Transcripts For CSPAN FCC 20240704

Elected officials, and industry executives discuss during a series of panels hosted by the panels moderator was steve clemons. Im one of those people who admit to going to davos. And this is not to be nice to one of our later speakers, cisco has the chalet on the promenade that you can go win, and i get obsessed with it because you can watch in realtime what they are tracking nefarious activities on the global web. In the internet. Im fascinated by the sources and i am also fascinated at how the sun moves, and how cybernefarious activities move and i always thought connectivity created this problem between trust and fear. Do you trust the connectivity or should you fear it . And im interested to hear how you look at that equilibrium point of how you deal with risk and resilience and what you should be worried about and whether or not we are getting it wrong. Such a great question. I think its a mistake to trust. r it, but i think we should manage it. I think we need to have our eyes open about the nature of the risk of an increasingly interconnected world. An estimated 43 billion connected devices by the end of this year. Thats a massive attack surface. And the mistake that we make is entrusting up to the point where we make ourselves brittle against a potential cyber event. I had the great honor of leading the great men and women in cyberprotection cybersecurity is not the goal. The goal is to make sure they take full advantage of we need a certain cybersecurity to do that. But at the end of the day if you set yourself up for a point of failure if an adversary, a bad actor gets into your network, you have made a huge mistake. And thats what the resilience is about. Resilience is about doing what you can to keep bad actors out, do what you can to make sure if they get in, which they probably will, they cant just have the run of the place, and assume all of that is going to fail. And how are you going to operate when that ransomware or other malware knocks out the functions that those computers enable . How you can operate in an integrated way. And we dont spend enough time on that. Since we are discussing security today, do you think we should change our frame on protecting secrets . Do we have secrets . Is that just an illusion . Thank you for asking that. I actually wrote a blog in 2010 called no more secrets. I sort of thought that was back there but i wasnt sure. This is something i have been talking about for a long time. We should just let it go, put our secrets down. Heres how i talked about it. I talked about it in terms of training to fight in the dark. And you meet your adversary at night or turn off the lights i believe the transparent world is coming out and the shelf life is vanishingly short. You think about it in terms of cybersecurity, what we just talked about. Also just all the pressures towards transparency, the ubiquity of information, the idea that you will compete as a business by having a monopoly of information, you know they are brittle plans. I say to my friends and National Security world of your plan is keeping secret for any amount of time, that is a brittle plan. We are not quite ready for that. But you should be pushing as hard as you can to operate with fewer secrets. And whoever can figure out how to operate with fewer secrets and less of a need to protect that information is going to have the advantage in the world that is here and that is coming out. My head. And the good news is democracies have an advantage. I want to know where democracies fit in. I sat in a form in poland the other day where the discussion was about ai and how ai can be so helpful in rooting out disinformation, identifying bad actors. Then somebody said ai can be used to generate misinformation. So is the future just ai1 versus ai2 and they are just going at it . And im just wondering where democracies with normal practice of Civil Society is in that and what i mean by democracy or institutions, not just voting. It is the right to institutions and minorities. Where does all of that mush of democracy fit in a highly sophisticated tech world of the future . Such an important issue and after spending 40 years during National Security stuff, most of my time is reinvigorate education in this country. How is it going . [laughter] it is a bit of a slog. But i have lots and lots of great partners. In florida . Right . Lots of folks who are out there. But seriously, instilling that sense of Civic Responsibility in and bringing that into stem. We need to bring that possibility and the idea of selfgovernance so that it is not just for institutions, its up to each and every one of us into the education that our Technology Innovators are getting so that they have that sense of, i have to be responsible about what i put out. The technology that i am innovating, that im working on, that i am developing, can be a tool or a weapon. And i have a responsibility thats larger than myself and larger than my company. Disinformation seeks to divide us, reminding us of our shared aspirations for government. It can be a way of uniting us. Disinformation tells us democracy is irrevocably broken. Not just flawed and eating reform, but fundamentally broken and we are powerless to bring about change. Civics can empower you to be engaged in informed agent that is the change of the promise of democracy. The general just issued a new report, and he is dual as head of u. S. Cybercommand and security and an executive summary of this report are now and it is interesting. In the back of my mind i have had ukraine in my mind. Russia put an allout assault, cyber assault on ukraine and this young guy, who is now head of all Things Digital in ukraine, deputy Prime Minister at 32 years old, is the acknowledged hero who somehow secured ukraines incredibly digital important assets. You also have out on the field these Software Engineers embedded in the ukrainian workforce. And i read the report and i said that is an official big sounding report, but do americans have anywhere near the capability and capability of what we are seeing in ukraine today . I am wondering where you think we stack up. What are our blind spots, and as you look at the real application of this in a theater of war that is active today, do we stack up well . Well, ukraine has been remarkable. They had a clear wakeup call. Russia carried out in 2015 that attack that folks might remember two days before christmas where they took out electricity for a quarter of a customers. Millionthe ukrainians, talk about resilience. They got the power back on in six hours. Not because their i. T. Folks kicked the russians out their system. But because they had guys who remembered how the grid was physically laid out. They got and their trucks and they drove to where the breakers were remotely switched and they manually put them back into place. Thats resilience. So the ukrainians had a wakeup call and an understanding of resilience that maybe we have not had on that scale quite yet. And to be sure, they have suffered consequences of successful Cyber Attacks in ukraine. It has had an impact on them, but not to the degree that we thought it might. And i think there are lots of reasons for that. One, i think it is much easier to get into a system, take some time to get into a system, you have to learn the system, you have to learn the operations, you have to figure out what to do to have the greatest impact. You can do that on your own time schedule over a long period of time. It is very different from banks. I want this target on this date, right now. We have always debated about the tactical benefits of cyber. I think it is a little military tactical. Last question, and this has been fantastic, but you have been out there pounding the drum on every purchase had from security concerns of how to manage risk, etc. But when you look at reports that lately show only 15 of American Private sector is really ready, if you would put at that high. I will put it bluntly, is the Biden Administration, is joe biden to communicate to seriousness of this . Are we not getting the leadership by the white house on these issues . Im not sure what ready means. I think we have come a very long way and largely our Big Companies like microsoft and others that are out there who are working closely with their customers, they are doing a much better job of protection. Ceos now rank this very highly. Boards are talking about this at general board meetings. So i think it is on peoples radar screen and i think where we have failed the most is on this area of resilience. We focus so much on threats, patches, vulnerabilities of your network, and not nearly enough on, this is a business risk, bringing in everyone in your business to figure out how a successful cyber attack to bring down your business and brainstorm all the ways you could mitigate that. Do you have paper and pencils, do you have handcranks, do you have mechanisms so that when that bad day happens you can keep working. And thats a big deterrent. You can say to your adversary, ok, maybe you are really good at cyber and can get into my system, you are not going to have the impact you hope to have. We have a famous journalist, when suzanne spaldings Terrorism Commission in 2000 issued a report, if you go back and look at that report you realize 9 11 had not occurred and said had we put in place those recommendations what a different spot we would be in today. So you did see the future. Suzanne spalding, csis, thank you. [applause] please welcome congressman rick larson, Ranking Member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee. Politics reporter will guide the conversation. [applause] thank you congressman for joining us today. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. I will just jump into, theres a lot of news on the hill right now, especially around the debt limit. No idea what you are talking about. Last week there was an incredible amount of news around artificial intelligence. Sam allman from openai visited. So i am curious, are there any emerging technologies in infrastructure that you can talk about that you think should be prioritized Going Forward . Yeah, this is a really exciting part of transportation. We passed the bipartisan infrastructure law thats built on a foundation built in the 1950s but we need to start thinking, if we havent yet, about what transportation writ large looks like in the 2050s. So there was a bipartisan infrastructure law to do that to build a cleaner and more accessible transportation system. The idea of technology, new emerging technology and how it folds into ensuring or helping us build that system is very critical. In aviation theres issues of drones in the airspace and the use of advanced air mobility. The age of the jetsons will be here in about three years. That is a combination of classic Aviation Technology as well as autonomous technologies, ai and a variety of other things. And when you look at aviation air traffic control, there may be areas where ai can help air Traffic Controllers in the future better manage the airspace. And there are a lot of things going on with surface transportation as well. A lot of interesting opportunities out there. Safety has to be all the first. Technology and transportation is one thing. If people cant get safely from a to b its not worth the investment. We are getting to a point where members of congress are just wrapping their heads around chatgpt. In terms of Surface Technology or infrastructure, can you elaborate on anything you might see in the future . I have not thought about how chatgpt would apply to transportation just yet. Maybe the manual could be readable, i dont know. But i think the role of helping folks get to a to b is best if you are a consumer of travel, and that is what you want. And so to the extent that ai algorithms can help cut down times, make the travel faster, make the directions that you take better. I was criticized the other day for making my staff still read maps. And the reason is, nothing against our wonderful online mapmakers, but sometimes they are really wrong. And as a member of congress, i want my staff how to know how to get to, lets say, ferndale, washington without a map. Because that is where city hall is in the mayor doesnt want me to be late. So there is a limit to the use of technologies. You still have to know where you are in the world in order to get to where you want to go. Leg the divide between urban and rural infrastructure. The farm bill is something that we should pass this congress. Can you talk about any investments, Infrastructure Investments along those lines, connecting the two . I think this is an important part of the debate that we have in transportation. Sometimes the debate gets trapped between folks who represent urban or suburban or rural areas. If you look at safety for instance, pedestrian injuries and pedestrian deaths are higher in rural areas on a rate basis and higher on reservations. The rate of accidents are higher in reservations. You can bring together urban, suburban and rural areas around safety. And some of the larger programs we have megagrants. Those are grants that can be used in urban and suburban and rural areas and you see congress advocating even those whod voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill they are going to rural and suburban areas and they are going into freight and pedestrians and bikes and building roads. So, there are programs where you can bring folks together that help build a constituency for transportation. And second, that will help our competitiveness, it will help with the investment of moving goods and services and people, including in rural areas, like areas that i represent. Speaking of rural areas, broadband, always a controversial point when we talk about that part of the country. What kind of initiatives are you supporting or is Congress Supporting along those lines . Yeah, this is an area outside of the jurisdiction of the transportation committee. But it was inside the bipartisan infrastructure law. 1. 2 trillion total included a 65 billion five or six Year Investment in broadband alone. A lot of those investments are being defined statebystate. Through our state broadband office. I encourage states to do that, because these have to be defined locally, where these dollars go. It will not be driven out of washington, d. C. The second thing we have all been advocating for is better and more accurate maps of service, broadband service. And the third is ensuring there is a spread of where those dollars go not a Peanut Butter spread, but were they need to go. Think back not that anyone wants to do this, but think back to the pandemic. I know, i dont want to do it either. But there was a story about Point Roberts, washington. This peninsula of land in Washington State that separated from the district. Now back in my district. Half are americans, the other half are canadians. All of them are great. Only half of them vote. But some of those broadband dollars are going to Point Roberts. In the future it will make them much less isolated if they have broadband system, a wireless system that actually works in the event of Something Like that. The pandemic is one thing. But after 9 11 as well the Canadian Border was close. Riding the bus with third, fourth and fifthgraders from Point Roberts into canada and to washington so they can go to Elementary School and that was the life they were living after 9 11 because the borders were closed. So, its kind of one story how broadband can be used to reach out into a rual area, an isolated area, and help in the future bring those folks and everybody else in the event that something horrible happened. You kind of touched on this. I was going to ask if there were any infrastructure issues specifically in your district you want to highlight. There is a joke on capitol hill that every week was infrastructure week and the president said it is the infrastructure decade. Every days infrastructure day, every day. We are doing all we can to identify and help cities and counties identify the projects they need funded. I jokingly say i am the mayor of the Second District and the deputy mayor of every small town in my district, because we want to help them get these dollars, deploy them, get them to work for a very simple reason. When we do this again in four years i want every member of congress to felt how good they felt at every ribboncutting of the last four years to make it easier to vote for the next version of the transportation infrastructure investment. Thank you, congressman larson. It was great having you here. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. [applause] please welcome congressman steny hoyer, chair of the regional leadership council. Steve clemons returns to lead this session. I get habitually used to calling our friend mr. Leader. So, mr. Leader you can keep doing it. I am not offended. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Let me start with a couple big news items before we go deep into infrastructure. I dont want you to be loyal or nice to anyone, but if you were to run the show a little more directly right now on the debt ceiling debate is anything you would be doing different to add to the mix of the moment . We need to tell the American Public the truth. That this is a phony debate and a fraudulent issue. It does not have much to do with the debt at all. The debt has to do with when you spend money or cut taxes. Neither of which will be affected by the debt limit per se. We are the only country in the world that has a meaningful debt limit that really does squeeze you. Denmark, where my father was born, has a debt limit. Australia used to have it and repealed it. Denmark never reaches it. Its a phony political issue meant to pretend we are cutting spending by eliminating the debt. You go to macys and you buy a 200 coat and you charge it. You go home and you sit around the Kitchen Table and say now we ar etoo far in debt, weve got to limit our debt. Macys sends you a bill for 200, you write dear macys ive a debt limit of 100 so we cant pay you the bill. Macys sends you a nice letter back and says we are very sorry to hear that. By the way, you no longer have any credit and we are suing you. The time you set your debt limit is when you buy something. That is when you ought to set your debt limit. Taking hostage of the credit of the United States of america will have extraordinarily catastrophic ramifications, which is why everybody does believe we are going to do it and they are appalled by this game has been played. And by the way, the democrats dont have clean hands on this in the past. I should note selfishly would that went representative matt gaetz said you dont negotiate with hostages lets jump in the infrastructure. I am really interested i didnt answer your question about what i would do differently. What i would do differently and i saw in the paper i think the president does need to explain to the American People what this is about more clearly. Mccarthy explains it, you just cant keep spending. So bidens voice has been missing on that . He has been talking about it but he needs to go in front of the American People and say, look, i would urge him to have a fireside chat. The article 14 route . I am not. The problem is it is problematic and it lacks confidence building. The real problem here is confidence. Here and around the world. That somehow america would not pay its debts. Everything in the world is denominated in dollars. The chinese would like it denominated in yuans. That would make them more powerful. But its not. This is not just a domestic issue, it is in a new strat this is an International Global issue and its a catastrophic problem that matt gaetz is contemplating. They are thinking it will have a little ripple effect. Thats not true. It will have gargantuan adverse effect. Regional leadership council. Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked you to chair a group of 12 democrats out there. As i think about it, we have cspan watchers now, theres a democratic channel and a republican channel for calling in, and an independent. Our spending on infrastructure, ira, how are you reaching real americans to wonder what are the connection between those billions of dollars in themselves . That is the point. Because the Washington Post had a poll that showed 62 of americans said the last congress didnt do much. Anybody who knows and followed the 117th congress, was one of the most consequential Productive Congress is in which i have served. And this is my 22nd congress. We have had a lot of Productive Congress is, some not so productive. But we had a majority and trillions of dollars were spent to bring us unto the pandemic. And in the second instance to invest in america. Invest in our competitiveness and making sure we can grow jobs. One thing the pandemic taught us was that we were relying on the unreliable. A producer of goods and the transporter of goods. We found that we were not selfsufficient, we were not independent in that sense. We need to obviously participate in the Global Trading process, but we also need to be selfsufficient so that when the crunch comes, as the pandemic imposed upon us, we can make it in america. I have had this make it in america agenda for 17 years. As you know, i am one of the more free traders in the democratic party, so it is a question of making sure that america can produce for itself that which it needs in times of trouble. Period. That is what the chips and science bill was about. That is what the infrastructure bill was about. That is what the reducing inflation will was about. And thats what the rescue plan was about. So this has been an extraordinary investing congress and people dont know that. Jeffries and biden, biden to his cabinet members and jeffries to us, we have 12 regions in our country. So he appointed 12 individuals to serve on a Regional Council and asked me to chair it. Our job is to identify what we did. What are the things that are available for communities, cities, counties, states. Secondly, to implement what we did, to make sure it gets out to the people. And to making a difference in the resiliency and productivity of america. Then thirdly, and this is critical, to inform people what we have done. And lastly, investing in america. That is what joe biden talked about, and frankly that is what donald trump talked about in 2016. He was going to do a trillion dollar infrastructure bill. 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 came, and there was no infrastructure bill. So biden is doing exactly in many respects what trump said he was going to do. Did not do. I am going to ask my team to give us a few minutes on this. You said one of the things we need to do with that money out there is to get this permitting reform done. But you are opposed to any more fossil fuelrelated permits. Isnt the debate between when you say i was just quoting you. But is there an equilibrium point between both sides that can get that permitting bill through . For one thing, nobody believes that tomorrow we can be fossil fuel free in terms of our reliance on our production and life in america. Thats not the case. So we have to have both. But we want to make sure we are not encouraging the expansion of fossil fuel, because we know it is harmful from a scientific and global warning standpoint. So we need to move to a nonfossil fuel energy basis. But it would be unreasonable. Therefore, it comes to regulation. I tell my environmentalist friends, we have authorized a very large sum of money for new Energy Efficient the biggest in history. Huge. And we need to get them done. The sooner we get them done the better off the world will be and the Global Warming crisis will be. Therefore, we need to make sure we have permitting that allows things to get done efficiently and effectively while protecting the environment. But we cannot wait years. The crisis is now. And therefore those of us who want to see a cleaner economy when you are engaging the environmental Progressive Community on the big infrastructure questions, and they had a big win, there were a lot of parties about it. Do they realize those dollars are stranded if they dont get a pathway on this . Because this is a super huge part of the infrastructure equation as well. And im just wondering if there is now an understanding because so many people voted on that environmental side of the equation against the bill before. I think the answer is many people do understand it. The president understands it. The president has talked about that. Obviously, its hard to extricate yourself from one battle where you fought increasing reliance on fossil fuel through the permitting process. In the republican party, drill, baby, drill, has been their mantra for decades. Its hard for them too. But lincoln said as our problems are new, we need to think anew and act a new. Now what we want to change and move quickly on our environmentally Friendly Energy sources. Now, i happened to be a big nuclear fan. Semi environmental friends were not nearly as respectful of my interest in Nuclear Power as they are today. Why . Because you are not going to get where you need to get without Nuclear Power. And therefore huge environmental organizations said, well, yes, but we need to get there. Just as we wrap up here, im fascinated by the Regional Council which i did not know much about. I know in your neck of the woods there are real points which will be dechoked, if you will. What are some of the brand name, in headlines moments and infrastructure . Youre also pushing people to make sure they get reductions on heat loans. What are some of the bigticket items that you want americans to know about . We want them to know about not only the bigticket items, because the probability is they know about the bigticket items. What they may not know about are some of the things like the broadband in their committees that may be next door to them. They have broadband but their community did not have broadband and they are disadvantaged. So there are a lot of things in this infrastructure bill, and we talked about roads, bridges and highways, but there is so much more. Im going to tick off the couple of items here. I dont have them all memorized, but, clean water. Flint, michigan is the poster child but there are thousands of flint, michigans. They were the tip of the iceberg. The fact the kids were getting sick costs everybody more in their health care. So if you help one person all of us will be advantaged. The internet, we just talked about. Roads, bridges, highways. Electric vehicles, tremendous investment in electric vehicles so that we can get to, from fossil fuel which we still have most cars running on gas to get people to feel the confidence that i can get plugin technology, i see that we have invested in batteries. So that people can have confidence, i can buy that kind of car and rely on it. These are the kinds of things and there are a thousand others. It is so massive what we have done. It is going to make it generational not just next year is going to change. That last i, on informing the American People. So when they hear that we are using federal money, yes, they used to and it is making my life better. Education is better, health care is better, and commerce better. Final question. Although i would love to go for an hour with you. What is your gut feeling . Are we going to get a debt ceiling deal . My gut feeling is yes, and my gut feeling is because we are really not all crazy. [laughter] dont you only need about five or six crazies . Some a bus are. All we need are five or six rational republicans and one to stand because they always articulate, including the speaker. Any speech on wall street he said default is not an option. That means if you take whats the deal . We want defaults prohibited or prevented. They want defaults prevented. What are we doing . We both want the same thing. You make a deal when somebody wants this and the other person wants that. But mccarthy himself and there have got to be six republicans who will sign a discharge addition and say we are going to avoid that. Theres got to be. By the way, there were only 13 people who voted for the infrastructure bill. I guarantee you there were 150 republicans for that bill. Are there enough democrats including yourself to support a reasonable mccarthy bill if he were to come out, if he loses his own right flank . I am not going to premise the way you did. There are enough democrats, over 100 democrats, who will sign a bill that President Biden and jeffries say is a good compromise. And it will be a compromise. So yes, there will be democrats, as there has always been. 150 to 170 democrats voted with him. 87 republicans, not the majority of his party. Boehner is not a good example because he left. Maybe mccarthys thinking maybe that is not what i want to follow. Let me call your attention to a speech in october that Newt Gingrich made to the caucus. Yall look it up. I just sent a copy to chief of staff of the speaker, and to garret graves. Garret graves is a rational, solid common sense guy. I am glad he is in the mix. But he has got this caucus which is very tough. And mccarthy has a caucus, very tough. But absolutely there enough democrats to pass a bipartisan compromise bill. The surprising conversation. First time i have heard a democratic congressman recommended Newt Gingrich speech, but im all for it. Ladies and gentlemen, congressman steny hoyer, former democratic leader. Its great to see you. Thank you so much. Its great to see you. [applause] are you guys having fun . We are now joined from california by jeetu patel, executive Vice President at cisco. We have him online . Hey, how are you . Lets give jeetu some volume. Tell me what you had for breakfast. Well, its 6 00 a. M. Over here, so i have not had breakfast yet. Sounds great. I am on stage right now. We have people here, we have people from cspan and others watching live online. I dont know if there any players that are going to take us down in the world of cyber security. Cisco recently basically said, watch out, we have much more complicated threats on the way, not only through cisco equipment but lots of other network equipment. And you put out a warning, and i want to start with a warning because we are thinking about how do we build an infrastructure for tomorrow and mobility and connectivity and energy that is smart, better, faster, and safer. What is happening today that might undo that . Steve, the way we have to think about this is the attacks are getting more sophisticated and the threat actors are actually getting more sophisticated as well. So what they typically try to do is they will attack the weakest link. So if organizations have outdated hardware, if they have old software that hasnt been patched, that becomes a vulnerability that you need to make sure you address first. So one of the things we have talked about is encouraging customers to make sure that they dont have Outdated Technology , that we actually provide them with the right level of support so that they can actually get their infrastructure updated so dont have the vulnerabilities that get you exposed. When you look at the questions we are looking at today, and we are going to be discussing with the deputy secretary of commerce in a moment, it is people, science, capacity and manufacturing, etc. Jessica rosenworcel will be talking, i think i will be asking her about spacebased telecommunication. As you look at the next generation of infrastructure beyond today, how do we embed and build in stuff that makes us safe . Because i have to tell you, there may be a roomful of experts in this, i am not. I am wondering how we can dummy proof our security in the future as we add on all this new infrastructure that we are going to be getting . Its a great question. The way to think about this is , security itself is becoming Critical Infrastructure. And it is a class of Critical Infrastructure that is also protecting other infrastructure. So its extremely important we look at this in a strategic way and there has to be a partnership between the Public Sector and the private sector. And the way to keep us safe is im going to stop you there for a minute. Partnership between Public Sector and private sector, we always hear that and it sounds so bland and interesting. How do you make it real . Lets talk about specifically breaking that down. What does that mean for the private sector . What does that mean for customers . What does that mean for the Public Sector . What it means for the private sector is it means that you build products that are secure by design. Thats not something thats an afterthought. Thats point number one. For the customers, it is what we just talked about. Having outdated infrastructure, making sure that is patched and that vulnerabilities are not exposed. Only 20 of the vulnerabilities discovered get patched today. Only 20 . Why is that . There is not enough skilled capacity of labor to go out and do that. Theres not enough technical knowhow with customers. So we have to make sure we can help customers make sure they have the right number of incentives. And number three is i think the Public Sector is doing a great job. They have done a great step forward. I also think what is required is a level of incentives towards the private sector so we can all be encouraged and have the right financial incentives to keep infrastructure intact. If we dont do it, the consequences are dire. Hospitals will start functioning stop functioning. Power will stop functioning. Water doesnt happen the way you need to. Literally the system stops working. You are a kind of wizard of oztype. You sit behind all the machines and you have the world what is going on. I have friends here from japan, from korea to slovakia. Rate them. How do they compare to the United States . Rather than going country by country, let me say one thing all of us have in common. We are all disadvantaged in the sense that an adversary has to be right once. We have to be right every single time. Regardless of what we are doing, we have to think of it as being necessary but not sufficient, we have to make sure we do more. I give you some very simple examples of things that regardless of the geography you might be in ,we are not seeing enough of. One of the easy ways to keep ourselves protected and i have asked this last time i was with you in d. C. How many in the room actually have multifactor identification turned on . Ok. I would say 90 . My friend from japan doesnt. [laughter] ok, that is actually great news. Sorry. You might want to turn it on now. But that is great news that they do. Typically when i go into most of these events, 30 to 40 of people raised their hands. And that is great news if we are starting to see 90 raise their hands because when people turn turn on multifactor identification, your likelihood of a breach goes down precipitously. We need to make sure that happens not just for individual consumers, that also happens for backend systems, that the i. T. Administrators have it turned on. Those are the kind of examples across countries we need to make sure return on so that regardless of how affluent or not affluent a country is look, the weakest link over here controls the keys. Controls the keys. The strength of the chain is dependent on the weakest link. Those companies, those countries that fall below the security poverty line can get the entire system at risk. Those weakest links are where the attacker start from. When you ask a question that says how are Different Countries doing, depending on the technical affluence the country might have, they will do proportionately well but it is our responsibility to make sure every country rises up to a certain base level of security. Or we all suffer. How does ai change the threat picture . Fundamentally. In three ways. The first thing is, ai is all these wonderful tools we all have changing our lives. They are also available to attackers. If you think about the majority of the attacks, 80 of the attacks, our studies have shown 80 start from email. We get an email. It is from the nigerian prince. He is keen on giving you 10 million if you click on a link. Get directed to a site that did not exist two hours ago. You download some malware. Malware gets to initiate some kind of process. Before you know it, you have this lateral spread of malware within your organization. That is typically how it happens. The way it has happened in the past is the nigerian prince email, it is easy to decipher it is not a legit email. There are typos. In the future you are going to have a for more bespoke personalized set of phishing attacks. I saw you at the kids baseball game. Click on this link so you can download some pictures. That will be something attackers will be able to have carefully crafted phishing attacks. What i mean by that is it is going to be harder for us to determine between legitimate activity and a coordinated attack. Ai is going to be a huge source and fuel for the adversaries. What ai is also going to be able to do is help Companies Like us and organizations in saying we cannot deal with security attacks at humanscale. You have to deal with it at machines ago. That requires you know only have the date of what is happening in the world but make sure the data can be correlated so you know when there is an email that comes in and a process that got kick started on your computer, those two are correlated and we need to make sure we do something to flag that as an anomalous activity. What you will see is there will be huge amounts of advancements with ai with the cybersecurity stack. In the Companies Providing cybersecurity defenses. There is going to be a huge amount of sophistication with the attackers. What we will have to do is make sure those attackers attacks are better deciphered also through the use of ai. I told her audience i go to your shelley in dabos to get a cup of hot chocolate. I stare at these giant screens that show where the various cyber activity, malware is being launched around the world. I dont know if you have seen this. Right now in malta or belarus or kansas, whatever it may be, there is bad stuff being shipped out in huge scale to the world. I am wondering given your knowledge youre able to pinpoint of really bad malware going out around the world, you watch it as the sun moves around the world, why isnt there some sort of global cop shutting these places down . We have so much awareness of who the bad players are. Why is there an impotence when it comes to responding and shutting that down so i can go in and be more relaxed when i look at the cisco screens . There is a tremendous need in the market for cross nation coordination around Cyber Attacks. It is important that you companies, google Companies Like us are helping coordinate those conversations across different nations as well. It is a very legitimate ask which is, what can we be doing so we are not just looking at each one of these things . As humanity right now, we are gutting more nationalistic in our behavior. There is more deep globalization happening. Everyone wants to make sure they have more of their own local controls. There is an importance of making sure all of us are coordinating much more crosscountry boundaries. The more we can do that, the more safe we will be. Like i said earlier, this is a hard game in the sense you only have to be right once as an attacker and you penetrate. As a defender, you have to be right every time. The more united we are as a front, the harder it is going to get for the attacker. The one last thing i will say on that front is the cybersecurity industry has not done a particularly good job of making these conversations simple to follow. As a result we have not done a good job of making these technologies easy to use. When we start simplifying security is the only time you can democratize it. When you democratize it, it is the only time you will have uniform defenses that can be had for every practice available. If you think about it, connectivity is a basic human right but with connectivity comes a lot of risk. Have to make it so we can defend the risk. If we had one thing you were to tell regulators in washington, policymakers to do to change the security map of american infrastructure, what would that one thing be . I would say provide more incentive to companies to make sure their Security Posture gets to be uptodate and we dont have financial constraints of companies keeping the entire society at risk. I want to thank you for getting up. If it is 6 00 a. M. , you got up at 5 00 to prepare for me. You look good in the morning. You should do this more often. Thank you so much for joining us. [applause] please welcome deputy secretary don graves from the United States department of commerce. [applause] mr. Deputy secretary, it is great to see you. I have known this gentleman for too long. I will try not to be too funny or jokey. We are talking about all things infrastructure. I just want to start out you and secretary raimondo are at the nexus of so many of the points we are discussing today. We are looking at what is the next generation of connectivity and broadband and telecommunications . What is the next generation of mobility . Looking at how we are spending infrastructure dollars. Looking at the future of energy. Are we going to deal with that. It is all interrelated. There is another dimension which i would call the intangible part of infrastructure. Science. Human capital. Manufacturing capacity. I would love to give you a chance for a moment because we have seen the chips act. Tell us about the intangible that we want to make tangible elements of infrastructure in this country. Thank you for having me. It is great to be here. Your point is exactly right. For too long, we have not invested in strategic way in our infrastructure. When we think about infrastructure, we have to think about it which more broadly than we normally do. We have to invest in our crumbling roads and bridges. We have to invest in things like we are doing with the broadband program. The highspeed internet investment. Also the investments for our ecosystem around the technologies that are going to power the future. So my conductors. Ai. Advanced manufacturing. The list goes on and on. For us to be able to compete with the rest of the world particularly against some of our biggest adversaries and competitors who are already investing hundreds of billions of dollars, we have to do it in a way that is smarter than we have done before. That is more coordinated. We build a resilient ecosystem. And and infrastructure that can stand the test of time. When you think about investors who are going after the best new technology, cleantech, maybe an ev battery. They want to make sure the investment is going to pan out in 5, 10 years t. If the companies dont. That investment is not going to pay out. That is what we as a country have done well but now we have to be much more strategic because the rest of the world is catching up and trying to pass us. What does that picture look like . Lets talk about the chips act. You have a lot of money out there incentivizing advanced Technology Investment in the manufacturing of chips. I have never seen the department of commerce im going to be candid. As important ab in th as important in the industrial policy picture. Do you folks realize you have become generals . It is a fantastic time to be at the department of commerce. From investing in broadband along with our friends at the ftc and i know the chairwoman is going to be here. You guys get along . We get along really well. That is what we have to do across the federal government. The good thing about commerce is we are at the center. We touch international, National Security. Economic security. The mystic policy. We are investing in broadband. We are investing 50 plus billion dollars in building a more resilient Semi Conductor industry. We are investing through our tech hubs program. So we have a workforce that is able to meet the needs of an fishery needs of industry. We are investing for the types of Economic Development we need across the country the build back better regional challenge. So that every part of the country is dealt into the bargain. That is the problem we had before is that we had a few nodes of success and in other parts of the country have not been able to bring their creativity to the table and that is what commerce can do to you talk about investing in broadband. I run into your head of the National Telecommunications infrastructure. He said i got 50 billion to connect america. There are 50 billion out there. We have done a lot of geomapping exercises to look at parts of communities and cities. How are we doing . Is the money moving . Our people feeling more connected than they have before . Right now we see numbers on a piece of paper or digitally. Im not sure how it is transforming the connectivity picture in the country. We are deploying dollars right now. It began with the American Rescue plan. And then of course 50 billion, right . 50 billion. It is because we are getting support from other parts of the government. We work with the fcc, treasury has resources. U. S. Department of agriculture has resources. Of course the private sector is also investing. We think we are going to be able to connect every household, every street, every business in the country and do it in a way that is affordable and accessible for every american. You have it happening now. We are seeing the buildout of the middle mile connections. We are seeing investments to make sure households have the ability to get access to highspeed internet. It is happening. States are also in the process of putting together their plans for the big chunks of money we are about to put out beginning later this year. Ftc has done a fantastic job of mapping the country. Looking at where they have access and where they dont. That is going to allow us working with the states to deploy these dollars at a the most effective way so we get to the most and we are not building too much redundancy into various locations around the country how are you feeling right now about where business is with regard to these big Infrastructure Investments . I have always looked at infrastructure the reason i have been such a strong supporter is it creates a big Time Investment to create recurring returns without having to make the investment every other year. That is why the government is involved. Whether it is in chips which i am obsessed with, next generation technologies, how are american businesses lining up with what our infrastructure plans are . The Business Community has been fantastic. Part of the president s invest in america agenda is to make sure we are aligned with business. We are taking the risk businesses cannot take. The type of infrastructure that requires large dollars so that businesses can be freed up to make the types of innovative investments, drive, research and development and power the country forward. Businesses have universally come to us and said this is the way we like it. It is a constant conversation to make sure we are doing this in a way that works for them. Of course we are working with the largest is nessus but we are also working with small and mediumsized enterprises. We have to make sure we are getting to those businesses that actually employ half of the country. And come to the table with a lot more of the innovation at times in some of these innovative sectors like cleantech, ai, robotics and the like. Were out of time but i want to spend time with you. Im sure you have a meeting with the president they are calling you away with but i dont care. I am interested in this question about projects and permitting. You have been in your job for two and a half years. You have had lots of government jobs. He has got a really weird background. It is really inspiring. His great great great great grandfather and mother ran a horse and buggy taxi business where the site of the department of commerce is. Your father now you are in government. Maybe they dont like that. You had this line of entrepreneurs and you have gone into business. It raises the interesting question about what you have been incumbent in your position, have you been able to see the completion of any projects the government initiated or started or has the permitting and regulatory problem gotten in your way too . You are powerful. I am but a public servant. I have focused as part of my career on delivering. It is why president obama and then vice President Biden asked me to focus on the recovery of detroit during that administration because they were going through some issues. Anyone who has been to detroit lately knows it is significantly different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I was literally just out in Washington State the end of last week. I saw how some of our investments that came as a result of the American Investment plan are impacting communities already. Already. Some of our investments went to support environmental resiliency and focusing other part of commerce. Investing in communities that have been affected by longterm harm related to agriculture practices. Industrial practices. We were trying to mitigate some of those impacts. The dollars went to a coalition of organizations that were restoring wetlands. You may say that sounds like a nice thing to do. Why do you care about this . . What does that mean . Not only is it important environmentally but it has a Major Economic impact. Those who study fish we spend a lot of time on fish in commerce know that salmon when they spawned, they swim down these overs out to the ocean. There is a critical phase where they spend time in the wetlands. That is where they actually grow the most. It is where most of their development happens. They put on half of their adult body weight while in these wetlands for four weeks. But the salmon ended up having to go right out to the ocean and the predators are much readily able to caption the salmon. What that means is the salmon stocks will down salmon stocks were down. That is going to drive economic growth. It is going to restore the ecosystem. It is going to drive towards him. It is nice to have a good story this morning. Do you have memorabilia from your greatgreatgrandparents taxi business . We actually do. You are like an ancient washingtonian. This is interesting. Yeah, my four times great grandparents were slaves. They started this business. Their son who got the entrepreneurial gene ran some businesses. Operated the warmly hotel. That is another story. A lot of the artifacts from the hotel. We still have the piano still used in the parlor. We have been able to keep our history together. There are man cool layers. Thank you for coming to join us. [applause] please welcome the chairwoman of the federal communications commission. Im going to ask my team now. We are going to have way more than five minutes. Just give it to me now. Great to see you here. Thank you for joining us as we discussed all things infrastructure. I want to jump ahead. So many times we sit and discuss what have we done now, but i want to transform ourselves for a moment. I want to tell our audience one thing about the chairwoman who does not brag about herself. If there is one thing in one person at a country responsible for connecting communities and libraries and looking at children who have not had easy access to a broadband in schooling and education, this has been her obsession way before she got to the fcc. When she worked in the senate, this is the person who moved that. It is rare to find individual who mattered so much in trying to address early on the Digital Divide question. Now lets talk space. Im obsessed with space. I am interested in how your commissioners at the fcc are looking at new pathways to connectivity and addressing some of the big gaps we have had. Tell us about the next frontier. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for your kind words. Since the beginning of time, we have looked to the heavens and the stars have left us breathless. You cannot look at those images from the james webb and not be in awe. What has changed in recent times is action in space is no longer the province of governments. We have new commercial models that support new kinds of space launch. Two satellites. New technologies that are making space the next frontier for our economy. If you need a number to understand how big it is, before the federal communications commission, we have applications for 60,000 satellites. To put that in context, globally, there are only about 7000 to 8000 satellites in our skies right now. You are seeing this radical increase in interest in using Communications Technologies in space to keep us connected. I thought you would go to space to escape regulation. How was regulation doing in space . Thing about space as it is a shared resource. Shared resources require coordination. Not just with domestic regulation but international regulation. What we have done at the federal can medications commission is i have reorganized the agency so we can be more reoriented toward the space future. It is going to be a half trillion dollar economy. I think the United States should lead. We have tried to streamline our satellite licensing process to make it a easier to deploy. We looked at Environmental Issues with orbital debris and space jumps making sure we have ways to prevent it so all the activity can sustain itself. This is one of the coolest things we are doing. We have this vision called the Single Network future where the devices everyone has in their palm where their pockets, they depend on terrestrial wireless services. What if we took that device and combined satellite functionality with terrestrial services . What we would be able to do is get rid of mobile dead zones. There is a huge safety imperative. It is true globally. We started an effort to try to develop the Regulatory Framework for the Single Network future that combined satellite and terrestrial services. Mcdowell county, West Virginia which i have been to, used to be one of the richest counties in america. I care a lot about it. It is one of the areas where there are dead zones. It is in appalachia. I worked for senator rockefeller so i know what well. That is right. Is this finally a way to leapfrog over the question of how you reach all of these nooks and crannies of the a ppalachian region . And the topography of the United States is beautiful. People in appalachia are sitting in mountains that are difficult to reach without wireless towers. Have to get a new to work on the deployment of those towers but also look for new technologies. Satellite and satellite medications is going to be part of that. As i mentioned in my introduction, you have been worried about uneven access and equity well before it became a fad. Well before it became a raging necessity to begin wicking at. It is not a fixed problem. Once you begin adding on 5g and new and new capacity, you are creating a new range of winners and losers. What is the Digital Divide picture today as you look at it . What have we solved for and what are we lagging on . Policymakers came out of this pandemic with a clear desire to try to address our nation Digital Divide. Bipartisan. We all rushed into the internet. Modern life, went online. We sell so many people who could not get there. Who were sitting in parked cars outside of closed libraries to get a wifi signal. Kids who set outside of fast food restaurants with borrowed laptops to go to on line class. People who could not keep up with their health care because they do not have the bandwidth for the telemedicine appointments. We should be able to address that without question. When you look at the bipartisan infrastructure law and all those other covid era pieces of legislation, what you see is an enormous investment in trying to close that divide. Making sure everyone in this country no matter who they are or where they live has access to highspeed internet. What is different about this moment is we have come to recognize that requires investment in deployment in places like mcdowell county, West Virginia where the economics of eating fiber and wireless are difficult. It also requires addressing affordability because we have a lot of low income households in this country but dont have Service Today or their service is not reliable because they have a tough time paying for that between gas and groceries. After federal indications commission, we are running a program called the affordable connectivity program. Branding is not our strong point. We call it the acp. If want to have some access to our headline writers we could use them. The acp as the largest ever broadband affordability project in the United States. We have 18 million households that depend on its support because it helps low income households get online and stay online. It is a program that is incredibly important because the Digital Divide is not just about employment. It is about affordability. We were in reception this money, there are a couple guys from the American Legion. They represented a class of veterans who came back and they describe themselves as not your upper educated crowd, veterans who come back often resettle in rural areas. Veterans that come back often to resettle in rural areas. Because capitol infrastructure chases the coast they say theres a real lack of investment in this area. When it comes to laying down the basic foundation so they could become entrepreneurs or get online sometime in is real spotty. Just on their behalf, do you feel that needle is moving . Whether they are veterans or others after they rural or less urban areas that we are solving the problem of well when it comes to connectivity . Yes. We have come to recognize not all geniuses dont on the coast of the country so much Economic Activity we can support if we make Broadband Access universal and for the first time with all of that bipartisan infrastructure law we are 15 new we are seeing new tools to make that happen they have never existed before them policymakers connection with the tools right places and get everyone connected. Do you find anything getting in your way right now . What are the Biggest Barriers domestically . Im an optimist with what we theres a lot of money and a lot of bills that have passed. A lot of communities want to be connected. Steny hoyers basically saying americans do not even really know its happening. What are the things you are wrestling with so that you are getting smarter deployment in this area that people are realizing they need improving. Im an optimist with what we can do the dollars and fathoms im also completely impatient. A lot of the programs move so slowly they may not understand whats happening. When we look back on this moment in history the commitment we made to connect the country is going to be on par with what we did the 1950s with the interstate highway system. Its not important and that big. I am older than many of you in the room. At the new america foundation, i was a fellow at new america, we actually had seminars that would teach lawyers how their lives would change the internet. Would change through the internet. The web it was looked at as this alien far off thing. We were interested in how it might change our world. Now, 5g. Massive data. Ai. I feel like we are at this Inflection Point of a whole new wave of technologies. All of it as i read about it screams and needs more spectrum. Which takes me back to the scc. How much of a headache is progress for you . I think the challenge is so much interconnectivity depends on our airwaves. Which is some of the most important infrastructure we are but nobody sees it. An airwaves is spectrum. Is that a limited resource . That is a limited resource. How we divvy it up its really important. We need new tools and more technologies to be more efficient with it. When we are more efficient with it, we push more airwaves out to commercial markets. Innovators can do things with that, we can start powering our phones at higher levels making more video available. Use it as sensors for agriculture and traffic and start understanding the world around us. Be more efficient with our resources that we have been. It comes back to spectrum. One challenge right now is that our authority to auction off airwaves. Push them into the hands of commercial providers that lapse in congress in march for. You have no more authority to put spectrum into commercial use . We have no more authority to do that with auctions. To give you a sense of how important that is, for 30 years, we had that authority. The scc has held 100 auctions and we have raised more than 33 billion between u. S. Treasury auctions. We may be hitting a debt ceiling if we hadnt auction . I appreciate your creativity. I do think that auction structure has been an incredible powerful force leading the world in wireless. Allowing it is a mistake. Other countries have taken note of our success. They are willing to rush in and harmonize the rest of the world around spectrum priorities. Some of the other countries do not do so with Democratic Values front of mine. Is there something to restore that authority underway . Theres legislation underway. But the sooner the better. Located to divide for us to walk in and organize the world during our spectrum priorities to work with us is going to take restoration we cannot continue. Authority we cannot continue to not have. You are so good at painting pictures of the future. I look forward to hearing more about the spectrum auction down the road. Im also interested in what we could possibly do with that spectrum and how important it is. We are already beginning to see the need to transition from 5g which im not sure people realize we have, or are getting to 6g. Its basically as we think about this evolution, it is a function of a massive amount of data we are sending in. Video and imprecision medicine and various things. Could you share with the audience what future that is . What a more robust infrastructure in a six g world can generate for us. If the most interesting thing about your Wireless World right now is your phone, that is not what he think it will be in the future. I think it might be the least interesting thing we are doing with wireless. Imagine a world with sensors and so much more of what is around us. Signals are adaptive. Recognizing patterns in what traffic looks like so we can get to work 15 minutes faster because we are smarter. Try to imagine a world where we have those sensors and farms and the soil so we ares order about so we are smarter about using chemicals and nitrogen, we are more environmentally smart about precisely where we have to put resources at any given time. We are going to start seeing all these kinds of Wireless Connectivity and the pattern recognition that comes with artificial intelligence. I think the world around us is going to become a whole lot smarter, a whole lot more intelligent and more sensitive to scarce resources. Is your house equipped with all these things . I feel like i need to say yes but the truth is no. You live in an average, boring, normal house . I asked my kids to fix the wifi router. I cannot do that. Should we trying some things out before we unleash it . I do try things out. Whats the coolest thing you tried that flopped and succeeded . The early days of voice command. If you think about it, we all use, those were built in the era of the typewriter. Its kind of irrational we are still using that to access the digital age. Im ready for it to go. You are ready. Me, too. I think its a voice command. I need the voice command to stop inserting obscenities accidentally into my text. You might have that problem but i dont have that problem. [laughter] ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. The chair of the fcc. So much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. [applause] please welcome the chief executive officer of horizon business, joining kyles jackson smith, cofounder and ceo. [indistinct chatter] good morning. Good morning. Kyle, how is your first trip to d. C. . It is your second. My second. Welcome. Really interesting moment in this gentlemans life. Carl was the cto kyle was the cto. Chief Technology Officer for all of verizon. A central architect of the Companys Technology infrastructure for many, many decades. Now the first cpo in the companys history. This is going back to bell labs with the main ceo running a third of verizons business group. He was appointed a couple of months ago. Its a real thrill to have you here this morning with us. Its a pleasure to be here. Tell us what is it like to be the first transition in a company with such an amazing heritage . Its very exciting for me. Because i spent all of my time with my team designing, developing and building networks. Whether it be files network or Global Ip Network or a wireless network. I spent all of my time thinking about technical problems and how to build the best network so our customers can rely on them. But now i have pivoted and i need to sell what we have built. Its really interesting and im learning a lot by talking to customers directly. Getting into what problems they have and how we can Bring Solutions to the table to help them further their businesses. Its fun. You build things and go out and sell it and get a new perspective. Is that the number one focus of your new role . For bidding from the technical background to more of a commercial focus . Yes. Thats the part im learning a lot more on. You have to balance your constituencies. You have the employees, shareholders and customers and now its about how do we steer the ship in the right direction and how do we organize ourselves so weakly very helpful to our customers. So we can be very helpful to our customers. Thats a whole other dimension. It takes me a little bit out of what i was doing. But i am still close enough to it. I see whats going on. And you are probably talking to ctos all the time. Ctos, cios. As in my previous roles all technology reported into my office. So i understand the pain. Of being the cio and what you need to deal with. Get into verizons incredible rule in the american infrastructure conversation and a second. But as a foundation, explain to us how verizon is approaching. What problems are you solving for your customers in the private sector, in the government . Could you walk us through . The commissioner just talked about it. 5g and 6g. Not sure of 6g yet. But 5g, theres a lot of technical capabilities we are putting in play that will allow developers to do new things. But what we are really excited about is the massive amounts of bandwidth. The reliability that we can bring. It really is going to be a game changer for businesses. Now, instead of using wifi to put your Mission Critical applications on, say a warehouse with robotics or a factory, a production line, trying to use vision to find errors quickly. Wifi just doesnt cut it. The capabilities built in early for this but ultra, ultra high bands. Really super low latencies. The ability to have reliability you talk about five and nine in our industry we make it eight night work culture ultra reliable. Those are things as a cio you want to have a brickwork that reduces costs. It reduces efficiency. It improves efficiency. Across all sorts of industries. Just talking to barbara, she will be here next. Its an ecosystem of people with a lot of technology coming together. What we do is we bring a platform that others can put their innovation on top of it. And we can partner with people and give solutions to cios and businesses. One example would be we have a test running on a factory floor. And before we put in these systems, something was broken, they would find it a minute later when something fell off the line at the end. And then there was a whole bunch of waste for that minute. We can see it right away now. They can stop the factory in like two seconds. That creates a lot more efficiency. Youve got more yield. That is the thing cios want. They want to put technology in to get a return on their investment. Shifting to verizons relationship with government partnerships, i know you are advisor to the president from the private sector. What problems are you solving on the Public Sector side . In particular, how do you perceive the Digital Infrastructure, digital connectivity challenges of the u. S. Right now . I think it is wellknown we been chosen we have been chosen with the faa to work with them to modernize their infrastructure. As someone who flies a lot you should be super happy. But a lot of our infrastructure was built a long time ago in the United States a lot of it is running on copper. Copper is not the stateoftheart anymore. It was 50 years ago. But the world has changed. And so, modernizing the infrastructure working closely with Government Agencies to bring their land line infrastructure up to snuff, we work with them on wireless technology, because the other two are blending together. You can bring all of that technology to bear now in helping governments and local municipalities and First Responders and the like get up the curve on technology so they can do the same things with cuttingedge technology than they can do on the factory floor. What about the infrastructure risk front . I know a lot of this is probably classified. Can you give us a sense of the scope and range of the problems and solutions . We are going to be doing a report every year, we talk about what we see in the world in terms of cyber threats. That is going to be coming out fairly soon i believe. But every single day, we are Critical Infrastructure for United States. We take that responsibility very seriously. How often is the Digital Infrastructure intact . Every day. Every day, nationstates and other criminal activities are trying to probe networks and poke around and see if youre leaving any doors open. If they can exploit those for either financial gain or something. Who is winning . We will get to a broader macro question. Every day, my colleagues and i wake up just worrying, are we secure . Are we doing everything we can to make sure the networks are secure as possible . I feel good about our stance. I feel good about how to approach it. To grow our capabilities, trying to stay one step ahead of what the bad guys are doing. Is ai an important tool for Verizon Business group, advancing these technologies . Absolutely. We have been using ai for a long time. Now the dialogue is around genai and what that can do. We have been doing a lot of test with various partners. A couple of things, how do we leverage it for internal use so we can support our customers better . How can we use it as a something we can sell to customers. And help them with their business. But also understand, what can bad guys use it for to try and hit our networks with . We are hitting all of those areas trying to figure it out. I want to close on a broader more macro question. You are one of the critical leaders in a fortune 20 global company, key in Digital Infrastructure. Which is obviously a huge source of competitiveness. How is america faring on the global stage in terms of maintaining these competitive fronts . How does america stay ahead . And stay competitive . Thats a good question. We talked about infrastructure here. A couple of thoughts. First i applaud what the government is trying to do to make sure everybody has access to broadband. I would encourage the government to think about other technologies and mediums you can use to help bridge that divide quicker. Than trying to run fiber to everybody. Thats going to take a long time. The wireless capabilities are there right now to bridge some divides. I think thats important that everyone has access to it. Not Everybody Needs a gig, i will tell you that, its a marketing thing. But that everybody has access. We need a game plan for spectrum. We have living hand to mouth in this industry for a long, long time. It is somewhat haphazard, i would say, when its needed we go work on it. Other countries like china have a longterm plan to free up a lot of spectrum. I am a Firm Believer Technology Wise we are in great shape as a country. But the people who move the needle on technology are those who practitioner it and understand it and use it. We have to make sure we have a good spectrum pipeline for the next few decades that the industry can count on and we can Start Building technology. An r d dollars can go in. Because people will know there is spectrum available. For me getting a spectrum pipeline through to lawmakers is vitally and for National Security Going Forward. Great. We are up with our time but we did not get to talk about the fact that verizon runs the city 911 system. Or the fact kyle is married to an engineer. It is a family of four engineers. It is a fun family household. [laughter] thank you. Appreciate it. [applause] please welcome the president and ceo of siemens usa. And joining barbara is gina, business editor. [applause] thank you for joining us. Barbara has an interesting perspective as the head of siemens in the u. S. You see infrastructure from a lot of different perspectives. And one of the most interesting takes you have is excitement about highspeed rail. Which is not words you put together in the United States. At least not right now. So starting off on that portion of our topic of mobility, how do you see the future of that developing when tomorrow im going to be hopping on an amtrak and i have to say and excited to say im not excited about that . But maybe your vision will convince me otherwise. This is a really exciting time for rail in the u. S. You know the bipartisan infrastructure law and the related regulations that have emerged are fostering a new decade of expansion in rail. This is the biggest investment since amtrak was founded. And youll see investments being made in all kinds of rail at the national level. Amtrak continuing to build local transit agencies, making local major investments. Siemens works with over 30 transit agencies across the country. The thing i am most excited about is in fact highspeed rail and the moment is now. The moment is now. We have the technology we have the ability highspeed rail in rail rolling stop in the u. S. What we are looking forward to is seeing the first leg of what will be a National Network established. The highspeed rail is a fantastic project. The key thing we are looking for is true highspeed rail with speeds up to 220 miles per hour. Can i just describe for you . . Yes, go for it. Lenovo train siemens is bringing to market will be the first highspeed rail in the u. S. Its actually capable of giving passengers free access to the length of the train and it includes something the team has called the party car. Whats in this party car . Youre going to have to see it to find out. Youre going to have to see it to find out. I am in then. Anything with the party car. With this new vision, what practically would that mean for people who live here and work here . For a lot of us who travel overseas, we have seen how easy it is to get around in europe and asia because of highspeed rail networks. What has been the problem here . How soon do you think you can make this a reality . I remember talking to somebody at the white house a few years ago who said, have you seen how big america is . It is true. Our wide open spaces. The distance between city pairs. Its daunting and makes everybody think, this is a nation for flight. But the fact is highspeed rail brings more city pairs into close proximity. This is one reason i believe private Sector Investment is going to be the secret here. Think about putting concessions around major stations. Suddenly you have the business case. Destination to destination, the reason for building highspeed rail and giving us an option of waiting and getting on an airplane, which has a series has a serious security infrastructure around it. Or being able to enjoy our highspeed rail moving across the United States easily. Stepping back from this very specific view, because rail and the transformation is one piece of what we are getting to do at siemens. You know weve been through decades of thinking about, what is the future for infrastructure in the u. S. . With years of lobbying and the investments being made, we are in a decade of action. This is incredibly exciting. He will see siemens is in the backbone of the economy everywhere. We are a Technology Company that combines the real and the digital world. Where we are actually applying our skills right now is yes, in rail. But also the transformation of vehicles of all kinds. To be more electric, more connected, more autonomous. So you will see us in the electrification of automobiles. We have pledged to build one million chargers for the United States market. Weve got manufacturing hubs around the country working on just that. I wanted to ask you about that. Thats obviously a big part of the Biden Administrations plan and we are seeing the rules around the tax credits to incentivize people to buy electric vehicles. What do you need to make this all happen . In california, there chargers everywhere. Your grocery store, parking lots and shopping centers. But in places in the midwest, even around here its hard to find sometimes, the charging stations. One of the pieces i found the most interesting is the real estate component. How do you make all of those components come together to actually expand our charging Station Network . Think about this as a system of systems problem for engineers. Engineers love problems like this. Where you say i want to get an electric vehicle but that means ive got to be able to charge it and power to it with the electric grid. The question is where is that infrastructure going to be . Etc. Siemens is working in all aspects of that change. Lets start with the buildings. There are Real Estate Developers today envisioning charging buildings. Imagine a two gigawatt building. Thats the size of a city. The idea that you could actually create a multilayer charging station powered with Renewable Energy that may be some onsite and some offsite at the edge of a metropolitan area and enable charging all around the city, think about the transportation of the air quality in the city if we could take that many internal Combustion Engines off the road. Thats exciting. What happens if you get into that kind of charging algorithm and you say im going to buy my electricity when its cheapest and im going to sell it and charge when it is more expensive . That creates a new revenue stream. So weve got new Business Models evolving out of the transformation thats going on. Ive heard people talk about, i now get my fleet for free because im engaged in power arbitrage. It pays for itself. These are the kinds of possibilities. What siemens is thinking about doing his first where can we invest in startups who are making this kind of change . Give them access to the portfolio of customers and launch their new, Brilliant Ideas through worldchanging scale, and where do we fit in with our knowhow in order to, for instance, make the modifications at the edge of the grid where suddenly now we have to have twoway control of electricity . Theres a solution weve got called plug to grid which is helping utilities and municipalities manage the twoway, the flow of power on their own grids. So what else do we need to make all this happen . The government has thrown a lot of funding at a lot of these plans, but a lot of them require, you know, permits or permission from local governments. You obviously need workers to get onboard, and we have a very tight labor market particularly in advanced manufacturing. What are the missing components . First of all, im going to challenge you on a verb. I dont think the government is throwing money at this. I believe the government is sending some very targeted investments actually to the state and local level where the people best understand what needs to be done. And this is just a down payment. I mean, whats happened with the legislation over the past couple years, its communicated a set of national priorities. Its said, we want to be part of a clean Energy Transition. We want to localize manufacturing. And ill tell you, the private sector is responding. Think about the chips and signs act. A 52 billion investment for semiconductors, there have been 600 billion in private Sector Investments already pledged. 600 billion in private Sector Investments already pledged. So this is happening, and it is triggered by a very clear signal by the federal government. Yes, permitting, big issue, and i know people are working hard on that. And so, obviously, were going to stand with our customers who are getting permits for things like interconnection to the grid so we can bring more power online, etc. But the other thing for us to be aware of is the work force. This subject comes up, gina, in every conversation im having in washington right now. I dont care if its the secretary of commerce advisor y counsel, they are saying this is top issue. Just last week we had conversations about telecommunications. What about the work force . So the role were playing at siemens is to Bring Technology to the table and actually elevate the role of people, actually make them more productive, expand whats humanly possible. Because with the help of technology, we can get it done. Were almost out of time, but i wanted to ask you since a. I. Is at the top of everyones mind these days, are you guys easing using chatgpt or other sort of generative technologies . In a very specific way, and i shared with gina, just yesterday i was at a conference in detroit, and i got a chance to see our virtual plc controller that is available in our manufacturing environment. It used to be programmed by hand. And what i saw was the integration of chatgpt in what ill call a hermetically sealed data environment, not unleashed general intelligence, but the application of the Neural Networks and that, you know, machine learning, that actually allowed me to talk to the computer and say, i want the controller to do this. It generated the code, and then i said, oh, please also generate the code commentary. You know, one of the most awful jobs in programming, writing comments for the code. [laughter] it did that in a matter of seconds. So, yes, take all of the tools that have been available to us in the digital world, apply that to the world of big infrastructure. Thats our job at siemens. So the future is here. [laugher] thank you. Thanks for your time. [applause] please welcome terry mcauliffe, former governor of virginia, to the stage. Steve clemons is back to guide this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, in my own . Am i on . Terry, governor, terry, all of us i know him as terry theres so much to talk about. But i do want to share with our audience that you and i have talked about infrastructure on many Different Levels. And today, you know, i basically, we have three tracks. Were looking at mobility, all this stuff on mobilities from ports the planes to tars to to cars to energy. Weve got a big permitting reform debate unfolding right now, and a big summit coming up on june 5th about how to get the equilibrium right on that. And we have telecommunications and connectivity, and, as you know, we had the chairwoman of the fcc, Jessica Rosenworcel up here. Of every governor, im going to brag, ive interviewed a lot of governors, ive never met a governor, when you were governor, that talked every dimension of infrastructure, you know, from 060. And you were the infrastructure governor. I just love the state. Im going to ask you, terry mcauliffe, private citizen, with all the money going into it, what are we not getting right that weve got to get right for this country to succeed down the road . I think we kicked the can down the road for so many decades. I couldnt be happier with the Biden Administration, we passed the big infrastructure bill with we finally passed the big infrastructure bill since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Should have been done 30, 40 years before that. I loved infrastructure as governor. I mean, i thought about it every single day. Tell them about some of the big projects you pulled off as governor. When i took office, i faced a lot of challenges. How many virginians do we have here . Very smart. Maryland . You like paying taxes . Thats okay. [laughter] d. C. . You really like taxes. 575, virginia. Just put it out there, whatever you want to do. You like throwing money away, but whatever. And virginias for lovers. Ill add that as well. When i took office virginias very unique. We have the most military installations, we have the largest base in the world, Fleet Forces Command, of course, the pentagon, cia, a lot of threeletter agencies. When i took office, virginia had been doing a couple p3s, andthey were total failures and a total and they were total failures and a total waste of taxpayer money. So i immediately had to stop a thing called route 460, the Previous Administration spent 300 million of taxpayer money on a road and not a shovel had gone in the ground. I was faced with United Airlines pulling out of dulles airport. That would have cost us 45,000 jobs. I had route 66, which had been, the can had been kicked down the road for years and years and years, and we were not meeting the minimum highway standard as it relates to the speed. 95 was gridlocked. So i said, lets redo the whole process. So i started a whole new process in virginia, we were the first in the country to pass that. As governor before, i could pick whatever roads or sidewalks i wanted. I gave up all of that power. We put a process in place where every single request for infrastructure had to go through a grading process, and those that came to the top we funded and those that didnt, didnt. No legislator or no governor had any power anymore in virginia over picking Infrastructure Projects. That allowed me to get the buyin of everybody to support it. So what we got moving on, i had a port that was bankrupt. My previous governor had put it up for sale. You dont sell your assets. You dont sell your airport, you dont sell your port. So i took it off the a market. Off the market. The year i took over, it was losing 100 million. We turned it around, we invested, now its one of the most profitable ports on the east coast. Dulles airport, we got a 50 million investment, went up to chicago, met with united, they signed a 7year extension. I added 18 miles south on 95 for those that are going down towards richmond. They had a horrible process of flyways, so weved ad 18 miles there, and i brought the express lanes all the way up to the pentagon for all of those that you are traveling on which affect you every day. But the biggest p3 in American History was 66. 66 was the most congested road in america. It just didnt work. So we put it up for a p3, and we ended up picking a spanish consortium, and it was about a 4. 5 billion project, they gave me a check for 500 million on closing. But i was able to add intermodal, bike paths, but ill tell you [laughter] you know, being governor sometimes its hard to keep people happy sometimes. The criticism from both the left and the right in my legislature was just, im raising tolls. I wasnt raising tolls. As you know on 66, during hov hours, you could not drive as a single driver, okay . All i said was, okay, single drivers, you can go on it, but youre going to pay. Pretty good. I was able to get over 4 billion on that publicprivate partnership, makes sense. But, oh, my goodness. I had democratic legislators running ads attacking me in Northern Virginia that im raising tolls. If you know my personality, steve knows me well, i didnt care. I wanted to do what i thought was the right thing for the sake of virginia. Now, how many virginians have written on 66 . Ridden on 66 . Everyones saying, boy, this is great. This is the greatest road ever built. Now im a genius. But im telling you, for five years, i was the skunk at the holiday party. I loved infrastructure. If youre going to move people around, quality of life, if you want to recruit businesses, i recruited thousands of companies, 20 billion in new capital, i wrote the bid for hq2, amazon, google, facebook, Amazon Web Services when i was governor. None of those companies are going to come to a state if youre stuck in traffic. Theyre going to go somewhere else. We lost in virginia before i was governor, you lost two weeks of vacation sitting in congestion in Northern Virginia. Thats what i wanted to fix. Moving people around so they can get to work, go to their ball games for their kids. But i also had a port. I wanted us to be a top port in the country. We had to move the goods from Hampton Roads to the bred basket breadbasket of america. Finally the other big, huge project i did for those that like to ride amtrak, how many virginians ride amtrak . As you know, gridlock, trouble. And the reason is, as you know, csx owns the lines. They own the lines. So, amtrak, we basically were running it, if you got a freight car going 28 miles an hour, they own the line, you gotta wait behind them. That was the problem. So what i did was a thing called the atlantic gateway which is a new spur of 18 miles so when youre leaving up from fredericksburg up, now the train, the freight cars can move off into this 18mile spur, and amtrak can whiz on by and get you up to do your business so you can make more money, you can spend more money in virginia. Thats why virginias for lovers. Glenn youngkin, youngkin yeah, lets all move to virginia, folks. Get out of those other places. So thats mobility. I was just thinking Governor Youngkin must love you for all the problems you solved. Yeah, he gets to cut my ribbons. At the end of the day, its about whats doing right for the citizens. We were at dinner, its an off the dinner record dinner, off the record, we had the ceo of boston consulting group, and we were talking about energy and permitting reform and how do you get the equilibrium right between new Renewable Energy and the reality that 80 of american needs are still tied in others. I was just really fascinated by your comment that night particularly given the placement of some some of the energy needs around ports. You said, look, youve got to deal with real life. Tell our audience about what you believe how to get that Energy Equilibrium right as we think about infrastructure. Another thing i faced, and it was very controversial, as you know, remember, the Atlantic Coast pipeline which ultimately dominion had to scrap. I think they spent a couple billion dollars. But put that aside. So, we need energy. So, as governor, i had two projects, one was about 2. 6 billion, one about 3. 2 billion, manufacturing, which i love, because i love manufacturing jobs to help in my more rural parts of the state dying from manufacturing jobs. I lost both of those projects i won the deal, i negotiated with the ceo, but i couldnt give them the 5year commitment of gas that they needed to operate their facilities. So that is actually a reallife situation where we lost thousands of jobs because i couldnt give them what they needed to come to my state and create thousands of new jobs. In addition, you should know this, and i always try to explain this so everybody, i dont care if youre left or right or whatever, you just should understand all the facts when you make a decision. We had Fleet Forces Command which is all of our military assets, the Largest Naval base in the world, even seal teams are in virginia. Virginia. Not maryland or d. C. Even seal teams are all in virginia. Weve got air bases, defense, intelligence bases. Five times, they lost power. Folks, thats a National Security issue, as well. So the point i always just try to make to everybody, the legislature, whether on the left or the right, these are reallife consequences that we have to fix, and weve got to put politics aside. So weve got to deal with energy. And im very proud, i led the nation on renewables. I did the largest solar field in a county with amazon because i also knew if youre going to get amazon, google, facebook, microsoft, theyre not coming to a state, as you know, unless you give them green energy. They wont come, theyll tell you right up front. So, what are you going to do . Youve got to provide them green energy. But at the same time, youve got to make sure all the other operations that you have going obviously can work. And so, i am all for the renewable space and everything we need to do. But were still at a place where we need gas. And in order to truly function and operate as a state, to recruit businesses and keep your military operating, i didnt want to lose imagine if i was governor and i lost norfolk station, oh, my goodness. So those are reallife things that we have to face. One of the things that President Biden has put on the table that the administration is proud of and we discussed it a lot this morning is broadband infrastructure, finally getting people connected, you know, whether its through space or 50 billion laid out in kind of new lines around the country. You know, in virginia, you have a lot of dead zones. You had a lot of dead zones. Do you feel like that needle is really moving substantially, or is the Biden Administration deluding itself . No. I think oh, no. Listen, we all, i can tell you four years ago, when i was governor, and i was chairman of the National Governors association, we all wanted to get every citizen connected. Of course you want to do that. It really is not fair did you just yawn over there . [laughter] what are you, crazy . [laughter] it is not fair for rural parts of the state that they dont have the same Educational Opportunities because they dont have the same pipe into their community to provide the same educational service. And to me, that is blatantly unfair. And so, we all worked hard. Now, there is no excuse with President Biden putting this money in for the infrastructure, every home should be connected. And, you know, its not only the pipe, but were all talking about what we can do in the air. Every home needs to be connected. It is just blatantly unfair that everybody you cant sell if youre a mom and pop shop if youre down in danville or lee county, virginia, way out in the further the furthest county way out, its not fair if you cant sell your products on a global marketplace and or your children cant get the same quality education because they cant get access through the internet. Its not fair. Making great progress. There are no excuses. Weve got to drive it, and weve got to drive it hard. You know, youre one of the governors that i have run into more than any other governor internationally in my experience. Whether tokyo, korea, brussels, wherever it may be, and recently you were in ukraine, and you were also recently in nigeria. This is unrelated infrastructure, perhaps, but i am interested in the fact that as a global publication, were paying attention to whats gown on in the world. What were you doing in ukraine and nigeria . Sure. And i loved the international, when i was governor, i was very proud, i did the most trade missions of any governor in u. S. History. I did 35 trade missions in 4 years. Why . I went and recruited businesses to come to virginia. Thats how i got 20 billion of new capital. I got unemployment down to 3. 3 . We were the number one state in america for cyber. I had 48,000 open cyber jobs when i left office. So i went all over the globe. When youre a governor traveling internationally, you can meet with whoever you want. Id land in tokyo ask and drive can two hours out to some ratty old factory somewhere, but you know what, steve . Theyre going to invest capital, and theyre going to create 200 jobs in wise county, virginia. That was worth my trip. So thats why i did so much international travel. I just got back two days ago from nigeria. I went over, they have 36 governors that just got elected, 18 brand new ones, so i did a conference of how to be a governor and how to work with a bipartisan legislature. Which was great. Before that i spent nine days in ukraine. The Washington Post just did a big story on it. They brought me over recently for infrastructure, all the things i talked about, they needed. I met with their minister of infrastructure because, you know, you and i have seen a lot of ukrainian events here, fundraisers, and i keep saying what can we do . How can we help . So they said come on over. So i went over and met with all the ministers and government officials, i met with a lot of the ngos, save ukraine which is the organization that is housing these children that have no parents. They have no home anymore. I went to their facility where the children who have been abducted, thousands of children have been taken from ukraine to russia. I met with a young 15yearold kid who spent six months in russian captivity having to recrete the National Anthem for two hours every day. They rescued 100 and brought em back. But you know my personality, if im going to ukraine under the president ial order, nobody can go 5 miles outside of kyiv. Im going as a private citizen. I said if im going to ukraine, i want to to go to the front line. I think im the first american, i went right up to the front line. You sent me a picture from donbas. Dnipro, saw the nuclear plant, we got shelled, our convoy got hit. I mean, i loved it, im not to going to lie. [laughter] you know, i had some equipment with me, i was just hoping if anyone would come after me, this would be unbelievable. So i went out and i went right to the bunkers on the front line and went underground. I saw them take out a convoy of russian tanks. Right. It was fascinating. Let me say this frankly, you know, im very committed to this war. We have to win this, folks. Here we have many nations moving away from democracies, here we have a young, fledgling country that that has moved towards democracy. We have to support them. The atrocities, what theyre doing to the captured ukrainian soldiers i wont say on tv, but this is a fight for democracy. This is a fight for who we are as americans. Im proud of the president. Hes got nato behind this. We are making great progress over there, but we cannot show one inch of daylight. And unfortunately, they watch nd say, i dont know if we should support ukraine, that reverberates, folks, i can tell you, throughout ukraine. This is battle for the soul of who we are as a nation. And weve got to keep doing it. So finally, terry, it is widely reported i dont think youve commented on this, but its widely reported that President Biden wants you in his cabinet, wants you in his government. If he asked you to serve, would you serve, and what job do you want . [laughter] you know, listen, ive known the president for four decades, for 40 years, and i was a big supporter of his when he ran last time. He wanted me originally to be in the cabinet. I wanted to run for governor. As you can tell, i love being governor. Ill be honest with you, im not going to lie with you, i would not be a good legislator. Its not my personality. I like to get out of bed, sign an executive order and, boom, 5 00, its done. Im not all of this this fighting and not getting anything done. Its just not who i am. As you can tell. So i would do anything joe biden asked. Id like to do stuff economicrelated, infrastructurerelated. Ive started several dozen companies. I used to own one of the biggest homebuilding companies in florida. Bought a bankrupt company, fixed it up, solved it. Ive been involved in business my whole life. I think we need more people in politics who actually sweated out a friday afternoon payroll. I dont think anyone should be an office until theyve had that experience of, oh, my goodness, how am i going to pay my employees this afternoon . It strengthens you up, and i think it does a good job of doing taxpayer money. Listen you know me, im like the dalmation with the fire truck, man, you got a problem, im ready to go. Maybe secretary of defense after my ukraine trip, you know [laughter] i was ready to go. Who better on the front lines . You heard it here. Ladies and gentlemen, the second governor of virginia. Come to virginia thank you so much. Mario cordero, from the port of long beach. [indiscernible] gina c. Returns to moderate this discussion. [indistinct chatter] so, we are lucky, because originally, we were, because the schedule was separate sessions with mario and john, but the stars aligned so, luckily, we are able to have them both here to talk about equity in infrastructure, which is a really interesting topic, but one that isnt widely discussed as were talking about, you know, all these billions of dollars being invested in various projects and whats going to be built in what state. So, im really interested to get both of your thoughts on this especially because youve been in the trenches and seen this up close on the ground. So, for mario, i wanted to start with you and talk about, you know, especially since the pandemic, and everything youve seen at the port there with all the bottlenecks and people talking about, you know, how many ships are waiting outside and the containers to worker to worker strikes. We have seen a Record Number across various industries whether its apple stores or workers at the port. So, i wanted to the get a sense from you, how are you thinking about this issue particularly with all the different groups of employees that you have to deal with at the port that are in different sort of work statuses, if you will, and how will you sort of balance and think about that in the infrastructure scenario . Well, thank you for the question. Number one, i want to thank john and phil washington for leading on in this subject matter. Were proud to join as a first mover or one of five first movers, but i think what john and phil have done here is really set the tone in terms of this question thats been talked about this morning already, the future of infrastructure. Part of that future has to be the building of generational wealth. That is, for example, barriers that in the past have prevent minority prevented minority and ethnic, womenowned businesses to participate in the opportunities of infrastructure marley in the last, in the particularly in the Large Capital improvement projects. In long beach, as you know, during the pandemic, we continued to build. And i think i said during that time of crisis, the port of long beach built. We had a Capital Improvement project of 4 billion the last 10 years that weve expended, and Going Forward our commission has already authorized a budget of in excess of 2 billion in infrastructure. So for us, equity and inclusion is a Big Conversation that needs to be had with regard to Infrastructure Projects Going Forward. And what about the different groups of workers that you deal with there at the port, and how do you balance all of those interests with, obviously, the business interests as well as just, you know, the economic engine that depends on, on things going smoothly at the port . At the mandate of our commission over the past number of years, weve done very well in terms of balancing and navigating through those challengeses. So for example, at the port of long beach, we excel in our small and very Small Business enterprise programs. So i think with that kind of record, resume, we do feel were positive, optimistic that were also going to move the needle with regard to, again, those groups of contractors that are prime contractors or subcontractors who, again, will have the opportunity to be involved in the Infrastructure Projects that we have Going Forward. Great. And, john, i wanted to turn to you. Especially because when you were at the white house, as the supply chains are, as we were just, you know, really feeling a crunch on that front, you saw this problem from a lot of different perspectives. So, how do you think about equity and infrastructure in terms of all the stakeholders . Because its not just, you know, the businesses and the workers, its the community, the people who may get displaced because of certain projects. How are you thinking about that and how businesses and the government can Work Together so that, you know, everyone can sort of benefit from these types of projects . Thats really a crucial question, gina. We have five years of infrastructure funding thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law. We should be using that to leverage communityserving infrastructure. Its not just building a bridge, its building a bridge to the middle class at the same time through the jobs it creates, through the opportunity, these Economic Opportunities that are opened as part of it. What were doing with the equity in Infrastructure Project is basically taking the intent of the Infrastructure Program and making it a twofer if or a making it a twofer or a threefer, squeezing more value out of public dollar investments by in addition to delivering the infrastructure itself, making sure that its an opportunity in particular for historically underutilized businesses to make that generational leap from a subcontractor to a prime contractor, or a joint venture partner, or an Equity Partner in the case of a publicprivate partnership. Theres kind of a concrete ceiling in many ways. The program is a ceo level commitment. Im really pleased to be with Mario Cordero here today who was one of the five force movers, the ceo of a Public Agency in the network, to make that commitment. We now have 18 state devotees, about 41 public and private businesses that are committing to do that, and the idea is Community Serving infrastructure has many dimensions. One of it is actually creating generational wealth by letting historically utilized businesses make that leap to prime contractor. Are these normally businesses that have been shut out of these opportunities or just not aware they are available . How are you tapping into them . The way we actually operationalize this is if you take the equity on infrastructure pledge, and it is equity and infrastructure dot org, the ceo of that organization is making a personal commitment for organizational change that is followed up on a daytoday basis by your procurement people and legal people and others to open that aperture of opportunity. One way to do it as unbundling contracts. Is firms that might not have qualified or been able t bid on a larger contract can do so on a smaller one. But to do that in a thoughtful way that also benefits the public by having more competition for the contracts. You are building a bigger base of competition. What we are saying is infrastructure should be serving people through these multiple goals. One of them is for historically underutilized businesses to be able to grow through the Infrastructure Investments. Do you need to run or do you have time for one more question . I have time. The time we can spend on the subject matter is a great thing. A great thing. I want to ask you quickly before you go about the netzero pledge and how you see that fitting in given all of the demands you have on costs and other things that could understandably make that be a lower priority. I think we lost him. Ok. John, i will turn that to you in terms of how sustainability plays a role in the vision. It does. Sustainability is a critical element because if we are going to have a good system of the future that serves us well, it has to be sustainable and one where we are improving the environment responding to the existential challenge of climate change. You see some of that in ports around the country and throughout the entire supply chain. The port of los angeles, new york, savannah, many other places, are moving forward whether it is the zero emission class a trucks, the port handling equipment that is low impact, shore power, ships are basically goodsized power plants that burn dirty fuel. When they are docked, they should be plugged in and not running. You see those as early sustainability efforts. There are impacted communities adjacent to ports all over the country. Historically, they have had all of the burden and little benefit from the ports. Rebalancing that so those communities do not just get the burden environmentally but also the benefits through jobs, through environmental remediation, and through a cleaner future in general is one way that can be done. Gina mario, glad to have you back. I was asking before about the ports netzero goal given all the competing business demands how you think that fits in and if you think that is realistic for the port to go for. Mario number one, it is absolutely realistic. The port has a great history of reducing emissions and now to eradicate emissions. I think the Biden Administration as helped for the goal we will achieve in 2032 have zero Emission Equipment at a 100 level. And zero emission trucks by 2035. Number one, we have a very robust Capital Improvement project. We spend about 300 Million Dollars annually with regards to what we have budgeted here. A lot of that is with regard to zero emission related infrastructure and technologies. Let me say one thing lastly about the port of long beach and equity in infrastructure. The port has an equity and Inclusion Office and does a good job of raising awareness in the city. The port of long beach is a department of the city. I believe it is the first port to have a deputy inclusion equity officer specifically for procurement. We just hired jennifer who comes to us with a lot of experience in contracting. It is important for us to be successful in that. We now have a Fulltime Position of a diversity, equity, and inclusion procurement officer because that will be the mandate for her to move the needle on these goals we have on the equity issue. Gina i wanted to ask both of you how you are dealing with this issue given every port has different rules they go by. They are competing with each other in a lot of ways. We saw that during some of the supply chain crunch. People were talking about, can you go to the east side and does that build up demands for those ports given the situation people were facing . How are you looking at this given the Competitive Pressures as well . Mario with regards to today, we have a twopronged mandate paid one is to move the nation a partially is cargo and also the nations cargo and address the sustainability issue. No other gateway to has the dual mandate. We are talking, and the same for the port of los angeles. These two ports go into the largest gateway in the United States, that is a twopronged emphasis. Having said that, i am confident we will have the Competitive Edge in our favor because i suspect other major gateways in the country later will finally decide to apply the environmental social governance we have here and we will be far ahead in terms of our Competitive Edge. For those beneficial cargo owners who also have decarbonized programs and plans of action and you believe in reducing emissions and eliminating harmful emissions and environmental social governance, you should be doing business with the port of long beach. Gina john, i wanted to ask about technology and advances in topology technology and how they can be good and bad in terms of equity issues. We have been hearing about ai and ai taking your job and worries about how it could disrupt the workforce and make for fewer opportunities. How are you seeing this issue play out when it comes to infrastructure and making sure the benefits are spread, especially as you go down the food chain . John great question. I had the great privilege to see firsthand during the pandemic in the supply chain crisis how people performed day after day. If you think about the longshore workers that showed up day after day, and lost a number of their colleagues as part of that, they clearly were essential for the nation. Throughout the entire supply chain, you saw some of the same things. One of the important attributes of a supply chain that serves americas economy in the future is going to be making sure we can upscale those jobs upskill those jobs wherever possible. They can move up the skill and wage scale at the same time. You are seeing much more flexibility and a much more resilient supply chain then we had a few years ago. That argues for workers throughout every part of the supply chain that are adaptable, learning new technologies, and able to function under the stress they have every day. I am optimistic the investments being made the private sector and Public Sector in the supply chain can not to stabilize but create more good paying, middleclass, familysupporting jobs. Gina great. I think that is all the time we have for now. Thank you, mario. I love your background. Perfect for this event. Thanks, john. Thank you. [applause] we will now hear from the vice chairman of smc global. I want to Say Something to our audience. Thank you to all of you. I feel like when we do one of these marathons in the morning and start out with coffee and keep you here the whole time and run you ragged through a lot of speakers that we should give you a medal or mug or tshirt. Give us time. We will work on that. We will save it for people who finish. You are the ones from the American Legion so hopefully you enjoyed that. I am obsessed with the question of how we get infrastructure right in the future. One of the great Energy Experts who has written eloquently and powerfully about the Energy Choices facing the country but also questions on climate and Global Security questions is daniel yergin, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author. Dan is in alaska as we speak today. He was in another asian country the other day. Set i have to have you at this conference. You will see me interviewing daniel. I will use facial expressions to say that is a great question, steve, something along those lines. He wrote a book called energy, climate, and the clash of nations. Nations. It is the tale of human stories and people who made a difference in our energy options. One of the things that strikes me that is so interesting is how many small vignettes have a disproportionate effect. Where tense look came from, it was not elon musk idea. He said lets look at airplane. I wanted to end the conference on a little optimism with dan yergin. Thank you all in advance for coming. I appreciate it. Lets roll. Thank you for joining us. We are with daniel yergin, a Pulitzer Prizewinning author. He is looked at as one of the worlds greatest, most thoughtful writing gurus on Global Energy markets. Most importantly, he is the author of the book i think everyone should read, the new math. Thank you for joining us today. When you think about where Americas Energy sector is pointing which is a mix of renewables and fossils, new Energy Sources along with that, what are your worries about our blind spots on Energy Infrastructure as we move forward . I think about three things. One is simply the scale given we are a 23 trillion economy and is 80 dependent on hydrocarbons to sustain it. The second thing is what you will be talking about in the future, the ability to get things done. The third is we are not looking at the realities and tendencies as we try to move from one to another. When you think about the permitting side, one of the interesting questions about that is that john podesta and other people on the Progressive Left of the energy and climate equation have been saying we need permitting reform because the largescale projects funded out of the ira are going to see those dollars stranded if they do not have projects they can move into. Can you tell us your take on permitting reform . Is there equilibrium possible between the hydrocarbon world and the Renewable Energy . I think that is the only way to move forward. The administration is focused on transmission lines but we need pipelines. If you carbon capture, you need permitting. It is astonishing. This seems like a nittygritty issue. It is years and years to get things done. If we had the kind of permitting system we had when eisenhower was president , we would never have National Interstate highways. One of the things you outlined in the book is you have concern as we move to a less carbon dependent economy that the Regulatory Environment can take us to a place where the need for energy is greater than, particularly hydrocarbons, greater than the regulatory world we are sculpting. The net effect is you create a spike and squeeze in prices in the hydrocarbon world. Can you explain that to our audience . We had the first Energy Crisis in the transition before the ukraine war. That is when prices spiked. That is when you had shortages. That is when you have europe in trouble. It is a mismatch between the targets and the regulatory mechanism on one side and the reality of supply on the other. One of the things i focused on is the question people have to look at, the new supply chains required for a netzero world which means a lot more mining. Mining needs permitting. Mining also means the u. S. Will become more dependent on other parts of the world. That is where it clashes with the new Great Power Competition between the u. S. And china because china has such a preeminent position and minerals around the world and processing minerals. Let me ask you about that. We just had a g7 meeting in hiroshima, japan. Many people have said they have not seen the g7 nations all aligned. You could call it the china concern summit. It made me wonder whether it is hightech, concerns about energy, critical materials, do you think for the west plus japan to succeed in Energy Aspirations and transitions that it has to come to a deal with china . You could also call it the Inflation Reduction Act the compete with china act. That carried over into the g7 summit. It was a more open summit on the subject of natural gas realizing the scale of natural gas needed for Energy Transition replacing call in southeast asia. China has dominated the process with minerals. It will not be easy to just create an alternative system given how long it is to get anything done. One of the things that surprised me when i was writing the new math is looking at how long it takes to develop a new mine. It is 16 to 20 years. If we look at copper demand, in 2050, world copper demand would have to double by the middle of late 2030. As a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, we are looking at how much more and we do not see where it will come from. There is the overarching issue of china and the west. One of the other Minerals Part of the renewable transportation sector is lithium. I recently had dinner with the ceos of lithium america. I said is all the lithium in nevada, australia, and africa . He goes, it is all over the world. In canada and some places in the United States, we have huge lithium deposits available but not mineable. North america could be a lithium superpower if you mine it. Is that a problem . There are many spots with lithium. You would need to get it permitted and get it done. The hostility toward mining is as great as towards oil and gas development. Are you going to look to argentina, bolivia . Basically, the state of california said every new car sold in california after 2035 has to have two times more copper than other cars. In peru, the president is in jail. In chile, the president is hostile to mining. You look around the world and you see who is in mining around the world, who has already staked out their positions. In a lot of places, it is china. I want our audience to know the new math is not just about a dense treatment of Energy Sources and this wonky book. It is full of human stories. It is a book filled with human vignettes of how we got where we are. Puts one of my favorite stories is the story of where tesla came from. The young man into thousand three goes to a fish restaurant with elon musk to try to convince him to do an electric airplane. He said im not doing it. What about electric cars . Elon musk said i might be interested. That is when he gets involved. A few years ago, musk said if not for that lunch, there might not have been tesla. If there had not been tesla, you would not see the automobile workers in the world rushing to come out with electric models. That is the big wildcard, what is happening to innovation right now. Our big energy conference, we have 225 startups right now. Five years ago, people would have said fusion is 15 years of away. Now they say five to 15 years away. I think innovation will provide the answers proved the question is the timing, trying to push things so fast. Is a system going to be able to do it . Are you going to replace system a with system b when it is not in place yet . You won a Pulitzer Prize for your writing looking at the scramble a Great Power Competition over will and energy. Im wondering. When i read the new math, and read it because it will transform your understanding of so many deeper dimensions of these choices societies are making, but i think the real question i have is whether we are creating the conditions of the 1970s, that we are dependent on hydrocarbons as we are trying to make an Energy Transition, creates opportunities for other great powers to shift the kind of control we are seeing rumblings of from saudi arabia on cutting back will production. We are seeing china become a global diplomat by way of dealing with energy issues. Do you have concerns america is not keeping up with that game and other players are trying to create conditions of the 1970s oil and gas again . I think it was a shock to have china mediating a deal between saudi arabia and iran. That was a surprise. I dont think we have seen china play that kind of role. My first book was on the origins of the americansoviet cold war. I was writing the history of a new cold war. If we squeeze resources in the United States and elsewhere, it will create higher incentives on the middle east. We will see that in terms of oil and gas. The u. S. , you were just in warsaw, but you know now, the world has recognized, europe has recognized u. S. Liquefied gas exports are fundamental to their security. That would not have been seen two or three years ago. I think you are also pointing to the fact we are creating new dependencies on minerals to the great degree people are not calculating. With that will come new geopolitical risks, tensions, and challenges. Is there anything the Biden Administration is getting right or wrong that you want to mention . I think if we take the ira, the great thing about this bill is it is agnostic. It provides incentives across the board. That is so different. I just came back from europe. In europe, the way to do it is to write very tight regulations telling people, bureaucrats in brussels telling companies what to do. I think the ira is a unique form of legislation as well as the size and impact of it. I think surprises will come out. Getting this sorted out has to be a bipartisan effort. Without it, you can put all the money into it, but if you cannot build things, you will not get things done. Are you aware of any Major Projects out there, permitting projects that have not been able to move forward because of the paralysis at many Different Levels in the permitting process . Federal, state, local . I think it is clear on transmission lines that is a huge problem, even bringing wires onshore for offshore wind. The Mountain Valley pipeline is 95 done and cannot get the last 25 miles done. Those are the types. You could make such a long list. Just make a list of all these things not happening because our permitting system is so inefficient and complicated. It ends up with just plain paralysis. Let me ask you finally, china. Does china and its investment in solar, acrosstheboard, new forms of nuclear, across every form of energy track out there, as i look at it and what china is doing, i wonder if the United States is further and further in the backseat of driving Global Energy realities, and i would just love to get your take on china. The u. S. Has the great advantage that we are the most innovative nation and we have an ecosystem no other country has. With that said, china has made a major commitment to wind and solar. Roughly 57 of their electricity comes from coal. One of the things i wrote about coming down the road is china was developing electric cars not only because of the climate and environment, not only to reduce oil but it recognized it could not get into the global Combustion Engine market. It was too late. It wanted to be a front runner in terms of electric car street i think we will see more competition from chinese electric cars coming into the market. On top of that, china owns about 95 of the world solar panels and lithium batteries. They are they are and we are not there yet. Dan yergin, thank you for joining us for the major semafor infrastructure summit. Thank you. There we have it. I think justin will come up and say a final word. I want to tell our ceos i want to be president of the master class because that is what we just got. Thank you all for staying with us today. I want to thank our team for their Great Partnership and allowing us to convene here. Justin, over to you. Justin repeating some of the words steve just said, this has been a great pleasure to host all of you this morning. We are still trying to figure out how you square really highquality, intelligent content from amazing people on a weekday across 2. 5 hours. We know that is a lot to ask. We are innovating around that. Thank you for being with us. Thanks to verizon and genesis who made this possible. For those of you interested, we would love to share some of our content at semafor. Com. Our newsletters and sector are getting a lot of attention and engagement. With that, have a great day. Thanks for hosting. [applause] this week, the house and senate are both adjourned for the president s day holiday and will return later this month. Thursday, live coverage of cpac, the consertive Political Action conference in washington, d. C. , with many conservative leaders spking at the event including former president trump. Friday and saturday, live coverage of the National Governors Association Winter meeting. Speakers include justices Sonia Sotomayor and amy coney barrett. In the group of antitrump conservatives and centrists serving as an alternative to ac. Also on saturday, live coverage the South Carolina republican primary. What this week le on the cspan networks or on cspan now, our free mobile video app. Go to cspan. Org for scheduling information or to watch live and ondemand anytime. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government