infrastructure that we are concerned with, that affects national security, the the government has a few options. you can start with the diplomatic angle. you can have marches, talks with other countries, and we are seeing that with china. you can have sanctions. the government can impose economic sanctions, including trade sanctions. at the most extreme end and what we have not seen yet is it you can have a response that would be proportional depending on the incident, both in the physical realm and the cyber realm. you get, in the cyber domain you can reach out and touch the adversary and powerful way. the government has the ability to do that. the question is, they will have to do that within the bounds of the law. that is key to the proportional response. once you have done the attribution job and you know who the target is.

post -- host talking with katherine. anthony in north carolina democrat's line you're up. caller: good morning. we talk about how we treat one another in race and things like that. the whole world is watching america communicate with one another. we have to obey the rule of law and we have to respect one another. we do say things, so i was just curious about one aspect of our security, but it is more how we relate to one another. it is how people capitalize on disenfranchised -- disenfranchising one another.

we have to be careful what we say to one another and how we respect one another. we must obey the law and so that way other countries will appreciate us. if we are a superpower, we cannot be corrupt, and cyber security is just a way of communication and we have to communicate where the whole world is watching us at one time. we must be fair, equitable, and think about how we speak. one last thing, i want the same that this pertains to people in america, that we have talked about how we treat one another race and things like that. we must stop calling africans, africans and europeans, we call them black and white. we should be fair and respect

one another. and be careful how we speak. especially those people who are supposed to be role models. especially for those who are voted on, respecting those who voted for them. guest: i agree. host: we'll move on. caller: good morning. i don't want to say that this is a mumbo-jumbo but i do not think it is that complicated. the way that everybody wants to make it so complicated, look if they do wrong and we know who the actors are they can be sanctioned or whatever. please this is power

centralization and you are sitting there testifying. i do not want to criticize, but i hear this over and over. perhaps it is a criticism that i should make, but the american people are watching, thinking, saying it seems like we got a centralization of power and the biggest centralization is communication. that is a dangerous. very dangerous. that is subversion. i am sorry to say that way, but i do not have much time. i mean, i will hear your comments and i will see what you have to say. guest: i think there's a role and what was interesting with how the president started the summit one of his first points wasn't that there is a division of labor. there is a shared mission. what he was talking about was that there are certain things that the government can do ought to do, and have the legal

authority to do. but there are other things that the private sector and individuals have the primary role in doing. you do not want the government to sit on all of your networks in order to secure them. american people do not want the nsa, even if it provided more security with our information but there are times at the extreme level where there is value for centralization of authority. when we are discussing responses to a cybertek, you would not want to delegate that two independent -- to individual companies or independent individuals. that is something that clearly the constitution sets out as a role for government. we have laws in place.

the computer fraud and abuse act which is actually something that is within the president's review looking at how we can actually change that law to make sure that private companies can do what they need to do to defend themselves and not be criminally liable. the law itself indicates how the american law restricts the use of certain action taken by private entities. i believe that centralization for certain rate -- a certain areas, particularly in the federal government, is important to defend national security. the higher and level of threats -- the lower issues certainly on the whole, were addressed at the summit. the government does not solve all these problems.

host: i want to ask you about something, an article which has an interview with the president where he talks about this. they note that this silicon valley, the white house and its efforts to share data with government agencies is incredibly appomattox. there is reason to be worried because these companies have sensitive information. collecting information has been criticized by officials. on the website, you have the president saying this is important. and then you have tech companies that deal with security numbers, credit card information, it doesn't sound like they are worried. guest: there is a reason to be worried, because these companies have sensitive private information. millions of americans and people

, there are key problems with this fiscal legislation. in the private sector, sharing information with the government, how can you ensure that the private data is protected. what the executive order order seeks to do, with the president and the congress are seeking to do, is it to find where these companies can feel comfortable operating in the operation hubs while protecting that data. it could be stripping the information that is not necessary in order to share it. the companies, if something falls upon them that would be a financial burden that many companies could not live by. the big issues come up in small companies. to require a small company to put resources on literally

redacting and restricting before sharing, not only is time-consuming that is also costly. host: mike is on the line. caller: i'm a world war ii veteran and i never heard of what they call cyber security. my question, if they can get our cyber security, why can we not learn about their cyber security? why can't we know what they are doing. i am a marine and when we had to give up ammunition and our rifles and our equipment to the people in yemen and it was directed to the white house, or the state department, what kind

of country are we living in? we are afraid of 40,000 people out there. we have millions, we have everything, the strength, the most powerful country in the world and we are trying to talk to people who do not know anything about talking, all they want to do is shoot and kill. please, answer that question why is it that our president is taking initiative and the look, you cannot do that to our country, and i think that you people should come to us, because we are stronger. they get all their information through us. when he tells them, i will not send troops to iraq, i will not do that, i will not do this when five servicemen got killed

in benghazi, i do not want to deliver this, but please answer me please. guest: thank you for your service. we ou and others a lot. now, from the recent talk that the president had, his concern was, the reason for that meeting, it was about a specific aspect it was not about the u.s. and its capabilities in the cyber domain. now, what you will not see in the public, is just what cyber capability the united states has. it is traditional in the physical round, as you know, states will not publicize unless there is a specific reason for doing so.

that is what exactly they can do. they will not publicize their defense of tools. in the president's speech, he opened with an example describing the state of affairs in cyber security, on a global level, what you are referring to, was something like an arms race. and then he used the analogy since then. our adversaries try to build up their tools to take down our defense. as a general alexander testified to, and if you look at the legislation that created --, the united states defense has different capabilities. to your point, why do we not tell the adversaries to stop and why do we not broadcast our abilities to stop them, well, it is difficult to discuss publicly your capabilities, but certainly

we do have them and we have them in different parts of the government. the president was talking about the role of dhs and information sharing. dhs has that lead in the private sector. but we are also talking about the intelligence community and their role. i do feel that i am comfortable that the government has great capabilities in this area, but we are not the only ones. the group of cyber powers is getting bigger. it is not going to be just one or two states, but it will -- that circle of states that can have a great effect, it will get larger and larger and therefore the reason for us to negotiate is necessary. host: we have two tweets.

the first one, there should be multiple checkpoints in security. the second one, if there is a crime in the territory, a crime in cyberspace, -- convenience should not be the ideal way making checkpoints. guest: what you hear from tech companies is that you should use firewalls -- that firewalls are no longer sufficient, we need a multifaceted system where, the president was quite funny in his talk at the university, talking about his passwords. he actually has used different passwords, everyone says you need strong passwords, but it is no longer just passwords, they are not enough. you need tech security companies

working on a multifaceted spectrum of not just authentication security. it is costly. you cannot do it on the cheap. what we do see is that in the last 10 or so years, companies are making progress. in the larger companies, it has been dedicated -- they have a large amounts of money. they put that toward security and you can see that the executives are listening more and more about how do we institute risk management programs. the concerned though, with smaller businesses which cannot always afford the cost, so i completely agree with that, the note sent in that it is not about convenience. it is no longer acceptable.

these standards, the framework that the president actually supported, that they came out with in 2014, it allows us to have a benchmark for companies. even the sophisticated companies and newer companies, they are assessing benchmarks. we need to measure security. there is nothing convenient about security. it is complicated and costly. host: mike is on the independent line. color -- caller: i have several common. -- comments. you have the tech companies coming out with operating systems, back in the 90's. the evolution of new product

development, whether it is energy, transportation, in this case cyber our dedication to ensure the safety and security of not just our citizens but our country and infrastructure, it is behind the curve. a gentleman just the few men -- few minutes ago, the gentleman from one or two -- world war ii could compare it to the arms of the germans and what better arms technology was compared to ours.

now, going into a company you may have security, several layers of security, but in the cyber world every single individual pc has an address whether it is a mac address, the physical equipment, the ip address, a virtual address. the money to address issues is big, and we must encourage young people to study cyber security. in the commercial tech companies, it has to be encouraged, both on the product development side, that is applications, but from the code

writing, the basic code writing level, we have to have a larger corporation and influence. this goes all the way back to other administrations, and looking forward and anticipating so many times, we do not act on, we react to. we have to be proactive. not saying that cyber security should have been created several years ago, but we must be aware of -- host: we are a little bit short on time and i want to make sure that catherine has some time to respond.

guest: certainly we cannot remain in a position where we are reacting to incidents. the goal is that we get to a state where we can be anticipate -- where we can anticipate and have the tools. part of that, having the tolls into defend and respond, is that we need to encourage and support young innovators. we're talking about students at the university's, research labs, where -- and the government can be part of that too. we can give money to those students who want to become computer scientist. we must support science and technology students. but the key to advance technology is making sure that we have the brainpower.