As in other parts of the Federal Government, the Trump administration has combined intelligence and computer security agencies to remove officials seen as unfair to its agenda. Next to these shifts, the White House has also been hostile to former U.S. computer security officials. In April, for example, Trump in particular direct All the departments and agencies to revoke the security authorization of the former director of Cisa Chris Krebs. And last week, following the criticisms of the far -right activist Laura Loomer, secretary of the army revoked an academic appointment That former director of Cisa Jen Easterly had been scheduled to fill in West Point. Among all this, the former national security agency of the United States and the head of the Cyber Command Paul Nakasone spoke with the founder of Defcon Jeff Moss in a discussion on the stage on Friday, focusing on Ai, computer crime and the importance of partnerships in digital defense.
“I think we entered a space now in the world where technology has become politics and basically each of us is in conflict,” Moss said at the beginning of the discussion. Nakasone, who is part of the Board of Directors of Openai, agreed, citing the January launch of Trump of the “Stargate” infrastructure initiative flanked by Oracle’s Larry Ellison, son Masayoshi by Softbank and Openai’s Sam Altman. “And then two days later, only by chance, [the Chinese generative AI platform] Deepseek came out “, Nakasone Deadpanned.” Amazing “.
Nakasone also reflects on demographic differences between the Federal Government of the United States and the technological sector.
“When I was director of the NSA and commander of the United States Cyber Command, every single fourth that I went to the bay or went to Texas or Boston or other places to see the technology,” he said. “And every place I went to, I had double the people who spoke to me. And then when I went back to Washington and sat at the table, I was one of the young people there. Ok, this is a problem. This is a problem for our nation.”
During the discussion, Nakasone has widely oriented his observations towards efforts to counter traditional US rivals and opponents, including China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as specific digital threats.
“Because we are not thinking differently of the ransomware, which I think right now is among the great flagelli we have in our country,” he said. “We are not making progress against ransomware.”
Sometimes, however, Moss attempted to guide the conversation towards geopolitical changes and conflicts all over the world that are fueling uncertainty and fear.
“How is neutral in this environment? Can you be neutral? Or the world environment since last year, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Iran, just make your choice, America: how does anyone remain neutral?” Moss asked at the beginning of the conversation. Later he added: “I think because I am so stressed by the chaos of the situation, I’m trying to hear how I can get control?”
Referring to these observations and comments that Moss had made to contact Open Source software platforms as an alternative to the construction of the community to multinational technological companies, Nakasone has hinted the idea of Moss that the world and its insinuated state of precarious flow.
“This will be an interesting plot that we play through ’25 and ’26. When we return [to Defcon] Next year to have this discussion, we will still be able to have this sense of, oh, are we really neutral? I don’t feel. I think it will be very, very difficult. “