Craig Newmark: The Paul Revere of Cybersecurity (Re-Air)

And learn the difference between an AI which is promised to try to be accurate versus those AIs which are built to be deceptive. That's still a target in motion. And then just prepare to be as agile as you can because everything is way more unpredictable than it ever was.

Well, I'm an amateur when it comes to the world of philanthropy. I read a lot. I have an idea of what areas need a lot of attention and don't get a lot of attention. I've built networks of networks to advise me, people who are really helping a lot of people in the world, people who are helping protect our country in big ways. And that's where I've decided to focus. I mean, I do have a sense of humor and I love birds. And oh, I have no sense of dignity. So now and then I'll support something because it's funny. Yesterday I had a photo op for Pigeon Rescue. Pigeon Rescue. And you might dig up a glamour photo of me with Margarine, the fancy pigeon. But the deal is, I'm winging it. I have learned some of the things necessary to protect the country. I'm focusing on them, doing what I can. And a lot of that has to do with deferring to people who really know their stuff, heavily funding them, reminding them that they need to communicate better, and then for the most part, I get out of their way.

My deal is that we need to mobilize the whole country. We need to, as individuals, we need to do a better job of protecting ourselves, our families, our homes. We need to do what we can also to protect our jobs and to protect American infrastructure. And in doing all that, we help protect the entire country. Mass mobilization like that means that someone has to get the word out. And so far I seem to be playing the role of Paul Revere. That's a maybe because I don't know if I really want to put on a powdered wig or ride a horse. Horses are, you know, kind of big and smelly and they don't like me. The role I do have is the same as Robert Morris. He was the one who basically financed the war of independence, the revolution. Ironically, not the Robert Morris who created the first internet worm. The missing role, we need someone with serious top-down leadership skills to play the role of George Washington. And I have no idea who that's going to be, but it's not me. And that requires serious social skills. And like, have you met me?

I really am a nerd. Seriously, with the obvious dysfunctions relating to social skills. All I know is being very passionate about all the time promoting stuff which really helps the country. And well basically think about what your moral compass is. My moral compass was set by Mr. and Mrs. Levven in Sunday school way back in the late 50s, early 60s. They taught me to treat people like I want to be treated. That means provide good customer service. They taught me to know when enough is enough, which is why Craigslist is monetized minimally. And now and then your brother's keeper or your sister's keeper. Those are a lot of the things I think about influence in business and maybe beyond. For example, if you're treating people like you want to be treated, you do the best customer service you can. Sometimes that's really difficult when your site is mostly free, but you just plug away and do what you can. There's other advice I only learned in 2010 at the West Wing. Valerie Jarrett saw that we were getting hit by a really nasty dirty tricks operation, one which proved to be successful. And she told me that no good deed goes unpunished. And she helped me understand that someone who's basically honest, particularly a technology person who's very honest, will never be able to successfully deal with or confront someone who lies for a living. So those are some of the big lessons I've learned. They're fairly sparse, but the idea is that anyone doing good work needs to be prepared to be hit by very bad people because they have no conscience regarding dirty tricks campaigns and those can do an enormous amount of damage.

Well, we're working on that now. Cyber security is a team effort in a very, very big way. The only way I've been able to start handling it is by segmenting it with folks. For example, some folks are working on workforce development and I'm preparing to heavily fund efforts which train vets and their spouses for cyber jobs. We need people to support education at the K through 12 levels. Most importantly, I'm trying to fund people to go through a multi-phase, multi-mass mobilization effort, which means being able to explain why we fight and how we fight. Relating to the how we fight part, we need to get serious tool recommendations and approaches to cut through all the confusion about that. And we need to create networks of networks to support critical infrastructure because right now a lot of the small utilities across the country, ones which run infrastructure like water or electricity, they don't know how to protect themselves. And as well as doing the Paul Revere thing, I need to start providing networks of help, networks of resilience because if I just say these utilities aren't getting the job done and we can get all screwed, I need to start providing the solution. Now, I expect mass mobilization will in fact piss off a lot of IT people across the country. But at least I'm trying to generate the solution as well as delivering the message. I just don't want to be the messenger that gets killed.

Networks of people. For example, right now we have a cyber resilience network focused on infrastructure growing out of this consortium of cyber clinics. Cyber clinics are groups growing around the country where people who are really good at cyber security can help train the people who need to be really good at it. Maybe at nonprofits, maybe at utilities. In addition, they're wrangling together some of the groups, networks of really serious experts in these areas. People involved say at the Franklin Project, University of Chicago, as well as the Undisruptible 27 group which is located through the Institute of Security and Technology. I'm also doing related work still to be fully, well, still to be really developed at Vanderbilt under General Nakasone. So, the networks are coming together. It really needs to be done one with George Washington level skills. And I'm a nerd. I barely have Paul Revere level skills, but like the Batman would say, I'm probably not the nerd you want, but I'm the nerd you got.

These groups are extensively collaborating with state and local level government agencies. At this period of our history, people aren't sure how it's going to shake out at the federal level. I'm just real naive when it comes to Washington and I don't know what to make of Washington. Washington doesn't know what to make of me. So I defer to professionals who are dealing with it. I'm kind of scared of Washington. The idea is this and the theme of the people working on cyber resilience is that if the foreign military starts taking down our water supplies, our power supplies, we're really screwed. So before that happens, we want to encourage everyone, everyone in the country to implement basic cyber precautions and then we got to motivate businesses and utilities to implement the same and a little more. I mean utilities have devices called programmable controllers and others that control things like valves and electrical conduits, that kind of thing. And you know those are not the kind of things that we know of as computer systems but they are electronically connected. Some of those devices which control the flow of water or power, they're right on the internet with no firewall protecting them. And that's not a good day for us.

I haven't found a good way to get people to invest in it. In previous years the major funders were Omidyar Network and myself. The Omidyar folks have, that project of theirs has ended. Me, I'm going to plug away and this is serious. I'm committed and planning for the next 5 to 20 years. That's a little shaky in that I'm 72. So at 20 years out I may have to conduct due diligence via seance and Ouija boards don't have the bandwidth I need. So in the worst case I may have to come back and haunt people.

Well, I'm not a comms guy. That's my great weakness. But I listen to great comms people who talk about flooding the zone with crap. Let's flood the zone with facts. The call to action for cyber security and we just got to do it and do it. And you know the idea is that we just have to remind people that the nation is under threat and everyone needs to protect themselves. Every influencer is a potential target either for someone who's just looking for greater attention, someone who might want to eliminate competition, or someone who wants to infiltrate their systems to launch other attacks. It is a common military attack on the part of the Russian or Chinese military to infiltrate people's systems and use them to attack others because if the attack is immediately originating out of your system, attributing that to a hostile nation becomes a lot harder.