 Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante and this is Silicon Angle Wikibon's production. We are here at MIT. I'm here with my co-host Jeff Kelly. Jeff, I'm very excited to be here again working with you side by side. Last summer, we started a collaboration with MIT at the Chief Data Officer Symposium. And we really hit it off with the folks at MIT. We thought they were really smart. I think they thought we were kind of cool. So we've now bring you, McCube, to a number of MIT events this year. We're here at the MIT Media Lab right across the river, and our background is Boston. This is the fourth ECIR workshop. ECIR is Explorations in Cyber-International Relations. And the topic of this event is cybersecurity in the governance gap, complexity, contention, and cooperation. So let me set it up for you. So cyberspace used to be really low politics, kind of a back room activity, not really front and center. Well, over the past two decades, cyberspace has essentially encompassed every part of our lives. And the impact of cyberspace and security has begun to seep into and bleed into international relations and geopolitics. So that essentially is what this conference is really all about. The conference started out, as I said four years ago, really trying to just organize the individuals in this space, a lot of the good thinkers, and now bringing together the whole notion of governance, the lack, really, of governance in any kind of institutions around cyberspace. We have a great lineup today of guests that we're going to be running through talking about these issues, talking about the impact on geopolitics, and specifically how the internet and its rise has really outpaced the ability of the world to really govern around this 21st century reality. Jeff Kelly, you were in at the keynotes this morning. What did you think? What did you take? Well, it's interesting, although maybe not surprising, when you think about the way the internet has developed. And this is true really of any new innovative technology. Rules and governance is not always top of mind when things are starting to be developed. And really, we've gotten to the point now where we're about 20 years into the world of the worldwide web and the internet, which really impacts every part of our lives. We're about 20 years into that evolution right now. And currently, it's a little frightening if you think about the lack of governance and standards around things like security in cyberspace. Some of the speakers in the keynotes this morning pointed out that the US has a very fragmented approach to governing cyberspace. That's one problem. Another, of course, is that it's US dominated, and where cyberspace doesn't recognize borders. But it's very much a US dominated governance structure. Because of ICON. That's what there is. Right, really, as one of the reasons, right? As the president of ICON pointed out, it's a US corporation, based in California. And it's initially focused on- Well, it's a nonprofit that's essentially controlled by the US. Exactly. So it's priorities- I say controlled by. I mean, essentially, they've got to get permission to do pretty much anything through the US government. And so therefore, it's priorities are going to be US-centric. And that creates the perception, whether it's real or not, but there's probably some truth to it that companies like Google and Facebook and other US companies are able to get a competitive advantage on the global market. Well, that's one reason. But I think the other reason is, of course, when you've got these, when the major global internet players are US-based, they're going to look after their own best interests. And it's not surprising in that sense that some of the focus areas around governance are going to be focused on issues that are important to them. Well, and we heard- and there's been a lot of talk in the IT industry for a while now about the different internet, the China internet, the German internet. We heard a situation where Angela Merkel was listening to Deutsche Telekom propose the German internet, and she was very intrigued. So this essentially, we're talking about forking the internet, which nobody wants. Because obviously, well, I say nobody wants. Well, globally, from an economic standpoint, that would not be advantageous. But from a narrow perspective, you could see why a country like Germany might want a German internet, or certainly China, would want a China internet. Well, I think, so we heard from Joseph Nye this morning, famous and well-known professor at Harvard around international relations. And he talked about, when you're talking about security, you've got to balance that, of course, with other priorities and other values. So there are, there can be a case- Like Liberty. Well, Liberty, freedom, innovation, commerce. Speed, agility. Right, so there are going to be some- All those things that drive economic value. Right, so the idea that you could fragment the internet, and we'll have a Chinese internet and a German internet and a US internet, that's one way potentially to mitigate some of the risks. But what does that do in terms of the other values and other priorities that we have around commerce and security and freedom, et cetera? So there's all different ways to approach this. And I think what really struck me in that keynote is that we are very early stages of this. There are, as I mentioned, a number of organizations like ICANN and others that are focused on governing different aspects of cyberspace. But there really is no kind of, as one of the speakers this morning put it, a hierarchical overall governance regime that kind of governs the totality of cyberspace. So some of the questions are, how do we get to that point? Do we want to get to that point? Is it going to be just one organization? Does it need to be a multilateral approach, like we heard from some of our, some of the keynote speakers this morning? So, you know, there's a lot of questions that remain to be answered around security and governance and cyberspace. We're going to talk about that today, of course. And there's, as I said, there's all different ways we can go about this, Dave. And it all depends on your perspective. We have come at this from a very US-centric perspective for the most part, up until now. We're starting to hear from more other parts of the world that are very interested in this. And it'll be interesting today to see how this plays out. The physical and the logical worlds, Jeff, are coming together, they're colliding in a way. I mean, and then you see all kinds of examples. Certainly, WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, the impact of social. I mean, in theCUBE, we always talk about cloud, mobile, social, and big data. And they're all enabled by cyberspace. So, we are here, we're at MIT. This is theCUBE, we come to you at these events. We extract the signal from the noise. We bring the best guests that are at these events. And this is a very high level of thinking at this event. I mean, a lot of times in theCUBE, we're talking deep tech. This really is not a tech conference. It's really one about policy and international impacts of cyberspace. It's my pleasure to bring on Charlie Sennett. Charles Sennett is the founder, one of the founders and the editor-at-large of the Global Post, phenomenal worldwide news organizations. Charlie, welcome to theCUBE. Great to see you. And so, you were in the session this morning. I mean, Charlie, in a lot of ways, this is in your wheelhouse. I mean, we heard about Brazil, essentially making a move to the middle. I mean, I'm reminded of politics, right? Everybody wants to be in the middle. That's right. And the U.S. dominance, you've certainly tracked, I mean, firsthand, the Arab Spring. You saw the role of social media, of Twitter, of cyberspace. So, again, welcome. What do you make of what you heard this morning? I think it's so interesting to know that there is this global debate going on, on governance and how the world is going to govern the internet. And it's one that we're not paying enough attention to. We in the media, we're not looking at this. This is an eye-opening conference where I really see a lot happening internationally in terms of diplomacy, in terms of the corporate world looking at this. But for me, as someone who's covered a lot of conflict, I thought the opening statement by Joe Nye, this is the former Admiral Joe Nye, now at the Kennedy School Distinguished Professor. Joe said we need to tone down the rhetoric on cyber war, cyber conflict, and think about this more in a more complex way, in a more nuanced way, about that there are definite rising security threats that come with cyber space, and with all of the potential that's in it for disruption of governance, of corporate America, the Snowden effect, right? We really have this sense that things could put forward some peril for our country. But we also have great opportunity, as he pointed out, and a great need now to think through governance. So I thought his sense of creating some level of toning down the rhetoric and focusing more on how are we gonna create governance was a great opening. Yeah, and he talked about the pendulum swinging back, and it really is a trade-off. Jeff and I were just talking about it. I mean, more security means less agility, less freedom, less liberty, maybe less economic value, but of course, lower risk as well. And so that's something that Joe talked about. He went back, he gave an example of Pearl Harbor, I'm sure we could go back thousands of years in history of similar situations. It was also interesting to hear the president of ICON, Fadi Chahade, talk about the U.S. dominance in cyber space, and from our standpoint of theCUBE, we cover enterprise tech, and you see Google and Facebook and Twitter, and the likes of others, historically, IBM and HP and others, the ascendancy of these U.S. companies, there's a perception out there that the U.S. is sort of the deck is stacked in favor of the U.S., and I'm certain some of that is real, and some of that is just perception, but that was kind of new news to me. Yeah, I think this conference highlights a dialogue happening around the world where people do feel that ICON has a sort of U.S. centric dominance of the internet inherent in its structures. I think even the president of ICON was saying we need to rethink this, that this is not sustainable, that the perception of U.S. control is not a sustainable system for governance, that they're gonna have to open it up, they're gonna have to be more inclusive in bringing a lot of voices around the world into thinking through a new model for governance. That's news, I'm in the business of news, I think there's a lot of news unfolding here. And he talked about Brazil as sort of the middle ground, and he said there were a number of factors that went into that and some deep analysis that he didn't have time to go into, why Brazil? Obviously a big country, it's technologically savvy, but why Brazil, what's going on in Brazil? I'm very interested in the metrics for how they determined that Brazil was the core of the center, and he didn't tell us that, right? He said we had a very complex set of metrics, I won't go into it. I'd love to know that. I think the obvious elements would be that it's one of the world's fastest growing economies, that it absolutely represents the global south and all of its sophistication, and its challenges and its great successes. This is very much a time when Brazil is ascendant economically, culturally. I think there's just a lot happening in Brazil. It's also always been a very independent country. And I was joking about the non-aligned states going back to the Cold War. There was the emergence of the non-aligned states, India sort of being at the center of that. I think Brazil is a new version of a digital age non-aligned state with a lot of potential for growth, a lot of interesting things happening. And I think it's very wise to hear that there's this courting of the middle going on. Very smart, but a lot to learn about how they figured out it's Brazil. And then Jeff Kelly, of course, you were in the room too. The analogy that Joseph Nye made with the progression of governance around the, you know, nuclear proliferation was interesting. I guess we're in decade two now of that, right? Right, yeah, you pointed out, it took about two decades from really the dawn of the nuclear age to get to this conversation about security as it relates to governance. And we're getting to that point now. We're about two decades in. So, Charlie, but I'd like to ask you, one of the things they pointed out, and I think kind of stepping back a little bit. So we talked about, and you just mentioned, this US-centric view of a role in terms of governance and security in cyberspace is unsustainable. Let's just take that statement and unpack that a little bit. Why is that unsustainable? Why is a US-dominated governance architecture or a paradigm really unsustainable as we start to evolve now into the third decade of, I guess, what you call the internet age? Well, I think Fatih Chahadi, who is the president of ICANN, was explaining that. And he himself was saying it's not sustainable. He has the man who is the president of ICANN is saying the model that he is presiding over is not sustainable because the internet is about connecting the world. It is the worldwide web. And if we're going to have the worldwide web reflect a collective sense of governance, we're gonna have to be more inclusive. So I think it's practically unsustainable. I think it's also physically unsustainable because you now have a clamoring from Russia and from China for other root systems to come into the internet. And as Fatih was pointing out, if that happens, you could really begin to see a collapse of the internet as we know it and that could have a tremendous economic impact on global economy. So I think lots at stake here to figure this out. I think there's a sense of urgency in the room that we're hearing about a need to really think this through in some new ways. So I wanna bring that back to the analogy that Joseph and I was making about the, what we can learn from the nuclear age. So there was the threat of mutual destruction that the United States and the Soviet Union basically were sort of monitoring things. But if that analogy holds true, the things are gonna get a lot more complex. I mean, right, if you've got- Got to be in a new Cold War with the Israeli nation. You've got Iran, you've got Israel. So what do you make of that parallel? I think it's a troubling parallel but I think we have to balance it with the great opportunity that's presented to us in coming up with a new structure of governance which is that you can have a place where the world really can come together. Think of the opportunities here for cross-cultural learning, for all of the things that are on the positive side of the ledger of how countries communicate with each other rather than the negative side which is war and competition and undercutting each other and looking around the world to get the upper hand. There's also tremendous openings for us to communicate in ways we never have before. So I think there's a lot at risk in this moment of figuring out a new governance that embraces the great possibilities of the web and doesn't just focus, as Joe and I pointed out, I think really importantly, that we don't use this rhetoric of cyber war and cyber conflict and get lost down a retro road of the past. What we're talking about is a new future and we really need to capitalize on it. Well, and a lot of that is economic, right, but we heard the story of a Deutsche Telekom proposing a German internet and Angela Merkel going, hey, that sounds good. You can see why Merkel might be upset. Forking the internet, I mean, right. You can absolutely see. So as you travel around the world, do you get that sense of friction, maybe even animosity toward the US? I think in the post-911 era in which you had a tremendous isolation of the United States, it's particularly under the presidency of George Bush with the war in Iraq. The US went from the great famous headline in France of we are all American now right after 9-11. Remember that? The morning after 9-11, we are all now Americans. A chance for us to have the world really see that we were under attack and support from the world turned into the war in Iraq, turned into the transatlantic divide like we've never seen it. Millions of people in Europe protesting the US then along comes President Obama, who apparently is gonna change that dynamic and suddenly talk about the US and its ability to really bring the world together. We feel like we hit the reset button with the world, but in five short years, I'd say we're right back to tremendous animosity toward the United States on a lot of different levels, but I think the Snowden effect is crucial among them, that the US has preached from a very lofty position for a long time about the surveillance strategies used by China, the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, and we look pretty hollow in our arguments given some of the WikiLeaks that have come out, particularly the leaks that Snowden created on how we have done our own surveillance. That's why Angela Merkel is upset and that's why she's thinking about rerouting. Very interesting just to note that they were talking here, these experts were talking about how world leaders like Angela Merkel, and even presumably in Washington, that they are not equipped to make these complex decisions on what is the future of governance, that there's a real need for some very rapid cramming to go on and a very great learning curve for our world leaders if they're gonna really play a practical and productive part of thinking through the new governance. And the knowledge may be in the US, but the coordination isn't. All right, we're gonna be unpacking these and other issues. We're live here at the MIT Media Lab. This is Dave Vellante. Charlie Senate will be back throughout the day, as will Jeff Kelly. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest. This is theCUBE.