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 d