 All right, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming out. I'd like to sit there and introduce myself. I'm Dan Weber. I'm the CEO for the Election Integrity Foundation, the New Not For Profit, which funds the voting village and will fund other voting villages and activities across the country and world to educate folks on what we're doing here at the voting village. And for those of you who are using Twitter and such, make sure to go out and tag at Voting Village DC and hashtag Voting Village 2019 for any of the posts that you do. That way everybody has a record and go back and be able to see all of this. So tonight, there the TD Francis X Hour Film Contest will be in this room at 7.30, in case you didn't know about that. And it's my honor and privilege to introduce our next speaker. It's Kimberly Young McLeer. She is gonna be talking about organizational cybernetics, a key to resilience for the digital village. And she's also the assistant professor for the US Coast Guard Academy. Do we have other military vets here in the room? Good thing. Thank you for your service, guys, appreciate it. Lieutenant Commander Kimberly Young McLeer is currently an assistant professor at the US Coast Guard Academy. She holds engineering and technical degrees from Florida A&M, Purdue, and George Washington University, including a PhD in systems engineering. And she's taught a breadth of different courses, operations, project management, which we all need and in IT as we know, crisis mapping and cybernetics and cybersecurity risk management. And she's been instrumental in enhancing the inclusion of cybersecurity training and education program for the Academy for Cadets and faculty. Just a wide range of things, especially her involvement with STEM. Let me not take up the stage any longer and introduce you to Lieutenant Commander Kimberly Young McLeer. Good afternoon. How is everyone doing today? Well, we're good. That's it? Yeah. This is actually my first time at DEF CON, so I'm just really thrilled to be here and thank you for the warm introduction. So I'm an introvert. Oh, can you hear me okay? Oh, no, you can't. Okay. So I'm an introvert, so I'm just gonna put that out there. Is anyone else an introvert? All right, I'm not alone. Raise your hand if you're an extrovert. Okay. All right, so some of you probably are wondering a couple of things right off the bat. Why am I not in uniform, maybe? I saw a couple of people looking at the agenda and they said, I don't have to do election security, so I got a couple of chuckles listening to people talk about that. And maybe you're not sure what organizational cybernetics is all about. Has anyone heard of that term before? All right, so I'll throw out one more. Raise your hand if you've ever met anyone in the Coast Guard, because we're kind of like unicorns. All right, have you ever met an introvert who's in the Coast Guard? All right, so we do some pretty extroverted things. You guys see that clip? We had it coasted at like, jumped on a submarine just for fun, right? Cause that's what we do in the Coast Guard. Right, that's every day. So we have a lot of missions, a lot of exciting missions, whether it's search and rescue, jumping on helicopters, jumping on submarines filled with drugs. But we are also involved with cyber security. That's kind of the niche I'm gonna be talking about with you. So I did give a little bit of a disclaimer that I'm introvert, so that means I'm gonna need audience participation. Are you guys up for that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, so you've, I think that was unanimous, right? All right, so here we go. So here's a little bit more in depth about my title. So democracy, resilience, and cybernetics. So I'm gonna be defining momentarily what Cybernetics is all about. I'm gonna do my best, tie that back into democracy, resilience, and really where the village, you all come in. So here's kind of the rundown. I'm gonna share a little bit more about my story beyond telling you that I'm an introvert. Gonna get into my background in systems engineering for those who may not know exactly what that's all about. Go into defining what organizational cybernetics specifically is from an academic research perspective as well as its applicability. Touch on very briefly, because I know I have a short window on natural disasters and man-made disasters. So that's all gonna be tied back in. And then kind of just transitioning into some interactive conversation, perhaps some Q and A. We'll just kind of go with the flow, see what the group energy is in terms of how we can unlock the village that is this room right now. And then I'll just kind of close with some final thoughts in the director's cut. So setting the stage, setting the stage. So I'm gonna show you a couple of slides and I hope as I make this presentation, if I can accomplish anything, maybe I'm gonna expose you to something you weren't expecting, you've never heard about, or it just makes you laugh. So that's the goal. All right, so here we go. Here's the first slide. All right. Yeah, yeah. So what do we see? What are we looking at? What, just shout it out. Okay, so it's two images. Yep, so on the one side, it looks like a college. I think we had to give away my bio a little bit. Florida A&M, what are they known for? So typically, you wanna shout it out? Exactly, so I saw you doing with your hands, all right. So, and what about the image to your left? Say again. Okay, so New Orleans, any other thoughts? Sugar Bowl, any other thoughts? West Indies, can you be more specific? Okay, all right. Has anyone heard of a place called Trinidad and Tobago? All right, Seven Miles from Venezuela, South America. So that's actually where my family's from. I'm actually first generation US and I went to undergrad at Florida A&M and I love just the concept of village and community, whether it's local community, global community and really just how do you tap into the talents that we have, the different diverse experiences that we have. So I do have two degrees in engineering, one degree in business, but I love history. I love just learning about people because I think that's really the ingredients to really understand what our humanity is all about, especially when we're talking about democracy and how we trust or maybe not trust so much some of our institutions. So I'm gonna keep these slides going. So what are these images of? Katrina, Coast Guard was involved with that and the other image? There's a little hint of text on the top. So what is that an image of? Riots, protests, 1921, almost 100 years ago. So I first learned about Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was actually studying history at Florida A&M. Florida A&M is a historically black college university or HBCU and regardless of what discipline you were studying, I studied industrial engineering. Everybody had to take about 18 credits in history and that's kind of the whole point of kind of maintaining the culture of the institution. So I first learned about these race riots, also mass occurred depending on what language you use and when I was sitting undergrad and this happened almost 100 years ago. So I just wanted to kind of plant that seed and just kind of let it resonate for a second. 100 years ago. So I'm sure everyone's probably heard about the Charlottesville incident that occurred. Was that spurred by just a couple of people who were upset or were there some other variables on how that actually happened? Does anyone kind of know some of those details? Yes. Yeah, so a consequence of the, it could be a liberal hub in Virginia and so they began between the two groups of protestors resulted in a death when someone drove their car. And I didn't pay you to say that. Okay, let's go on and make sure. I was like a prepared answer, right? And so did social media play an influence in any of that? Did outside actors play any influence or role in that? Right? So if you think about 100 years time, right? We've had hatred, we've had all different types of disasters with manmade, natural disasters, et cetera. And again, I kind of go back to our humanity. How do we actually respond when we have these types of incidents and can we have technology? Or in other words, is technology an enabler to maybe accelerating some of these vulnerabilities that we may have in terms of how we treat one another. All right, this slide here. Since some of you may have been wondering, is she actually in the Coast Guard? That's the proof. So social media, so my PhD is in systems engineering. I'm a nerd, I love studying all types of topics. The more complicated it is, the happier I am. So one of the things I noticed, I worked for a DHS cabinet secretary back in 2013 and 2014. So that would have been Secretary Napolitano, Secretary Johnson, and then I went over to the Coast Guard Academy after that. One of the things I noticed is coming from a DHS perspective and then going down to be a professor, is there is this gap in how we viewed cybersecurity from an educational perspective. There was a gap in the sense of can academics actually bring solutions to the table in an operational sense. So one of my passions is really just kind of bringing the village together, bringing the community together because we can solve problems. It's not gonna be solved exclusively in academics. It's not gonna be solved exclusively in any other pockets, but we have to come together. So this is basically an image to your left of my students, we had over 100 students who ultimately use social media to monitor from Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and also Florence. So it was the first time in our service history they actually were monitoring social media which results in saving lives. So that's basically kind of the end of that journey for my team and as a cadet he ended up actually being selected to earn a very high medal for his work. So over to your right, there's two images of the same person. This person, she actually just recently passed away this past November in 2018 and that's Dr. Olivia Hooker. Does anyone recognize that name? Dr. Olivia Hooker. She passed away at the age of 103, native of New York. That name maybe, and there was a, what do you call those? A Google, what do you call those? What's a, thank yous, that's how cool I am. I don't even know what they're called. She actually was the last survivor of the Tulsa massacre who had a recollection of it at the age of six. The other reason why that's significant, I actually had the honor of attending her gravesite services because she also happened to be the first African-American female to serve in a list in the US Coast Guard. So kind of just full circle for me, the last time I made a variation of this presentation was actually the day after her gravesite services in New York City. So I always, to the best of my ability, try and acknowledge her sacrifice, her service to the nation, and just everything that she has seen throughout her lifetime. And it's always about how do we bring the village together to improve our humanity. All right, so I'm gonna get a little bit faster with my presentation. So Ethical Hacker, I looked this up in a dictionary this morning, and this is what I found. Says it's a noun, a person who hacks into a computer network in order to test or evaluate its security rather than with malicious or criminal intent. Would you all buy this definition? How much would you buy it for? Now I'm just kidding. All right, so you pretty much would agree if that's what it means, right? All right, so here's another thing you may not know about me. Here we go. If I were to strike that out, you are looking at the Coast Guard's first and only active duty whistleblower. So what does that mean? It means I'm really, really, really passionate about doing the right thing in order to advance our institutions, our society, our nation, and so on. So I kinda just contrasted the definition of an Ethical Hacker with whistleblower. I can really substitute that, and I can say it's a person who studies a system in order to evaluate and test its security rather than with malicious or criminal intent. So in other words, whistleblowers are becoming the mainstay effort to make corporations or governments more secure. So when I saw that definition, I thought that's interesting and it really resonated with me personally. So again, I'm gonna be throwing out a lot of information at you, so feel free to hang on for the ride. And so as I throw out certain things, whether it's Trinidad and Tobago, Carnival, FAMU, any of the degrees I have, or just mentioning whistleblower, if anything's come to mind, feel free to shout it out. All right, so disasters. Some would say, I like a little chaos in my life. So, here we are. So here is an image. It looks kind of academia. That's not a word, but I just made it up. So it's from a research, it's called Organizational Cybernetics. It's not a new model, but it's a model that I have used extensively throughout my life. And here's how it works. So you'll notice that there is a large circle, a large square, and then there's kind of this blobby shape that says environment, present environment and future environment. So what you're looking at in the circles is what we call operations. That's just basically, it's a day-to-day grind. It's how are things actually working and functioning. On the top, it's your management, your policy, your intelligence. So what all of this basically means in a nutshell is, and this is the academic theory, that any system, in order for any system to be viable, meaning it can withstand any disruption. For in order for any system to be viable and resilient, it must have these components. It must have these components. This is not the same as looking at an org chart and making sure that you have a CEO and directors and so on. This is saying for any system. Is a human body a system? Or is it a system of systems? All right, don't get shy on me. Don't get shy. Who's the other person I paid in the back? Is a human body one system or is a system of systems? Shout out any systems in a human body. Shout it out. Be proud. Nervous system. I'm sorry, say it again in the back. Digest, that's a good one to have. Exactly, so even down to the cellular level, right? So there's several, several systems, right? And we don't even think about it. All these systems are working in harmony or not even thinking about it. Until what happens? It starts shutting down and you start maybe showing some symptoms, right? So that's true for any type of system. You're gonna have vulnerabilities and we need to have more folks actually understand and assess how that system is either working or not working. So in a human sense, what that means is you go to the doctor if you're not feeling well and I'll get into that in a quick second. So I just pulled some recent headlines this morning kind of about this event and election security in general and these are just a few of the headlines I pulled. So you have lawmakers are turning to hackers at DEF CON for election security, election security threats from misinformation to voting machine, the scrambles secure America's voting machines, status quo on voting machine security is a danger to our democracy. These are just a few headlines that I just pulled just this morning. So how does that make you feel when you see some of these headlines? How does that make you feel? Are our systems secure? Do we have the ability to make them secure? Just talk to me. How are you feeling about this? Not very good. Are there anxieties? Anxieties around the elections kind of impact that even further. What does that mean? 2020 just shout it out whatever's in your heart. Our voting systems aren't secure. So what does that mean? We're gonna keep unpacking that. What does that mean? We need to do better. So we have maybe some legislation that potentially isn't going anywhere, that that's one viewpoint. Anything else? All right, I heard the word trust. Can I have you repeat that one more time? You don't know if you can trust the results. So as a human being, if you can't trust something, what feeling do you have? Probably some angst, some anxiety, some discomfort and maybe we want to do something about it and that's part of the reason why we've gathered here today to figure out what we can actually do about it. If we start to have distrust in our institutions, what does that mean folks? Chaos. And you guys heard me say before I love little chaos, right? The crazier the better. So I know I had just a few more minutes left. So I want to kind of wrap up a little bit. So a few months ago I talked about human body systems. You can look at anything as a system, right? Our election system, right? Shout out to another system in society that we have. Justice system, healthcare system, right? Financial banking system and so on and so on and so on. So a methodology that I've used, again organizational cybernetics, this is how it works. You have system pathologies. Pathologies just basically means how do we diagnose it, what's wrong with the system. You can have structural problems, functional problems, we can have feedback loops and communication problems. So if you were to go to the physician and you say you're not feeling well, you want for that physician to make sure that you have a good diagnosis, right? And if you're not happy with that diagnosis, are you just gonna be okay with it? Maybe you want a second opinion. Maybe you need to have multiple experts come together and make sure that whatever they're prescribing you or recommending is actually fitting the issue that you have, right? Then that doctor's probably gonna have some kind of a monitoring system where they say if you show these further symptoms or if X happens, call or download on one or come back, right? So you have these feedback loops. As human beings, we know what we want for our bias and the same thing we want for our election processes and all the other systems that we just talked about. So the first one is, is it built right? So hopefully everyone had a chance to look at the actual machines and just kind of walk around and explore, right? So you actually have the hardware and machines themselves, right? So are these legacy machines, are they new machines? So are the machines even built right? So that's just one viewpoint. And as I'm kind of walking through these steps, think about you all as a collective village, not as one expert coming up with one opinion or one method. So if you think about hackathons and bringing the village out, that's what it's about is having multiple viewpoints to be able to study those systems because those systems are recursive, meaning they're systems within systems within systems. They are complicated and complicated systems and complicated processes needs a village of people with different perspectives to tackle it. The next piece is functional. So does it work as designed? Does it work as designed? You can even look at it in a broad sense, right? So if we have our political system, that is the system, right? Is it working as designed? You're laughing, right? So you see where I'm kind of going this, right? So if the end goal is making sure that as citizens we trust our institutions, we trust these systems, think of all the layers that exist. You have machines themselves, right? At the different state, county, federal levels. You have lawmakers, you have foreign actors, you have social media, you have public perception, you have media systems and institutions, right? That's a lot of complexity. Would you all agree? So we need to make sure that as we're looking at these systems, how, and this is just one example, not to pick on our lawmakers too much, but what's the feedback loop, right? As a lady said over here a few minutes ago, some of the bills maybe are just sitting there, right? So what's that feedback loop? Do we have members in Congress who are representing us? And I'm not asking anyone to answer, right? So you can start to imagine how complicated these things can be. And again, think back to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, right? They didn't have these types of issues with respect to technology, right? When we talk about just our human spirit that we have, we're 100 years later, and people are still saying that they have concerns and anxieties around trusting the institutions around their own democracy. So again, I kind of just wanna let that sit with you that 1921, we're coming up on almost 100 year anniversary. All right, so I knew I threw a lot out there at you. I'm prepared for people to ask you questions offline. And I know many of you probably have never heard of what CyberNX is all about. But what I can say with certainty is that it has worked in solving some of our most complicated problems already. And so those who are interested in learning more about I'm happy to give you kind of a more appropriate kind of a format to give you more information. So this is kind of the last that I wanna leave you with. This was from our first whistleblowers from 1777. They actually were Navy sailors that were persecuted through their chain of command. And it says, we are ready to hazard everything that is dear and if necessary sacrifice our lives for the welfare of our country. We are desirous of being active in the defense of our constitutional liberties and privileges against the unjust cruel claims of tyranny and oppression. So that's from our first whistleblowers, 1777. And again, I know I've thrown a lot out at you but I hope you have at least one laughed, two heard something you've never heard before, and three recognize it takes village to solve our most complicated problems. So thank you for the time.