Chief Cyber Warrior Discusses Next Chapter

So, hi, this is Lindy Kyzer with ClearanceJobs.com and welcome. This weekend, the intelligence community celebrating one of the highlight events of the year, the intelligence at National Security Alliance’s William Oliver Baker Dinner. The event is a great engagement between current and former intelligence and national security community members. And each year INSA recognizes the remarkable contributions of some of our nation’s incredible leaders. And this year’s William Oliver Baker Award is being given to retired General Paul Nakasone, recently retired as head of US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency after decades of service in the U.S. Army. As we gear up for this weekend, I have the distinct privilege and delight to talk to General. So thank you so much, sir, for your time and taking the time to be on the show with me,

Lindy. Thank you.

So again, we’re talking about the lead up to the Baker award recognition. I know it makes especially military leaders uncomfortable when I ask these kind of questions, but I’d kind of love to share what were your feelings or thoughts when you found out you were a recipient of this year’s Baker Award? I know awards and recognition can be tough in this community, so what were your thoughts or feelings,

I was humbled and honored, humbled to be considered among the greats of our community, whether or not that’s Secretary Gates, whether or not that’s Admiral Inman, general Alexander, general Hayden, or Ann Kara Christie. But I was also honored, honored in the sense that this award is not only for me, it’s in recognition. I think of the work that intelligence professionals, particularly those at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command do every single day.

Yeah, I love that. It’s been amazing to see over the years the different folks who have been a recipient of that award. And like you said, it points to leadership contributions, but also just the various work that’s happening across the community. I’ve certainly seen you speak at INSA events or in your military tenure. You’ve invested time, which I know is really the most significant that you can give as a senior leader, especially in the military community. Why is that cross collaboration between industry, academic, military, government engagement so important to accomplishing our national security objectives?

Collaboration Partnership is the competitive advantage of our nation and the intelligence community today when we face such complex threats as election security, cyber intrusions, and fentanyl poisoning, the way that we have to address it is bringing together a unique team of interagency intelligence, community industry, international partners and academia. This is how you’re able to solve borderless challenges, the most sophisticated threats that our nation faces today.

You recently retired from your military career as commander of Cyber Command and director of NSA. Talk about how it felt to culminate your career in that role when you launched your military career. Did you imagine that you would conclude it as the nation’s chief cyber warrior.

When I launched my military career, there wasn’t really anything termed as cyber, and so I would tell you that no, I didn’t think about one day being the commander of U.S. Cyber Command. But one of the things I would say is that I was fortunate to have a great degree of luck circumstance and timing. And most importantly, I worked for incredible leaders. I worked with our best in our nation in terms of what we did every single day to defend our nation. And I think I work to solve with these folks the most challenging problems our nation faces today. And that really is I think the secret of being able to rise from being a second lieutenant to one day commanding cyber command in the National Security Agency.

I know it’s something that you’ve talked about before, but definitely during your career there was this shift to being more proactive rather than reactive In our cybersecurity posture, I’ve heard you speak about before. Can you kind of speak to that shift? I know the cyber threat is not going away. The demand for cyber talent that we see is not going away. So why is being proactive rather than reactive?

Cyberspace has such low barriers to entry. Anyone can operate. And I would say that we watched for many years as our intellectual property was stolen that adversaries tried to influence our election and increasingly they did even more egregious things. And so in 2018, the department said, stop. We’re going to defend forward. And this idea of defending forward operating outside the United States appeal to us at Cyber Command and the National Security Agency and we took it and we said, this is persistent engagement. We’re both going to enable our partners and act in a series of different ways. But what that did was with a domain like cyberspace where activity is constant, we’re always operating and our adversaries know that we’re always operating and we are having success.

There’s ongoing chatter about whether cyber needs to go the way of Space Force and have its own branch designation. General Mattis was recently quoted as saying he disagrees. Do you have any thoughts?

I think what people have seen that cyber is changing so rapidly that we have to think about how we’re going to organize ourselves. I do not think organizing a service is the best way to do that right now. Here’s what I do know. The department’s goal should be able to design, deliver, and deploy the most capable cyber forces that address the threats today and into the future. We need to do it in the shortest amount of time possible and we have to do it at the lowest resource cost. And so cyber command, the department defense have already started to look at this idea of being able to model themselves after special operations command. What are we seeing with Special Operations Command? Always operating a series of professionals and doing this in a manner that is unique in our department. Cyber comms the same way. I think this is the way we address the problem.

And it was recently announced that you would be founding director of Vanderbilt’s new Institute for National Defense and Global Security. I think that ties in great with the conversation we’re having today with the William Baker Oliver dinner, the opportunities for partnership across industry. Speak a bit to that new role and what you’re looking forward to accomplishing in this next chapter of your career.

When I left government service, I knew I always wanted to give back. There’s a statistic right now that I think is really telling in national security, there are 16 times more people over the age of 50 than under the age of 30. So being able to work at Vanderbilt, designing a brand new Institute of National Defense and global Security, we’re going to look at building four pillars. We’re going to educate, we’re going to innovate, we’re going to convene, and we’re going to advise. And at the same time, taking the strengths of Vanderbilt interdisciplinary approach, how do you bring together all the different pieces of the puzzle to make a whole? So we have policymakers that code and coders that understand policy. The second thing is we have to move at a rapid speed, being able to operate at the speed of modern conflict today. And the third thing is really radical collaboration. How do you bring together all the different partners to solve our nation’s most complex issues? And so we’ll look forward to seeing you and others on the 18th of September down in Nashville as we open up the new Institute for National Defense and Global Security.

Oh, that’s an official invitation. I might show up. You never know, sir. If I get an invitation, I end up going places. Well, it’s exciting. It’s always exciting to be a part of something new. Kind of what prompted you into that pivot though? Is that something that you considered might be the next stage for you? Or what’s unique about this opportunity or this timing in terms of what you’re starting there?

So I think education is in my DNA. My parents are both educators. The idea of being able to give back this idea of a career, of being able to both learn at our army schools, being able to learn on the job and be able to do self-study. This is really the idea of being able to then convey this back to a whole new generation of national security experts.

Well now you’re speaking my love language. Steve Leonard is a contributor at Clearance Jobs. He talks a ton about professional development leadership kind of this next generation and he’s now in academia as well and supporting that. And I think what he says, there’s just this huge need for ongoing learning, continuing to learn, continuing to give back there. So love to hear that and love to see the foundation of continuing education. Maybe pivoting in careers too, because I think that’s important with cyber. You mentioned that cyber, it’s not just the technologists that’s needed to build our cyber posture, correct?

It is. I think that when we consider all the different elements of what we’re going to face in the future with cyberspace, an element that’s so important to our national security, we need, as I said again, policy makers that understand the technical aspects of what we do and we need the technical aspects to understand the policies that underpin what they do. This is the approach that I think we need to take as a nation as we move forward.

Well, appreciate that, sir. Always appreciate your leadership. Can you speak a little bit to, you had a lot of thought leaders around Section 702 and that legislative push now we’ve seen things accomplished there. Can you speak to that a little bit, why that was necessary? Why is you kind of transitioned out? You were still advocating for policy shifts there?

Section 7 0 2, the authority that allows the intelligence community to operate outside the United States against non-US persons to be able to understand what is going on. Having been at Pentagon on nine 11, I understand that it’s not just seeing the dots. It’s being able to connect the dots. 7 0 2 allows us to do this and allows us to do it in a manner that is protective of our civil liberties and privacy. It can’t be in a misalignment of national security and civil liberties and privacy. They have to be balanced. So this authority, the most important authority I think the intelligence community uses today to keep our nation safe is one that is overseen, is one that’s narrow and is one that is effective for our nation.

Amazing. Well, thank you again, sir. Was there anything we didn’t chat about today that you want to talk about in the lead up to hanging out with you on Saturday night,

Lindy? We’re looking forward to Saturday night. Looking forward to seeing so many of our colleagues join us for the Baker dinner.

Thank you so much, general Naka for your time today. Excited to see everyone at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. William Oliver Baker dinner taking place this Saturday. Appreciate the opportunity to recognize and celebrate with our community and certainly appreciate your many accomplishments, general Naka and your time here with me today.