I was just listening to a podcast about this game and one of the hosts mentions hot keys for selecting equipment during missions. The other guys on there don't remember the feature so he mentions that it might be exclusive to this version of the game.
I played this on DOSBox recently (not GOG version) and I don't remember having these hotkeys either, so was it added to this version of the game?

The original versions of Syndicate and American Revolt only have shortcuts for selecting the agents and entering the panic mode, at least far as the manual tells me.

Yeah, I rechecked that version but is this one exactly the same? Maybe it's in the Mac version.

GOG usually doesn't modify the games they release; certainly not in order to add bonus features.

What podcast did you hear that information in? Maybe that could help explain what's going on.