Information trade how big tech conquers countries, challenges our rights, and transforms our world. Can you hear me without the mic . No, okay. Can you hear me with the mic . Also know. Heads up in the back. Alexis is the deputy ceo of new york city where she runs basically a policy Experiment Lab trying to get vendors to compete for who cana devise the best programs to improve social welfare of the citizens ofpr new york. She is an adjunct professor of media and communications and she spent a couple of decades studying these issues extremely intensively as doctoral student and then as a member of the staff of the u. N. Mission, of the state department, and also just thinking her guilty about the witches so clear from this book which i really admire. A quick round of applause for alexis. [applause] just jump right in. This book is about what you call take a minute and tell us what those arent what you felt we needed a new category for them. Sure. Thankdo you all for coming. So wonderful to see you all here. I think the best way to describe is to talk about how i came upon the idea to write this book in the first place. Back in 2015 there were a number of terrorist attacks across france, and in november 2015 the was with the largest terrorist attack which killed over 130 people and it was found out after the fact a lot of these attacks are carried out and organize in social media. So social Media Companies really got involved in working with defense agencies to try to figure how do we stop the proliferation of terrorist on our platforms, how do we keep them from organizing, attacks like this on a platform. It was a kind of rough start in the beginning. One of the people who is responsible for the tax was captured about six months later, despite the fact you didnt actually post on facebook for the entire time. The was in a lot of cooperation between governments and Tech Companies at the time. A few years later facebook, google, youtube, amazon and a few others came together for a Global Internet for him to talk about how to use, right terrorism. This is something that was really just organized by the Tech Industry and for the Tech Industry. There wasnt a get a lot of cooperation with government. Skip forward a few more months. We saw the series of hurricanes in use, hurricane marie hit puerto rico and wiped out their power grid, wiped outth cell phe coverage. Fema didnt show up. Who showed up . Tesla came forward to rebuild their electric grid. Google showed up with project, these balloons that provide internet and telecommunications coverage. E and it was at this time i thought okay, what is going with the Tech Industry . Theyre not just making spreadsheets and calendars or apps. They are getting involved in areas where outside of their core mission and aries the use to be the full responsibility of the government. With diplomacy, counterterrorism, defense, effort such ability, edison services and i thought the rest be some better way to talk about them than just tack. He seemed to have a role to play in geopolitics. The problem was nonstate actor kind of already involved being a bad guess i started studying where this turn happened although some would think of Mark Zuckerberg as a terrorist. So i looked into, i just did some research and recently as 2010 the diction of social science to find nonstate actors as examples like the u. N. And nato. Even then there were not considered terrorists and it sometime around 201220 13th that 2013 that you start seeing this term is used with reference to alqaeda and it eventually with isis. Nonstate actor was taken with that guys but there are these tech were not nationstate either. So i i thought maybe there needs to be another way to talk about them so i introduced this concept of net states. So interNet Companies, internetbased companies who are working outside of their Core Technology mission in areas that used to be the domain of nationstates like defense, diplomacy, infrastructure, citizen services. I wrote the article in 2015. People who read it said i think this is a little bit of a stretch and i put it on the shelf for two years and after hurricane marie i thought actually i really feel like theres something to this and thats when you put the article out there, wired publisher and it turns into this book. Whats the difference between net states and of the big Tech Companies who might have philosophic concerns like donating money or volunteer eight oh whatever, cisco, those that are major and twostep . Is a good question. In the book i dont put twitter in this category and and i do t castle in this category which might seem surprising. The reason is im looking at how Tech Companies are expanding outside of the Digital Services and into these domains that use 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 is having a real stake in national treaties. This is a differentiation i make between these two and people have asked me what about other Big International companies. Your cocacola that operates globally and mcdonalds but neither one of them are opening a Counterterrorism Department. Facebook has a larger Counterterrorism Department than the state department and it doesnt seem all that strange that they would. I think this is one of the reasons i thought its worth paying attention to. The list of companies qualify as net state is google, amazon, facebook, off of it and you anticipate my question, tesla may be why tesla . One of the things i looked at in the book is not just a Tech Companies are expanding intergovernmental domains but how they are expanding into what i call just in real life, in the physical infrastructure and services. This is something tesla and elon musk and his many Sister Companies of tesla is doing in some ways more than anyone else, with his solar city operations, they are pursuing partnerships with government to provide electricity. Hes nobody into space with star link. Theres a lot of endeavors where they are no longer just look at their prime products and Services Like cars. But are really changing the way we think about public infrastructure. So for instance, with the Boring Company they are producing highspeed rail in chicago. Thats a branding mechanism he objects to. Exactly. One of the question is, we have no private Sector Companies who are in charge of our public infrastructure, what happens when the decides they dont necessarily want to make it available for all . This is one of the reasons i talked a lot 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 they are not under any obligation to stay. They dont have their responsibility the government has to provide equally and fairly access to services. What do they want . You write in the book net states to have beliefs. What you mean by that . What are their beliefs . One of the things that distinguishes these companies is a number of people that work there, a large enough contingent to make a difference, lets say, are driven by this belief that technology should be used for good. We see this with the case of google. They worked with department of defense on a very small contract called project maven looking at how to apply ai to the recognition technology. This was a small contract. They have a handful of people out of googles empire working on it, but when people found out inside google this was happening, a number of people resigned in protest. There was a companywide letter circulated saying we do not believe google should be in the defense business, and google backed down. They let go of the contract, to let it expire. So a a significant portion of e drive people who work in these organizations that want to see tech being used to build things, to do good. So their belief is not totally unlike the government is constituted in the constituent parts. This is something i think its one of the interesting features of these particular companies that i call net states, is that of course their interest in the 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 alliance with these beliefs of their core belief, that tech should be used for good. I think one of the challenges with this dynamic is that we may cheer them from the sidelines and say google, go ahead and protest but we dont actually have any role as citizens to directly influence that process, which is think makes this unique phenomena. Will come back to that in a minute. Based on your experience at a lot of what you talk what in the book i want to ask you about the governments relationship to net states. Let me ask you if you can start by recounting this episode you have in the book where, i have not read about before, and beating from the social Media Companies and take others with the Justice Department and the fcc about interference before the 2010 election and how that went. So there has been attempts by the Tech Industry up to about 2018 as referenced in the book to reach out to Law Enforcement, to reach out to big federal agencies and try to partner with them, work with them about figuring out how do we meet the challenges that we all face together. The Government Entities have been a little slow to respond. There was a meeting that was held in which the key player, google, facebook and others invited members from the department of Homeland Security and offered a lot of information about the own strategies to deal with their platforms, the emerging misInformation Campaign. In response they were met with silence. So the next time they convene they didnt invite anyone from government to the table. Now, i think in 2020 were seeing the ship to look at a special from the Defense Sector starting to reach out to Tech Companies very aggressively to get them to work with them, but i think there was the chief Security Officer at facebook is now at stanford put it really well. He said a local Police Department may be really hardworking and really strong, but we wouldnt ask a local Police Department to defend against an invading army. But thats sort of whats happening in the tech sector here we are looking at these Tech Companies to stand up their own counterterrorism units and own defense mechanisms, and not really providing the support that they need. After that episode and maybe before the cycle is sort of an interesting parable in the book about the rest of government stand office news. They can get their act together to participate in the Tech Companies are just going to do whatever they want to do. That was a valuable point. At the same time that presents a bit of a problem because we know that d. C. And especially Congress Even more than executive branch does not and cannot keep up with tech and with all these septuagenarian lawmakers who make their careers in a truck or car are then medicine and law but they show zero grassroots technology. I just remember during the zuckerberg during last year how facebook make money any was clear he had not been on a platform at all. We can tell these people to be better and higher better staffers or whatever, but fundamentally im wondering if you have thoughts of the government to be smart about its relationship with net states that the people in charge of overseeing the agencies have basically no idea what to ask for . Its a really good question and i think this couplet couplef different ways when you do think about it. One is when you do make sure were putting people in congress who do understand the importance of engaging with technology, not just some ancillary locale but really a power player in both domestically and geopolitically. So thats number one. We are starting to see an influx of younger sort of more Diverse People running for elected office. I have some hope that within a few years well see kind of the nature of people who are representing us start to reflect societies 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 have 24 Election Campaign of misinformation from four actress. That was a few years ago and weve not seen any congressional action and i think theres no real excuse for it other than an lack of appetite. I dont think its a lack of understanding. Even if the Congress People themselves dont grasp all the details of technology, they certainly have access to resources that they could learn or help inform themselves better about what to do. Its hard to be passionate if you cant grasp it. Apparently Vladimir Putin exactly. Talk about the work of these net states who are stepping up on counterterrorism and antibigotry and prejudice groups. Im wondering what you think about the imbalance that exists between the work of those Tech Companies that net states can do here and abroad, and what you think theres a a certain imbalance in the plainfield of the First Amendment presents, you know, we have strictures about how we can compared the eu which cant impose regulations more easily. What are your thoughts about that . I was talking with someone from the French Embassy about the fact that really robust hate speech laws in france and using but we done anything like a First Amendment. Sort of this wistful way. I was looking at him through this wistful way of thinking would be great if were some able to find a middle ground . I think that there needs to be some sort of movement from people who are sort of at the extreme ends of these things. Theres no mistaking really serious hate speech really for anything other than what it is. Its sort of equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater i think. Extremely egregious examples of hateful content, if it cant relate them in some way we could at least put pressure on our Tech Companies to be more aggressive about labeling if not taking them down. This is something we seen a look at with facebook and youtube and google is labeling the content that is problematic. Facebook recently has been doing this with information about the coronavirus that seems problematic, labeling it as it is the potentially suspect. This is one way to get at making sure consumers are more informed of what their sync with that just dripping it away from the internet completely. Do you feel like, do you have any thoughts about whether that is working, can work . I think its still early days and we will need to study its impact. I think its a start. Its better than nothing. I remember a few years ago asking eric schmidt who was the ceo of google at the time what the thought was that google about search, why cannot thise something that they took to have your hand in identifying hateful or problematic content ricky said we dont censor anything but we can do you rank that kind of contents content so doesntp first. They are putting their thumb on skills although the behind the scenes. Against this comes up to this question of the fact we dont necessarily have visibility into these actions. One of the things that makes these copies interesting from citizens perspective is the relative absence of transparency. We are not really in a position to say reveal to us your algorithms that show who you are flagging or not. We need to see the results and hope youre doing a good job. I have more questions about that but of what to make sure we cover a lot of bread before we take questions from the audience. I wonder where you come down on backdoors, the i get up on to wait around security features on devices so you can unlock them during an investigation or terrorist event. A big fight between attorney general and Silicon Valley. Its a difficult question and that something that i keep, columbia parttime in addition to much up at the city and ive had some people from the fbi come in a talk about this exact issue because i thought much of an expert what theyre up against. There is this palpable sense of frustration from the Law Enforcement sector that they dont have the tools they need to pursue people who are doing, engage in criminal activities in a way they would without this kind of technology. On the other hand, you can see from a company like apple one of the selling features of their phone is its secure and your information states on the phone unless you choose to do otherwise with it. I can understand the tech copies perspective to say why would we weaken a product that has such good security . It seems us to be some sort of agreement with Law Enforcement if they are 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 and this is an incident where there was no question of whether or not the person device was actually the property of some of it com