In the mic . No. Without the mic . Also no. Alexis is the deputy cto of new york city and runs a policy experiment lab, trying to get vendors to compete for who can devise the best programs to improve social welfare of the citizens of new york. An adjunct professor of tech media and communications at Columbia University and spent a couple of decade studying the issues as a doctoral student and then as a member of the staff at the u. N. Mission of the state department, and also just speaking deeply about them which is so clear from the book, which i really admire. So quick round of applause for alexis. [applause] just jump right in. This book is about what you call net states. Maybe you just want to start by taking a minute and telling us what those are and why we needed a new category. Canthank you all for coming. The pest way to straight what net states are is to talk about how i came upon the idea to right this book in the first place. So, back in 2015, there were a number of terrorist attacks across france, and in november of 2015 there was the largest terrorist attack which killed over 130 people, and it was found out after the fact that a lot of these attacks were carried out and organized on social media. So social Media Companies got involved in working with the defense agencies to try to figure out how to stop the proliferation of terrorists on the platforms, keep enthem from organizing attacks like this on our platforms, and it was a kind of rough start in the beginning. One of the people who was responsible for the attacks was captured six months later, despite the fact he had been actively posting on facebook for the entire time. Wasnt a lot of cooperation between governments and Tech Companies at the time. A a few years later, facebook, google, youtube, am on and a few amazon and a few others came together an Global Internet form to find out how to fight terrorism explicitly and this was just organized by the tech industry, and for the tech industry. There wasnt, again, a lot of cooperation with government. Then skip forward a few more mock months. We saw a heres of hurricane. Hurricane maee a hit puerto rico and wiped out their power grid, cellphone coverage and fema did not show up. Who showed up . Tesla. Came forward to bree rid their greening grid. Google showed up with project loon. Balloons providing internet and telecommunication coverage. Thought, okay, what is going on were the tech city . Theyre not just making spread sheets and calendars or apps. Theyre getting involved in areas way outside of their core mission, and areas thatad to be the full responsibility of government. With the diplomacy, counterterrorism, defense, infrastructure building, citizen services, and i thought, there had to be some wet better way to talk about then them than just tech. This had a role to play in geopolitics the term nonstate actor kind of had already evolved to being just gad buy. So i started just bad guy. I study where this happened. Some would think of Mark Zuckerberg as a terrorism. Some people think of Tech Companies as the bad guy. I just did some research and as recently as 2010, the digs incarcerate of social science defined nonstate actors with examples like the u. N. And nato. They were not cord terrorists. And it was 2012201 3 you started seeing the term used with regard to al qaeda and then isis. So nonstate actor was taken with bad guys but the Tech Companies were not nation states, either. So i thought there needs to be another way to talk but them. So introduced the concept of net statesful interNet Companies, Internet Based Companies who were working outside of their Core Technology missions in areas that used to be the domain of nation states, like defense, diplomacy, infrastructure, and citizen services. And i wrote the article actually in 2015. People who read it said, i think this is a little bit of a stretch. And i put on a shelf for two years, and then after Hurricane Maria i thought, actually, i really feel like theres something to this and thats when i put the article out there. Wired publish evidence it and it opportunity turned turned into e book. Whats the difference be net state and other big Tech Companies who might happen philanthropyishing concerns, donating, cisco, or uber or oracle that are major and do stuff. Its a really good question. In the bike dont put twitter in this category, which i do put tesla in this category, which might seem surprising in some ways. The rope is that im looking really at how Tech Companies are expanding outside of he Digital Services and into these domains used to be the territory of governments. You dont see uber getting involved in counterterrorism yet or at the moment. Microsoft is very deeply involved in diplomacy. You dont think of cisco as having a real stake in national treaties. So this sort of the differentiate between the two and some peopled a city. What about other Big International companies. Cocacola that operates glow globally, mcdonalds but theyre not opening a Counterterrorism Department. Facebook has a larger Counterterrorism Department than the state department, and sun seem that straining they that strange they would so i thought its worth paying attention to. The list of companies that qualify as net states, is google, amazon, facebook, apple, and profit and you anticipated me question, tessla. Why tesla. Absoluteliment one thing i look at in the become is not just how Tech Companies are expanding into governmental domain but expanding into what i call in real life, in physical infrastructure and services. And this is something that tesla and elon musk and his many sister companies, tesla, is doing some ways more than anyone else with his solar city operation, theyre pursuing partnership width government to provide electricity. He is now moving into space with star link. Theres a lot of endeavors where theyre no longer just looking at their prime products and Services Like carsbut are really changing the way we think pout public infrastructure. For instance, with the boring company, theyre producing high speed rail in chicago. And a branding maybe inch that elon objects to. Exactly. So, one of the questions is, if we have now private Sector Companies who are in charge of our public infrastructure, what happened when they decide they dont want to make it available for all. And this is one of the reasons that i talked about in the book about teslas work in puerto rico. They stepped in at a time when puerto rico needed someone to step in. When the federal government really did not. But theyre not under any obligation to stay. They dont have the responsibility the government has to, for instance, provide equally and fairly access to services. What do they want . You write in the book net states happen beliefs. What do you mean by that, what are their beliefs. One think i think distinguishes these companies is that a number of people that work there, enough a large enough contingent to make a difference, lets say, are driven in some ways by the belief that technology should be used for good. We see this with google. They, worked with the department of defense on a very small contract called project may ven, looking at how to apply a. I. To their Recognition Technology in drones, and this is a very small contract. A handful of people out of googled empire working on it. When people found out inside google this was happening, people a number of people resigned in protest terrorism was a companywide letter circulating we do not believe that google should be in the defense business, and google backed down, let the contract expire. So its significant portion of the drive, people that work in these organizations, that want to see tech being used to build things to do good. Their beliefs not totally unlike a governments is constitute offed constituent parts. Yeah. Something that i think is one of the interesting features of these particular companies that i call net states. Of course theyre interested in their bottom line, interested in making sure they can be successful businesses, but you do hear about internal employee protests, when the company does something they dont think aligns with these beliefs of their core beliefs, that tech should be used for good, and i think that its one of the alcohol langes challenged with the dynamic is we may si, yay, google forks ahead, protest, do anything you dont think is eight, but we dent have any role as citizens to directly influence that process, which i think is something that makes this a unique phenomenon. Well come back to that in a minute. Based on your experience and a lot of what you talk but any book issue want to ask you about the governments relationship to net states. Let me ask you, by dish if you can start by recounting this episode you have in the book which i had not read about, meeting by the Media Companies and at the Tech Companies with the Justice Department and the fec and the interference before the 2018 election and how that went. There has been attempted by the tech industry, up to about 2018, reverencees in the book to reach out to Law Enforcement to reach out to big federal agencies and try to partner win them, try to work with the to figure off how to meet the challenges that we all face together, and the Government Entities have been a little slow to respond. There was a meeting held in which the key players, google, facebook, and others, invited members from the department of homeland security, and offered a lot of information but their own strategies to deal with terrorism on their plats, the emerging Disinformation Campaigns and they were met with silence. The next time they convened they didnt instant individual anyone from the government to the table. I income 2020 were seeing this shift at but from the defense sector, starting to reach out to Text Companies very aggressively, to get them to work with them, but i think that there is a the chief Security Officer at facebook, now at stanford, said a local Police Department may by really hard working in really strong but we wouldnt ask a local Police Department to defend against an invading army. But thats what is happening in the tech sector. Were look at these Tech Companies to stan up to own counterterrorism units and Defense Mechanisms and not providing the support they need. The disengagement after that episode and maybe above this cycle is sort of a really interesting parable about the risk of government standoffishness. If d. C. Cant get it act together participate the Tech Companies will do whatever they want to do. Which i thought was a valuable point. And the same time presents a bit of a problem because we know that d. C. And especially congress, even more than the executive branch, does not and cannot keep up with tech and we have all these send old lawmaker who made their money in medicine and law but so zero grasp with technology during the suckberg hearings, Lindsey Graham asked if the facebook is the i same as twitter and orrin hatch asked how facebook made money. And we could ask them to be better and higher better staffers about i won differ you have thoughts how he government can be smarter but to the relationship with net state if the people in charge with overseeing the agencies has no idea what to ask for. A really good question. Think theres a couple of different ways we need to think but it. One is we need to make sure were putting peek in congress who do understand the importance of engaging with technology, not just as some ancillary locale but a power player in both domestically and gee row politically. Number one geopolitically. Were seeing an influx of younger and more Diverse People running for elective office. I have to hope within a few years well see the nature of people who are representing us start to reflect societys interest more globally. But i also think the people who are currently in office, its not a surprise that Technology Companies are impacting our daily lives. This is not news in 2020. We had the 2014 elects and this Misinformation Campaign from foreign actors. That was a few years ago and not seen any congressional action, and i think that theres no real excuse for it other than a lack of appetite. Its not a lack of understanding. Think even if the Congress People themselves dont grasp all the details of technology, they certainly have access to resources they can learn or help inform themselves better about what to do. Hard to be passionate if you cant grasp it. Yeah. Apparently Vladimir Putin doesnt want wants to silence the campaign. Yeah, talk but the work of these net states who are staffing up counterterrorism and antibigotry and terrorist groups. What do you think about the imbalance that exists between the work those Tech Companies, the net states can do here and abroad and whether you think theres a certain imbalance in the Playing Field the First Amendment presents. We can we have Legal Precedents and strictures how we can silence speech here compared to the eu which can impose regulations and do more things more easily. What are your thoughts about that. Its interesting if was talking with one from free French Embassy the fact they heat robust hate speed law in france but he said we dont have anything like the First Amendment in a wistful way and i was looking at him in a wistful way, thinking wouldnt it we great if we were able too find the middle ground. Think there needs to be some sort of movement from people who are sort of the extreme ends of these things. Theres no mistaking really serious hate speech, really, for anything other than what it is. Its the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater issue think. So i think that extremely egregious examples of hateful content, if it cant regulate enemy in say we can at least put pressure on the tech company to be more aggressive but labeling them, if not taking them down, this something we have seen with facebook and youtube and google is labeling the content that is problematic, facebook has been doing this with information about the coronavirus that seems problematic, labeling it as being potentially suspect, and this is i think one way to get at making sure consumers are more informed about what theyre seeing without stripping it away from the internet completely. Do you feel like do you have any thoughts about whether that is working, can work . So, i think that its still early days and well need to study its impact. I think that its just start. Better than nothing. I arm few years agoing a eric schmidt, the ceo of google, whether this should be something they took a heavier hand in identitying hateful for problematic content. He said we dont censor anything but we can derank that kind of content so it doesnt come up first. So theyre sort of tipping the put their thumb on the scaled behind the escapes and this come thousands this question of the fact we dont necessarily have visibility into these actions. So, i think one of the things that makes the companies interesting from a citizens perspective is that relative absence of transparenciy. Were not in a position to say, reveal to us your algorithms that show who your derank organize flagging or not women just see the results and hope theyre doing a good job. I have more questions but i want to make sure we cover a lot of ground before we take questions from the audience. Where do you come down only back doors, the idea that Law Enforcement needs a way isecurity features devices to a big fight ten the attorney general and Silicon Valley. Yeah. Its a really difficult question, and its something that i keep columbia parttime, in addition to my job with the . And i have had some people with the fbi talk about this exact issue. I thought heat larry from the expert and theres a palpable sense of frustration from the Law Enforcement sector that they dont have the tools they need to pursue people who are doing engaging in criminal activities in the way they would without this kind of technology. On the other hand, you can see from a company like apples perspective, one of selling opinioned of the phone is its secure and that your information stays on the phone unless you choose to do otherwise. I can understand the tech companys perspective 0 to say why weak an product that has such good security, but has to be some sort of agreement with Law Enforcement, if they have all of the proper approvals in place, to find some sort of solution to access content. I was thinking about the case with the San Bernardino attacks in california there was no question whether or not the persons device was property of someone who committed a terrorist act but the was nothing that Law Enforcement would do because there was no access. I think there are enough smart people working on these issues there could be a middle ground solution we havent yet identified that doesnt involve breaking the phone. Or new pi