Alexis is a deputy ceo of new york city where she runs basically a policy Experiment Lab trying to get offenders to compete for who can devise the best programs to improve social welfare of the citizens of new york. Shes in that adjunct professor of communications at Columbia University and shes studying issues extremely intensively as a chicago student and then as a member of the staff at the u. N. Mission of the state department and also a quick round of applause for alexis. [applause] just jump right into this book is about whatn you call states. Maybe you want to take a minute to tell us what those are and you why you thought we needed a new category 4 them. Thank you all so much for coming and its so wonderful to see you all here. I think the best way to describe it 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 of 2016 there was the largest terror attack which killed over 130 people and it was found out afterthefact that a lot were organized on social media. Social Media Companies really got involved in working with defense agencies to try to figure out how do we stop the proliferation of terrorism on our platforms . And we keep them from organizing attacks like this on our platforms and it was a kind of rough start in the beginning. One of the people who were responsible for the attacks was captured about six months later despite the fact that he had been actively present on facebook the entire time. There was a lot of cooperation between governments and Tech Companies at the time. A few yearsh later Facebook Google and youtube amazon and a few other came together for Global Internet forum to talk about how to fight terrorism explicitly and this was something that was organized by the Tech Industry and for the Tech Industry. Skip forward a few more months we saw series of hurricanes in the u. S. Hurricane maria hit puerto rico and wiped out their power grid, wiped out cell phone coverage and fema didnt really show up. He showed up . Tesla came forward. Google showed up to provide Internet Telecommunications coverage and at this time i thought okay what is going on with the Tech Industry. They are just making calendars and as per their getting involved in areas that are way outside of their core mission and control responsibility of government with diplomacy counterterrorism infrastructure building Citizen Services and i thought there had to be a better way to talk about them than just tech. They seem to have a role to play in geopolitics. The problem was the term nonstate actor kind of had evolved as a bad guy. I started studying where the turn happened. Although would think of Mark Zuckerberg as terror. I did some research and as recently as 2010 the dictionary of social science defines actors with examples like the u. N. And nato so even then they were not considered terrorist and it was sometime around 2012 or 2013 you started seeing the term they used al qaeda and eventually with isis. Nonstate actor was taken with bad guys but clearly these Tech Companies werent nationstates either so i thought maybe there needs to be another way to talk about them. Introduced into any nice companies who are working outside of their Core Technology mission in areas that used to be the Domain Agency like infrastructure. I wrote the article in 2015 pair people reddit said i think its a little bit subscript and i put it on the shelf for two years and have to Hurricane Maria thought i really feel like theres something to this and thats when i put the article out there why are published it and it turned into this book. Whats the difference between net states and other big Tech Companies who may have philanthropic concerns like donating money or volunteer aid or cisco or over or any of those other major. In the book i dont put twitter in this category and i do put tesla in this category which you might find surprising in some ways and the reason is im looking at how Tech Companies are streaming outside of services it into these domains they used to be the territory of government. You dont see uber getting involved with counterterrorism yet for at the moment. Microsoft is very easily involved with diplomacy. You dont think of cisco is having a real stake in it. This is sort of the differentiation between these two and people are asking what about Big InternationalCompanies Like cocacola that operates globally and mcdonalds but neither one of them are opening up a Counterterrorism Department. Facebook has the largest Counterterrorism Department and the state department doesnt seem all that strange. I think this is one of the reasons that i thought its worth paying attention to. See a list of companies are google amazon facebook apple and microsoft and you anticipated my question, tesla. Absolutely. One of the things i looked at in the book is not just how Tech Companies are expanding their domain but how they are expanding into what i call in real life and physical infrastructure services. This is something that tesla and elon musk and many Sister Companies that tesla are doing in some ways more than anyone else which is City Operations and partnerships with governments to provide electricity. He is now moving into space. There are a lot of endeavors where they are no longer looking at the prime products and Services Like cars but are really changing the way we think about public infrastructure. For instance like the Boring Companies are producing highspeed rail in chicago. A mechanism that elon objects to. One of the questions is we have now private Sector Companies who are in charge of our public infrastructure. What happens when they decide they dont necessarily want to make it available for all and this is one of the reasons i talk a lot in the book about teslas work in puerto rico. They stepped into the time when the federal government step when puerto rico stepped in to the federal government did not. They dont have the responsibility to government has to for instance provide equally and fairly access to services. You write in the book that they have the 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 in some ways by this belief that technology should be used for good. In the case of google they work with the department of defense for the contract called project mabin looking at how to apply ai to their Recognition Technology and this is a very small contracts. They are a handful of people out of googles entire company by what people find that insight tool that was happening a number of people resigned in protest and they were companywide letter circulating say we do not believe google should be in this business and google pack now. They let their contracts expire. There are people that work in these organizations that want to use tech to build things and to do good. Its unlike government can constituted as its government parks. One of an interesting feature of these companies that i call net states of course their interests and their bottom line in making sure they can have successful businesses but you do hear about internal employee protests. The company doesnt align with their core beliefs that tech should be used for good. I think its one of the challenges with this dynamic that we may cheer them from the san lai sidelines and say yea google protests and do anything you dont think is right but we dont have her role as a citizen to directly influence that process which is a big phenomenon. Will come down back to that in a minute. I want to ask you about the governments relationship to net states. Let me ask you if you could start by recounting this episode you have in the book the i have not read about before about interference before the 2010 election and how that went. There has been attempts by the Tech Industry up to 2018 to the time that this book to reach out to Law Enforcement to reach out to federal agencies and try to work with them in figuring out how do we meet these challenges that we all face together and Government Entities have been a little slow to respond. The meeting was held with the key Players Google and facebook decided security and offered information on how to deal with terrorists on their platforms and the emerging Information Campaign and in response they were met with violence. By the next time they convened they invited government to the table. 2020 we are seeing a shift a little bit from the private sector trying to reach out to Tech Companies very aggressively to get them to work with them but i think the chief Security Officer at facebook who is now stanford put it really well. He said a local Police Department may be really hardworking and really strong that they wouldnt ask a local Police Department to defend against it and army but that is sort of whats happening in the tech sector. We are looking at these Tech Companies to stand up to counterterrorism and not really fighting to support them. The engagement after that episode before this cycle is an interesting parable in the book about the risks of government standoffishness in the federal government cant get its act together to participate in the Tech Companies are just going to do whatever they want to do which i felt was right to a point. At the same time it presents a bit of a problem because we know especially congress more than the executive branch does not and cannot keep up with tech. We have all these lawmakers who made their careers in insurance or car sales or even medicine and law. Just remember during the zuckerberg hearing last year orrin hatch asked facebook. You can tell these people to be better and higher better staff or whatever but fundamentally numb wondering if you have thoughts about how the government can be smarter about its relationship with a net states and people overseeing agency and how basically no one has asked for. Its a really good question i think there are a couple of different ways when he did think about it. One is we need to make sure we are putting people in congress who do understand the importance of technology not just as ancillary locale but a power player in domestically and geopolitically. We are starting to see an influx of younger more Diverse People running for elected office. I have hopes that within a few years we will see the nature people who are representing us start to reflect these interests more appropriately. 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. Of the 2014 elections and misInformation Campaign from foreign actors, that was a few years ago and we have not seen congressional action. Theres no real excuse for never there have been a lack of appetite. I think even if the congresspeople themselves dont grasp all the details of technology they certainly have access to resources that they can learn or inform themselves better. Its just hard to be compassionate. Talk about the work of these net states who are staffing up in counterterrorism and antibigotry and am wondering what you think about the balance that exists between the Tech Companies and what the net states can do here and abroad and whether you think the imbalance the First Amendment presents. We can we have restrictions compared to the eu who can compare things more easily. Its interesting i was talking with someone earlier about the fact that they have really robust hate speech laws in france but they said we dont have anything like the First Amendment. I was looking at him in a wistful way thinking but wouldnt it be great if we were somehow able to find middle ground. I think there needs to be some sort of, some sort of movement from people who are at the extreme ends of these things. There is no mistaking hate speech for what it is. Its like someone yelling fire in a crowded theater. I think extremely egregious examples of hateful content if you cant regulate them in some way he can at least have her Tech Companies be more aggressive about labeling them as not taking them down. What we have seen with Facebook Youtube and instagram and facebook has been recently doing this with information about the coronavirus labeling it as potentially suspect and this is i think one way to make sure consumers are more aware rather than it away completely. Deal response about whether that is working or it can work . Its still early days and we will need to study the impact. I think its a start and its better than nothing to remember few years ago eric schmidt who is the ceo of google at the time asking what the thought was in google about certain whether this should be something that needs a heavier hand tonight doma find it problematic content and he said we dont censor anything. They are sort of tipping the cup on someone behind the scenes in the comes as question of the fact that we dont necessarily have visibility into these actions. One of the things that makes these companies interesting from a citizens perspective is the relative absence of transparency. We are really in a position to say revealed to us your algorithms that show who you are citing are not. Let me see the result and hope that they are doing a good job. I have more questions about that but i want to make sure we cover a lot of ground before we take questions from the audience. The idea that Law Enforcement needs away runs unlocking and terrorism event. Its really difficult question something i taught at columbia for time and its my job in the city could efficiently have people come in to talk about this exact issue because i thought lets hear from the experts and theres is real palpable sense of frustration from the Law Enforcement sector that they dont have the tools that they need to pursue people who are engaging in criminal activities in the way that they would without this kind of technology. On the other hand a company like apple and its perspectives one of the features of the selling points is that a secure in your information with it. I can understand for Tech Companies to say why would we weaken a product that has such good security but there has to be some sort of an agreement with Law Enforcement had to have all the proper approvals in place to find a solution to access content partners thinking about the case with the San Bernardino attacks in california and this is an instance where theres more question about whether or not the persons device was the property of someone who committed a terrorist act but there was nothing that Law Enforcement could do. There was no access so i think there enough smart people working on these issues that there could be a piece of legislation that we have identified. The one of the reasons we suggest that is Tech Companies are not seeing our legislators take up new regulations or any regulations or meaningful regulations. I think that i feel a little bit more confident about the text are stepping forward in this climate. One thing i like about the book is in a time of deep cynicism and pessimism about the role of tech which i feel like i am especially steeped in as the publisher about tech you have forced us to confront a lot of the good it does alongside the bad and i want to read a quick section here. She writes about how tech do so much for good. For example in 2018 a Police Department assisted up Pilot Project using experimental facial Recognition Software and within three days 4000 missing children were located. Boys were rescued. She talks about an apple watch that detected a womans heart rate who it then the elevator when she went to kidney failure and she was taken to the hospital. Excuse me for just a second while i reach for the next rest of my notes. You dont flinch from the bad stuff too and i wonder what your disposition is toward the tech pessimist, like Jacob Silverman who says they net states have irrevocably taken our power and made society truly worse. I would add first of all whether not any of them still use a smartphone or google or publish their ideas about how technology is not working for us on our platforms in its reality that we have to confront. Theres a lot of problems with Tech Companies that we are engaged on an basis. They give us something. We have all become accustomed to how quickly they can connect to each other through social m