 Larry Strickling, first of all, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. During your tenure, what were the most significant points in the U.S. government's relationship with ICANN? Well, let's focus on the time that I served as administrator at NTIA, which would have been 2009 until January of 2017. And I think in that period, there were two milestone dates. The first would have been September 2009, when ICANN and the U.S. government executed the affirmation of commitments as a new way to define the relationship between ICANN and the United States government. The second, of course, was our March 2014 request to the multi-stakeholder community to develop the transition plan that led to the eventual ending of the IANA functions contract between ICANN and the U.S. government, which finally went away at the end of September 2016. So within those periods, I think with the affirmation of commitments, one of the key things that emerged from that relationship were the accountability and transparency review efforts that were undertaken by ICANN, which involved stakeholders from throughout the community looking hard at the accountability and transparency at ICANN. And I think that built a very important foundation. Those recommendations, watching ICANN implement those recommendations, built a very strong foundation that gave us the confidence in the U.S. government in March of 2014 that ICANN was now ready to go that final step and have the IANA functions contract be eliminated between the U.S. and ICANN. I want to go into the stewardship transition, but before we do that, let's jump back to the AOC, the affirmation of commitments. In 2009, when that was a work in progress, when it was a concept and the AOC had not yet been signed or even drafted, what was your reaction? What was the feeling within the DOC about the AOC? I think the feeling was that this was the next step in the evolution of the relationship. The idea was that there had been a previous contractual vehicle. I think a joint project agreement was the official lingo. And moving to the affirmation of commitments was a signal to the world that the U.S. was looking to evolve that relationship. I mean, keep in mind that when ICANN was set up in the late 1990s and was first designated to perform the IANA functions, it was always viewed as a temporary measure. In fact, back in 1998, the hope was that ICANN would be completely privatized and the U.S. government relationship would be over by the year 2000. So when we get to 2009 and we're seeing the relationship still there, I think there was a question of how do we continue evolving this relationship? How do we continue to show support for the multi-stakeholder model of governance and continue to encourage it and support it so that we can get to that eventual point that we finally got to at the beginning of October of 2016 when the IANA functions contract could go ahead and expire? I started at ICANN roughly around the same time you took your position as Assistant Secretary. From 2009 up through 2016 when there were congressional hearings about the IANA stewardship transition, there was always in my mind a certain lack of understanding on the part of Congress as to what ICANN was and what it should be. First of all, do you agree with that? Is that a fair characterization? And secondly, how did you deal with that? Well, certainly there were people on the Capitol Hill who I think felt that ICANN was part of the U.S. government or maybe more accurately that the Department of Commerce and NTIA managed and directed and oversaw the activities of ICANN. So we could see that emerge during some of the issues that popped up in the last eight years. So the expansion of the GTLDs, that was a matter of a lot of controversy among American businesses. They naturally got their congressmen involved and they would then want to come to us and try to hold us accountable for things that were happening at ICANN. So I think there was always a constant amount of education going on that needed to go on in terms of explaining to people in Congress that no, I mean, we've really turned these issues over to this organization ICANN and to the stakeholders that participate in the ICANN processes. And these really aren't judgments for the U.S. government to be making or blessing or vetoing. But it was a constant area of education over the last eight years. And it was one that I think both we and the Department of Commerce and ICANN had to be up on the Hill constantly educating members and their staffs in terms of exactly what this relationship was. Is it fair to say that there was always in some elements in Congress a concern that the U.S. is giving away the Internet, that we'll no longer control the Internet, no matter how false that premise may be? Well, certainly when we announced the transition in March of 2014, one of the responses from a very small number of legislators was, yes, this was going to be giving the Internet away and not just giving it away, but giving it away to authoritarian governments where the free flow of information on the Internet would be somehow impeded by the U.S. stepping out of the role that we played under the IANA functions contract. Of course, that represented a fundamental misunderstanding of what our role had been with the IANA functions contract. And we went to great length to indicate that we were not involved in what goes on the Internet. And our specific role with the IANA functions contract was simply the clerical role of whether or not the change being proposed to the domain name system and the root zone file in particular by ICANN was accurate so that it could be passed on to Verisign who actually executed the update. I mean, starting in March of 2014, it seemed like every day we had to keep explaining to people that the role we played was not what people seemed to think it was in terms of managing the Internet and managing, more importantly, the content of what was on the Internet. And that misperception existed right up till the end as witnessed by the campaign of Senator Cruz to try to block the transition from occurring. How much frustration, though, is that, I mean, you just said, you know, that misconception existed for this prolonged period of time, despite what I'm sure were constant briefings by you guys to the Hill. Were you hitting your head against the wall? Well, it's just part of the process. What you never really know when you're dealing with members on the Hill or, frankly, dealing with people in any business relationship or regulatory relationship is, are they intentionally misrepresenting the facts or do they really just not understand what you're trying to do? Our approach always was to assume the latter, and that if we could keep educating these folks that they would finally understand that the concern they had really wasn't a realistic one. And I will say that in the last six months, starting back in March of 2016, when the community completed its plan right up till the end of September, the input and the support from the community itself was absolutely critically important to getting this done. It was important for members of Congress and other people who had their doubts about this to hear from the American business community why this was good for the Internet, to hear from civil society why this was important for maintaining freedom on the Internet, to hear from the technical experts as to why this wasn't going to lead to governments taking control of the Internet. So the forces who understood this were well arrayed and definitely providing critically important input into this process. So the information was out there, but you still would run into pockets of opposition that did folks who either didn't understand this or chose not to understand it for whatever political fight they were trying to wage at the time. Talk to me about the back story behind that March 14 announcement. How long had this been under discussion at NTIA where there are talks with ICANN? How did this arise? In 1998, the plan always was to get the U.S. out of it. So in that sense, it was always a goal of the US government to do it. Right. So I think the wake up call for me at least, so let me speak personally to this, was the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, where for the first time you had a majority of governments who were willing to be counted in support of seeing more government intervention to regulate the Internet. And coming back from that meeting at the end of 2012, my reaction, and I think it was shared by other people who had been part of the U.S. delegation was that we had work to do. If we wanted to see the multi-stakeholder model expand in terms of the support it received around the world, we had a real effort, particularly with countries in the developing world, to explain to them and show them how the multi-stakeholder model would protect and benefit their interests as opposed to the more traditional, let's just get governments together to vote on these issues. So I think it was really starting in 2013 when we started to recognize that we needed to be out there much more affirmatively with countries in the developing world in terms of showing them the power of this model. And what greater demonstration of the U.S. support for the model than our stepping up as we did in March of 2014 and saying, hey, we so much believe in this model, we're willing to step back and leave the governance of the domain name system to that multi-stakeholder community which you developing countries can participate in and should participate in and embrace. And I think it really showed to governments in some of these other countries that the U.S. was really putting its money where its mouth was in the sense that we were really willing to end that relationship in the furtherance of the multi-stakeholder model of governance. I think that provided a tremendous amount of credibility to the effort and really got, I think, governments behind us. Now, did he get every government behind it? Of course not. I mean, we never undertook this with the idea that we were somehow going to convince a government like Russia that its views about government control of the Internet should change. They weren't going to change. They didn't change. I don't expect they'll change in the future. The battle, though, was not with them. It was with all these other developing countries who were undecided. They didn't know which was the right model. They hadn't really seen the benefits of the multi-stakeholder model in their own countries, and this was an opportunity to demonstrate to them how this could work, how it could benefit them, and get them on board. And I think the proof of that is demonstrated in the fact that I think roughly 30 countries that had voted for more government control of the Internet in Dubai in 2012 joined in the consensus plan in 2016 in Morocco in terms of supporting the plan that came to us for our review to complete the transition. So I think that shows how much the plan and how much the support of the international community had grown over that period. I mean, certainly there were very important countries like India that came out in the summer of 2015 in support of the model, but behind that there were a lot of other countries that were seeing how this worked, understood it better, and were seeing that it was be beneficial to their own Internet economies to support the model. Between that announcement in March of 2014 and when the stewardship transition actually took place in 2016, did you ever think this is not going to happen? No, I will tell you that there were times when we could see people spinning their wheels. We could see the process maybe veering off track a little bit, but you never had doubts? Well, that we were ultimately going to get it done. No, I was confident we would get the transition completed, but there clearly were points in the process where there needed to be corrective action taking. We tried to remain as hands-off as we could at the U.S. government because we had after all asked the community to develop a plan, and I think it was a testament to the faith we have in the model that we could kind of step back and restrain ourselves and say, these folks are going to have to work it out, but the model is strong enough, they will work it out, and that's what ultimately happened. There was criticism, you heard it, that NTIA should be in their pushing for this thing. Yeah, but when as soon as we start substituting our judgment for that of all of these stakeholders, then we're not supporting the model at that point. You support the model by saying we're going to give it to the stakeholders to decide, they organize it, they figure out what's important, and they come up with the plan. What you're relying on is the necessity of having consensus at the end, so that sure, the group at one point tested maybe a more extreme version of one of the accountability models than we were comfortable with in the U.S. government, but we never came out and said that because we felt that the community would self-correct, and it did. The community did come back and say, maybe that's going a little too far, let's pull it back a little bit. Again, I think it was a testament to the faith we had in this that we knew or felt confident that that would happen in the end. This may be an imprecise narrative, but the community, at the time the transition was announced by you folks in March 2014, the community felt this was a prime opportunity to deal with ICANN accountability, enhance accountability. That was not in your original plan. Correct. So why did you agree to the linkage of the transition and accountability? Well, because the community wanted it first and foremost. The community wants a lot of things. Right, but by the same token, we had just completed the second accountability and transparency review team in 2013, and I had been on that team, and I can remember going to the ICANN meetings and soliciting people for their input. And frankly, I don't think people took it as seriously as they had taken the first review in 2010. And in some respects, I was surprised when we got to Singapore in 2014, which was a week or two after our announcement, and everyone's in there talking about this is our chance to improve accountability. It was like, well, where were you folks last year when we were doing the accountability and transparency review team? Privately, I'm sure I did. But it wasn't intended to be a criticism. It was just a reflection of the fact that people had been focused on other issues in 2013. And now, faced with this ultimate change in the US relationship, people, I think, mobilized realizing that this was the best and perhaps final opportunity to really deal with things that had been gnawing at them previously, even if they hadn't been fully ventilated during the ATRT in 2013. So there was no feeling that somehow it was invalid to bring these issues up six months later. And we did, I think, reach out and accommodate that very quickly and say, look, if this is what the community wants, then great, we'll link them together. You got to have both of them done and bring us that plan. You're no longer an assistant secretary, so I'm sure you'll answer this question with unsurpassed candor. How high up was the concern over the transition? Did it go up into the White House? I mean, what came at you from above? After we announced it? After you announced it, between the time of the announcement and when the transition was successful in October of 2016. So even before we had announced that there had been interagency discussions led by the White House, so when we made the announcement in March, it was made with the knowledge and support of other agencies and through the White House. And then through the period, over that two-year period, it was a constant agenda topic in a standard or a regularly scheduled White House meeting that we had roughly once a month where we would update people on what was going on. I don't know that it ever got to a point where there was never any second guessing about whether this was the right thing to have done. There were points in time at which we got input from other agencies in terms of how it was going, concerns they might have, issues they might have so we can make sure they could get addressed. But at the end of the day, there was full and total support from other agencies for this. Larry, did you ever have any indication that this rose to a level of interest, concern, or awareness on the part of Obama himself? Personally, no. I don't know that. I mean, my understanding is that in the end, when we were down to the last six weeks or two months, that very senior people in the White House, probably including the president, were aware of what was going on. During your tenure of interaction with ICANN from 09 until the end of the Obama administration, what was your most problematic dealing with ICANN on any issue, whether it was the AOC, the transition, whatever? What was your lowest point and elaborate on that, if you would? I can't really think of a... Oh, come on, Larry. And I don't even remember the particulars. I do remember the ICANN meeting in Colombia in 2010, 2011. It was in December, I think, in Cartagena. And I asked for and was given an opportunity to speak to the board in private session. And I don't even remember exactly what my remarks were, but I know they were transcribed. But I think the message was something along the lines of, this is a multi-stakeholder community. You've really got to listen to the stakeholders. You've got to embrace what you're hearing from people. You need to be less defensive about the input that you're getting from folks. I don't even remember today exactly what the context was in which I gave those remarks, but that was probably the one time that I felt, gee, I really ought to give my perspective on how I see the arrangement or the relationship between the board and the community at that point in time. It sounds like, to you, the most important thing was keeping a light touch. Oh, absolutely. And certainly during the transition even more so. But even before the transition, it sounds like you were always... What you're telling me is you were always very concerned about that. Right. Well, then again, it goes back to the fundamental fact that we didn't manage ICANN. We didn't oversee ICANN. We simply had this stewardship relationship with the IANA functions and that overall relationship that helped designate ICANN back in 1998 as the organization to perform those functions. And so we were always very cognizant of that. Now, that didn't mean we weren't vocal and loud advocates inside the governmental advisory committee. And I fully expect the U.S. government will continue to be strong advocates inside the governmental advisory committee. But that's as any other government. We're on an equal footing with them in that context. And we will certainly represent American interest strongly there, as anybody would expect we would. The difference was this idea that we had this special ability to command ICANN to perform according to what we wanted. And we were very, very careful not to do anything that would give support to that notion, which was just not true. If the transition had not happened in 2016 toward the end of the Obama administration, would it have happened? I mean, could it happen now is fundamentally what you're asking or could it happen in early 2017 when we're talking here? No, I really think that the window ended with the end of the Obama administration. You'd had candidate Trump had come out and joined Senator Cruz in opposition to the transition in late September. And so I would think that if it hadn't been completed, this might be an area where you would see another reversal of policy between the two administrations. So basically, there was a very narrow window that was open for the acceptance and the actual finalization of the transition. There's two years. Well, yeah. But by the time that things had progressed to the point where you had a valid transition proposal, by the time you'd finished the Hill hearing, there was a limited window there. Yeah, but we had gotten the plan in March. We had said we'll take 90 days to review and approve it. We got it done in, I think, roughly the 90 days. So that by early June, everything was done. I mean, we had basically said we've reviewed the plan. The plan meets all of the criteria that we laid out back in 2014. There was still some work that needed to be done. That's the period when the Hill came in, though. Yeah, and then the Hill came in. And so I was involved in sending a lot of letters to new pen pals on Capitol Hill over the summer. But we never felt that anyone had ever raised an objection or an argument for which there wasn't a compelling answer in support of completing the transition. I mean, you had a lot of arguments that issues emerge that had they really been substantial, presumably would have been handled by the community for the two years they were developing their plan. But you had people coming up with these ideas that somehow there was a legal transfer of government property, even though that had been looked at already and their conclusion had been reached that there wasn't any inappropriate transfer. And then that got reaffirmed by the governmental accountability office in the fall. So all of a sudden we're dealing with all these objections being thrown up against the wall to see if any of them would stick. And again, none of them had any substance to them. And we had answers for all of them. And it was just a question of representing that and then making sure that stakeholders like American Industry, American Civil Society, worldwide, international or civil society and businesses were in there supporting and reaffirming the points that we were making. But having a reasonable answer in this town in Washington, D.C. isn't always a dictate that that position will prevail. Exemplified by the Senate hearing, which was chaired by Senator Cruz, where he came at you pretty hard. I mean, you had had the GAO study dealing with that issue at that point. He still went after it. You went after it aggressively through questioning with you. What was your reaction? I mean, I saw what your obvious reaction was. I'm asking what was going through your mind. So Senator Cruz had made it his campaign at some point in the summer to try to block the transition. And he was going to resort and did rely on some of these arguments others had come up with as a reason to object to and try to stop it. He wasn't unable to get a majority of his colleagues in the Hill to agree with them. I think largely because of the work that we and industry and civil society had done to educate members as to what the facts were. You went into that hearing knowing you were going to be beat up. Oh, sure. Well, or that he would attempt to, yes. What's your opinion now? You've had some time. The waters have calmed a bit. I'm curious about your perceptions of that hearing looking back on it. It was a tough hearing, but that's why they pay us the big bucks. But I think it was important and I frankly welcomed the hearing at that point in time because it gave us a chance to actually engage on the record and dispense with some of these arguments that were being made. Now, did we make a convert to Senator Cruz? Clearly not. But if anyone was listening to that hearing and was paying attention to the facts, I think they would come away, hopefully being much more confident in the fact that this transition was good for America. It was good for the Internet. It will enhance free expression on the Internet. All the things that Senator Cruz said he was in favor of are going to be accomplished and are being accomplished by this transition. The objection really was over whether or not this particular mechanism would lead to the outcomes that both he and we and others agreed upon. Are you proud? I think everybody who participated in the process should be proud of the outcome. It was the most amazing, largest, most sustained demonstration of the power of the multi-stakeholder model. And so I think everybody who spent any time in it should feel proud about getting to this point. Everybody had a role to play. Everybody played those roles in the outcome. It was good for the Internet, good for free expression, good for free flow of information. So yes, I think everyone should be proud about it. Let me ask you this. You speak with a parent passion, with a parent interest on this. At NTIA, you are involved in a number of issues, not just Internet governance, not just ICANN, but spectrum and a whole variety of issues. You're out now. You're out of that job. How important were the issues of what we're talking about, Internet governance, ICANN, those sorts of things, among all the things that were on your plate, how fascinating or interested were you personally in that specific subject matter? Well, I mean, we worked on a lot of fascinating issues. We worked on expanding broadband access and adoption around the United States. We worked on a whole series of other Internet policy issues. You mentioned spectrum. We were involved in, I think, a major policy advance in spectrum, this adoption of spectrum sharing as the way to best meet the growing needs of federal agencies and commercial businesses for more spectrum. But this was a unique issue, partly because there was no playbook. There was no, it wasn't like anybody had done this before. And so just working on it, seeing how it would go, making sure that we were monitoring it, we had to nudge it a couple of times, notwithstanding my hands-off policy about it. So, yeah, it was a fascinating project to work on. You were going where no man had gone before to quote Star Trek. Well, that was true of all of us who were participating in the process, yeah. Will you stay in the world of Internet governance or Internet regulation, that arena? Well, I don't know what the shelf life of this tape is, but yeah, it's a very interesting area. I think one of the things that's incumbent on all of us who were part of this process is to think about how do you now take the multi-stakeholder model and apply it in other contexts, where perhaps you don't already have a tradition of using the process. But the fact is it's been demonstrated to be a very effective way to solve problems and to engage people in doing that. And there are lots of very thorny Internet policy issues that would benefit from the application of this kind of process. Because there are many issues if we wait for legislation, if we wait for regulation, just in the context of the United States, we'll be waiting a long time. But because of the international implications of so many of these issues, the idea of getting an international agreement on this that goes beyond just governments is very, very hard. And so how do you take these concepts? How do you take this enthusiasm, this energy and this demonstration of success and now find the opportunities to use this process in other places? And it's hard because you need to have some kind of sponsoring or convening organization. What brings people together is a sense that the group that's going to meet has the legitimate role to decide a problem, to solve a problem. That's hard to do just out of nothing. And so how do we attack that problem? How do we approach that? I think will be a challenge for all of us who stay in the Internet governance space over the next several years. But it's also a tremendous place for opportunity because if you do wait for legislation, if you do wait for regulation, you're going to wait too long. And to the extent we can start making progress on these issues, even if it's not comprehensive, it'll be good for everybody. It'll be good for the Internet, be good for the world community. It's just a question of how do you get it organized and resourced to actually get people to come together and work on these issues. What I'm hearing is a certain enchantment with the uncharted nature of this. But I think it's a tremendous opportunity that's presented here. Larry Strickling, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. You're welcome. We appreciate it. You're welcome.