Trivia

Has placed in multiple screenwriting competitions, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2007 Nicholl.

Ben was living and working in Kurdish Northern Iraq when he learned both 'Rumble' and 'Larceny' were green-lighted.

Ben Budde was published in the Small Wars Journal on terrorism and media on 24 January 2018 -- "Don Quixote Syndrome: Mass Media and Epistemic Identity in Extremism".

Ben presented his paper "Don Quixote Syndrome: mass media experience, overt consent, and epistemic identity in extremism" at a symposium on pop culture and terrorism at Senate House, London in early 2019, hosted by Royal Holloway University London.

Ben is a survivor of the April 17, 2015 attack in Ainkawa, Erbil, Kurdistan (Kurdish Northern Iraq), within the blast radius of a VBIED and subsequent small arms fire. At an establishment across the street from the consulate, Ben helped get staff to ballistic cover during the exchange. Ben was also working nearby during the MoJ attack of 2013.

Despite the headline, Ben was not born in Milwaukee, WI.

Has an MA in the subset of International Relations called International Security (legitimating good governance and elections in post-conflict zones) from the Graduate Institute of Politics and International Studies at the University of Reading, United Kingdom.