 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit live in Washington, D.C. A face-to-face event. We're on the ground here is theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host. Got two great guests, both CUBE alumni, Shannon Kellogg, VP of Public Policy for the Americas and John Wood, CEO of Telos. Congratulations on some announcements on stage and congratulations, John, for being a public company. Last time I saw you in person. You were private, now you're an IPO. Congratulations. Totally virtually. Didn't meet one investor, lawyer, accountant, or banker in person. What a great experience. It's all done over Zoom. It was amazing. Oh, I know, I'll go back to that. Kellogg, Shannon, great to see you. You had great props here earlier. You guys got some good stuff going on in the policy side. Acor, Max on stage, talking about this Virginia deal. Give us the update. Yeah, hey, thanks, John. It's great to be back. I always like to be on theCUBE. So we made an announcement today regarding our economic impact study for the Commonwealth of Virginia. And this is around the Amazon Web Services business and our presence in Virginia, or AWS, as we all call Amazon Web Services. And basically, the data that we released today shows over the last decade the magnitude of investment that we're making and I think reflects just the overall investments that are going into Virginia in the data center industry of which John and I have been very involved with over the years. But the numbers are quite something. And just to clarify, this is not part of the whole H2O, HQO, whatever they call it, HQ2. HQ2, yeah. So Virginia, Amazon is investing in Virginia as part of our HQ2 initiative. And so Arlington, Virginia will be the second headquarters in the US. In addition to that, AWS has been in Virginia for now many years investing in both data center infrastructure and also other corporate facilities where we house AWS employees in other parts of Virginia, particularly out in what's known as the Dulles Technology Corridor. But our data centers are actually spread throughout three counties in Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County. So this is the max analysis, it wasn't anything to do with any kind of head questions, it's just Virginia impact. What did he announce? What did he say? Yeah, so there were a few things that we highlighted in this economic impact study. One is that over the last decade, if you can believe it, we've invested $35 billion in data centers that are located in Northern Virginia. In 2020 alone, the AWS investment in construction of these data centers was actually $1.3 billion just in 2020. And this has created over 13,500 jobs in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So it's a really great story of investment and job creation. And many people don't know, John, and this sort of came through in your question too about HQ2, but AWS itself has over 8,000 employees in Virginia today. And so we've had this very significant presence for a number of years now. And Virginia over the last 15 years has become really the cloud capital of the country, if not the world. And you see all this data center infrastructure that's going in there. John, what's your take on this? You've been very active in the county there. You've been a legend in the area in tech. You've seen this many, I don't know how many years you've been doing cyber, I think the longest running company doing cyber. My 31st year. 31st year, so you've been on the ground. What does this all mean to you? Well, you know, it goes way back to, it was roughly 2005 when I served on the Economic Development Commission in Loudoun County as the chairman. And at the time, we were the fastest growing county in America in Loudoun County, but our residential real property taxes were going up stratospherically because when you look at it, for every dollar of real property tax that came in to residential, we'd lose $2 because we had to fund schools and police and fire departments and so forth. And we realized for every dollar of commercial real property tax that came in, we made 97 cents in profit, but only 13% of the money that was coming into the county was coming in commercially. So a small group got together from within the county to try and figure out what were the assets that we had to offer to companies like Amazon. And we realized we had a lot of land, we had water, and then we had, you know, this enormous amount of dark fiber, you know, unused fiber optic. And so basically the county made it appealing to companies like Amazon to come out to Loudoun County and other places in Northern Virginia. And the rest is history. If you look today where Loudoun County is, Loudoun County generates a couple hundred million dollar surplus every year. Its real property taxes have come down in real dollars. And the percentage of revenue that comes from commercials like 33, 34%. That's really largely driven by the data center ecosystem that my friend over here, Shannon, was talking about a second ago. So the formula basically is look at the assets, the resources available that may align with the kind of commercial entities that could house there, domicile there. That could benefit from it. So what about power? Because obviously data centers need power. Fiber, okay, fiber is great. The main power pipe. You can build power, but the main point is water for cooling. So I think we had an abundance of water which allowed us to build power sources and allowed companies like Amazon to build their own power sources. So I think it was really sort of a better, what do they say, better, lucky than good? So we had a bunch of assets come together that made us pretty lucky as a region. Nice area too. It is a nice area. And John, it's really interesting because the vision that John Wood and several of his colleagues had on that economic development board has truly come through. And it was reaffirmed in the numbers that we released this week. AWS paid $220 million in personal property taxes in 2020 alone for our data centers in those three counties, including Loudon, Fairfax. So Amazon's contribution, how much to the county? $220 million over three counties in Northern Virginia. So Loudon County, Prince William, and Fairfax in 2020 alone. And that actually makes up 20% of overall property tax revenues in these counties in 2020. So the vision that they had 15 years ago, 15, 16 years ago, has really come true today. And that's just reaffirmed in these numbers where we're releasing. I mean, these for the Amazon, it's all I ask you the question. I mean, there's a lot of like, just for misinformation going around, corporate reputation. This is clearly an example of the corporation contributing to the society. No doubt, if you think about it. Okay, that's some good numbers. Yeah. $220 million. $35 million capital investment. You know, 10, you know, it's, what is it? 8,000, 9,000 jobs. Yeah, 8,800 jobs, AWS jobs in the Commonwealth alone. And then you look at the economic impact on each of those counties financially. It really benefits everybody at the end of the day. It's good infrastructure across the board. How do you replicate it? Not everyone's on Amazon though. So how do you take the formula? What's your take on best practice? How does this roll out? And obviously Amazon will continue to grow, but that, you know, there's one company. Is there a lesson here for the rest of us? I think, I think all the data center companies and the cloud companies out there see value in this region. That's why so much of the internet traffic comes through Northern Virginia. I mean, it's, I've heard 70%, I've heard much higher than that too. So I think everybody realizes this is a strategic asset at a national level. But I think the main point to bring out is that every state across America should be thinking about investments from companies like Amazon. There are really significant benefits that helps the entire community. So it helps build schools, police departments, fire departments, et cetera. 10 jobs, opportunities. Shannon, what's the vision though beyond data center? You get solar, sustainability? We do. We have actually a number of renewable energy projects, which I want to talk about, but just one other quick note on the data center industry. So I also serve on the data center coalition, which is a national organization of data center and cloud providers. And we look at states all over this country. We're very active in multiple states. And we work with governors and state governments as they put together different frameworks and policies to incent investment in their states. Virginia is doing it right. Virginia has historically been very forward-looking and very forward-thinking in how they're trying to attract these data center investments. They have the right tax incentives in place. And then back to your point about renewable energy, over the last several years, Virginia has also really made some statutory changes and other policy changes to drive forward renewable energy in Virginia. Six years ago this week, John, I was in Acomac County in Virginia, which is the Eastern Shore. It's a very rural area where we helped build our first solar farm, Amazon Solar Farm, in Virginia in 2015 is when we made this announcement with the governor. Six years ago this week, it was 88 megawatts, which basically at the time, quadrupled Virginia's solar output in one project. So since that first project, we at Amazon have gone from building that one facility, quadrupling at the time the solar output in Virginia to now we're, by the end of 2023, gonna be 1,430 megawatts of solar power in Virginia with 15 projects, which is the equivalent of enough power to actually enough electricity to power 225,000 households, which is the equivalent of Prince William County, Virginia. So just to give you the scale of what we're doing here in Virginia on renewable energy. So to me, I mean, this comes down to not to put my opinion out there because I never hold back on theCUBE, it's a posture issue. We count on that. It's a posture issue of how people approach business. I mean, it's the two schools of thought on the extreme. Screw business, government pays for everything, or business friendly. So this is a modern story about friendly business kind of collaborative posture. Yeah, it's putting money to very specific use, which has a very specific return. In this case, it's for everybody that lives in the Northern Virginia region. So that benefits everybody. And these policies have not just attracted companies like Amazon and data center builders and renewable energy investments. These policies are also leading to rapid growth in the cybersecurity industry in Virginia as well. John founded his company decades ago and you have all of these cybersecurity companies now located in Virginia. Many of them are partners like this. Yeah, I know John and Emma both have contributed heavily to a lot of the systems in place in America here. So congratulations on that. But I got to ask you guys, well, I got you over the last minute or two, cybersecurity has become the big issue. I mean, there's a lot of this policies is all over the place, but cyber is super critical right now. I mean, where's the red line, Shannon? Where's, you know, things are happening. You guys bring security to the table, businesses are out there fending for themselves. There's no militia. Where's the support for the commercial businesses? People are nervous. So you want to answer? Well, I'm happy to take the first shot. And then we'll leave John with the last word because he's the true cyber expert, but I had the privilege of hosting a panel this morning with the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, Jeniz Easterly. And the agency is relatively new and she laid out a number of initiatives that the DHS organization that she runs is working on with industry. And so they're leaning in, they're partnering with industry in a number of areas, including, you know, making sure that we have the right information sharing framework and tools in place. So the government and we in the industry can act on information that we get in real time, making sure that we're investing for the future in the workforce development and cyber skills, but also as we enter National Cyber Security Month, making sure that we're all doing our part in cybersecurity awareness and training. For example, one of the things that our Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy recently announced as he was participating in a White House summit that President Biden hosted in late August was that we were going to at Amazon make a tool that we've developed for information and security awareness for our employees, free, available to the public. And in addition to that, we announced that we were going to provide free strong authentication tokens for AWS customers as part of that announcement going into National Cyber Security Month. So what I like about what this administration is doing is they're reaching out, they're looking for ways to work with industry, bringing us together in these summits, but also looking for actionable things that we can do together to make a difference. Yeah, so my perspective, echoing on some of Shannon's points are really the following. The key in general is automation. And there are three components to automation that are important in today's environment. One is cyber hygiene and education is a piece of that. The second is around misattribution, meaning if the bad guy can't see you, you can't be hacked. And the third one is really more or less around what's called attribution, meaning I can figure out actually who the bad guy is, and then report that bad guy's actions to the appropriate law enforcement and military types, and then they take it from there. Unless he's not attributed either, so. Well, the basic point is we can't, as industry, hack back, it's illegal. But what we can do is provide the tools and methods necessary to our government counterparts. This is that point about information sharing, where they can take the actions necessary and try and find those bad guys. I just feel like we're not moving fast enough. Businesses should be able to hack back, in my opinion. I'm a hawk on this one item. So I believe that, because if people dropped on our shores with troops, the government wouldn't protect us. I wouldn't protect business. Your point is directly taken when Cyber Command was formed before that as an airline, sea, and space, physical domains, each of those physical domains have about $150 billion they spend per year. When Cyber Command was formed, it was spending less than JP Morgan Chase to defend the nation. So we do have a ways to go. I do agree with you that there needs to be more flexibility given to industry to help with the fight. In this case, Andy Jassy's offered a couple of tools, which are, I think, really good. Strong tokens, training. Those are all really good. We've been working with Amazon for a long time. Ever since, really ever since the CIA embraced the cloud, which was sort of the shot heard around the world for cloud computing, we do the security and compliance automation for that air gap region for Amazon, as well as other aspects of the system. The world needs more telos faster, keep cranking up that software because, tell me right now, people are getting hit. And people are getting scared. The colonial pipeline hack, that effect, everybody started going, wait a minute, I can't get gas. But again, in this area, and Jen Easterly said this this morning here at the summit, is that this truly has to be about industry working with government, making sure that we're working together. Government has a role, but so does the private sector. And I've been working cyber issues for a long time too. And kind of seeing where we are this year and this recent cyber summit that the president held, I really see just a tremendous commitment coming from the private sector to be an effective partner in securing the nation's cybersecurity. Well, this comes full circle to our original conversation around the Virginia data that you guys are looking at, the Loudoun County, Amazon contribution. The success formula is really commercial public sector. I mean, the government has to recognize that technology is now lingua franca for all things. Everything, society. Well, and one quick thing here that segues into the fact that Virginia is the cloud center of the nation, the president issued a cybersecurity executive order earlier this year that really emphasizes the migration of federal systems into cloud and the modernization that John has worked on. John heads a group called the Alliance for Digital Innovation, and they're very active in the IT modernization world and we're a member as well. The federal government is really emphasizing this migration to cloud, and that was reiterated in that cybersecurity executive order from the president. Well, we'll definitely get you guys back on the show. You want to say something real quick? Just all I'd say about the executive order is that I think one of the main reasons why the president thought it was important is that the legacy systems that are out there are mainly written on COBOL. There aren't a lot of kids graduating with degrees in COBOL. So, COBOL was designed in 1955, I think. So, I think it's very imperative that we move as many of these workloads as we can. I don't think they teach it anymore. They don't. So, from a security point of view, the amount of threats and vulnerabilities are through the roof. Awesome. Well, John, I want to get you on the show, our next cybersecurity event, maybe have you come and do a fireside chat and really kind of unpack all the awesome stuff that you're doing, but also the challenges that there are many. She had to keep up the good work on the policy. I still say we've got to remove that red line and identify new rules of engagement relative to what's on our sovereign virtual land. So, you know, own another ball game. Thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you, John. Appreciate it, man. Okay, CUBE coverage here at AWS Public Sector 7 in Washington. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.