>> first, another cyber attack on a major company. this time the world's largest meat packing company called jbs, this is a week after the colonial pipeline attack. what is going on?

the ceo from colonial vector is joining us. good afternoon. >> hello. thank you for having me >> this time hackers coming for our meat supply. tell us what happened. >> there is a repeat pattern that should concern all of us. it feels like there is a campaign underway. if you go back a few months, one of our water treatment facilities in florida was impacted. then energy was impacted with colonial pipeline. now with the meat supply and if you saw the news today, there is a steamship company in massachusetts got hit by ran somewhere as well. it almost feels like that there is a concerted effort to disrupt our daily lives. that should be of tremendous concern to everybody. >> before we get into the -- i want to know what is the impact

on american consumers? are we going to see meat prices go up? how long will this last? >> i think there is a distinct possibility. a major supply chain that is impacted that has an impact on pricing for the average consumer. yes, you will see a quantity item like meat supply prices could go up in the coming days and weeks. >> for folks who do not understand how cyber ransom works, explained to us, the hackers get in, tell us what they get, what they get for ransom and what a company has to do to get control back. >> the simplest way to explain this is if you look at, you and me. if we were to have ran somewhere and we downloaded to our laptop and the ransom where

is in our laptop, it would lock us out. the way you regain control of your laptop is there will be a phone number to call or a place to pay off with dollars or with bitcoin. once you do that, you get the keys to unlock your laptop. think of that at scale where you have a large entity that is not just lockdown but good chunks of the infrastructure. -- that is the way you get control. >> it looks like they are coming back on, jb s is settling this. what does this mean? let's look at the broader picture of why this is happening more and more. where is our collective weakness, where is the penetration point? >> i think the hard reality

here is for the attacker, you in essence have an exponential opportunity to go and break in. if you are to put this in layperson's terms, if you're protecting your house you have doors and windows and you have to secure. when you talk about it structure, you have endless ways of getting through into the infrastructure. that creates a very different problem set for us to protect ourselves against. the key here is to really create a mindset where you assume a breach will occur somewhere, at some point. it is not just focusing on stopping something, it is what you can do to detect the attack as it is happening in as close to real time as possible. that is crucial. the way, technically that we should solve this is really

having a broad-based adoption of artificial intelligence. this may seem, for a lot of viewers that this is far- fetched fetched, is this true? the fact of the matter is, it does work, it is the most effective way of getting ahead of attacks. for any large business listening to the show today, i would say to you it has got to be a part of your arsenal. if you do not have this as a part of your arsenal, your security posture is compromised. >> jbs is saying they are getting their supplies back up and getting their systems back up. do they have to pay is that the only way out? >> they had to create some kind of compromise for whoever locked the system up, or, occasionally, depending on the kind of ransom where and attack, if it is a garden-

variety kind there are tools available that will help you unlock these systems. as demonstrated by the colonial pipeline hack, more often than not, people end up paying. >> jbs thinks that russia criminal elements are behind us. how do they trace this? how do they prove that? >> to be perfectly candid, i think that tends to be, you look at a pattern of attacks and you do attribution around it. you say more than likely it was originated in russia. i do think, on a broader scale, that there does seem to be activity that seems to be bent on destructing our daily lives. it is too much of a coincidence that you have several activities going on impacting different parts of what we depend upon on a day-to-day basis and there is a pattern emerging and that generally

implies some kind of very organized activity at our nationstate. >> we do know the white house is confirming they are in contact with russia. what do you expect will come from this engagement, high- level, diplomatic engagement, if you will? >> very little. i wish it would lead to some grand resolution. i think that we are obligated to have this discussion, as we should. if history were to be an indicator, this is not going to stop anytime soon. >> this is a big disruption to our economic sectors. i wonder if there is any chance that these are related to what we remember last year in the waning days of the trump administration with the solar winds hack that touched on these government agencies including homeland security. is this related? >> i think to the extent that it is emboldening people to say

if we can get into the heart of the american government, then, surely we can get into the heart of american business. i think what that hack did is demonstrate that our most significant agencies are vulnerable. therefore, it is a fair assumption to say that our most critical industries are equally vulnerable and it has enabled people to say, let's take a shot and see what happens. unfortunately they have been proven right so far. >> assume you will be breached and take actions accordingly. the ceo of vectra. thank you for your time. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> speaking of vulnerabilities, a local bay area county taking up the issue

>> thank you for sticking around as mass shootings continue in the u.s. as we await federal action on gun violence, a bay area county is looking to add a galatians. joining us now is the san mateo county supervisor, one of the proposed sponsors of the ordinance. supervisor pine, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> you are proposing stricter rules for people who want to open a fires arm firearms dealership. >> we are proposing an ordinance that would strengthen local oversight of gun dealers. the goal here is to ensure that gun sales are done safe

eagerly. legally. there will be restrictions and requirements placed on gun sellers. for example, they have to pass a background check, obtain a license in the county, the store site would have to have specified security features, for example, such as bars on the windows to prevent theft, firearms would have to be stored safely when the store is open. there would be video surveillance of sales and perhaps most importantly there would be buffer zones around gun dealers. there would be buffer zones around homes -- >> schools and churches things like that? >> daycare facilities, exactly. there tends to be more gun violence near gun stores, these buffer zones are really intended to provide more

safety. >> let me ask you, wouldn't this be limited in that it is just for unincorporated areas of the county. this does not affect the cities in san mateo county. >> that is right. our legal authority only applies to unincorporated areas. there are 20 unincorporated uni areas. the hope would be that this ordinance would be adopted by the city. we have quite a bit of precedent for that. the accounting often passes ordinances, one of particular note is over a year ago, the county passed a gun safe storage ordinance that requires people in their homes to make sure that their guns have a lock on them, or kept in a a and are otherwise protected from unintended use. the county adopted the ordinance, about 12 of our cities have followed by adopting a similar ordinance.

>> that is your main goal is to see if you can influence the cities in the county. did the vta shooting last week affect how you look at this issue and the need for stricter standards? >> this ordinance has been under development for some time come up prior to the tragedy in santa clara. what the santa clara tragedy reminds us of, gun violence is an epidemic in this country, it is incumbent on all of us to do what we can at every level of government to reduce gun violence. it certainly motivates me and my colleagues to look at what we can do locally. >> what do you say to people who feel like these requirements are unnecessary given california's fairly strong gun control laws relative to other states and laws that are credited for lowering the number of gun deaths in the state.

>> california does have strong laws at the state level. in this particular area of regulation firearm dealers, a lot of the regulation is left to the localities. the ordinance that we would -- is a stricter ordinance, stricter requirements than required by state law. we are fortunate to be in a state that takes gun regulations seriously. one needless death from gun violence is too many. we are motivated to see what we can do at the local level. >> there currently are not any firearms dealers and unincorporated areas of the county. i think that there was not, was this designed to say that we do not want any? >> that is correct. there is currently no dealerships and unincorporated

counties. this sets a set of ground rules that any future dealer would have to comply with. they are very strict requirements. you would have to be a motivated gun seller to meet all of these requirements. >> what is the timeline? >> the timeline on the ordinance will be heard for the first time next tuesday. we would have a second reading later in the month and it would be effective towards the end of july. >> supervisor dave pine, we appreciate your time. keep us posted. >> happy to do that. thank you for having me. coming up next, here is an interesting question, do college application essays favor the wealthy? we will get into that

away with the sat requirenalso equity gaining traction in the last few years. it is thought that if the testinpirelying more on essays. is that really fair? or is there bias involved there? joining us now with a fascinating new study are stanford researchers sonia and aj. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for >> i am not sure who wants to take it, whoever wants to jump in, please do. my first question is, it seems fairly widely accepted that test scores are strongly correlated with a students family's wealth and parents education level as such use for college admission is being fiercely debated. some say the process is more fair and less bias of colleges look at grades and essays. you found something interesting about the essays.

tell us about the findings. >> thank you for that introduction. i think you are totally right in setting the stage and the debate we are waiting into. we wanted to investigate if other pieces of the undergraduate application process and holistic review might bear traces of bias or having a relationship with class. what we did, we computationally read these personal essays we are working with data set 60,000 undergraduate applications to the university of california system in 2016 through 2017. what we found is by reading these essays we found a strong relationship between the essays that's dude it's right and they are reported household income. >> give us some examples of the word choices of those students from wealthier families versus less wealthy and maybe syntax differences. give us an example so we know what you are looking at.

>> ha, did you want to jump onto that? >> we looked at the form of the essays, commas, syntactic features as well as the word choice. on the word choice side of things, applicants with higher income and sat score tend to write about more philosophical ideological types of things. lower income applicants and lower sat scoring applicants tended to write more about family, relationships, interpersonal relationships, tutoring and time management. >> the content was different and the word syntax was all different. was there any evidence whether one was favored over the other? just because there's a difference, did anyone have a preference for the college admissions readers?

>> this is a great question and a key thing to highlight. our research does not have access to any kind of essay rating and admission decision. we do not know how and admission officer, who is reading these files, if they pick up on these differences, t number one, we do not know if they pick up on the differences. number two, we do not know how that will impact the decisions on what they make or how they assess the essay. it just shows the way students from different socioeconomic macros are writing their essays, but we cannot show what that means in terms of the admission process or the decision they get. >> this is interesting. if anything, the essay gained more weight in terms of factors. when you take out the test factor of the sats, what you have left are the extracurriculars, application and the essays.

if this is becoming more important, does your findings suggest that we need to find a way to remove potential bias, since there is a social class difference reflected? >> i think that is a great question and one that we have been wrestling with for a while especially in light of these findings. one thing that we found is that class is likely to be present in all aspects of holistic review in the undergraduate education process. you mentioned extracurriculars, you can imagine how those are classed and related to socioeconomic status, family background, absolutely. one key take away -- i am sorry. >> go ahead. >> one key take away we have is that class does not reside in one aspect. the debates that we are waiting into have been going on for a long time about the veracity and the fairness of sat scores. what the research is showing is really, the entire mechanics of the undergraduate application

process is really vulnerable to these coming out and showing up in different aspects. this is a call for practitioners and researchers alike to think about the mechanics of holistic review and how we choose to move forward. >> holistic review of meaning, looking at all the different aspects about a candidate or applicant not just looking at grades and scores. i want to ask you, this is so fascinating, i wonder if it can be extrapolated to job applications. imagine that. i am seeing nods. >> it is a body of literature that is also growing. using text as data for computational analysis. there have been resume audits and algorithms used in hiring and firing decisions that have

found syntax biases. allots a lot of people have made mistakes when they rent or buy a home. what kind of biases happen with those documents. we hope this is part of a bigger growing literature. >> i wonder, then, this may sound crazy, can a computer be taught to evaluate whether it is a college application, housing application or job application, can a computer be less bias than humans? >> i think this is a common conclusion that people draw maybe we should automate all of this because computers will be less bias and they are not susceptible to the same kind of human biases. one thing we forget is we are the ones who program those computers. it is a human. people can impart the same biases. you can think about who has access to implement those

programs and write those programs. you can imagine that it might be more insidious than the biases that are encoded into computation and then become implement it on a wide under the guise of objectivity. i think we are conscious cautious of that. >> i am so fascinated by your research. i think you also said you found if you use i or you, it is more correlated with people from lower socio-'s -- socioeconomic backgrounds. if you use the or and, i and, know why that is and that you look into the reasons? >> we have not looked into the reasons. there was another study at the university of texas in austin that looked at these using the same technique we did. they found a similar pattern could predict college gpa. what they theorized, and what i might also theorize is that

applicants that are using words the and an are talking about concepts and things and students to use i, we and you are talking about interpreters relationships. their suggestion, and what i might buy into is the students writing about concepts of things, academic life and culture is more geared toward that kinds of thinking. >> fascinating research and a starting point to look at when that car hit my motorcycle, insurance wasn't fair. so i called the barnes firm, it was the best call i could've made. call the barnes firm now,

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>> thank you for joining us today on this tonight, the major headline involving the coronavirus in the u.s. and the cyber attacks. first, the pipeline affecting gas, then the u.s. meat supply. and tonight, news the nta in new york city was hit. first, the coronavirus. president biden declaring a national month of action, to reach his vaccination goal by the fourth of july, to get 70% of adults to receive at least one shot. tonight, the new incentives, from free child care in some communities to promising of free beer. and the warning tonight about variants still posing a threat in the u.s. tonight, the cyber attacks targeting the u.s. and news this evening that new york's mta, the largest public transit system in the country, was hit, too. it comes amid news the largest meat