, right, in The US globally, we would just all have to say, all of us buy goods and services created by exploited labor if we buy anything in the regular economy. Right? You do. I do. Like, we all do.
Bridgette:No one likes to sit with that. Like, I get it. Much easier if trafficking is really about bad people who make choices on this global stage that's very distant from me, and it's never, you know, at my kitchen table. And so I think I think it's but if until we get the kitchen table conversation, right, until we stop traffic talking about trafficking as as a unicorn. And in many ways, Epstein is a unicorn.
Bridgette:Right? His wealth, his power, his access. Like Mhmm. Like, you know and so until until we stop talking about unicorns, I think we're just still missing the mark, generally.
Justin:Don't you think that so much of the energy that's been put around this story around Epstein, is a long and continually revealing story, isn't it a story about bystanders? Because the conversation around Epstein is, well, who knew? Who was around? And it's about this like the nuclear blast zone and where does complicity fall within proximity? And so most people are not willingly participating, but they might unknowingly be participating like you and I are, and I've been raising my hand in the marketplace for years.
Justin:I unwillfully complicit, participate in But we're building intelligence and visibility to be able to reduce that. Isn't this conversation about bystanders? And isn't this conversation about, you know, where do we sit in that concentric circle?
Bridgette:So just with all the caveats, I was, the expert witness for The US Virgin Islands when they sued JPMorgan Chase over banking Epstein. For a long time, you know, this case wrapped for me in October 2023. I couldn't talk about any of it because it was all under cloak and dagger, if you will. Much of my expert report has now been made public, so there are things I can I can talk about? And so I think you're right.
Bridgette:It's about bystanders, but I think what's missing from that conversation is and I think it's missing just more broadly in human trafficking conversations, is we'll often talk about, well, we wanna help victims. But what we don't spend time talking about is, can we all agree on who that is? And can we all acknowledge that the biggest anti trafficking work we need to do is to make sure we aren't doing the first step that traffickers need, which is dehumanizing people in front of us.
Justin:And
Bridgette:what I mean by that is, you know, I reviewed and it's now been made public multiple communications of banking employees about Epstein's victims, who I would say are Epstein's victims. Right? And they're kind of disdain for the choices that those women were making because they weren't viewing those women as victims. They were viewing them in a way maybe as people who are willingly choosing to participate in commercial sex or who were exploiting Epstein's wealth. I don't know.
Bridgette:I'm not them. I I I can't say how they're viewing them. But I see this over and over. And, you know, I was interviewed once and someone said to me, you know, what is your, like, last question about Epstein that if you could ask one thing and have the world, you know, open up to you and that you could know something, what would it be? And and this is the honest truth.
Bridgette:My question is what happened to him? Like, because healthy people don't hurt people. And for me, that's kind of my line. What happened to Epstein? What happened to Epstein?
Bridgette:That's that is my
Justin:make him do this? Is that your question?
Bridgette:Yeah. And and the reason I mentioned that is because my line for myself is the moment I turn perpetrators into monsters is the moment I have to stop doing this work because that is dehumanizing them.
Justin:Woah.
Bridgette:And it doesn't mean I don't want them held accountable. I think Epstein, if he was still alive, should be in jail. 100%.
Justin:Of course.
Bridgette:But the moment I can't see his full humanity or any perpetrator's full humanity, I'm out, Justin. I don't do the work anymore because that's what trafficking needs every time. Right? In supply chains, we need to not think about these individuals as human beings entitled to dignity and a fair working environment. We just need to think about them as widgets.
Bridgette:Right? Like, need if I'm banking, I need to judge the choices these women are making. Right? Like, that's the first step. That's what traffickers Bank on, is that we will stop seeing people in their full humanity.
Bridgette:And so, yes, it's a bystander, but it's bigger than that. Mhmm. It's it's that we are willing to so quickly other the people in front of us.
Justin:Jeez. That's a lot. Not even for That's me, that's a a lot. No. I just my my my mind and my heart are breaking at the same time around this.
Justin:I think for the listeners at this show would fully agree with you on this. They're looking at supply chains that they cannot see the people. They see numbers in spreadsheets. And yet they know, because of the intelligence they're getting and because of the regulations that they face, that there are problems out there, quote unquote needles in haystacks. And bringing this humanity of there are people whose choices, whether it's the Olympic athletes or the people in the Virgin Islands, there are people whose choices have been taken away from them and are now forced to do things that benefit others and don't benefit themselves.
Justin:Is that So how do we Tell me, you tell me, how to help the responsible sourcing manager at such and such multinational be able to carry these two things at once. I need to reduce risk in my supply chain, which is a numbers game, and I need to see people in my supply chain, which is a human game. How do you give me some guidance about how to help those folks.
Bridgette:Well, I mean, think one of them is the I think that the best way to reduce risk is to see humans. Right? The moment I so I think I think one of them is and and and, you know, my law students and I worked on a big project about this is, just stopping pretending that everything is opaque. And and and let me just step back from that. Complexity is not the same thing as opacity.
Bridgette:And I wanna be really, really, really clear about that. Right? Things can be deeply complex and have thousands to millions of data points. That does not mean the same thing as being opaque. And I think that our legal system in many ways, our disclosure requirements in many ways, like, public narratives in many ways, have compute have, like, substituted opacity for complexity.
Bridgette:And and part of the reason is as someone who and I appreciate your kind words about my legal career. You know, I am just a first generation college student from Rural Route 7 in Northern Indiana. So so but I think, you know, as someone who spent my legal career representing both sex trafficking survivors and labor trafficking survivors and hearing people talk about, well, it's just impossible to know things. And whether that's in a hotel room where a sex trafficking survivor is being, you know, exploited or, you know, someone in a supply chain, I just always had this immediate visceral reaction of my sex trafficking clients aren't performing sex acts on themselves. Right?
Bridgette:There are more people involved. Mhmm. And then when I think about farm workers, which is much of what the research we've been doing is on, the the product they pick goes through hundreds, if not a thousand sets of eyes and ears and hands. Right? Like, there there is no problem with seeing, touching, looking, learning.
Bridgette:Right? And so when there was the Operation Blooming Onion indictment Yes. Yeah. Can talk about that? This is
Justin:a this is a project you guys have just yeah.
Bridgette:Yes. So Operation Blooming Onion was one of The US's largest forced labor prosecutions in The US. It found that over a 100 migrant workers were held in Georgia's under onion fields. 24 people indicted and involved lots of money and different people. And you know, we would we don't have enough time to go into all of the convictions and plea deals and all that just to say there's no question that labor trafficking existed here, and a number of the primary perpetrator traders were held accountable.
Bridgette:Fantastic win. Right? Like, great. The moment, though, that I started thinking more about this case, I was like, that's fantastic. I'm really, really glad that those people are being held accountable.
Bridgette:But why aren't we having a conversation about where those farm products ended up? And so we all started, you know, talking, and I said, well, you know what? What I do have, I don't I can't answer that question why, but I have a lot of law students I can put to work. Right? That's I built my career on.
Bridgette:I have a of law students I can put to work. And so we really began to play with this question of not relying on company disclosure and not relying on worker disclosure.
Justin:To do what?
Bridgette:Just to see if we could see into the supply chain. Could I answer the question of
Justin:choice of supply chain is what
Bridgette:you're saying. Like, where did those onions end up? Like, why are we not talking about the companies that end up buying them? Again, I'm not saying those companies should be held legally culpable for knowing about the trafficking and financially benefiting. That's like a different analysis.
Bridgette:I'd have to know a lot more facts.
Justin:Yeah.
Bridgette:But why did they escape even a mere mention in the media that they were procuring exploited goods? Like, the media never even mentioned them.
Justin:So this is post is this post case, or is this
Bridgette:Yes. Post case. I I I have never represented anyone involved in operation blue bean onion. I don't know any of the workers. I am I am taking on this project the way anyone could.
Bridgette:Right? Just what's what's what can I Google? Right? Like, what can I Google is the Hey?
Justin:I see a problem. I see I see a judgment. I wanna see if me and a bunch of law students with laptops, and that's it. No no access to shipping records, no access to proprietary data. We're gonna see if we can trace this case slash supply chain.
Justin:Okay. Got it.
Bridgette:And also, I'd been on calls with with folks who worked on Operation Blooming Onion. They're like, yeah. We don't know where they went. We don't and when you look at I mean, separate. When you look at market share for the amount of Vidalia onions that are produced by these farms, the answer would be they're everywhere.
Bridgette:Right? But but we don't get that. But so Yeah. The law students just started, like, the painful work of doing all sorts of things. We we looked at we would we started with the h two a filing.
Bridgette:When you want yep. When you want farm workers to work on your farm, you kind of apply for, I want 20 farm workers, if you will. And the Department of Labor publicly posts those requests from farms. So we were able to look at the indictment, look at the places that the the onions were grown where this exploited work happened, and then pull those h two a publicly available Department of Labor website, pull those h two a orders, and then start gathering addresses that told us, you know, these are these are the this is essentially the origination site. This is the soil.
Bridgette:So we have tons of addresses, but this is the soil. This is where this is where it started. And then we said, okay. See if we can, like, figure out where it ends up. I have to say, I never knew I would be so grateful to every person who ever left a one star review of a vegetable.
Bridgette:Right? Because people who post online complaints about their produce became some of our best best sources of information. Who knew who Yeah. I know. Who would have known?
Bridgette:Right.
Justin:Here's to the complainers.
Bridgette:Here's to the complainers. We love you. Yeah. You know who else we love?
Justin:Keep it up.
Bridgette:We love we love people who have barns at their farm where they post the logos of the companies they sell to. Google Maps, when you do the, like, turn the little person around, click click click. No. Yeah. So right?
Bridgette:And so we love when someone wins an award that then connects their name up to a farm that then tells us a bunch of things because when they accept the award, they say, like, who they sell. Right? So it was all there. Right? It was all there.
Bridgette:And so through the work, students traced roughly three quarters, so 75% approximately, of the implicated farms to national grocery stores.
Justin:Okay.
Bridgette:Now we weren't looking for a 100%. What we were really looking for was just this idea that opacity exists is wrong. It's just complex. Right? There's lots of data points.
Bridgette:It takes time. It takes It will. It takes
Justin:some reason. Will. Yep.
Bridgette:All of those things. Now we're separately working on, like, can we automate what we did? Like, is it possible to do that? But
Justin:thoughts on that.
Bridgette:Yeah. I'm I'm sure you do. I look. I I have a day job that's not this. Let me just say We should talk.
Bridgette:We
Justin:should talk.
Bridgette:Yeah. People. It but it also became this idea that, you know, when you think about the fact that when there's, like, a foodborne illness outbreak, an E coli outbreak, if you will, we're able to trace the head of lettuce from the supermarket shelf to the farm within forty eight hours.
Justin:Mhmm.
Bridgette:Right? Because there's
Justin:There's a reason.
Bridgette:Because there's will. So if true opacity existed, foodborne illness could not be traced in that way. If true opacity so so, you know, I'm not saying that this that this work that we did in the clinic is like, oh my gosh. We've solved all the supply chain problems. That's not it.
Bridgette:It's really just an attempt to get folks to start talking about complexity. And then also, hopefully, to say now in the age of AI, right, in the age of more access not that AI is perfect, all those things.
Justin:No.
Bridgette:But how might that complexity be battled, right, in a way, the advocate in me, right, battled in a way that actually helps reduce exploitation or helps hold accountable people who are choosing to dehumanize the person in front of them, know it, and are like, I still want I still want the money.
Justin:Yeah.
Bridgette:And so I but I actually you know, your opening point about, like, I have so much empathy for people doing procurement work because I think the hardest thing would to do would be to hold the humanity of the workers 18 levels down the line.
Justin:Of course, they
Bridgette:can When in many ways, that's the biggest task.
Justin:Yeah, it's like, President Johnson, I've got all the responsibility to
Bridgette:get rid
Justin:of the power, right? All responsibility for the supply chain, but none of the power. I think that's what we're always trying to help the companies we work with get that they need power. They just need, you know, it's that famous story about when Martin Luther King went in to talk to LBJ and said, LBJ gave that excuse and he walked out and said, We got to get that man some power. And that's when they started the sell So you've gotta get that power coming from on top.
Justin:Now what's interesting, and I wanna get to this, definitely wanna get into the AI part of it, is we do have a reason to challenge the complexity problem. We have the technology.
Bridgette:Yes.
Justin:Technology is this. I mean, you proved you could do it with eager law students' laptops, right? Yes. Get AI, forget all the rest of
Bridgette:Yeah, all of it.
Justin:Just raw dogged it. So, you know, it's, to your point, I think you've proven a point. And I think most companies are starting to get that. I don't wanna say waking up, but I would say they're growing into a world where that used to say, Hey, it's complex. There's no reason to understand your supply chain.
Justin:Don't ask, don't tell. You pick your reason, right? You know, just work. Not, we don't need it. The need to understand what's going on in your supply chain well exceeds human rights exploitation.
Justin:We're talking geopolitical, we're talking, you know, we're talking energy. What I love about this time that we're living in is the moral case that led us to do a lot of the work that we do is now becoming a business case. When those two things come together, and by the way, they don't stay together very often, but when they do, that's the time to change the way things work. So are now moving into AI ethics and that's kind of like this next phase. I'm super excited to see all the work that you're gonna do there.
Justin:But knowing that, I would seem like you've got a lot of perspective around complexity and the complexity that AI solves for. Is there any guidance you can give our listeners around what you're seeing around this super intelligence that we now have and this kind of old world complexity that, frankly, no longer exists?
Bridgette:Yeah. I mean, I think my hope is that, you know, I am not someone who wants to sue every company on the planet. That's not my hope. My hope is actually we do enough key cases that we change the risk management perspective that it becomes more expensive to use exploited labor. I actually think right now, probably, unfortunately, there are tons of incentives to use exploited labor.
Bridgette:Like, it's actually I actually think the incentive structures are wrong right now. And so I don't want litigation to be pounding everyone. But what I do want, you know, I want when that indictment happens in the future. I want reporters saying, who bought these onions? Mhmm.
Bridgette:What companies? Right? I want all of us going, wow. You know where that supply chain stopped? My kitchen.
Bridgette:Mhmm. Right? I want us to have that not Epstein is a total unicorn unique over here. I don't make as much money as him. I'll never ride in a private jet or go to a private island.
Bridgette:Mhmm. Did you did you eat a Vidalia onion in the past five years? Right? Did you enjoy an ice burger with an onion on top? Like, do you like onion rings?
Bridgette:Because when that conversation happens, it won't be as hard for procurement workers to picture humans in their supply chain because all the incentives will be helping them. Right? Like, everything will be aligned to help them. And Yeah. So
Justin:what you we've talked a lot about what's going on here in The United States where we both live. Our customers have supply chains and even operate elsewhere in the world where there are also human rights laws that they're facing and some challenges. So, you know, we're seeing, we've got new laws coming into Europe around that are similar to import bans here. Think, and it's very natural for US companies doing business in Europe, whether you are headquartered out of there or not, to be thinking about how much complexity do I need to reduce in my supply chain, but not overwhelm us with too much information. And that's real.
Justin:I have a lot of empathy for that.
Bridgette:Yes, me too.
Justin:I was on a call this morning with someone who's like, Wow, Justin, that's a lot of data you're providing. I'm like, It is, and it has the benefit of all being true. So what are we gonna do about it? Right? Because what people are scared of is creating a bunch of choices that they then have to make that they're not ready for.
Justin:And so I think that the listeners here know that they've got choices they've gotta make. But from a legal standpoint, is there any guidance you can give them that can maybe lower the pressure around this? Because I hear you saying being proactive is better than being reactive because you don't want it to be too But that's not tend that doesn't it's not necessarily how humans think. They usually
Bridgette:think No. I know.
Justin:Help you out the problem when you get to it.
Bridgette:I know. Well, one, I actually think some of the things happening in Europe because I'm not a procurement person, I don't have to deal with these realities, but I'm really intrigued by them. Right? Like, the EU and Germany, they're really operating from the assumption that big companies can trace their supply chains and must. Right?
Bridgette:Like, that's gonna be a real interesting shift if if if US companies are are doing that as well. And that doesn't I I think that when you start from that perspective, it doesn't mean I think a whole bunch of more people should be on the hook. Right? It means that if you show that you are looking and that you found something and then you're trying to help fix it, like, that those people should get all the gold stars. Right?
Bridgette:Not be be hauled into into court. But, we haven't done anything with this formally. So what I'm gonna talk about next is just more some of my thoughts and everything. One of the things I'm really intrigued about with your question of, like, what do you do? Right?
Bridgette:All these data points, so much data. Well, frequently throughout my career, I've had big data people coming to me and being like, we wanna fight trafficking. We want this dataset or that dataset or this thing or that thing. And I often don't have those datasets. Right?
Bridgette:Like, I can't give away my client files, that sort of thing. I think there's a really interesting opportunity in supply chains to start just almost creating like, putting a bunch of data in saying, these are what we think trafficking indicators are. How would you, AI, find them? What looks like a vulnerable supply chain to you? I mean, if I was one of these companies who, you know, was a supermarket and I had bought stuff from these farms, which, you know, we we named them in our paper.
Bridgette:Lots of supermarkets that we all use. I would wanna dump as many data points as I could into some AI simulations and say, could we have seen this? What would have been the indicator? Right? Because once we start saying things that, like, we know there was trafficking in the supply chain, right, but but we didn't, quote, unquote, see it, we can actually ask AI to say, okay.
Bridgette:What what might we have missed? Right? What might have alerted us? Can we actually come up with red flags that are evidence based per chance, unlike the ones we have in the field right now, which are just someone made them up for the most part, and we tell people they're red flags? Mhmm.
Bridgette:And so I I actually think this problem, while it is overwhelming, actually invites this really fascinating solution space, which is how do we get the big data to work for us? Right? Because, you know, if I wasn't if I had access to some of this stuff, I would just want like, I have so many simulations I would want want to run about, like, we think this one's clean. We think this one's not. What what do you see as differences between the two?
Bridgette:Right? Like, like, I am sure. So we're doing Declan oh, Croucher, think is his last name, is doing some really interesting work in the ethical recruitment space where his sort of perspective is that there are things you can see in public SEC equivalent filings effectively, that, like, indicate whether, illegal, recruitment fees are being used by companies or not, just by what people file publicly. Interesting. And so and I and I actually think if we could get clued in to the right indicators, there are neon lights flashing out there, right, telling us what's happening.
Bridgette:And AI and data mining and the cost of compute going down I mean, environmental cost. That's not what I mean. But, like, what what we have access to. Going down, gosh, we really have a chance to identify those neon indicators. It actually makes procurement easier for people.
Bridgette:You're not just, like, fumbling in the dark trying to figure out like which of these things might be a true risk. And so I'm just really excited about it.
Justin:Yeah. No, it's an encouraging time. Here's one of the indicators that surprises me. I meet with companies every day. And I'll often ask companies, Why are you coming to us?
Justin:What are you interested in? What kind of problems are trying to solve? And a couple of years ago, it was very much like, Oh, this regulation or that regulation or our board. It may be every so often it's the board wants this, but it's usually regulatory pressure saying, Hey, you need to step up your game on XYZ issues, whether it's human rights or greenhouse gas or water, whatever it is. Increasingly, I mean, maybe almost 50% now of companies that I talk to, the pressure on them is, yes, of course, regulations.
Justin:But the pressure on them is from their customers. Wow. And consumers like you and I, business customers that are passing down the burden of complexity to their suppliers.
Bridgette:Yes.
Justin:And we are seeing that just like you go to market with price and time to market and quality, increasingly a factor for commerce is transparency. Because you are reducing the potential risk. So coming to market with a transparent supply chain, it's not there yet, but it is becoming a competitive factor to be able to reduce the risk. Because what are we looking for now? We're looking for IT security.
Justin:There's all these security issues in order to do business. Every time someone buys our software, we go through this IT security hazing. We're starting to see supply chain security hazing starting. And it's just in the baby steps, but the data makes it so much easier to verify, to trust and verify in one step. Not just trust because you wrote out something in a compliance report that says, I don't do these things.
Justin:Doesn't fill that window.
Bridgette:That's out the window. Right.
Justin:Yeah. Right? It is just like anyone, including law students in Michigan, can map your supply chain with a laptop.
Bridgette:Mhmm. Yeah. And I'm so like, it's, exciting. Right? Also means it also means that companies who are able to put their data companies who are drowning in data now can hopefully drown in solutions.
Justin:Yeah.
Bridgette:I I love transparency. I worry about it slightly because, again, it only matters if we see everyone in the supply chain as fully human. And on that.
Justin:Because I wanna talk about humanizing
Bridgette:Sorry, keep coming back to it. Sorry, I keep coming
Justin:No, back to no, I'm thinking about it. Like, the humanizing of bad guys.
Bridgette:So I just wanna say, I everybody is capable of making bad and good choices.
Justin:I'm of that.
Bridgette:Yeah. Right? And so Yeah. And so I just think like so let's humanize people who make bad choices.
Justin:100%. We're all capable of it. We are. I remember one of the first times that I that's one of the first times. It was the first time I did this far away.
Justin:I went to Lake Volta in Ghana and went out to find and meet kids that had been trafficked onto the boats to fish. Right? Horrible stories. These kids usually purchase for $20 or so. Then six years old, horrible.
Justin:And I remember, you know, we went out early in the morning. It was like super dark. It was just like this crazy. And it was just, you felt like you're on Mars. Like you're just, you know, wild and we goodness, like wooden boat that's like probably gonna sink and we-
Bridgette:Right, right.
Justin:I mean, we're bailing water as we are out there. I'm just like, what have I done? Yeah. I brought a film crew with me and we're trying to document this problem. Others have documented it, but we're we're out there looking and we come upon this boat where we see two little boys, brothers.
Justin:One of them was asleep because he was exhausted because he'd been working all night. I'll never forget his t shirt said ships ahoy on the on the t
Bridgette:shirt. And
Justin:and it was threadbare and all the rest of it. And I was talking with an interpreter to the guy that was controlling him. Mhmm. I said, well, isn't aren't the boys supposed to be in school? Isn't that aren't they the age to be in school?
Justin:I'll never forget what he said. He he looked at me, like, as plain as I'm looking at you, he's like, if they don't work, I don't eat. Right. And I'm like, had nothing. First of all, there's no argument.
Justin:I'm just like, you're living in a poverty that I don't have any reference point to, you're also exploiting He These are deep humanized his exploitation
Bridgette:too. But by recognizing that, like, he lives in a poverty that you can't even understand, that's the ecosystem argument. Right? That's saying like, oh, to fight this, it's not like take out this guy on this It's the system. Right?
Bridgette:It's the system. And I and and I think trafficking law had such an opportunity to talk about systems, and yet we're still just talking about bad guys.
Justin:Recognizing it through a system. One of the things that we say at our our organization, at our company is don't agonize, organize. It's easy to just like stay in the agony, like, oh my God, this is terrible and I'll never fix it. It's like, what I get so encouraged is seeing our customers map their supply chain. They can now map it 10, you know, 10 tiers back.
Justin:They can see these challenges and then having human conversations, conversations about trust. Because really, what is commerce? It is trading across trust. Do I trust you that you are also looking into your supply chain? Can I trust you to continue to do business?
Justin:Can I trust that you're not gonna pass risk on me? That's it.
Bridgette:I mean, just imagine a world where we harness data in a way that's like, let's just pick something. Right? Let's just say chocolate, just for just say that. And, you know, we know that there's a cost on average to harvest a cocoa bean. Like, we know that there's a cost to ship.
Bridgette:We know there's a cost to process. We have a pretty good sense if we're in that market, like, what those costs are. And so if someone is offering even if we just use price point, for example. If someone's offering something at a deep discount, imagine a world where we could kind of figure out on their books. Is that because they're just taking less profit, or is somewhere in the supply chain taking down those costs?
Bridgette:And, again, unless someone's taking a loss, that probably means the human factor is taking a loss unless they somehow have free supplies or free shelter or free rent or something like that, which we know likely doesn't exist.
Justin:There's a lot of opportunity between what is current and what is perfect. Yes. And this idea that it has
Bridgette:to in imperfect. Right? I just I'm just interested in not exploitive. Yeah. And so and I think, you know, it's actually a issue happening right now in in the Epstein case where a lot of attention is being focused on potential coconspirators, victims who may have done things to harm others while they were being victims.
Bridgette:Like, where is that line? What like, where do we draw the line? And I must have said in multiple interviews today, I'm just not interested in that conversation right now. Let's hold all the people accountable who have zero chance of being a victim. Right?
Bridgette:I long for the day when we get down to, right, the space I feel like you're talking about. Like, I long for the day in supply chains when I'm not worried about, like, the exploitation. Instead, I'm like, how do we figure out true cost and being perfect? Right? We are, you know, that we like, we're not there.
Bridgette:And so, yes, acknowledge it's a it's a complex conversation. Put it on the shelf. Like, let's travel the road together that we can all agree we need to travel. And I look forward to sitting across from you and having that conversation with complexity complexity when it's time.
Justin:Me too. Is there
Bridgette:any learn a ton, and we'll learn a ton on the journey. Right? A ton that might answer those questions we can't answer right now.
Justin:Any encouragement or any wisdom that you can offer people that are, you know, stuck with this impossible job of all the responsibility but none of the power inside of supply chains?
Bridgette:We talk about trafficking in a way that makes it sound like the only people fighting it are law enforcement. And the reality is that the biggest, biggest, most effective possibilities, live in other spaces, including this one. And so I know you're not being recognized as anti trafficking advocates by the general public, but know that in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we are recognizing you as anti trafficking advocates.
Justin:Bridget, thank you so much for coming.
Bridgette:I was happy to be here. Thanks for having me.