will get pretty substantial subsidies to help them pay the cost. these are some of the things that we expect to see some attention to whether or not we get bills passed and executive action, that is to be determined. these are the areas i do see the democrats and republicans working together on this year. host: marilyn >> contact information for every house and senate member. scan the code at theight to preorder your copy tod every purchase helps support our

nonprofit organization -- operations. >> this year mar the 50th march fo life rally. watch liveere beginning at noon ey on c-span. fbi director christopher wray discussed how to elegy can help in civil defense. from the world economic forum, this is just over 45 minutes. >> good morning, everybody. thank you for joining us for this panel. i would look to start by expressing our condolences to minister yuliia svyrydenko

on the death of your colleague in the helicopter crash yesterday. dual use technology, the concern about it is something that dates back to the days of nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the fear that technology that has beneficial purpose could also be used for destructive and. the concern continued about biological weapons. today we are in a world where almost any technology can be used for good and harm. one of the signature features for the kind of technologies we are seeing today whether it's on digital technologies on the internet, genetic engineering, almost anything you can see it's not simply in the hands of a handful of governments or powerful corporations, they are democratized technologies that anybody can use. the potential for anybody to get their hands on something and use it for nefarious purposes is

multiplying and that creates dilemmas for policymakers. and director wray part of his job is to promote the use of technology for development and make sure it's available while also keeping in mind the threat that it composed. some of the kinds of technology that we have seen having dual use today, ai tools being used for recognizing and preventing cyber attacks are also being used to analyze vulnerabilities in places and find ways they can be penetrated. facial recognition can also be used for mass surveillance or by hackers for scraping people's data for phishing attacks. the conversation here has been around generative ai this year and this explosive interest in

it and the potential and how it can be used for speeding up many tasks or adding creativity but there is also a way of generating misinformation or convincing face -- fake messages. ukraine is a subject we're going to talk about because we have the first deputy prime minister with us and because the ukraine conflict has been a laboratory for a lot of these technological questions ever since the russian invasion. some of the iranian drones have turned up to have western components in them. one on the panel has been providing protection to ukrainian websites and infrastructure and has withdrawn

much of its work in russia. how you balance the need of providing sensitive information to people in a war situation while preventing attacks on critical infrastructure. there are interlocking issues that come together in the ukraine conflict which i think is relevant to our discussion today. i want to start with a question for the first epi-prime minister, western military technology has been very important to ukraine in this conflict. a lot of civilian technologies have played an important role also. >> thank you for having us discuss this important topic. it's important for me to be here and to reflect on our experience.

one of the reasons why ukrainians show their resilience not only on the battlefield also an economic life because the ukrainian economy, the core elements of ukrainian society -- [indiscernible] one of the reasons is the fact that we're using to maintain operation technologies. we have application for ukrainian citizens 18 million ukrainians register by this application. it gives us the opportunity to get information, covid

certification, but it has become a special instrument and tool for the government to maintain procedures during wartime. for example, we have temporarily displaced people. people have the opportunity to be registered here and we have provided them the possibility to apply for unemployment. they don't need to go directly to the unemployment center. they can make it easily just by applying to the application. also they are able during this wartime -- it's a mortgage program and also an application so you can get a mortgage ring

wartime. -- during wartime. also there are attacks on the energy grid and we need to find a way to maintain the energy grid system. this might save the working of one nuclear station in case it would be able to maintain -- we also will provide through application to help us maintain the country under the war circumstances can be provided by this application. civil law before the war were

always skeptical about using technology because of the sensitivity about the security of information but during the wartime, it becomes a vital instrument for us like the government to provide social assistance governmental programs for ukrainians under war conditions. that's why currently ukraine is a playground for all of the questions for security society. i think we have a very good experience in civil technologies running the country. >> i want to underline how extraordinary this is for a country that is fighting for its existence is also managing to achieve the kind of changes in the government that a lot of other countries only dream of in peacetime. it's really interesting that that is able to happen. director, i want to come to you

on this question i raised earlier. as i said, iranians were captured in ukraine, dismantled, and found out to have off-the-shelf components that could be used by almost anyone anywhere. as you think about the legal frameworks about supply chains, export controls, as you think about how to promote the use of technology for civilian purposes for economic development while being conscious of the risks that can happen if it gets into the wrong hands in this extremely globalized world, how do you think about trying to prevent the kind of use of technology in a conflict? >> something like an iranian built suicide drone being used to attack innocent civilians in ukraine is a particularly poignant example of why export

controls matter, why sanctions matter. we take very seriously our obligation to try to protect businesses and innovation from the threats they face by the same token, we need businesses to ask responsible questions of potential customers so that they can ensure their technology is not being used in horrific and irresponsible ways. that's where the export control regime is designed to help strike that balance to protect innovation for all the positive things that technology can be used for, but also to try to guard against in this case catastrophic consequences. >> do you see this having an effect in a world that is so globalized? at some point these technologies

can be replicated and used everywhere. >> it depends on the technology we talk about. in many cases, asking the right questions of potential customers becomes a critical piece of it. enforcement where the technology is knowingly misused. >> obviously clout has played an important role in the ukraine conflict. you came under immediate pressure to pull out of russia altogether and i understand you scaled back you still wanted be able to protect russian dependent media or allow sensitive information to flow through to russians. can you talk about the trade-offs and how you thought about them? >> women talk about a year ago

today, we were seeing -- come out of the region that made us very worried that russia was going to invade. we immediately reached out to authorities that we work with got in contact the ukrainian government and provided our services to protect critical infrastructure from cyber attacks. when the invasion actually happened, we terminated any russian government deleted customers from using our infrastructure then we worked with law enforcement and experts to say what do we do next. while there were some calls for us to pull out entirely, what we saw women talk to the u.s. government and european governments was that there was an important need for organizations like a group that is a cloud customer to be able to still get their message out and they are themselves constantly under attack from

russian authorities. in order to protect them, we had to have some of our infrastructure still running inside of the country. we made that determination that was the right thing to do. again we don't pay taxes there anymore, we don't service any sanction entities, any government affiliated entities, but there are still russians to think that what's happening in ukraine is what it is which is an incredible travesty and potentially a war crime. the other thing we have done is that we have provided our services to individual russian household that want to bypass the censorship that russia is imposing on the internet to be able to access western media and today we estimate that around 10% of russian households are using cloud source technology to bypass that censorship. we see consumption of western media going up and i am hopeful that again it is awfully hard to overcome such an all-powerful

regime in a country like russia as vladimir putin's, but i am hopeful that if we see changes within russia it's in part because some people are getting the truth. what's interesting is, as we were doing this a lot of the protests erupted in iran and we watched iran shut down the internet. i got a call from the white house who said can you do in iran what you are doing in russia? i said no. they said why not? i said because sanctions prevented us from ever putting our equipment in iran so the same way we can help the russian people i passed censorship, we are unable to do that in iran. i said it's too late. there is a trade-off. as a company, a law-abiding company, we are happy to comply with any sanctions regime and

how that gets implemented, but we should understand that if you don't let us do something in a certain place, it might mean that after the fact when you do need the network to be accessible, we can't undo after the fact solve that problem. that's a trade-off that i think we as the private industry as well as the government needs to have conversations around. >> what do you think about that trade-off? >> we engage in those trade-offs every day. we see both great opportunity but great agers. in the wrong hands. the kind of trade-off that matthew was talking about is something that is the source of constant discussion as we try to find the sweet spot between achieving the consequences for security that we all want

without the unintended consequences. >> i want to go one more twist on this particular question of these trade-offs. in the rush ukraine conflict, the moral calculus is pretty clear. russia is the aggressor, everyone is on the side of ukraine. western policy is clear. i can imagine other conflicts arising between countries where some western countries have an interest in supporting one or another. not only you come up and western companies as well provide security services find themselves in the uncomfortable position of you i take aside? do i stay neutral? how would you imagine a situation between a war between two countries and africa?

>> we are fundamentally computer scientists not political scientists. when situations like that happen, we have to reach out to the people who are the experts. in that situation, we would reach out to we are u.s.-based company, we would reach out to the u.s. department of state, the white house, the fbi. we would say we are not experts, we need guidance and we will follow the guidance you give us. that isn't a totally satisfactory answer because that means we are very much aligned with what u.s. policy looks like, but that is going to be where we are going to start that conversation. as there are companies like ours that are massively multinational, we have equipment running in over 120 countries

worldwide. that is something that we have to constantly struggle with. we will take guidance from people like director wray. >> you make autonomous vehicles that can be sent into dangerous areas that can look for things. there was a session yesterday that palantir hosted the prime minister of digital transformation of ukraine where he talked about how the battlefield is a place for technological innovation. he said product is a should happens on the battlefield. do you think about what is

happening in ukraine as an accelerant of technological innovation? what do you see coming out of it particularly in the area of autonomous vehicles and the kinds of things you work on? >> historically that has been true. you think about wars in the past like world war ii, acceleration and development technology whether it be penicillin or aviation, it has been an amazing accelerant to bringing new technology and trying out new technology. our colleagues at palantir, this is our moment. also for silicon valley tech companies to understand the importance of national security and working with governments to help protect western ideals. for us in particular, our battlefront is the energy security infrastructure. there are two battlefield in our

opinion. the war on the front lines and also over christmas 9 million people in ukraine had no access to power. what our company is focused on is how to utilize robotics, autonomous vehicles, as well as ringing that into the fold with software to help project went the environment will fail so we can make the right strategies and plans and things we can recommend because we have the ability to see critical infrastructure across nations and even in the defense sector what leads to failures and how to stop it from failing. these are critical pieces of data that drive artificial intelligence to help predict and provide better decisions as a relates to national security on the energy front. obviously we see that as well on

the cyber side. it is important to remember ai models are only as good as the data inputs going in. robotics are an amazing way to safely quickly but also with high fidelity capture information that can inform ways to extend the life of infrastructure in ukraine, europe, america because you have to remember this infrastructure that powers everything you see here in the room, 60-80 years old built in the cold war going past its useful life. we have to make sure it can last and also be there in times of crisis and climate change. then we have to figure out how to improve it and get more out of infrastructure so you can deploy and make better decisions using information. robotics is a critical part of

coding the physical world charm governments >> ukraine has been a kind of russian testing ground for cyber attacks since long before this war and we saw times when large parts of the ukrainian power grid were taken out by russian cyber attack. that raises concern of the same thing happening in other countries. given what jake is saying about we are learning about infrastructure, but also about resilience and how to protect it better as a result of this war. thinking about the fact that more and more infrastructure control systems, thinking about the fact that autonomous vehicles of one kind or another being used in inspections or used for monitoring create a

further -- potentially for cyber security when you think of those things together, doesn't make you feel like u.s. infrastructure specifically is becoming more vulnerable or less vulnerable? are we getting better at these threats or are they multiplying? >> yes. [laughter] >> on the one hand the attack surface is significantly broadening. the arrange of methods is increasing both in quantity and quality. on the other hand, the sophistication of the private sector is improving and particularly important the level of collaboration between the private sector and the government especially the fbi, i think made significant strides. we are looking at cyber attacks, looking at what is happening in

the ukraine. we did see as the conflicts erupted and increased effort by the russian intelligence services which have been conducting russia cyber activity against u.s. infrastructure for years. we are increasingly concerned that the surveillance activity, scanning and research, all of the preparatory activity that could be one thing could be an indication of something more serious. so the name of the game in terms of cyber defense is to try to get, further left and that is why for example we conducted a significant technical operation against a gr you -- gru because we did not want to wait around to find out what they were up to and what their ultimate intentions were.

when you talk about autonomous vehicles, it is obviously something we are excited about just like everybody. but there are harms we have to guard against that are more than just the obvious. one of them is the danger that there could be ways to confuse or distort the algorithms to cause physical harm. i am thinking about a story i heard not long ago about researchers who were able to trick self-driving car's algorithms by essentially putting a piece of black tape over a stop sign and caused the car to accelerate about 50 miles an hour. it is a simple example but it shows some of the harms we have to guard against. a different harm we are concerned about is the un-norma is amount of data -- enormous amount of data that they

aggregates. anytime you aggregate lots of sensitive data it makes it a sensitive target. thinking of a ton amiss vehicles , -- in terms of the data it aggregates and harms that can come from that is very much on our mind. >> i think that, i actually see a story of optimism around cyber and ukraine because as the minister talked about, ukraine is still able to run their digital economy. they are still able to function today. the beginning of the invasion of ukraine which did not happen in february of last year, it happened with crimea. the cyber attacks and then were much more destructive and much more effective. in norma's credit has to go to -- enormous credit has to go to ukrainians. they became much better at defending their own nation in

cyberspace but credit also has to go to cloudfare but microsoft and crowd strike and google and others who stepped up and went their technology to say we are going to give you the best of what we can do. what is amazing is when you take the best and go up against an adversary that sometimes seems impossible to see, like the scary russian cyber hackers, the good guys win and that is what is happening now. when the best of the good guys go against the worst of the bad guys the good guys win and that is an optimistic message for us to take. >> you give me a segue into my next question. this has been an information war in many respects. we have seen how russian

soldiers have enabled ukraine to -- you also see how russia has been posts on social media by civilians to identify vulnerabilities. so this is a classic dual use dilemma about the openness of a society when we have digital technology and social media. in an age when society is transparent in wartime how do you think about digital self-defense? how do you think about making the country less vulnerable to attacks based on the kind of information that is generating in its online life? >> i think you answered your own questions. we cannot stop it. what we should focus on an absolutely agree, you know, the

work that is happening, [inaudible] it is a war against evil. what we feel, what we observe, -- one level of technology and using one level of weapons. we will definitely win this war with another level of technology. ukraine is now a huge battlefield. and this knowledge that we gained in this war is unique and very useful for the future mobile agenda. and that is why it is so useful for us.

it will be able to provide us with the proper technology. but the question is, how long will it take us? i think technology can play a vital role in this war and what we are trying to -- for small companies, we are trying to facilitate them to scale up to set up some -- for them. it is a bridge between public and private companies, small ones, big woods and help -- big ones and help us to win this war. just focus on ukraine.

we can just pay our attention on ukraine, on our ability, on our technological levels. another thing that could help us to win this war. >> i have a related question to that. i am british. we were brought up on -- of the second world war, if the germans came

-- it is another story. i think civil defense in ukraine is really based on technologies, on digital solutions.

i think the majority want to coordinate on technologies and set up small businesses while trying to develop our defense. our civil defenses look like in a of technologies and development in the military tools that help protect us. >> since we -- everyone here seems to be talking about ai, kind of reminded us how powerful ai is even though a lot of the developments we have been seeing have nothing to do with -- specifically. but it creates many opportunities both in military and also in cybersecurity and it

raises questions of dual use in many respects. i actually wanted to start with one of the examples director ray -- wray brought up. that could be used by adversaries to expose threats. maybe i will throw that question to you, jake. since you are promoting and developing the use of autonomous vehicles. how do you think about the ways it could be used for malicious purposes? >> i think cybersecurity, the push for development and implementation of cybersecurity, not just commercially but also with energy and utility companies, that used to be forefront and probably is not

invested in heavily enough. fiscal and cybersecurity needs to increase investment to ensure that data does not fall -- and i think that robotics, whether it be packages to your doorsteps, i think that is a world of robotics that i do not play too much in. we believe in the importance in the power of useful robotics, useful ai in the energy infrastructure and defense spaces to increase -- whether it be an aircraft carrier or -- with the air force. it leads me to something i hope we can hear from the prey

minister on which is at some point this war will end. -- prime minister on which is at some point this war will end. a stronger ukraine is a stronger u.s.. i think it is a very important thing to ensure decisions we make around rebuilding critical infrastructure in the ukraine, rebuilding energy independence security, are informed by as much information as possible. understand what was damaged, how to repair it. to also allow for reimagining of what it can look like. we have to make sure it is a bridge between that vision and where we are today but it is very important to ensure the decisions we make about rebuilding as well as the decisions now and heating homes

in ukrainian and europe. and robotics and ai need to be at the forefront of gathering information to inform decisions and doing that securely as well. and i think working with governments is extremely important. it is a positive vantage and i have the religion of working on tools that can help -- on very important matters. >> do you share this optimistic viewpoint? >> ai is a classic example of a technology where i have the same reaction every time i think. wow, we can do that. and so when it comes to ai i am and we are deeply concerned for example, about the chinese governments ai program. which does not share the values

reflected up here on this panel and into this room. the chinese government has a bigger hacking program than any other nation in the world and their ai program is not constrained by the rule of law. it is built on top of the massive droves of intellectual property and sensitive data they have stolen over the years and will be used unless checked to advance that same hacking program, to advance the same intellectual properties, to advance repression that occurs not just that comb in mainland china -- not just back home in mainland china. that is something we are deeply concerned about. >> it feels like ai is a double edged sword when it comes to cybersecurity. both gives you new ways to look

for pathways of potential threats but also it gives bad actors a way to look for weaknesses. how do you see the business that you are an evolving over the next few years? >> certainly ai has been extremely helpful in improving cyber defense. it makes it much better able to identify patterns and trends and find connections and to make a more informed decision about cybersecurity. but it also aids cyber offense including cyber attacks, like malware development, social engineering, things of that sort. so there is a degree to which the cat and mouse game that occurs in about realm of cyber defense, and cyber offense and cybersecurity are being critically permeated by the whole ai discussion.

then as some of the examples we talked about here already reflect, we are concerned about the data. we used the autonomous vehicles example before but it is not the only one. the aggregation of data that comes with ai and the potential ai itself becomes a target. >> do you see it is also this continuous cat and mouse game? or is there more fundamental shift coming in at way we use ai tools in cybersecurity? >> the first think about ai is the challenges in the algorithms. the algorithms are pretty simple. the challenge is the data. whoever has the most data wins the ai game. i am optimistic that there are more good guys then there are bad guys. when you look at cloud where, 20% of the web sits behind our

network gives us an incredible vantage point to be able to stay ahead of the bad guys and i think that will allow us to continue to go forward. one of the topics in cybersecurity has been data sharing. ai accelerates the need for that. amongst the good guys working together. so if we can share that data and feed that back into the system, if we can work together in order to understand the threats we all face, then i am optimistic that ai gives us an accelerant to help state in front of threats that are there and even though there are risks, the fact that there are more good guys than bad guys, the fact that we can work together when we create ways to cooperate, i think those are the things that make me optimistic that we can stay in front of the threats coming. >> i want to challenge this a little bit because if we are in

a world where there are increasing number of countries that are sanctioned by the west, that are seen as adversaries, then the universe of the international, the part of the internet you don't have insight into his greater and so that good guy bad guy equation starts to shift doesn't it? >> the number of places we are sanctioned, the north korean internet is tiny. we still see a huge amount of the iran traffic because it is going to western parts of the world. people get traffic out of crimea. the nature of the internet is that it is an interconnected system. even in our wrong the amazing thing is -- even in iran, they

cannot operate their stock market without being connected to the internet so that gives me hope we actually have created a system that even in repressive authoritarian regimes it is hard for them to put the horses back in the barn. the thing to watch is will iran, will russia will they be able to create the same sort of control centered internet that china created from day one? china never let the horse out of the barn. the question is if countries can put the horse back in the barn, then i think that is what i would start to get concerned about. so far i do not think anyone has been able to successfully do that. even in russia. you can access western media, you can see what is going on in ukraine and that gives me hope. that is not true in china because they never led the horse out. that is what i am watching carefully.

can around create their own chinese version of the internet? -- can around --iran create their own chinese version of the internet? the internet is inherently global. >> i don't disagree with matthew's view, i would make two important points. he repeatedly referred to the good guys working together. and that is the critical premise for that to happen because in a world where all these technologies are available to both the good guys and the bad guys, the good guys are constrained by the rule of law and international norms. the bad guys are not. would you could argue gives them

a competitive advantage. the advantage the good guys have is when we are all all working together then they are no match. but because they are not constrained by the rule of law, or international norms, we have to be mindful of the advantage that gives them and work together in partnership. >> i want to give the prime minister the final word. overly the war will end -- hopefully the world and end someday and you will have a part on the technological development. what are you hopeful for? what opportunities do you see? >> we hope we will win this war. we are optimistic.

everything that can help us to fight on the battlefield. after the war, the construction project from there to the second world war, will begin. i agree that technology will play an essential role and we need to protect -- we need to also build a platform for construction and we should make an estimation of the damages that were done and we should have control over the construction procedures that will follow.

for technology it will play a vital role. and that is why it is so important part ukraine to win the war. good guys are trying to follow the rules and we have constraints. and bad guys can -- the law and they should be punished. that is why it is so important to have your support on different levels, on the military side, the financial side, the technological side so we can speed up the victory and show that good guys are keeping together. >> thank you very, very much. thank you all for listening and thank you to our wonderful panel for taking part in the discussion. [applause] >> on friday, transportation

secretary and attorney general will address the united states conference of mayors. watch live at 10:30 a.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now our free mobile video app or online at c-span.org. congress returns next week f legislative work. th u.s. is back monday at 3:00 p.m. eastern for a vote on the confirmation of the assistant defense secretary for energy, and environment. pete ricketts is also expected to be sworn in to thsete. the house returns tuesday. embersilconsider several bills on u.-xico border security. you can also watch on our free video app sp now or online at c-span.org.

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