Secure Free Society (SFS)
The Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) is the leading U.S. national security think tank combating transnational and transregional threats in the Western Hemisphere. For more than a decade, SFS leads the effort to counter the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strategic influence in the Western Hemisphere and deter the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism that catalyzed the worst U.S. border crisis in history.
OUR MISSION
TO RESTORE AMERICAN GREATNESS BY ADVANCING SOVEREIGN RIGHTS, SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES, INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, PROSPERITY, AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.
Our History
With more than ten years of a proven track record analyzing Transregional Threat Networks, the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) is the leading U.S. national security think tank countering Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Our history began with a vision by Dr. Alejandro A. Chafuen.
One of the world’s leading commentators on the economic thought of the Thomistic and Late-Scholastic thinkers, Dr. Alex Chafuen is the founder of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS). Dr. Chafuen has dedicated most of his life to advancing the free society through research and policy programs, including security and defense issues. The interest sparked after witnessing terrorism erupt in his native Argentina, in addition to the increasing insecurity spreading across Latin America.
Once Dr. Chafuen recognized that terrorism was on the rise and counterterrorism efforts left many holes, he began to recruit and support security and defense experts. The September 11th terrorist attacks further elucidated the problem, making evident that to advance a free society, we must connect the efforts of those promoting economic freedom to those working within the realm of national security.
From 2004 to 2012, SFS was housed at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Initially, as an idea to catalyze those working on economics to focus more on security, intelligence, and defense, and to connect national security scholars to the world of economic freedom. The initial model was the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) in the Czech Republic, which served as an inspiration for the SFS program. As president and CEO of Atlas, Dr. Chafuen created the “Think Tanks for a Secure Free Society” program. In 2008, Joseph Humire joined Atlas and started managing the SFS program, which by then focused largely on workshops and seminars in Lisbon, Prague, New York, Dallas, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Santiago, and other major cities around the world and funding some independent research papers.
In 2012, SFS spun off from Atlas to the International Freedom Educational Foundation (IFEF) with Joseph Humire at its helm as Executive Director. To read more about the transition to IFEF and the birth of SFS as a center please read this document.
Read the case for Securing Freedom
Since then, Joseph has grown SFS from its humble beginnings as a part-time endeavor to now a full-time effort with a team of dedicated staff and senior fellows and forged a new path for the Center with a unique focus on crime-terror convergence, border security, weaponized migration, and countering, malign, anti-American regional and extra-regional state and non-state actors undermining American sovereignty and challenging U.S. national security in our near abroad. Issues that at the time, not many were discussing.
SFS was the first think tank to reveal in 2014 that Venezuela’s immigration agency provides identification documents to Hezbollah leaders and other foreign terrorist organizations. SFS, in partnership with the American Foreign Policy Council, also pioneered a deeper analysis into Iran’s strategic penetration of Latin America, including a groundbreaking study in 2016 that uncovered the covert intelligence network that Iran uses in South America, namely in Argentina and Brazil.
SFS studied how China used 5G telecommunications networks to undermine democracy in Brazil and Chile, and was the first think tank to expose China’s dual-use space infrastructure in South America as part of the PRC’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy. More recently, SFS has focused on studying the crisis on the U.S. southern border and embedded with the first Central American caravans in 2018 to start an in-depth study of weaponized migration. This research led SFS to advance the concept of weaponized migration, where state and non-state actors manipulate migrants as a tool of asymmetric warfare.
Please watch this 15-minute video that provides an overview of SFS history prior to our 10th anniversary celebrated at the 2023 Western Hemisphere Security Forum held at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C.
WATCH the 10-year History of SFS
Throughout the last two decades, the Center for a Secure Free Society has evolved from an idea, to a plan, to a program, to a center, finally to its permanent role as an independent, next-generation, national security think tank, engrained as an important fixture to advance America First principles for those focused on the Western Hemisphere.
SFS has evolved into a leading research and educational think tank, publishing ground-breaking reports and organizing various seminars and programs throughout the Americas. SFS is also an emerging content creator for innovative digital products, namely our Border Wars Podcast and website monitors tracking the violent Venezuelan terrorist gang, the Tren de Aragua, and the authoritarian influence of China, Russia, and Iran through our VRIC Monitor.
We are the top national security think tank in the United States combating transregional threats in the Western Hemisphere, with name recognition and a respected brand behind it.
The first ten years of SFS were an incubation period of incremental growth, building our brand, developing research products, and establishing our presence in the think tank landscape. The next ten years are a period of accelerated growth as SFS where we will expand to new frontiers and introduce cutting-edge research products that innovate how think tanks approach the work of foreign policy and national security from a realist perspective grounded in America First priorities.