this week, the head of the american girl scouts helping nearly 2 million girls excel at science while fending off an unexpected move by the boy scouts. congress considers a bill that would allow silicon valley companies to hack and nothing runs software like a deer. our reporters this week on "press: here." good morning. to be honest with you, we have rocket scientists on this show all the time. so it takes a lot to impress us.

but we are also impressed by the woman who helped steer the voyager spacecraft and now helping steer the future of american girls as the ceo of girl scouts usa. girls learning as much about technology as they are selling cookies. there are now girl scout badges for engineering and robotics. while the maybe of us try to lead a den, she watches over about 2 million girl skrout sc. and she is joining us. so that is i imagine trying to lead that many people, because i'll tell you, cub scouts are like herding kittens. >> it's really fun being the ceo of girl scouts and we are united by our mission to make the world a better place. >> you were a girl scout you were. >> and i am so grateful because

changed my life trajectory. i grew up in a small rural town and thanks to girl scout, i realized i had potential in science. so i began taking science and math classes a the a time when girls like me weren't doing that, so that could prepare me so i could be doing engineering atted t at the highest levels and yes, i became a rocket scientist. >> we've heard about the s.t.e.m. badges and cybersecurity badges. and there is a push to get more young girls interested in science. but you know, historically the very pre-professional badges for boy scouts or girl scoukout cou part of the curriculum, but boys railroad g were getting excited about space, so why get specific as opposed to maybe something more

fundamental? i imagine you didn't take a s.t.e.m. badge type, you know, activity. >> that is a great question. and actually since the very beginning, we've had badges that are relevant to girls and the world around them. so 100 years ago, we had badges will electricity or carpentry, airlines, being a pilot. so now we always try to have badges that are relevant to girls. and s.t.e.m. is one aspect. outdoors is another. leadership. life skills is another. and entrepreneurship is another. and a lot of times they really overlap. like for me, i was on a camping trip when my troop leader saw me looking at the stars. so i was doing a lot of outdoor events and is she saw that that could spark an interest in science. later on she made the connection to connect that to maybe earning a science badge. and because i was earninging a cooking badge at the same time, i learned that combining

ingredients and getting the sequence right and adding heat at the right levels, you know, it's the same process. so that kind of gave me that ah-ha moment at a young girl that i could do a science and that i could be good at it. and that is the same kind of thing. we wa hewe want girls to experience my different activities. and one thing we announced this week was our girl scout s.t.e.m. pledge. but also s.t.e.m. leaders. maybe girls -- we want girls to be technology lits r rat, so ma no users, but coders, they can help shape policy and how technology is used every day. >> so do you think one of the problems i've seen about women and girls in education is they don't participate as much with the participation not rewarded as much, they get interrupted

more in class and that sort thing. does it help to have a gender specific atmosphere, does that encourage more speaking up and more leadership? >> absolutely. that is really where we focus. we are the girl expert. recently we had a big convention in columbus, ohio with over 10,000 girls. and we had rock climbing, space can s capsule simulation, ecven a tac for scuba diving. i'll never forget the enthusiasm of a girl who walked in and looked at everything and she said all of this is for us? because that is not their life. but yes, all of that is for them. and we allow girls to experiment, to try, to fail, but to say it's okay. and so yes, that girle only environment really allows girls to try to spread their wings and try new activities. and really to get that courage

and confidence. you don't always have to be perfect. it's part of learning. >> so i know what you are both hinting around is that the boy scouts recently said they would admit girls. and i want to get to that, but more about s.t.e.m. for just a second. and that is, how do you balanbalanc balance -- as a former cub scout, two schocoolest things a knives and fire. the things that made cub scouts exciting were nich knives and . how do you not make it a science class and keep some of the girl scout traditional things that girls like and love and have done? not that i'm advocating that girls should not be involved. >> oh, my gosh, there is so much to make it fun. fun with friends is absolutely the case. so yeah, we have a lot of indoor activities for girls, but also a lot of outdoor activities. and with the s.t.e.m. pledge, we will add at least and i had 80s

regional facilities on while a girl is looking at the stars or doing zip lining or archery,i h regional facilities on while a girl is looking at the stars or doing zip lining or archery,. >> is also s.t.e.m. associated with it but it is fun. >> this is good marketing for you. and boy scouts have the same problem. there is an age, what is the age, 13? right. there is an age in which it was fun and now you're not ready to wear the uniform anymore because they are the on skateboards and things. it's not as cool as it was. i think that you can market to parents that we are teaching them s.t.e.m., keep them in girl scouts. >> that and also girls want to make a difference, they want to help people. and really connecting whether anxious outdoor activities or s.t.e.m. or leadership, this is a way to help other people, help your family, your community, the world at large. a really good example is miss teen universe is a girl scout

and they took the leadership skills some he lea she learned got the law changed in her state. that is very much what girls learn.the law changed in her st. that is very much what girls learn. >> there was a lot of writing about when the boy scouts opened it up to girls and i think quite a few women were very critical of that move because they would say what understand is that this is a place where girls can really have their voices heard and they don't have that pressure that they might have in a classroom. which all makes sense. but i talked to some parents and they are like i have three children, two older boys and the i didn't thinker girl wa er younger girl wants to do what the boys are doing. so what would you say to a family like that where yes, you have a cool program, but the girl just wants to be with the boys? >> you know, we were disappointed that the boy scouts opened up to the girls because

we really dominate in -- we're girl experts in how girls learn even their brains are wired differently. and what we want to do is have activities for them in a way th that they learn collaboratively. they tend to learn more in group efforts. and that is the kind of experience that we offer them. >> so i'll jump in for a second. what i would like to do if you are watching us on television, we will go to our next guest in just a minute. i'm not quite finished, i talki with sylvia, so we'll take a commercial break on television. on the internet, we'll continue our discussion with sylvia. we'll be back in just a minute.

welcome back. silicon valley used to be full of farms, or chand chards nmost. these days they are full of research labs. these engineers at blue river in sunnyville are changing the way farmers all over the world handle their crops. their technology works with automated tractors made by john deere. robots tilling the land and picking the crops. deere was so impressed with blue river's technology, it bought the company for $300 million.

jorge is company founder and eo as well. congratulations for sticking to it. john deere said this is better than anything we've got. >> that's right, they had a lot of efforts around automation and making sure that they stayed in front of the curve, on on bringing technology to the farm. i think we complement a lot of those efforts and maybe accelerate them. >> the engineers work on primarily things that drag behind the twrak toractor, righ? the sensors and things that go into spraying and tilling. how do they figure out what works? you have a farm out back? >> yeah, that is a great question. we have a couple things.

one is inside. we've constructed this amazing space where we can try our technology. we have this little fake farm, but we can do experiments really fast. but in addition to that, we have also in salinas, a greating a grill cu agricultural place. >> last year there was quite a bit of talk with the new immigration rules and the fears that there would be much harder restrictions with people who are working in the field. the focus actually very quickly shifted to technology as something that can do what is being done manually. do you see this as 10, 15 years people who have come to america to do these jobs that a lot of americans don't want to do in the field? they will be done by robots, and so that kind -- that segment of

jobs is not available anymore. >> yeah, the technology has been influencing agriculture. you think about it 100 years ago about half of the u.s. population was involved in production of food. i think there is a big trend of less americans working now, it's about 1.6% are involved in the production of food. so there is part of a trend that i think that trend will continue for sure. a lot of the focus that we have in the company is around using herbicides and much more efficie efficiently rather than reducing labor. but i do believe that in general the population of the u.s. is shifting more towards urban higher paying jobs and those are typically in the city. so it's good that we can help farmers also in some ways or help america continue to produce food. >> i'm curious about the machine learning part of this.

for example the herbicides. i mean i would think that you would just spray herbicides over the crop as you need it and how can you -- how do you apply machine learning and fancy algorithms to figuring out where to spray the herbicide? >> that is a great question. the state of the art is you take a herbicide and you apply it everywhere. the wheeeds die, the crops don' die. and that has a lot of issues. there are a lot of opportunities to do it better. and one of them in particular the one where we're he focused, weeds have become resistant to herb side herb side herbicides over and over. similar to antibiotics. so there is a problem for farmers now using that technique. what we do instead, we take images really fast of the plant and we say okay, this is a weed,

this is a crop and we spray only the weed. that allows us to use herbicides that are not only the ones tied to the genetic modification, it allows us to use much broader set of herbicides, rotate them and in addition to that, re ddu the amount of herbicides by a factor of ten. >> one of the ironies of automation with all of this, as you make tractors more efficient, you could sell fewer tractors. wouldn't you? >> yeah, perhaps. perhaps. a lot of benefit in 24 othis on around using less herbicides -- >> i get that. but if it takes a farmer driving a tractor ten hours and takes a robot can do it at night, you know. fewer tractors. >> yeah, that is potentially right. in addition to that, it's part of again of a trend of machinery getting bigger and bigger. so you can think john deere or

any other company for that matter has been working on making labor more efficient and being able to do more and that has pabeen driving a lot of tres for example producing more food. >> there is an interesting movement going on among farmers, i think it is the right to repair policy, which i didn't know about until reading about this whereas the machinery equipment gets more and more sophisticated and computerized, a farmer can't fix his own tractor, has to send it back to the manufacturer. and people aren't necessarily comfortable with that. they want to fix what any own. because they own it and they want to be sort of locked into just like we can't fix our own iphones, you know, we have to go to apple for that. and in-john deere h think john opposed this movement. why shouldn't a factor be able

to fix his other tractor? >> this is new to me, too. i think that john deere is very much in favor of helping the farmer be productive. i think that is behind a lot of the this is making sure the tractor is there to operate when the farmers need it and i think they have their way of accomplishing that having personnel that is qualified that can even in a proactive way know when the tractor is due for repair. i'm not the expert though in that area. >> you are the expert in a lot because you're paid $300 million for your company. congratulations on that. he's with blue river and we appreciate you being with us. >> thank you very much. jack dempsey once said best defense is a good offense. that is true in silicon valley -- when "press: here" continues.

welcome back. security firms have been helping shield people and firms from hackers for decades. sometimes the shield works, sometimes it didn't. but meet the sword. this is a bill called the active cyber defense certainty act which would allow companies to hack back. to hack the hackers and steal back the information they lost. companies can finally go on the offense. here to explain the proposed

bill is the ceo of a company that tricks hackers. and it's ac-dc. >> yeah, pretty interesting. >> so you know a lot about the bill. hack back like getting to the xurt computers? >> yeah, if somebody attacks you, then you can counter attack and get into their network. eye for an eye kind of an approach. >> and going into the file and delete them? >> exactly. but the caveat in the bill, you cannot attack an innocent per n person/network along the way and second, you need to make sure that you are aware of the crossborder or international laws. and you can only retrieve your own files, not touch anything else. so practically impossible do all that. and the fact is most attacks come from other countries and other things.

so the idea of the bill is kind of manifestation of the frustration where you see big headlines every day that there is another cyberattack and the feeling is that nobody will be caught and they will get millions of dollars. and so there is frustration in the population. and this bill is kind of trying to do something about it. and the idea is to allow the defenders to attack the attackers. >> i have to tell you, i have been writing about cybersecurity for 18 years now. i talked to a lot of people in and out of government and out of big companies. i would say about five people that i know think this bill is a good idea. >> in other words, very few. >> very few. the overwhelming majority especially from high ranking ex-intelligence officials is that this will unleash havoc, that people will screw up, that there will be -- if an attacker is coming into a series of

proxy, they will hit the proxies by mistake and you could actually start a war this way. do you actually think this is a good idea? >> no, i completely agree with you. and i was going to say the same thing. that while what this bill is representing is probably not the right -- >> it was introduced bipartisan, but the two people one from georgia and from arizona may not understand computer technology the way you guys do. and i think you're running into that in washington, aren't you, that listen, it's more complicated. >> yeah. very complicated. basically unleashing cyber unchecked will create more havoc and not too many good things can happen. however, the companies realize this and will take law

enforcement's permission before you can start that. they don't wait for you to get the permission. that won't happen. however, these kind of ideas, most companies can do a lot more in preventing this data from being breached to begin with. and they are two different things. so far companies have worked hard. but you need to combat commerce, you need to open up to trade with the people on the internet and you need to share information. so while you should do all you can to prevent, you need to also recognize some things will get in. and the focus is to move to detection. and within detection, there are many capabilities that companies can invest in. so if you detect early in the cycle, the probability of breach occurring will be minimized so that you don't even have to retrieve the data. >> let's talk about what might

be a better idea. there is one piece of this legislation that seems sort of interesting and appealing to me. and that is beaconing is okay. that if you have -- >> explain that. >> i'm on it. if you can put stuff in your files as abc company and if it gets taken, it has beacon in there that will signal back to you where it is. so it will help with attribution. there is a specific exemption for things that won't do any harm, it's like putting the dye pack in the bags of money at the bank. and you look around for the guy with the dye in his hand. i can see that. but let's talk more broadly about if defense is more important, and most of the people that i talk to think that we need to be spending a lot more money on defense, federal funding, how can we do that with legislation, how can we do a law to help companies protect themselves instead of enabling swashbucklers like this?

>> i don't know what the laws can do, but i think as the cybersecurity industry, we can do more. and we have focused on as sim a asymmetry of attacks. we fool the attacker into tripping on to one of us and then we can detect them, neutralize them, expect the nature of what they are trying to do and use that fr informati to prevent. so i think that's where the companies need to focus. not of the government can do in terms of companies and normal cycle of working. but what government can do is work with other countries and work on better treaties to make sure these unguarded attacks coming from around the world where there is no room for our law enforcement agents to capture somebody in -- >> sorry, i have to interrupt. we have one minute.

>> so just looking back at the last year, seems like the attacks got bigger, wanna cry and ex-. do we now assume that everything is vulnerable? >> i think the big picture is it will remain challenging. but it will also stimulate innovation and new ways to defeat the bad guys. that is what we are focused on. and we think that there is good hope that we can improve security continuously. eventually i think big picture will be all the governments need to get together and come up with a little more regulations on internet. it's wonderful for free speech, but there are bad actors and easy to go across the border.

>> a ton of regulations. thank you for on beiyou for bei. the alternative ways to protect yourself if you (don )t ( get e vaccine. plus, any breaking news that develops overnight. and kari tracks a wet start to the work week. )today in the bay ) - monday morning - 4:30 to 7.

that is our show. thank you to making us part of your sunday morning. damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today, the niteliters, the bay area musical sensation, playing cali-jano music on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: we begin today with the visit by--the monthly visit of the mexican consulate in san francisco. with me is the consul adscrito here in san francisco, guillermo reyes castro, welcome to the show, sir. guillermo reyes castro: thank you very much, damian, thank you for having me here. damian: thank you for being here. well, tell us the roles of the consul adscrito. what is it that you do for the consular? guillermo: well, my main role is to support the consul general, offering the services to the community here in the area, in the bay area. we are offering consular services, protection services, and naturally all of the other areas, such as location, health,