Im one of those people who admit to going to davos. Cisco has the chalet on the promenade where you can go in and i i get a with it because you can watch in realtime what they are tracking nefarious activities on the global web. Im fascinated by the sources and how the sun moves and how cybernefarious activities move and i always thought connectivity created this problem. Do you trust the connectivity or should you hear it 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. To make it such a great question and i think its a mistake to trust. I dont think we should fear but i think we should manage. I think we need to have our eyes open about the nature of the risk and its an increasingly interconnected world. 43 billion estimated 43 billion connected devices by the end of this year. Thats a massive attack and the mistake that you 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 everything the net have to offer. 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 thats what the resilience is about. Resilience is about doing what you can to keep bad actors out and 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 are at their malware knocks out the functions that those computers enable and how can you do it 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 or is that just an illusion . Thank you for asking that. I wrote a in 2010 called no more secrets. I sort of thought that was back there but i wasnt sure. So we should just let it go and put our secrets down. Heres how i talk about it. I talk about it in terms of training so few trained 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 in the shelflife is vanishingly short. You think about it in terms of private security and what we just talked about. And all the pressures for transparency the ubiquity of information the idea that you will compete in the business by having a monopoly of information you know they are brittle plants. I say to my friends and National Security world of your plan is keeping secret some something speaker for any amount of time you need a different plan so thats training. We can give up our secrets today but we are quite ready for that but it means you should be pushing as hard as you can to operate and whoever can figure out how to operate with fewer secrets and less of a need to protect that information you will have the advantage. I want to know where democracies fit into this that and the polling with the discussion about ai and how ai can be so helpful and moving out disinformation and rooting out bad actors that somebody said ai can be used to generate misinformation so its ai one versus ai too to and they are 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. Institutions and minorities. Where does all of that mush of democracy fit in a highly sophisticated tech world . It such an important issue and after spending 40 years during National Security most of my time today is to reinvigorate education in this country. How is it going . While its a bit of a but i have lots of great partners. In florida . Right . Lots of folks are out there that seriously bringing back that sense of Civic Responsibility in bringing that into step. We need to bring that possibility and the idea of selfgovernment not just for institutions that 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 for what i put out in this analogy that im innovating and working on it for a weapon. I have something 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 for disinformation tells us democracy is irrevocably broken. Fundamentally broken in powerless to bring about change. That changes the promise of democracy. There general paul issued a new report as head of u. S. Cybercommand and security and an executive summary of this report are now and its interesting in the back of my mind not february 24 of february 23 russia put an allout assault, cyber assault on ukraine and this young guy fedorov who is head of all Things Digital and ukraine in his 32 years old is acknowledged he wrote who somehow secured ukraines incredibly digital important assets and also have fields Software Engineers embedded in the ukrainian workforce and a red of facilities report and i said thats an official big sounding report but do americans have anywhere near the capability and what we are seeing in ukraine today . Whether you think, what are our spots from nsa Cyber Command in our population and as he looked up yearold application application of this in a theater of war that active today does that stack up while . Ukraine had a clear wakeup call. Russia carried out in 2015 that attack that folks might remember two days before christmas where they take took out electricity for a quarter million customers. They got the power back on in six hours not because their i. T. Folks kick the russians out their system. Because they had guys who remembered how the it was physically laid out and they got in there and drove to the break her and manually put them back into place. Thats resilience. The ukrainians had a wakeup call and an understanding of resilient and we arent on that scale quite yet. And to be sure they have suffered consequences of Cyber Attacks in ukraine. It has had an impact on them but not to the degree that we thought it might. It takes time to get into system. You have to learn the system and learn the operation figure out how to do it to have greater impact but you can do that on your own time schedule and its very different from saying i want this target on this date right now. It we have always debated about the benefits of cyber. The last question and its fantastic that youve been out there basically pounding from 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 cyber tech is ready. Is the biden of administration failing to communicate the seriousness of this and are we not getting the leadership by the white house on these issues . Im not sure what ready means. I do think, listen to think we have come a very long Way Companies like microsoft and others out there who are working closely with their customers they are doing a much better job of protection. Ceos rank is very highly and i have sat on the nephra boards and boards are not talking about this and it general board meetings. I think its on peoples radar screen and i think where we have failed the most is as they say in this area of resilience. Patches and configuration of your network. Bring in everybody in your business to figure out how a successful cyber attack to bring down your business and brainstorm all the ways it could be impacted. Do you have enough paper and pencils and you have backup mechanisms so when that bad that happens you can keep working and thats a big deterrent. Youre saying to your adversary may be overly good at cyber that you arent going to have the impact you want to have. Is a famous journalist who we will remember decades ago 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 had we put in place those recommendations would we be in a different place today. Suzanne spalding, csis, thank you. [applause] please welcome congressman rick larson Ranking Member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee. The politics of porter will guide the conversation. [applause] thank you for joining us today. 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. I am curious are there any emerging technologies and infrastructure that you can talk about that you think should be prioritized Going Forward . And this is the exciting part of transportation. We pass the bipartisan infrastructure law that built on a foundation built in the 1950s but we need to start thinking and we have started thinking about what transportation writ large looks like so there was a bipartisan infrastructure law to do that to build a cleaner and safer system. The ideal the idea of Technology New emerging technology and how it folds into ensuring or helping us build that system is very critical. In aviation or issues of drones in the airspace and advanced air mobility and the age will be here in about three years and that is a combination of classic Aviation Technology as well as autonomous technologies, ai and when you look at aviation air Traffic Control there may be areas on the pesticide where ai ai can help air Traffic Controllers in the future in the airspace and their things going on with surface transportation as well put a lot of interesting opportunities out there. Safety have to be first. All the technology and transportation is one thing. People cant get safely from a to b its not worth the investment. We are getting to a point where members of congress can and wrapped their heads around Surface Technology or of the structure. Can you talk about an elaborate on the future . I havent thought about how chat g. Bt would apply to transportation just yet. But i think the role of helping folks get from a to b, if you are Consumer Travel and transportation thats what you want. Ai algorithms can cut down on time and travel faster and make the direction to take better. It was criticize the other day for reading maps and the reason is when, nothing against the on line mapmakers sometimes they are really wrong and is a member of congress about my step to know how to get to say ferndale washington. And without a map. The mayor doesnt want me to be late so their limits to these technologies. You still have to know where you are in the world in order to get to where you want to go. Lets talk about urban and bridging the divide between urban and rural infrastructure. The farm bill is something that you should pass in congress. Can you talk about any investments, Infrastructure Investments along those lines . I think this is an important part of the debate with transportation. Sometimes the debate gets trapped between folks are from urban or suburban or rural areas. If you look at states for instant, 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. To bring together urban suburban in rural areas around safety and some of the larger programs we have megagrants. Those are grants that can be used in urban and suburban in 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. There are programs that can bring folks together that help build a constituency for transportation. And second that will help our competitiveness and help in the investment of moving goods and services in people including areas that i work in. Speaking of rural areas, broadband albies the 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 . This is an area outside of the jurisdiction of the transportation committee. Inside the bipartisan and 1. 2 trillion total including a 65 billiondollar, five or 6 milliondollar in broadband alone. A lot of these investments are being deployed statebystate. We want to encourage states to do that because these have to be defined locally where these dollars go. The second thing we have been advocating for our better maps of Service Broadband service and the third is there is a spread of where those dollars go and not a Peanut Butter spread but were they need to go. Think back not that anyone ought to do this. Think back to the pandemic. I dont want to do it either but you might remember one story about Point Roberts washington at peninsula and Washington State that separated from the district. They are all great. But some of those broadband dollars are going to slack week last week going to it will make them in the future much less isolated if they have broadband system for wireless bride and system that actually works in the event of Something Like that. The pandemic is one thing. After 9 11 as well the border was closed so riding the bus the third, fourth and fifthgraders from Point Roberts into canada and other candida 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. Its kind of one story how broadband can be used to reach out in the isolated area and help in the future bring those folks and everybody else in the event that something happens. You touched on the app and infrastructure issues specifically in the district. I will just say there is a joke on capitol hill that every week was infrastructure week and the president said i appreciate that it probably is. Every days infrastructure day every day. We are doing all we can to identify and help cities and counties identify the project said they need funded. I jokingly say im a member of the Second District in the mayor and a deputy mayor for small town in my district is want to help them get these dollars and apply them to get them to work for a very simple reason. If we do this again in four years and want every member of congress to remember how good they felt in the last four years to make it easier to vote for the next version of the transportation infrastructure bill. Thank you could congressman larson. It was great to have you here. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. [applause] please welcome congressman steny hoyer chair of the regional leader should council. Steve clemons returns to lead the session. I get habitually used to calling our friend mr. Leader. Im not offended. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Let me start at a couple of things before we go deep into conversation. I want to ask you and i dont want you to be nice to anyone. If you could run the show more directly right now is there anything you would do different to add to the mix of the moment . This is a phony debate that doesnt have much to do with the debt at all. Did that have to do if you spend money or cut taxes. Neither of which will be affected by the debt limit. Where only the country in the world that has a meaningful debt limit. Denmark has where my father was born in australia used to have it in a repealed it. Denmark never its a phony political issue met to pretend we are cutting spending by eliminating the debt. You go to macys and you buy a 200dollar coat and you charge it and you go home and you sit around the Kitchen Table and say now we are too far in debt with the limit our debt. Macys send you a bill for 200 you write dear macys ive debt limit of 100 so we cant pay you and macys send you a nice letter back and says oh we are very sorry to hear that and 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 or thats when you want to set your debt limit. The taking hostage of the credit of the United States of america 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 a hand in this but i told people i will never vote against the debt limit. I should note selfishly would represent a matt gaetz if you dont negotiate with their hostage that was one of our reporters. Lets jump in the infrastructure. I am really interested i didnt answer your question but 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 at this is about more clearly but i think mccarthy explained it in terms of its spending and the American Public says you cant do that. Joe bidens voice is missing on that. I think hes talking about it but he needs to come to the American People and say look i would urge him to have a fireside chat. In extremis you might not use it but its problematic and confidence building. It confidence here around the world that somehow america would not pay its debts. Everything around the world is dom nominated in dollars. So this is not just a domestic issue this is an International Global issue and its a catastrophic problem. Matt gaetz, some of them are saying go buy it and it will have a ripple effect. Thats not true. It will have gargantuan adverse effects. Regional leader should council. Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked you to chair a group of 12 democrats out there and is a