additive manufacturing? >> the gentleman here in the fourth row and then -- >> ryan sturgell with the cohen group. i wanted to ask what initiatives you see either dod funding or potentially even other departments for additive manufacturing, and, for example the white house has, you know, moved to set up this national network for manufacturing innovation and the first center is on additive manufacturing, i think based in youngstown ohio and dod kicked in a fair amount of money to fund that initially. other -- and maybe you can comment on sort of how that's going, but are there other initiatives like that sort of coming down pipeline that we might see. >> thank you. over here. >> i'm sean lingus with "federal computer week" magazine. dave you mentioned a versery

are moving away from a hardware-laden approach to more software to having digital things early in the cycle. that's kind of like maybe a crude summary of what you said, but can you elaborate on what you need by that and implications for how the u.s. does business in that field? >> because the three questions were put so succinctly. there was one more hand and i'll bring that into the mix and then we'll just wrap up. >> hi. my name is steve barron. i'm a soldier and defense fellow though my remarks are my own here. would i like to see if i can get remarks specifically as they relate to 3-d printing and energetic materials. as we look forward we head a lot of discussion about cold. ry and carts i was wondering with airdrop munitions so they can be more tailored and adapt adaptable and more efficiently placed in the hands of the war fighters. to kind of zero in, opportunities and efforts, what's going on right now that you know of merits of this kind

of research and effort and lastly defense industry and academic partnerships, things that we can leverage our graduate students to do a lot of lifting on. what are the opportunities there? thank you. >> why don't we just work from brennan downward and we'll see if we can cover most of these questions as we conclude. >> okay. i think i can kind of speak to the -- to three of them. with regards to logistics, the -- the key part that we see in terms of applying additive manufacturing as i menned earlier is you're essentially turning the supply chain on its head so you create the part and -- and at a manufacturing base and then you send it to a depot and it gets put on a component or it gets sent out into the field. if you push the entire supply chain forward and you actually put the ma she be in the field and you're printing in the field, you're actually just trunk agent entire process and meeting the need exactly where it is, so the potential there is great and significant in

condensing the whole supply chain and all the logistics that support it and looking at reduction of inventory and reduction of all of the money that is spent on the space where all of these parts are housed, but, again, it has to be a thoughtful process and which of those parts actually is there a business case to trunk ate that with logistics and supply chain and then with regards to the question about academic partnerships, so a lot of the universities work with organizations like myself and then the youngstown, ohio, it's america makes that you're referring to, it is an initiative that was borne out of the dod and it brings together industry academia and the services and -- and department of defense to have a conversation and continue to push the technology forward and to facilitate the process of the acquisition process and introduce that entrepreneurial spirit that you have in the small organizations that focus primarily on technology of the 3-d print and the potential implications. they may not have a familiarity

with the dod contracting process like most of us do and so america makes and organizations like it are helping to facilitate that conversation. there are a number of investments that dod is making directly with schools somen state and virginia tech will two of the schools we work with. sim iii is the lab at penn state and dreams lab at virginia tech is the 3-d arm and the different organizations that dod is making to look at them collaborativelily to look at the potential implications and what the processes are, where can you find efficiencies, what parts or components might be able to be printed and then we do a lot of work -- we also facilitate that conversation so taking the questions and investing our own funding and answering those questions and using the academic expertise. the graduate students in those programs, again, till have that traditional manufacturing and engineering pc ground and then are advancing it to understand better how do you design in 3-d? how do you look at a part a was

subtractively manufactured or three or four part and put them together and look at how they could be printed so those are some of the things and i hopefully covered all three of those. >> jim. would i like to address the question around design for additive manufacturing. i could characterize it right now as being an art and not an engineering science that the software design software needs to take a jump forward before it catches up with the technology that there's a lot of lack of understanding or just frankly knowledge about how you design the digitally optimal part that it's sometimes referred to. so, in many ways i compare it to when composites came in to aerospace and everybody was a metal person there was just an incredible adoption cycle a

cycle and had to totally reorient themselves, a cycle of getting composite education into engineering schools before it really flourished. that took decades really. there's some of that going on with designs for additive manufacturing. i would say there's really two interesting things though in the design for additive manufacturing space. the first is where designs are coming from that we've all heard about competitions being run on jet engine brackets or parts coming from design and art schools used in industrial applications so there's -- there's this democratization of designs already occurring. where do you go for ideas and solutions to include the actual users of the product? the second thing is that my experience is that folks embark on design for additive manufacturing path often veer

off and start designing for their own supply chains because as they lay out economics and the needs they revert back to i don't want to change the part. i just want to be able to build it at the point of use because of what that does to my logistical requirement, my inventory requirements, what it does for a disappearing source of parts, et cetera. >> thank you. >> dave? >> so sort of what's the implications for more and more software content closer and closer to sort of the front end of these systems? maybe i'll motivate that with an example and take you back a couple of decades or more so there's a set of enthusiasts that sort of have these scanners and they listen to things going on on the radios and if you had 20 or more years ago what you would do is figure out what you want to listen to. you go down to your local electronics store and you buy a crystal. you would open the back of the radio up and you would plug the crystal in there and you had

four slots for crystals so you could pick four if you wanted four and if you could change your mind you go back to the storage and get a different crystal and put that in and then you could use the device to listen to radio frequencies most interesting to you. we take that approach with the product. you get it enter the frequency and, boom, you're listening to it. as new formats come out, in large part that -- that new system is able to address and receive and understand those right? and the reason it can do that is because we're actually converting from the radio frequency that comes over the air into a format where we do a lot more of the processing in soft way. much, much earlier and so the -- the change to accommodate a new -- a new system, in this case a new radio, that you want to be able to listen to is an up load of software in that system. it isn't going down to the store and buying a crystal so you can sort of extrapolate to there to

system that we're not listening but communicating and systems where perhaps we want to bridge across different radio formats, right? in the past you might have to have different sub radios for each of the formats that you want to bridge and now you can ingest all of those and in software make that connection occur. real implication is one of, you know efficiency, cost, ex accessibility and those kind of things. >> and jimmy bryce harper, jimmy. i appreciate that relationship there because my son is a huge bryce harper fan. >> and we can't make him with 3-d manufacturing, can't yet make a replica. >> a little one. >> a little one. >> so i -- there are allotted -- there are a lot of key ideas here. i think going back to the question on design for additive mfrgs, at the end of the day that's the real opportunity. that's the real opportunity because it opens up a whole new way of making things that can

cost less because i need material. they can take less time because i can eliminate some processes out of my manufacturing line. there are a lot of things i can do with that that frankly just make the product better. i can take weight out of products because i don't put things in other places where i can't remove it later on. i have design flexibility. right now i've got a program where i've got a major component of a military engine on test and we made parts of it use additive manufacturing and i was able to lay in instrumentation leads and in doing that or ports for instrumentation leads and by doing that i don't have to add things that disrun aerodynamic performance. it just makes it a lot better so that really is ultimately where we need to go. what's the catch. what we have to learn how to do as jim alluded to it, it's kind of an art right now. get

the way we pose our problems and how we do our al i analysis we have to think not only how we make things and how we design things and analyze them with the physics to take full advantage of that. the opportunity there are things like the america makes initiative, like stem initiatives that tap into additive manufacturing. america makes was intended to catalyze the industry. intended to get this started and apparently it's worked because we're here talking about it. companies like my own, like others are really heavily engaged in it and we're working and real taking it forward very quickly. the other part of it, universities are a huge part of that. how do i think differently about the physics? we have a relationship that we heard about two universities earlier. we have a relationship naturally being a connecticut-based company and where we're working on additive manufacturing with them and if you talk to different companies, you'll hear

similar stories about things that they are forming with their universitieses that they have relationships specifically for that reason so i think there's a huge opportunity there, and i think it's only a matter of time before we get there. >> wonderful. well listen thank you all for being here and please join me in a big round of thanks and appreciation for panel. friday an c-span a look at medicaid and housing policy including toefrts reduce homelessness through better mental health services. watch live coverage of the alliance for health reform at noon eastern time on c-span and c-span.org. when the senate takes its august break we'll feature "book tv" programming weeknights in primetime on c-span2 beginning at 8:001 eastern and at the end of the summer look for two special programs. on saturday september 5th we're

live from our nation's capital for the 15th annual national book festival. followed on sunday with our live "in-depth" program with former second lady and senior fellow at the american enterprise institute, lynne cheney. book-tv on c-span2 television for serious readers. admiral paul zukunft is the newly appointed commandant of the u.s. coast guard and spoke at the national press club about challenges facing the coast guard including cybersecurity and increased shipping routing from the expansion of the panama canal. this an hour and a half. welcome to the national press club. my name is jeff balew withal jazz rah media netter english channel networks and our guest today is u.s. coast guard admiral and commandant paul zukunft. first, i would like to introduce our he had table guest and would ask each of you to stand briefly

as your name is announced. from the audience's right natalie de blasio ron haven and a member of the national speakers committee. make leaderer, publisher of "stars and stripesch" lieutenant command mer natalia best of the u.s. coast guard, jen judson, defense reporter at politico and co-chair of the national press club young members committee master chief steven cantrell, master chief petty officer of the united states coast guard and skipping over, kevin wensing, retired united states navy captain and the press club member who arranged the event speaking over our speaker momentarily, information technicians specialist second class janai, john donnelly, senior defense writer "congressional quarterly" and co-chair of the national press

club press freedom committee, will watson deputy commander of the national press club american legion pest and john gallagher, senior america's reporter ihs maritime and "trade fair play" magazine magazine. i also want to welcome our c-span and public radio and online audiences on press.org and i want to remind you that you can follow the action on twitter use the #npclunch. as 25th commandment of the united states coast guard ald miller paul zukunft leads the largest component of the department of homeland security. the non-retired coast guard boasts some 828,000 personnel including active duty reserves, civilian and volunteers with a

budget of about $8.1 billion. down a bit from last year, right? members of the coast guard operate ice breakers in the arctic ocean and help mitigate recent events like the migrant crisis coming over, the greenpeace blockade protest against the royal dutch shell execute counterdrug operations in the caribbean and provide security both in the u.s. and even some places as far away as the south china sea. they respond to natural disasters such as hurricane katrina and more on how we're marking that event here at the club a little later and human cost disasters such as the deep horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico? additionally the coast guard rescued more than 3,000 people each year and searches for boaters who go missing such as the two teenagers who disappeared off the coast of florida recently. as the smallest military force and the only one with law enforcement authority the coast guard has had a role in the

defense of the united states for 225 years. in fact yesterday, was the coast guard's birthday. today admiral zukunft will discuss the challenges for the coast guard such as congressional budget struggles, a well-debated cyber security plan maintaining a zero tolerance for sexual assault and a fleet in high need of monetization and sheer numbers to tackle the next 225 years. please give a warm national press club welcome to the commandant of the united states coast guard, admiral paul zukunft. [ applause ] >> jeff, thank you for the flattering introduction, and i had a chance to meet many of you before, and i just want to thank you. there's a lot of places that you could be right now but i'm just delight that the you're here to learn a little bit more about what i would say the little engine that could, the united

states coast guard, whose roots trace back to august 4, 1790 and i'll tell a little bit about our history talk a little bit about the present, talk a little bit about the future, and then really open it up to question and answer and just have a very spontaneous dialogue recognizing everything we say is on the record. so this has been a phenomenal week for the coast guard. i just returned from grand haven, michigan. called coast guard city usa. it's a city of about 10,000, but this weekend it was a city of 200,000. here to celebrate the united states coast guard, and every coast guard man and woman walking the streets of grand haven, michigan young teenagers not giving us flack but saying we love the coast guard. you cannot come back to washington, d.c. with a better feeling than after spending a little bit of time in coast guard city usa grand haven. yesterday we unveiled the forever stamp in commemoration of the united states coast guard. 15 million stamps printed because many time most folks

don't realize what the coast guard does on a day-to-day basis. i'm honored to be here with you today. tomorrow i'll be on pitching mound at national stadium to throw an opening pitch but more importantly on saturday i'll be in boston massachusetts as we commission our fifth national security cutter which is really paying huge dividends and i'll tell a little pitt about one of the national security cutters a little bit later on in my remarks. on monday i'll be in san diego for the ship that's going to return, and i'll tell you that story later and this is going to be a big media event a very big shoot, if you will, and then on thursday i'll be in havana cuba and so we'll be opening the embassy the following day. i'll be involved in bilateral discussions with the government of cuba with our u.s. interest section there and then secretary kerry, as you may know will be there on 14th as we open up the embassy in cuba, and so a little bit different than the coast

guard that alexander hamilton envisioned 225 years ago as i rattled off, you know, what's on my schedule for just the next two weeks, and the good thing is this is a slow two-week period. it actually picks up after, that and it's going to comfort asia-pacific region as well. it will will cover the arctic so we've got a lot going on over there as well. the coast guard many times we find ourselves on all seven continents across the globe, including anti-arc characters but today we've got two special people who are with us here today. right now we're only on five-day seven continents, but we're -- we'll get back to all seven of those. joining us first of all is lieutenant commander natalie best. she was commanding officer of a patrol boat serving for central command in the straits between iran and bahrain so she was the commanding officer of that cutter. and i just want to make a point that since 1978 every military

occupational specialty in the coast guard has been open to women, and they literally hit the ball out of the park and very trying. deployed for a year, young child at home, and it's great to have you back and we brought her back to washington, d.c. [ applause ] and you also heard introduced is petty officer janai. he's an information specialive. he works at an area where we can't say a lot about what they do behind locked doors, but he's also a linguist and served on one of our hamilton class cutters that was involved in a multi-lateral operation, not an exercise working with china japan, korea russia canada and the u.s. but really u.s.-led, and he was our linguist our japanese linguist because it's really hard to do combined operations if you can't speak a universal language.

we've been operating in this domain now for a number of years under the auspices of what we call the north pacific coast guard forum, and it's really a model of collaboration and effort with some of our key asia-pacific partners so thank you for your work over there. [ applause ] so imagine, if you will, it's august 4th, 1790. the continental navy was disbanded. the last ship was auctioned off in 1785 so while we emerged as victors from the revolutionary war, we were very much a bankrupt nation. in our first secretary of treasury alexander hamilton probably a champion of the understatement said if we had ten sentinels poefed at our ports might they do some good for the prosperity of our nation. a tariff act was passed before that, but you had pirates. you had people bypassing our

tariff laws and so quite honestly we're a maritime nation but without any maritime governance whatsoever. so alexander hamilton had this vision in that we would charter ten revenue cutters and then he wrote a letter to each one of those commanding officer. he wasn't so big on specifications of those ten ships. he said somewhere between 36 40 feet, and by the way each one shall cost $1,000 apiece. he sent these commanding officers out to build them. the first up came in at $2,500. two and a half times its initial acquisition cost. today our acquisition program, our total acquisition portfolio our growth is less than 2% and so we won four of eight of the federal acquisition awards last year so we've come a little bit -- some way since 1790, but the most important piece that alexander hamilton charged those commanding officers is to be

mindful that we are a country of free men and we are impatient of those who don't have a temperate attitude and abuse the rights of our citizens of the united states. and it was that letter to those commanding officers that really lives within the dna of the coast guard today, and it's reflected in our core values, honor, respect and devotion to duty. last year we used aviation use of force where we use sniper rounds to disable outboard engines, and we did that nearly once each week last year and there wasn't one person injuring during those interactions. just yesterday there was a boater in seattle shooting weapons at police officers. the coast guard gaim came in. we surround them, and we used the most powerful instrument, the strongle muscle in our body which has the least restraint our tongue and we were able to talk this person down at a point in time.

if you go back to alexander hamton's charge be mindful that we are a country of free men. i'm very mindful of the fact how heavy handed law enforcement tactics play out on cnn and so you to not see the coast guard of yesterday or today involved in any of these heavy-handed laumtd tactics. it's not me but it really gets pack to the dna of our peopler is veng on the front lines of our coast guard today. so i could not be more proud of what they do. fast forward to present day and i talked about one of our national security cutters. we have been a member of the national intim jens community for some time now so we're not only an armed service a law enforcement service we're also a member of the national intelligence community, and when i'm in san diego this monday, i will meet the coast guard cutter "stratton." it's the third of our national security cutters and they are coming off a four and a half month deployment. they have to come in because right now they are probably --

their load line is below water because of the 32-plus metric tons of cocaine that they have interdicted on one patrol not one bus. these are multiple interdictions over a four and a half month period. all of this driven by intelligence. last year when i came into this job, we had awareness of about 90% of the drug flow. ultimately destined for the united states. it doesn't come here directly. comes into countries like central america, like honduras el salvador and guatemala. coincidentally those are the same countries of origin where unaccompanied minors were entering the united states so violent crime, drug trafficking activity, but all of it targeted towards a demand in the united states. so there's a clear nexus between regional stability and drug trafficking but we have awareness of 90% of the flow. before coming into this job we were able to target about 10%, about 10%. now, some of this intelligence

comes from confidential informants. they are not paid a lot of money from their host nations. it could be a fishermen and he might be paid $300 to provide us very actionable information. if he's found out he'll be assassinate. not only will he be assassinated but his family will be assassinated and yet when we get that information i just don't have enough ships. i don't have enough assets to act upon that information. now the good news is we've closed that gap by nearly 35% in the last year which means we're not doing something else somewhere else and i can't tell you what that is but we've doubled down on the transit zone and it's making a huge difference today. we're up in the arctic, and i don't think alexander hamilton envisioned the arctic. last week we had protesters in portland, oregon, as one of shell's ships was departing. we are rapelers jump off a bridge and held a ship held up

and said you can't really be protesting here. shell is actually drilling as i speak today but into formation but five years ago today i was down in the gulf of mexico where i spent seven months which were like dog months as a federal coordinateor of the deep water horizon oil spill. oil spills you can measure in gallons, not barrels. and we need to be mindful that shell is responsibility of carrying out its responsibilities up in the arctic. we'll have five ships and then we also have several helicopters operating up in the arctic. this last winter we saw the record low sea icics tent up in the arctic region and as ice starts to retreat we may see a record retreatmentment of sea ice 14 of the 15 warmest years in the arctic have all happened in the last 15 years. what i do know is that there's a

lot more water than where there used to be ice, and not only that, but about 5% of this region, 5%, is charted to what i would say modern-day standards. i was in iceland a month and a half ago. i was on the icelandic coast guard vessel "thor" -- what a great name that is, "thor." so i looked at their charts, and the datum is from 1915. that's when the most recent survey work is. so when the "thor" is operating up there, they send their boat up in front of them with a side scan sonar so they don't stumble upon anything. this year we will have 200,000 tourists that will venture into the arctic. many of the cruise ships go flying by at 20, 25 knots through the same waters that "thor," very used to operating in this area -- and the reason i say that, when i met the captain a little crusty. i said how many years of sea duty do you have? 58. more than magellan.

and so he is uncertain about what's up there, but what happens if one of those cruise ships were to find a pinnacle in 39-degree water temperature? we knew what happened with "titanic" 103 years ago. we know because we're still flying the international ice patrol 103 years later to warn mariners of any icebergs that drift into the shipping lanes, but if you have a mass loss of life up in the arctic, the coast guard will be pressed into service. we're in a very active campaign, i am during my term as commandant, as we look at recapitalizing the coast guard. when you look at an icebreaker, it's a national asset. it's not just a coast guard asset, and it serves multiple stakeholders' interests, not just coast guard, national science foundation, department of defense, department of interior. the list goes on and on, but it's not like passing the hat or

passing the plate at church and say, okay, everyone donate. we'll give our tithes and offerings and we'll have an icebreaker. there's violent agreement this is a national requirement. we just have to come up with a way to fund this. the next big acquisition for the coast guard is going to be the offshore patrol cutter. i took a ranking member from the senate down to visit one of our ships, and when he went on there, it was a 210-foot cutter. it's 50 years old. we're now on the nearly fourth generation of coasties that have now served on this very same ship. it doesn't have dedicated ballast, which means as it burns fuel, it rocks around a little bit, so we're having lunch and this member said it's probably a good time to go out and look at the horizon. and so we're only on the ship for 90 minutes, and he's already uncomfortable, but we're sending our crews out there for months on end to serve on this very same ship. then i said, let me just show you the engine room real quick. we go down there and we look at the two main diesel engines that were dropped in there back in 1964.

and the engineer of the watch says, senator, welcome to the one platform in our inventory in the united states that is impregnable against a cyberattack because there's not one digital system on this ship. so, yes, we do need to recapitalize these assets, and that's why the offshore patrol cutter, as many may have heard me say, is our number one priority going forward. but when you look at cyber, i was over where riota works and i was over there yesterday to wish him a happy birthday, but in one of those vaults there was a very aggressive nationally sponsored cyberattack that took place. it was a spear fishing attack. i can't say a whole lot more about that, but it's had a significant impact on a federal agency in u.s. government, and i'm not talking about the opm

hack. this is highly classified, but it was our cyber watch standers that were able to kill that spear phishing attempt before it even reached our recipients. had those recipients opened it, we would have had to take them off the net, and it's no coincidence that many of the targeted recipients were very senior officers in the coast guard. fortunately, they can't spell zukunft, so they couldn't get my e-mail. i said there's some advantage to having a name you can't spell or pronounce. but we're very active in the cyber domain as well. i released a cyber strategy and we pushed it out last fall and industry is now coming to us. we regulate the maritime industry and post-9/11 probably one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation was the maritime transportation security act of 2002. and it required vessels and it required our maritime facilities recognizing that 90% of our global trade moves by sea, that they needed to implement safeguards, physical security at

their facilities, so they've done a great job of that. i happened to be down at an lng facility being built out in louisiana. i won't give you that name because it would be an insider trade secret but this facility when it's fully up and running will move more liquefied gas than there are gas carriers in the world to move that product. what a great time to do this at this point when the united states sits on the largest reserves of lng as well and the panama canal expansion project when i was in there last november by all indications will open up probably on or about the 1st of april of 2016. it's 180 feet wide but initially it will take ships up to 160 feet wide. it means lng carriers from the united states can supply the asia-pacific market with lng and do so in a timely fashion, which is good.

when i talked to the facility operator, and you know you're in southern louisiana when the road kill shifts to alligators. and they have the fences, they have the cameras, they have the physical security, and i said, well, what are you doing about zeros and ones? zeros and ones. i'm not following. i said what are you doing about the invisible attack? he said who would want to attack us? i said you're supplying the asia-pacific market. there's another pure competitor. it's called russia. if you think the ground rules haven't changed when it comes to cyber these days, might someone like a national targeted attempt try to shut you down so you don't take their market share away? what's the coast guard's standards for cyber? we don't have those. but industry is now very incentivized of how do they get smart on cyber. we need to be able to leverage cyber as well. four weeks ago we had six drug interdictions.

these are 30-foot pangas each loaded with about a ton of cocaine. but over an area from canada, united states, mexico, central america. six boats over an expanse that large in the open ocean and we got all six of them. we would not have gotten any of those if we were not able to leverage the cyber domain and vector our ships to where we knew these threats were operating. many of you that have worked in the intelligence community probably can figure out how we do that, but if someone compromises our ability to do cyber, then we're not able to do that. and when you just look at search and rescue, i only wish those two teenagers had an emergency distress beacon. we would have found them in a matter of minutes, not even an hour. that signal goes up to a satellite, comes down near realtime, and we're ready to launch within 30 minutes and we would have been on scene within

30 minutes of that eperb being activated. nothing is harder for me as a commandant when i tell a family member that one of ours has died in the line of duty, but all of our sector commanders, they make those notifications to first of kin. and when we make those notifications, it's as though we have lost a member of our family as well. we don't do it callously. we do it in the spirit as alexander hamilton reminded us, that we are a country of free men, and so we gave it our best effort. we searched an area of over 44,000 square miles from florida all the way up to north carolina. we didn't find these two young boys, which we always take personally, but cyber is a big enabler in our ability to do that. so a little bit about the past, a little bit about the present, and i'm very excited about the future of the coast guard. the future of the coast guard is really represented by two of the people sitting here at the head table. this is the best educated coast guard that i have seen in my -- if you count my academy years, 42 years i have been around the

coast guard. i clearly know that i would not get into the coast guard academy today. the new leaders that are coming out of the coast guard are by far superior than where i stood, and obviously i did okay in the coast guard, but you're going to have many more capable future leaders of our service. not only that, but they're fully empowered. i talked to bm-2 russo on the coast guard cutter "stratton" yesterday. he's a pursuit coxswain. he chased down a panga. he was able to interdict a ton of cocaine. and his voice went something like this. well, admiral, i had watch. i went out and we stopped the boat. i said there's more to the story. come on. highlights. i said, tell me a little bit more about the "stratton." then his voice picks up. these are the best people i have ever served with. i am honored to be on this ship. this is the best ship in the coast guard.

i said, what are you going to do next year? he said, my tour is up, and he's going to be serving on the "stratton" and they're deployed for 230 days out of the year. he goes, i'm going to ask my detailer if i can get a one-year extension because i'm going to be a qualified under way ood, which is usually reserved for officers. i have 88,000 bm-2 russos in the coast guard. so with that when people talk about budget, i said really the bedrock strength of this service, our backbone as it was going back to 1790 is our people. we just got a little bit more complex mission sets than we did in 1790, but alexander hamilton's vision is alive and well because his letter to those commanders resonates with each and every person in the coast guard. i'll now read my notes -- no, actually i'm done with that. and what i'd like to do is open it up to question and answer. [ applause ]

>> and now the fun part. some of the questions have been quite interesting, admiral. let's see. senate armed services committee members are concerned that russia has 40 arctic icebreaker ships and america has one. is that going to change and when? i know you addressed that a bit earlier. >> yeah. so as i stand before you today, i have one of my vice admirals is with the national security staff up in the arctic to see firsthand what some of the challenges are up there. when you're up in barrow, alaska, you now see berms being built because you used to have a natural berm, a barrier, if you will, by all of the ice. so you're seeing a lot of coastal erosion. you're seeing a nearly threefold increase in human activity up there, but you look at the

inventory of the united states, and the united states has one heavy icebreaker. we have a medium icebreaker and the coast guard cutter "healy," it can break ice up to eight feet thick which is operating up there. but "the polar star" is nearly 40 years old, and so this past winter when "the polar star" was coming back from antarctica, it is the most powerful non-nuclear powered icebreaker in the world. it is an awesome ship, but it's 40 years old. and so on the way back, there was a new zealand trawler that was beset in ice 150 miles into an ice field. some of that ice in excess of 15 feet thick. so the only ship anywhere in that hemisphere that could rescue them was "the polar star," and they did. they did a great job, but when they got 150 miles in, and i'm thinking this is a 40-year-old ship, god forbid they have a casualty, who is going to come to their rescue?

we do not have a u.s. rescuer for the rescued, if you will. no buddy system. so we really do need to build out our capacity in the arctic. this is drawing a lot of attention. i have been working very close with the national security staff, with both house and senate, authorizers and appropriators. as i said earlier, how do you fund it? that is really the billion-dollar question right now. but this is really generating a lot of interest, and i am optimistic that on my watch we will see, no fooling, forward progress as we look at building a national fleet of icebreakers. we had seven when i came into the coast guard as an ensign. we are down to two right now. so we've moved in the wrong direction over the last nearly 40 years. >> you talked about the phishing attack. when was it? did it just target the coast guard? can you say anything else? >> this happened in the third week in july. we were not directly targeted,

but the coast guard is on the dotmil domain. as are all the armed services. the coast guard hides behind if you will, the lead curtain for all of dod when it comes to information protection. there are a number of other higher level officials than -- well, i wasn't on the list, but you can imagine. there were some pretty high targets on that, and some of those attacks were successful, which means those individuals, their files had to be taken down completely, and it takes awhile to build those back up again. so it does cause a disruption. good news is we were not disrupted, but we were not the primary target. >> continuing along on the cyber questions, some critics are saying that the coast guard cybersecurity strategy lacks potency, personnel, cyberhygiene, originality, and funding. >> is that a question or a statement? >> do you agree or disagree? >> actually, i disagree.

yeah, we have a company, if you will, of 70 cyberexperts. i call them experts and i don't call them warriors because their first job is to defend our cyberdomain. just as we did with the spear phishing attack, and we've seen a number of others, and quite honestly, you know, there are attempts to infiltrate our data systems on a daily basis. at the same time they're the ones that keep an eye out -- i mean, near realtime if someone says i need to charge my iphone, i'm going to plug it into the domain, alarms go off and when it comes to cyberhygiene, the next step is accountability. now, i have to be careful how i word that because then it's considered undue command influence, but we need to look at accountability standards if we have training and the like when it comes to not plugging unauthorized devices into our network, but it still happens. so right now our biggest threat is in the cyber -- is cyberhygiene. it's not just us.

there was a mobile offshore drilling unit that drove off the site it was drilling on because the control systems that operates on a network, somebody on that drilling unit had plugged in a device that had malware and all of a sudden that dgps signal couldn't communicate with the thrusters and now that mobile offshore drilling unit drove off the site. fortunately, the blowout preventer kicked in, didn't have a spill. this was over off the coast of nigeria, but it cost that drilling company millions of dollars to get back on the site and then re-establish it. so cyberhygiene is a big piece. we're part of u.s. cybercommand. we have a coast guard flag officer in there. he's in the j-3 directorate. it's where the coast guard belongs because we operate in the dotmil, dotgov and dotcom domain. we're the only service that does that. we're a unique instrument when it comes to cyber security. it's an opinion but let me

counter it, point, counterpoint, but that's my retort to that particular question. >> thank you. what -- given veto threats over the homeland security, what figure, dollar figure, given veto threats over the homeland security budget does the coast guard actually need to tackle its mission going forward and why? >> our total budget is actually about $10 billion, and last year for the second consecutive year the coast guard had a clean financial audit opinion. i talked about our acquisition program. less than 2% growth across our entire acquisition portfolio, and then when we buy stuff, we keep it. we maintain it very well. the fact that we have ships 50 years old, i was on one up in grand haven this weekend that's over 55 years old. still doing coast guard business. so, one, we mind our checkbook. two, we drive a hard bargain when we buy stuff, and when we buy it, we take very good care of it.

what we haven't had over the last several years is a reliable and a repeatable acquisition budget. we've seen swings as wide as nearly 40%, and so when i'm challenged that my program of record is not affordable, it's like saying your mortgage is not affordable either when someone just took 50% of your disposable income away from you. yeah, you're going to have to foreclosure, but if you didn't cut me 40%, this is a very sustainable program of record. but as we've seen wide swings, and right now we're seeing a shift in direction where the value proposition of the coast guard, some examples that i gave you when i talked to you earlier, is fully being appreciated and a number of members, both sides of the aisle, both chambers, are saying we need to invest in the coast guard. so on that note, people aside, i am very optimistic with the markups we've seen so far, i can't share those with you, but it may very well bring the largest acquisition budget to the coast guard in coast guard

history. so i'm pretty excited about that. >> one quick semi follow-up to that. in fact, one of your recent hearings some members criticized the coast guard for a lack of timely delivery of your capitalization plan. how would you respond to that in terms of your acquisitions? >> there's a two-part story to that. one is a five-year plan and the other is a 20-year plan. and it's very difficult to chart out to 20 years, and if that is going to be, you know, a bold statement that you're going to make 20 years from now, we know that 15 years ago we didn't predict 9/11. when the qdr was released a year and a half ago, we did not predict the rise of isil, we did not predict ukraine, we did not predict ebola, and we live in a very dynamic world today where if you walk your way across from east to west and around the world, i challenge you to find a region of tranquility, if you will.

so it's a very complex operating environment so it's very difficult to predict out 20 years what the world is going to look like 20 years from now. but if you look at the systems that we've acquired, when you look at the hamilton class cutters that were brought online in the mid '60s, we modernized those as we went along. we make sure that whatever you buy is -- has space, weight, and power availability to accommodate new systems for new threats that are somewhere over the horizon. and so when you look at the national security cutter, that is an optimal cutter to work in what is a very probably opaque world if you start to look 10, 15 years, but those ships are going to be operating well after i cross the bar. so i think we've made smart decisions on what we've acquired within our program of record recognizing they will be around 20 years from now as well. >> facebook is building drones that are man-free and solar powered. they can fly for three months

consecutively. could that technology help the coast guard in the future with constant coverage, and i want to add one little thing to that question. when you're engaged in drone technology, there's always the debate between civil liberties and actual deployment and personnel and force use. how do you deal with, a, the technology of lengthy usage of drones and, b, the ongoing debate over usage of drones in terms of civil liberties? >> fortunately, out on the high seas it gets pretty lonely out there. in that we're the only entity that has really a unique compendium of authority outside the 12 miles of u.s. waters, which is the high seas. we have over 60 bilateral agreements that deal with counter drug, that deal with proliferation security, that deal with fishery regulations. as i stand before you today, we're using drone technology on the coast guard cutter "healy"

flying outlook where there's leads in the ice, has thermal imaging, look to see where there might be mammal activity so we don't disturb it. it's easier to use drone technology in sometimes marginal weather you would otherwise put human beings at risk that can do the exact same thing and can do it persistently. so drone technology, we've only seen, no pun intended, but the tip of the iceberg, and we've used it in counter drug operations as well. in fact, we used it in one intervention where normally the ship comes charging over the horizon, blue lights screaming. this case one of our national security cutters launched a drone, and they realized it was a refueling vessel waiting for that super panga loaded with cocaine to get refueled and continue on its way. so instead of charging over the horizon for the next 36 hours, kind of like sitting in a deer blind and you put a salt lick down there as well. so they stalked this thing for 36 hours, and then as soon as

that go fast showed up, they bring the drone back and then launched the armed helicopter. shot out the outboards and we got several tons of cocaine out of that as well. more importantly, we got the bad guys, and they're now in a safehouse, if you will, providing us very valuable information. none of that would have been possible without drone technology. are we going to own the upper edge technologywise on that? probably not. commercial off the shelf, our adversaries, organized crime is a $750 billion industry, so i'm going after that with a $10 billion budget. so their biggest challenge is how do you launder $750 billion? there's no budget control act. there's no sequestration with these ill-gotten gains. so there's a little bit of a mismatch as we try to match technology against our adversaries. and i think when you look at drone technology, i see that as a challenge as we look 20 years out and probably less than that. probably in the next five years.

>> you mentioned your coordinating role in the deepwater horizon spill and there have been a few spills in the news lately. given your experience as the on-site coordinator for five or seven months, how -- what are the lessons learned from deepwater horizon as permits are now opening up and more drilling is opening up ten years later that the coast guard can apply? >> tip o'neill probably said it right. he said as in politics, all things are local. and it's no different with the oil spills, and if you're not engaged first and foremost at the local level, so what we realized very early on during deepwater horizon as it impacted the gulf states, very hurricane-prone part of our country that is very accustomed to operating under the stafford act. you declare a national emergency, then under the stafford act, the governor reigns supreme. under the clean water act and with an oil spill, the federal

government reigns supreme, and this impacted five states. not only did it impact five states, it impacted five republican states leading up to midterm elections. if you're looking at an oil spill, you need to kind of look at it like a rubik's cube and look at every angle behind it. one, it's a huge media event. it was my job to get it out of the national press, at least get it on the back fold of "the washington post." how do you work with the media to tell your story? i was never going to win the day over a tar ball on the beach. but what i could win the day when you looked at the daily release rate of all the offshore relief well drilling, just offshore alone was probably in the neighborhood of $50 million a day being expended by bp as we wrote out here is the incident action plan and what you need. we had 47,000 responders, bigger than our active duty coast guard, responding to this as well. but getting the media out to where the heavy artillery was,

getting to the source of this oil and where we were the most effective was offshore, and then getting all of that out into social media. we worked with noaa and we created this application called erma, environmental response management application, and we pushed it out onto the web once we got it fully up and running. the first day we had 200,000 hits. on day two it was 2.2 million, and it just went viral after that. so rather than people waiting for the news cycle, they could go to this near realtime, look at jpeg encrypted photos, what was happening with the response. they could manipulate the data and draw their own conclusions. the final piece was we had 70 coast guard officers detailed to every parish president, every governor, so if they didn't like the way their county, their parish, their state was being allocated resources, you go to that coast guard person first. you don't go to cnn and try to, you know, steer the ship through national media, but let's work together on this and build unity

of effort, but if you don't have unity of effort, this will become a media event. and at the end of the day the environment is going to suffer as a result. so a lot of good lessons learned for what proved to be probably one of the most complex responses the coast guard has had to deal with. >> a freedom of information act lawsuit was recently filed to require that shell make public details of the safety of their arctic drilling equipment. do you agree those should be made public given the coast guard's mission to make the arctic safe? >> certainly when it comes to safety, there's a need to know. there's clearly proprietary information when it comes to oil spill leases. the auctioning of these leases is actually one of the largest sources of revenue generation in our federal treasury. so without divulging, you know, the expanse of a given reservoir, but the safety standards that are in place, they're shared with us, they're shared with the department of interior, and clearly i believe

there's a need for the public to be informed of what safeguards are in place to mitigate any impact to the environment. >> you spoke a lot about budget constraints and all the challenges. at some point some priorities are going to win, some are going to lose. you talked a lot about what's going to win, what's going to lose. >> what can't lose is force structure. all the service chiefs are grappling with the same dilemma. how do you modernize and maintain force structure at the same time? our active duty coast guard component, among the 88,000 is right around 40,000 people. of that 88,000, 31,000 of them are all volunteers, coast guard auxiliary. i can't even call them a force multiplier because i pay them nothing. whatever you multiply by zero, you get zero, but they provide millions, millions of free man hours supporting coast guard

missions that don't involve putting themselves at risk. mostly our recreational boating community, but i can't cut force structure. maybe you make those very difficult decisions of what operations that you would have to cut. and we've also -- always defined ourselves by 11 statutory missions, and some may say, just get rid of one of those missions. well, each one of those missions has a funding line a program element assigned to it, so when you divest of a mission, you divest of the funding that goes with it and all you have at the end of the day is a smaller coast guard. 100 years ago is when the coast guard, the name coast guard first came into being. and the first commandant of the coast guard was under attack by the taft commission. they said we need to strip away all of this and move all your authorities into the navy. when they did the study they realized it was going to cost the navy over 40% more of what it cost the revenue cutter service to do what it did on a day-to-day basis.

if you're looking for efficiencies, you're not going to find it because, quite honestly, many of our platforms are swiss army knives that can operate in a multiple of domains and mission sets including working side by side with our navy, with our department of defense service members as well. so people are the most critical asset but you may have to trim operations. you may have to slow down an acquisition. as painful as that is, you can recover from that, but there's a check valve. when you get rid of people, it's very difficult to bring them in absent a major contingency like a 9/11. so my approach to our human resource capital is to hold fast on the human resource capital that we have and look at where there's opportunities for further growth, especially in the cyberdomain. >> a few on climate change and alaska.

since the president gave one of his commencement speeches at the coast guard academy, how is climate change going to change the coast guard's job in the next few decades? >> that's a tough one. i use the open water versus ice-covered water comparison. we're seeing large expansions of open water. it is widely agreed that the seawater temperature is rising and sea level is rising. i just go back to -- the phenomenon with that is you have more frequent and more severe typhoons. we're just clearing out a category 2 typhoon that just hit saipan. we have several assets up there today. two years ago a super typhoon haiyan hit the philippines with the highest ever recorded winds of nearly 200 miles an hour. if you can imagine a tornado 60 miles across. if one of those hit the united

states, we might be convinced that what is going on with the world's climate today. but rising temperature, and as water expands it rises as it well. so we have low-lying islands in the pacific islands that are inundated with water at extreme high tides right now. those are some of the challenges that we need to look at. when we look at infrastructure that's being built today that's going to be around 100 years from now, did you factor in a rise of five or six feet of seawater? an area that doesn't get a lot of attention is greenland. so when you look at greenland, as those glaciers melt, it is freshwater and it sinks. as it sinks it displaces warmer saltwater that rises to the surface. now you have warm saltwater and you've got cold ice and you have this temperature gradient that usually causes more severe winds that accelerates erosion. more ice being released. you can't put this on a linear model.

if you don't at least plan for that, we're very much a coastal nation but we need to take all of these factors into account as does the coast guard as we look at some of the challenges. but you can't plan this in two, four, or six-year windows of time. we need to be thinking 10, 15 years out. it's very easy to delay that decision and say it's not going to happen on my watch. on my watch i need to make sure three commandants from now says i'm glad they at least paid attention to this. so we're keeping an eye on this. >> how much of navigable waters increased in the arctic? >> i wouldn't say it's increased. there is a lot more activity up there. there is a cruise ship from the bering sea to --

to carry over 1,000 passengers next year through the northwest message. there's no aids to navigation up there. much of this area -- 5% is chartered to what we would call 21st century standards. the charting void that's up there is of great concern because if one of these ships does find a pinnacle -- we have a sea mount named after the coast guard cutter healy because they found one. it rises up over 10,000 feet from the sea floor. fortunately they found it with their side scan sonar and not their hull. we're also looking at a traffic separation scheme in the bering strait to assure that you don't have collisions at sea up there as well. >> couple of similar questions. should the navy take possession of the coast guard's icebreakers? what would you say to giving up that mission? how important is it to have more

than just a few icebreakers and to modernize the military assets in the arctic region now? how is the arctic mission changing given russia's new build-up there? >> we made probably once a week i see the cno in the tank. i have a seat with the chairman and other service chiefs. each year we have staff war fighter talks. we've had lengthy discussions about the arctic. i am confident the admiral doesn't want to take on an icebreaking mission. when you look at what does an icebreaker need to do in the 21st century? clearly it needs to break ice and support a scientific mission. russia is militarizing the arctic. they turned the arctic into an area of access denial. if you look at an icebreaker as you look into the future, if you look at modular systems, make sure you reserve space, weight

and power so you can put navy type systems in an ice environment to protect u.s. sovereignty up in the arctic domain. those are the discussions that we're really having. not to pass this off to one or the other but you look at future requirements of a heavy ice breaker, it has to be more than just break ice, support science. it has to do a multitude of things. >> moving to another part of the world -- the south china sea. some in the coast guard would call this a success story. you hear a lot in military parlance about the asia pivot. what specifically is the coast guard's role given its limited resources, given its shrinking budget, given its trying to shoot -- rob peter to pay paul. what's its roll in the diplomacy in the south china sea and anything else in that region? >> next month i'll be in the

philippines. i'll be in vietnam, then i'll be in a six-way discussion with five other nations, including russia and china, japan, korea. canada will be at the table as well. china has created a china coast guard. they used to have five seagoing services called the five dragons. now four of those services come under the auspices of the china coast guard. there's been a lot of discussion that we should deploy coast guard cutters over to the east and south china sea. our u.s. policy is one of nonintervention. i liken it to a dog that chases a bus. what do you do with it? if i sent one ship over there, china can tend ten to my one and japan can send six to our one. if it is a numbers game, i'm never going to win. if you look at the one ship over there to me, i look at the

real opportunity costs. this fall we wrote out a strategy for the western hemisphere. the last of the perry class frigates to be decommissioned. it was doing the lion's share of the drug interdiction activity, that we've seen in the western hemisphere with law enforcement coast guard teams. as the navy is rebalancing, there are some trade-offs being made there as well. if they're vacating one region, i need to make sure i'm doubling down on the void created by the navy. the opportunity costs significant if i send one ship to the east and south china sea. the dog that catches the bus, what is our policy going forward? then the void that i've left behind as well. we've written a cooperative strategy for the 21st century. navy coast guard marine corps. each service chief has signed that. i look at the coast guard as filling some of those vacuum

spots created as the navy rebalances. where can the coast guard fill some of those requirements as a sea going service. >> speaking of coordination does the coast guard currently have a strong ability to share resources in realtime in multiple homeland security partners like customs and border patrol? if not, would this help improve the mission success of the coast guard? >> we've come great strides. for a department that's only been around over 12 years, it wasn't until 1986 that we came to realize we need jointness among our armed services. what we do have within the department of homeland security today, joint task force east, primarily maritime, west that deals with the southwest border, one for investigations, really the intel piece of this. each of these task forces you have coast guard, cvp

immigrations and customs enforcement working side by side. we have a joint requirement council that looks at joint requirements in this case of navy and air forces of the department of homeland security. coast guard and cvp. our isr platform is a dod enterprise, but we're using it in the coast guard. as a military member of dhs saying this really works. this is a great system. cvp is putting that in their p-3 and dash-8s. we're also looking at interoperability and commonality of systems. makes it more affordable, makes parts more reliable. you can also capitalize on the schoolhouses for some of these as well. we have come pretty far in a very short time within dhs building unity of effort across the various components. >> do you ever see a time coast guard returning to the department of defense and out of

homeland security? >> probably not. one value we bring to dod is we can go title 10. we're title 10 service which means we are a military service, but we also do title 14. if you look at any campaign plan, there's probably some embargo provision written in into that that may require a law enforcement authority which the coast guard can bring to the table. then if we have to go to title 10 we can just as easily do that on the fly as well. our systems are interoperable. i think that's a key part so we don't come with systems that can't speak with dod systems so our new platforms have navy type, navy owned but fully interoperability with our allied brethren. >> when it comes to migration especially from the caribbean, do you support the feet dry policy?

one fot dry policy? how have recent diplomatic efforts in cuba likely to affect that and other matters in that region? >> i'll let you draw your conclusions. we have brand-new fast response cutters. they are great platforms. there was an expectation that a migration policy was going to change around christmas. it didn't, but that was the perception back in cuba so we had a spike in migration. we were able to apprehend almost every one of those boats destined for the florida coastline. but then it takes about five days to go through a screening process before these folks are brought back to cuba. within the last two weeks, we had two migrants that shot themselves, then were medevac'd before we apprehended them so they were medevac'd back to the united states. we had another four that found bleach on one of our ships and drank it and so we had to

medevac them. we have others that will self-mutilate to do whatever it takes to get their feet dry in the united states. meanwhile, our crews are trying to safeguard these folks for five days while they pick up more because of a feet dry policy. it puts our people at risk. it puts others at risk. when you look at our policy versus what's played out, off the north coast of africa, we're saving lives. yes, we're apprehending but many of these folks are in really unseaworthy. but they'll probably go back and try to cross again. the feet dry policy makes it challenge for those doing enforcement to a safeguard them. until we have a clear light to be able to repatriate them back to cuba. >> just a few seconds left before i ask the final question.

i'll first present you with a national press club mug. >> thank you. >> noting that we are the leading organization for professional journalists and fight for a free press worldwide, i'm going to ask you one little question about the mets. are you going to -- are the mets going all the way this year? >> so 1969. so you had a late acquisition, the mvp of that world series. the names have changed a little bit. now there are names like aribe, cespedes. mets have already had the tom severs. they've got the pitching staff, the hitting. they've got the commandant of the coast guard, for crying out loud pulling for them. when i throw the opening pitch

tomorrow, if i throw a warm burner and it hits matt scherzer in the shin and he's taken out for the next two weeks -- i wouldn't do that. as you know, the mets were caught up in the bernie madoff scheme, and they auctioned off a good part of the team. again, i go back to 1962 when they had no place to go but up. when you look at our coast guard sometimes you can relate to the mets. you've got no place to go but up. you got the mets destined for the world series and you got the coast guard doing the same thing. >> how about another round of applause for admiral? we'll see you back here hopefully on august 12th with

reverend bishop. i'd like to thank the national press club staff and broadcast center for organizing today's event. if you'd like a copy of today's program or to learn more about the national press club please go to our website, www.press.org. thank you. we are adjoined. this weekend, politics books and american history. saturday at 8:00 eastern, congressional profiles with four freshmen members. brendan boyle, louisiana republican ralph abraham michigan democrat, brenda lawrence and new jersey republican tom mcarthur. sunday night at 9:00 with elections coming in october a debate among the four national party leaders in canada. saturday night at 10:00 on book tv's afterwards, charles murray

argues through the use of technology we can rein in the power of the federal government. sunday at 7:00, susan souther talks about the city and people of nagasaki, japan from the morning it was bombed until today. this weekend on american history tv we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki and the end of the war in the pacific. our programming starts with a conversation from harry truman's grandson. and later, we'll visit the american university hiroshima nagasaki atomic bomb institute with peter koznik. sunday morning at 10:00, our coverage continues with the 2000 documentary on the making of the atom icbomb and interviews with two bomb survivors. get our complete schedule at c-span.org.

now a discussion about computer security and defending against cyberattacks with a panel at the hudson institute that includes mike rogers. this is two hours. all right. good afternoon. i'm samantha ravich, the principal investigator on this project. i want to thank everyone for attending. in particular, i really want to thank the hudson institute and the foundation for the defense of democracies for co-hosting this event. i also want to thank the co-authors of the monograph. some will be speaking today. juan zarate, mike dubowitz. but some may be in the audience, abe, andy and tiffany. i don't know if tiffany is here.

if you haven't seen it tiffany was quoted extensively in a recent "washington post" series on the cyber vulnerabilities of the auto sector. a few housekeeping notes before we get started. the first panel will begin momentarily at about 1:00 and will roll into the second panel. finish around 2:00. there is a short survey, if you could, if you haven't taken it already, we would really appreciate it. it will give us -- it's anonymous and short. it will really give us a better idea about how people are thinking about cyberenabled economic warfare, and where resources should be put to it. we will be publishing both a synopsis of this seminar, and the results of the survey, so stay tuned. all right. so let me set the stage for a few minutes on how the project on cyberenabled economic warfare really got started. it really had its genesis back in the mid-1990s.

in discussions with incredibly smart people like marge at the smith richardson foundation that sponsored this work about the intersection of economics and security. so in 1997, the asian financial crisis hit, if you remember. it began in thailand and then the contagion quickly spread to indonesia, south korea, malaysia, other countries throughout the region. foreign debt to gdp ratios rose over 180%. during the worst of the crisis, riots occurred, governments fell. the causes of the crisis were varied but most experts think it was the combination of crony capitalism, and economic bubble flooding the market with cheap money, and a simultaneous slump in semiconductor prices with the rise in the value of the u.s. dollar. but from westport, connecticut, we discussed how economic destabilization in southeast asia could potentially affect

larger regional securities. what would it mean to relations in taiwan and china? what would it do to separatist groups like abu sayyaf. it was the malaysian prime minister at the time, what he was saying that really got us thinking. mr. mahatir initially penned the blame on financiers saying they had sabotaged the malaysian economy. he said the economic fires were no accident, but a western conspiracy to rule the world and tell other countries how to run their affairs. we discounted the malaysians' specific diatribe and rhetoric and thinly veiled semitism, if you remember that party. but we did think about the broader issue of how a country or countries could use economic means to undermine an adversary

or change its policies. we thought back on america's use of economic warfare against the nazis, then again against the soviet union. and we began to think, if and how the u.s. would need to think differently about these threats and capabilities as the world financial markets became more automated and more integrated. over the next decade, the conversation kind of waxed and waned, but came roaring back as evidence began piling up on the scale and scope of cyberattacks against u.s. banks, u.s. defense contractors, u.s. intellectual property, our electric grid, our health care system, the most sensitive parts of our government. were we seeing something new? again, there's always been economic warfare. where one side in a conflict goes after the economy of another to affect and weaken its overall strength. but the rise of the global electronically networked economy, and the growing cross-border integration and interdependence of its

constituent parts has produced sizeable opportunities for various actors to develop new methods and strategies of economic warfare. both state and nonstate actors increasingly can contemplate new possibilities for using pernicious cyberpenetration of critical economic assets and systems in order to cause harm to a target state security capabilities. so we label this new class of security threats cyberenabled economic warfare. the attempt at achieving political and security goals through cyberenabled economic aggression. and in this type of warfare, the united states is particularly vulnerable. as mike mcconnell said, if we were in a cyberwar today, the united states would lose. this is not because we do not have talented people or cutting-edge technology. it is because we are simply the most dependent and the most vulnerable. so we started this project with a few organizing questions. one, within the escalating

cyberattacks on u.s. public and private organizations, is there lurking a new type of action. some form of concerted strategy to undermine the u.s. economically. two, are there adversaries whose strategies are specifically designed to cause economic harm that could weaken or significantly debilitate u.s. security capabilities? three, is the u.s. prepared to identify and address such strategies effectively? and four, if not, what can be done? we did not attempt to provide definitive answers in the monograph and through this seminar, rather, what we wanted to do is start a robust, much-needed debate on this topic. the chapter authors and those who are participating in some of the seminars we've held have also been willing to put novel and creative approaches on the table. some are workable, some might not yet be workable, but it is critical for new ways of thinking to be explored to address this problem. because to a person, we are

certain that u.s. intelligence, defense, treasury and homeland security departments and agencies appear to be inadequately constructed or attuned at present to address the way these threats are evolving. the u.s. system for detecting, evaluating and addressing the cyberenabled threats is insufficiently focused on the matter. this raises concerns about america's preparedness for identifying and responding to existing economic threats. and the ability to match the rate of their evolution. and with that, i want to turn to our first panel that examines the evolving nature of this debate. we're honored to have three highly knowledgeable and well-regarded individuals. so our format is that each will speak for about ten minutes. and then we will open it up to q&a for another 20 or 30. so first up is the honorable juan zarate.

he served as the first ever assistant secretary for the treasury. he served as deputy national security adviser for combath terrorism. his phenomenal book explores the evolution and importance of this new era of economic warfare. juan serves as chairman and senior counsel for the center on sanctions and finance. >> thank you very much. thanks to all of you for coming. this is a wonderful turnout and a wonderful event. i want to thank the hudson institute, and mark dubowitz for hosting today. sam, thank you for your leadership, for shepherding the authors for this important piece of work. i would commend all of you in the room, and those watching online, to make sure to pick it up and read it. because the contribution at least from the other authors in this compendium are incredibly important. i'm honored to be here today, especially with steve and mike, to discuss these issues.

i want to thank sam, too, because she gave me an opportunity to write a bit more about the issues that i began to explore at the tail end of my book that i think are critical as we look forward. what i want to do is discuss with you, and maybe open up the discussion for the panel to talk about the convergence of financial and cyberwarfare. because as sam has laid out, one of the interesting dynamics of the 21st century is how dynamic, how fluid, how interconnected both the global financial and cyberdomains have become, and how interdependent they are. the reality is, the more dependent that the u.s. and western economies become on those globalized interconnected cybersystems, the more vulnerable we also become to the potential asymmetric impact and effects of those who may try to attack, if not affect u.s. interests. and so what i would like to do is talk a little bit about what

that convergence looks like, starting first with the discussion of the nature of the threats and then what this means strategically. because i think where we are now is we're facing a very dynamic and shifting threat landscape. but also a dynamic and shifting strategic landscape, where the threat of asymmetric capabilities is really upon the u.s. and has really been identified by the dni, and others in the u.s. intelligence community. threat landscape itself. in particular, the actors involved in this space. it's clear that actors around the world, be they state or nonstate actors, have realized there's asymmetric advantage in using cybertools, using tools of financial or economic warfare to their advantage. that in many ways, it provides a low barrier to entry and asymmetric advantage to think

about the use of these tools in a much more aggressive way, to attack u.s. interests. in many ways, it's laid out the 20th century, in the beginning of the 21st century, dominated not just by the american economic dominance, but really a dynamic where the u.s. found creative and innovative ways to use power and influence, and reach to isolate rogue actors from the financial system. we're seeing this play out obviously in the negotiations with iran. we're seeing this play out to a certain extent in the debate around russia. the ability to use financial and global tools to isolate rogue behavior has largely been the province of the u.s. government and u.s. policy. but u.s. competitors, and threatening actors realize that those very same tools, those very same mechanisms, some of the same strategies can actually be used against the u.s. for

asymmetric advantage. so you see a full spectrum of actors playing out in this space realizing this dynamic. super empowered individuals, hackers, for political or other reasons, profit often using these tools to go after the financial system, in particular banks. sophisticated organized crime groups using deep expertise found easily on the internet, beginning to infiltrate banks and the financial system. intelligence services, figuring out how to use these tools for state and nonstate advantage. again, for profit and for political purposes. and then finally, nation states. some of them major powers like russia and china, others marginalized like iran, syria, north korea, figuring out ways to use these very same tools to influence. and we've seen plenty of examples of that.

one of the advantages to these actors is the low barrier entries. as we often say, it's not very costly to get into this game, or to be on the offense. it's incredibly costly to be defending against these. but there's a supply of expertise available on the internet. often sold to the highest bidder. there is the dark web that provides access to those willing to play in those dark alleys of the internet, and to connect with those with expertise. there's open source protocols and programs that allow individuals and small groups to have global reach. and there's weak defenses globally, whether it's at opm, or in other systems around the world where small or relatively weak actors can gain access to prized information. and so you have a spectrum of actors with a spectrum of capabilities that provides a low barrier to entry.

and begins to challenge the u.s. system and dependencies. now, the tools of disruption, and potentially even destruction are many fold. you have spear phishing techniques and attacks, which are common in the cybersecurity space. you've seen d-dos attacks, increase in sophistication and frequency. you've seen malware evolve into some pretty dramatic and important ways, in particular, attacking the financial sector. you've seen trojan horse attacks, which may portend potential destructive malware attacks. these aren't imagining or hypotheticals, we've begun to see them. the jpmorgan attack last summer. a good example of the potential for vulnerability as well as destruction. the dark seoul attack led by the north koreans affecting south

korean banks and operations. the denial of service attacks led by the iranians and syrians against western banks which continue to this day. the attacks against the middle eastern banks in 2012. the nasdaq hack, which has not been fully determined, or figured out, in october of 2010. matched with significant infrastructure attacks, like ramco and others. portend the real series of adaptations and attacks on the financial system in a way that is strategic, systemic, and important. now, let me move just very quickly to discuss why the financial system, in particular banks have become such an interesting and important part of this landscape. as i've often said, in many ways, the international global banks are now the center of the cyberstorm. and that's for a few reasons. one, banks in the financial

system, where the money is, right? so if you want to profit, if you're an organized criminal ring that just wants to make money, you want to engage in fraud, that's where you hack. that's where you attempt to get access to data and to money. it's also where intellectual property, sensitive information may exist, informational data important to data, also intellectual property important to deals and companies that are engaged in mergers and acquisitions, and attempts to enter new markets. so that information becomes valuable to a whole host of actors. banks over the last 15 years have also become protagonists, and many of the national security issues and debates that affect rogue actors and countries. so the very isolation of iran, for example, from the global financial system has been driven in part by what the western banks have decided to do, or not do, in terms of business with the revolutionary guard, or iranian companies and fronts.

and also, actors in the space, the full spectrum that i described understand that banks and the financial system are part of the key vulnerability and a systemic risk for the west, and for the united states. and so some actors, no doubt the most destructive among that spectrum, would find it incredibly advantageous, if not helpful to try to bring down the system in some way, or to destroy the trust that is at the core of the international financial system. what hank paulson once called the magnificent glass house. and so the banks, the financial system find themselves in the middle of the cyberstorm at a time when the asymmetric environment is evolving. evolving in some interesting ways. as sam mentioned, and as the report lays out, the u.s.'s vulnerability is increasing over time. with hybrid warfare, and gray zones of warfare beginning to evolve as parts of national doctrines.

we see this clearly with the russians, how they're thinking about the use of proxies in cybercapabilities. you see this as well in the environment where there's much more fluidity than in the past with rogue actors able to interact, and profit with and for each other. so the chinese government able to use nonstate actors to hack, and to claim deniability of those attacks. the syrians and iranians developing their own capabilities, perhaps relying on others. the north koreans clearly developing capabilities as seen in the sony hack and attack of last year. so there are enormous adaptations happening due to the technologies, due to the global connectivity of the system, but also strategically with these rogue actors, with these challenging states, thinking aggressively about how to use these tools.

and i know the next panel is going to get into some of the defensive dimensions of this, sam, but i do think it's worth mentioning, at least some of the ideas that i put forth in my piece, and that i know we will discuss here, because there has to be a new way of thinking about the strategy. there has to be a new way of thinking about these tools, in ways that not only puts us on the defensive, but also on the offensive. and thinking about more aggressive public/private partnerships and paradigms that allow us to create not only defense in-depth, but also denial, strategies of deterrence, which we have yet to do using financial tools like the president's executive order from april 1st. perhaps some tailored hack back capabilities, in particular instances, perhaps with cyberwarrants. when the government gives license to the private sector to protect its systems, go and destroy data that's been stolen, or maybe even something more aggressive. and then finally, developing the redundancy of our systems, so it

becomes less attractive as a strategic tool for our adversaries. so with that, i hope that's a helpful way of framing the issues. it's a much more dynamic environment not just in terms of the threats, and the technology, but also strategically as we look at the landscape. >> that's fantastic. i look forward both in the q&a from this panel and rolling into the next one, to discuss some of those things that juan laid out at the end, particularly the hack back, which is a very interesting topic. next up we have steve chabinsky, who's general counsel and chief risk officer for the cybersecurity technology firm crouch strike. mr. chabinsky served for over 15 years with the fbi, where he helped shape many of america's most significant cyber and infrastructure protection laws and strategies. as deputy of the fbi cyber division, mr. chabinsky helped oversee fbi strategies, intelligence analysis, budget

and policy development and execution, and major outreach efforts that focused on protecting the united states from cyberattacks. so mr. chabinsky? steve? >> thank you. juan, those remarks were so good. all you've left me to do is actually pull some of the subjects you brought up. what a tour de force as an overview. where you really started, you know, where you ended is where i'm going to start, which has to do with strategy. where are we, where should we be. we actually have a failed strategy right now. the way we know this is we keep putting more resources, more people, more effort, more policies in place, and the problem keeps getting worse, right? by no stretch of the imagination can someone say that's going well. even our best efforts, to the extent we say we're doing well over time, it doesn't compare to where the threat's going. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008

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