>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS public sector summit live in Washington D. C. A face to face event were on the ground here is to keep coverage. I'm john Kerry, your hosts got two great guests. Both cuba alumni Shannon Kellogg VP of public policy for the Americas and john would ceo tell us congratulations on some announcement on stage and congressional john being a public company. Last time I saw you in person, you are private. Now your I. P. O. Congratulations >>totally virtually didn't meet one investor, lawyer, accountant or banker in person. It's all done over zoom. What's amazing. >>We'll go back to that and a great great to see you had great props here earlier. You guys got some good stuff going on in the policy side, a core 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 the cube. Uh, so we made an announcement today regarding our economic impact study, uh, for the commonwealth of Virginia. And this is around the amazon web services business and our presence in Virginia or a WS as we all, uh, call, uh, amazon web services. And um, 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 um, uh, >>just clever. This is not part of the whole H. 20. H. Q. Or whatever they call HQ >>To HQ two. It's so Virginia Amazon is investing uh in Virginia as part of our HQ two initiative. And so Arlington Virginia will be the second headquarters in the U. S. 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 uh in other parts of Virginia, particularly out in what's known as the dullest technology corridor. But our data centers are actually spread throughout three counties in Fairfax County, Loudoun County in Prince William County. >>So this is the maxim now. So it wasn't anything any kind of course this is Virginia impact. What was, what did he 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 2020 alone. The AWS investment in construction and these data centers. uh it was actually $1.3 billion 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 in this Sort of came through in your question too about HQ two, But aws itself has over 8000 employees in Virginia today. Uh, and so we've had this very significant presence for a number of years now in Virginia over the last, you know, 15 years has become really the cloud capital of the country, if not the world. Uh, 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. Um, you've been a legend in the area and tech, you've seen this many years, you've been doing so 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, Loudon County as the chairman. And at the time we were the fastest-growing county in America in Loudon County. But our residential real property taxes were going up stratospherically because when you look at it, every dollar real property tax that came into residential, we 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 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, unused fibre optic. And so basically the county made it appealing to companies like amazon to come out to Loudon County and other places in northern Virginia and the rest is history. If you look today, we're Loudon County is Loudon County generates a couple $100 million surplus every year. It's real property taxes have come down in 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. So >>the formula basically is look at the assets resources available that may align with the kind of commercial entities that good. How's their domicile there >>that could benefit. >>So what about power? Because the data centers need power, fiber fiber is great. The main, the main >>power you can build power but the main point is is water for cooling. So I think 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 a sort of a uh uh better what do they say? Better lucky than good. So we had a bunch of assets come together that helps. Made us, made us pretty lucky as a, as a region. >>Thanks area too. >>It is nice 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. Um, aws paid $220 million 2020 alone for our data centers in those three counties, including loud >>so amazon's contribution to >>The county. $220 million 2020 alone. And that actually makes up 20% of overall property tax revenues in these counties in 2020. So, you know, 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. >>I mean, he's for the amazon. So I'll ask you the question. I mean, there's a lot of like for misinformation going around around corporate reputation. This is clearly an example of the corporation contributing to the, to the society. >>No, no doubt. And you think >>About it like that's some good numbers, 20 million, 30 >>$5 million dollar capital investment. You know, 10, it's, what is it? 8000 9000 >>Jobs. jobs, a W. S. 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 that? Not everyone's an amazon though. So how do you take the formula? What's your take on best practice? How does this rollout? And that's the amazon will continue to grow, but that, you know, this one company, is there a lesson here for the rest of us? >>I think I think all the data center companies in 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, there are really significant benefits that helps the entire community. So it helps build schools, police departments, fire departments, etcetera, >>jobs opportunities. What's the what's the vision though? Beyond data center gets solar sustainability. >>We do. We have actually a number of renewable energy projects, which I want to talk about. But just one other quick 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 uh states all over this country were 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 and Virginia is doing it right. Virginia has historically been very forward looking, very forward thinking and how they're trying to attract these data center investments. They have the right uh tax incentives in place. Um and then you know, back to your point about renewable energy over the last several years, Virginia is 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 a coma at 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 quadruple the virginias 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 going to be 1430 MW 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 the cube. It's a posture, 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 true business. The government pays for everything or business friendly. So this is called, 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 benefits everybody. >>And these policies have not just attracted companies like amazon and data center building builders and renewable energy investments. These policies are also leading to rapid growth in the cybersecurity industry in Virginia as well. You know john founded his company decades ago and you have all of these cybersecurity companies now located in Virginia. Many of them are partners like >>that. I know john and I 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 for the last minute or two cybersecurity has become the big issue. I mean there's a lot of these policies 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, where's the, where's the support for the commercial businesses. People are nervous >>so you want to try it? >>Well, I'm happy to take the first shot because this is and then we'll leave john with the last word because he is 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, Homeland Security, Jenness 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 their partnering with industry and 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, and we in industry can act on information that we get in real time, making sure that we're investing for the future and the workforce development and cyber skills, but also as we enter national cybersecurity month, making sure that we're all doing our part in cyber security awareness and training, for example, one of the things that are amazon ceo Andy Jassy recently announced as he was participating in a White house summit, the 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 uh strong authentication tokens for AWS customers as part of that announcement going into national cybersecurity months. So what I like about what this administration is doing is they're reaching out there 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. >>So my, my perspective echoing on some of Shannon's points are really the following. Uh 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 mis attribution 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 guys actions to the appropriate law enforcement and military types and then they take it from there >>unless he's not attributed either. So >>well over the basic point is we can't as industry hat back, it's illegal, but what we can do is provide the tools and methods necessary to our government counterparts at 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 like I believe that because if people dropped on our shores with troops, the government will protect us. >>So your your point is directly taken when cyber command was formed uh before that as airlines seeing space physical domains, each of those physical domains have about 100 and $50 billion they spend per year when cyber command was formed, it was spending less than Jpmorgan chase to defend the nation. So, you know, we do have a ways to go. I do agree with you that there needs to be more uh flexibility given the industry to help help with the fight. You know, in this case. Andy Jassy has 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, you know, ever since, uh, really, ever since the CIA embrace the cloud, which was sort of the shot heard around the world for cloud computing. We do the security compliance automation for that air gap region for amazon as well as other aspects >>were all needs more. Tell us faster, keep cranking up that software because tell you right now people are getting hit >>and people are getting scared. You know, the colonial pipeline hack that affected everybody started going wait a minute, I can't get gas. >>But again in this area of the line and jenny 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, you know, government has a role, but so does the private sector and I've been working cyber issues for a long time to and you know, kind of seeing where we are this year in 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 this >>full circle to our original conversation around the Virginia data that you guys are looking at the Loudon County amazon contribution. The success former 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. Um uh the president issued a cybersecurity executive order earlier this year that really emphasizes the migration of federal systems into cloud in the modernization that jOHN has worked on, johN had a group called the Alliance for Digital Innovation and they're very active in the I. T. Modernization world and we remember as well. Um but you know, the federal government is really emphasizing this, this migration to cloud and that was reiterated in that cybersecurity executive order >>from the, well we'll definitely get you guys back on the show, we're gonna say something. >>Just all I'd say about about the executive order is that I think one of the main reasons why the president thought was important is that the legacy systems that are out there are mainly written on kobol. 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 has made these workloads as we can, >>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 cyber security event. You have you come into a fireside chat and unpack all the awesome stuff that you're doing. But also the challenges. Yes. And there are many, you have to keep up the good work on the policy. I still say we got to remove that red line and identified new rules of engagement relative to what's on our sovereign virtual land. So a whole nother Ballgame, thanks so much for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you appreciate it. Okay, cute coverage here at eight of public sector seven Washington john ferrier. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Mhm.

>>From around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>We continue our coverage here on the cube of AWS reinvent 2020 I'm John Wallace, glad to be with you here and glad that you've joined us for an important discussion. You know, a lot of companies and many industries are making a very concerted effort toward promoting greater diversity and inclusion within their various workforces. And the renewable energy industry is certainly a big part of that movement. And here to talk about how AWS is supporting that and what the industry itself is doing. I'm proud to and pleased to welcome three guests. We have Shannon Kellogg with us from AWS. He's the vice president of public policy for the Americas. Shannon, thanks for being with us here on the cube. >>You back. Thank you. And great >>Whetstone, who is the president and CEO of the American council on renewable energy. We're going to call it a core from here on out, and also joining us Colleen Pickford, who was the EVP at ACOR, and welcome to both of you. Glad we could have it here on the cube. Glad to be here. John's great. You bet. Absolutely looking forward to this discussion first off, Shannon, let me, let me turn it over to you. I know, uh, AWS had some fairly significant announcements, uh, very recently about renewable and, um, you know, launching that on, around reinvent 2020, if he would take us through that a little bit about that commitment and what exactly that news was all about. >>Well, thank you on, uh, Amazon overall, uh, made a very, uh, significant announcement, uh, last week of 26, uh, renewable energy projects around the world. Uh, so many of those here in the U S but also, uh, many of those, uh, internationally and, um, the announcements, uh, collectively last week, along with what we've already announced previously in renewable energy projects now makes us the largest, uh, corporate, uh, buyer of renewable energy in the world. And so we're really excited about that. Um, this is part of our longterm, uh, efforts, uh, to be a hundred percent renewable, um, in our, uh, uh, footprint around the AWS infrastructure, uh, footprint, uh, but also a part of the broader, uh, commitment that we have at Amazon, including around climate and sustainability. So, uh, we were really super excited about last week from now. >>Yeah. Can you give me an idea of the flavor of the projects? I mean, you're talking about more than two dozen, uh, and as you said there around the world, so I assumed pretty wide variety of impacts and, and of, uh, initiatives as well, but maybe just to give those watching at home and idea of what the scale at this point. >>Well, it's a mix of, uh, solar and wind, uh, projects. Uh, like I said, both in the U S and abroad. Um, we had previously announced, uh, uh, several, um, solar projects in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For example, with last week's announcements, we added more, uh, solar, uh, in Virginia, we had previously, uh, uh, announced, uh, wind projects in Ohio and we added more, uh, wind, uh, and, um, uh, you know, large scale utility scale projects in Ohio. And so we also included other States of course, are in the U S and in countries as well, including, uh, one of the first offshore, uh, projects, uh, offshore wind projects that we've done, uh, with, uh, in this case with, uh, off of the coast of Germany. >>All right, Greg, when you hear about that kind of commitment that AWS is making, uh, in terms of, uh, not only from a geographical standpoint, but from a variety of standpoint, we're talking about when we're talking about solar, um, I mean, what is, what stands out to you with regard to the, the impact of that kind of commitment and that kind of initiative >>Kale it's really impactful. It's such an impressive thing to be able to bring that many new renewable projects that are that big online in a single year, that the total amount of new clean generation is on the order of 4,000 megawatts. It wasn't that long ago. That would be a great year for the renewable sector as a whole in the United States. If you go back 10, 12 years. So the idea that one company is now procuring so much renewable power is phenomenally exciting, and we're just so proud of Amazon and it's big progress toward Amazon. So a hundred percent goal, uh, and really, uh, toward the broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough to stay within shouting distance of what scientists say we need to do in order to protect our planet's climate. >>Right. Great point. Uh, Colleen, I know you made an interesting point recently, you were talking about the accelerated membership program, which is, uh, an initiative that you've just launched, uh, in terms of trying to create greater diversity and equity and inclusion within the renewable energy, uh, workforce, uh, AWS big sponsor of that, um, founding partner. Uh, if you would tell us a little bit more about that program, uh, and, and what you see is what you hope it's near term or short term impact might be. And then maybe the long tail of that, you know, what kind of impact you can have eventually? >>Yeah, absolutely a core like toward like many in our industry, we've been looking at how we can play a role in creating a more equitable and just future. Um, and we were lucky because we have board members who went during our normal boring board meetings, and we're looking at our membership, asked me, they said, what are you doing to bring more diversity into a core membership? And I had to say, not enough, and that's really the Genesis for the accelerate program. And we were really fortunate to have Shannon and Amazon and our other board members work with us to develop a program that will create opportunities for companies that are owned or led by women or people of color to access a core in all of our benefits for two years and create additional resources for them to really grow their businesses in a way that they may not otherwise be able to. >>Yeah. Shannon did point out that you are board members, Colleen just, just mentioned, um, uh, of a core. What is it about this particular initiative that you think that has peaked the AWS entrust? >>This is Colleen said, uh, we were discussing at the board level, you know, ways that we could, um, do more as a or, uh, in this companies in this sector, promote diversity and inclusion. And we were brainstorming one day and came up with this, uh, with this idea, you know, it's, I'm really excited about it because, um, we're basically going out and offering a core membership and other services, uh, to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the sector led by, uh, minorities and, um, uh, women leaders. And this is just a fantastic opportunity to assist companies and organizations that are just getting started, uh, in an encourages innovation and encourages obviously diversity and inclusion. And so we're super excited about this effort. >>Is this, is this something that you can direct toward a company of any specific size? I mean, Shannon just touched on it, small business, um, but is, is this applicable? The, the, the accelerate program is this geared toward just the small businesses, larger >>Turn in Britain. Uh, we want to bring more diversity in the sector. We want to help. And it's really the smaller companies that need assistance and making those connections and participating, uh, and gaining the access, uh, and maybe mentoring pro bono services. Uh, we want to help those small companies become bigger, grow this sector and, and help enhance the diversity, the leadership in this sector from underrepresented communities. We want, you know, like much of the economy we recognize the renewable energy sector does not yet look like America looks and that's something we're all fighting to achieve. And it's, uh, incredibly helpful to have an Amazon is really the founding supporter of this program. And after Amazon stepped up, uh, seen a number of other companies join in and helping make this a reality. And we've got a lot of momentum now, very excited about the accelerate program. >>Colleen, I like to hear a little bit more from you on the partnership with AWS in general. Um, I know this isn't the first time that you all have partnered together. So if you would maybe fill in some of the blanks about that history that led us to this initiative, and then for them being the one of the founding partners along with the Berkshire Hathaway foundation. >>Sure. I mean, Amazon's been a member of our board for a number of years now, their commitment to the industry is clear and, you know, Shannon and his whole team actively participate across a core providing us with guidance and with insights like these. I think when you look at what we've done with the accelerate program, you know, it's not the first stop for a new small company organization like eight core, but we can have a measurable impact on their go to market strategies and their ability to grow their business. And Shannon and Amazon gave us that insight and they gave us some additional insights about what we could provide through the accelerate program that could really help make a difference for those companies. >>Hmm. You know, Greg, um, if I could just flip the script just a little bit here or, or, uh, get you back on to the discussion about climate change in general. I know that's just obviously, uh, the, the, a key driver to your organization's mission. Just your thoughts about, you know, where we stand, that you talked about trying to be within shouting distance of certain goals. I know there's been discussion about United States for joining the Paris accord, um, and committing to voluntary, uh, uh, emissions controls, just, I mean, where are we in your mind in terms of, of trying to seriously address the problem >>We're behind? I mean, the surprising thing is the renewable sector has been growing at a booming pace. We had over $60 billion in investment last year and wind and solar power, uh, one of the most important economic drivers for the country. Um, we're going to end up despite all of the difficulties presented by 2020 with a pandemic, we're going to have record renewable energy growth in 2020, we're going to bust through the old record, which was about 23,000 megawatts. And we'll be more like 27,000 megawatts. So that's great, but to get our arms around the climate issue, we know we have to grow much more rapidly. We've set a goal at a core of achieving a trillion dollars and investment by 2030, starting when we launched that program back in 2018, uh, and we made a lot of headway, but we're behind. We need to be investing closer to 90, a hundred billion a year in order to see that growth in logging at growth at a much higher rate, we feel really optimistic about getting a tailwind from the new administration, the desire to build back that, or, uh, the clear focus on policies and that value the ability to generate power, to make our economy grow and grow dramatically without greenhouse emissions, without adding to, uh, climate change. >>So, uh, um, I'm optimistic we can get there, but we know we gotta step it up as much as we've been growing as successful as we've been. It's not enough. And we know that >>Colleen, how does your organization in ACOR trumpet that, um, I know you talked about the nexus of finance and policy and technology. Obviously policy is what, uh, is at the center of this particular discussion, but, but how, how can you in the coming year, especially, um, be a, a key driver in that discussion? >>Well, I think, you know, we bring together a really unique stakeholder group from all across the renewable energy industry. And we take those stakeholders and it gives us a magnified voice to share the message of what's needed to really drive more Watts of renewable energy onto the grid. And what are those barriers in policy to making that possible? So, I mean, that's really how we do it is we bring together the most unique group together, >>But we appreciate the work. Uh, no question about that. It is a dire need that needs to be addressed. And we certainly thank you for that. Uh, Shannon, we thank AWS for their support, not only of this initiative, but of all that you're doing around the world. And, uh, we certainly wish you all the best of success with the accelerate membership program and creating these better hiring opportunities within your industry. So thank you all very much for joining us here on the cube.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the cue, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine, Edie, you event. It's a small conference. It's a second year, but it'll crow like a weed like everything else does the of us. And it's all about Amazon and a degree. As for education, and that's everything from K through 12 community college, higher education, retraining vets coming out of the service. It's a really big area. And we're really excited to have fresh off his keynote presentations where he changed his title on me from what it was >> this morning tow. It was the senator duties >> David Raymond, the director of what was the Virginia Cyber Range and now is the U. S. Cyber range. Virginia Tech. David, Great to see you. >> Yeah, Thank you. Thanks. So the Virginia cyber age actually will continue to exist in its current form. Okay, Well, it'll still serve faculty and students in the in the Commonwealth of Virginia, funded by the state of Virginia. Now the U. S. Cyber Angel fund will provide service to folks outside over, >> so we jumped ahead. So? So it's back up. A step ladder is the Virginia, >> So the Virginia Cyber Range provides courseware and infrastructure so students could do hands on cyber security, educational activities in Virginia, high schools and colleges so funded by the state of Virginia and, um provides this service at no charge to the schools >> and even in high school, >> even in high school. Yes, so now that there are now cybersecurity courses in the Virginia Department of Education course catalogue as of two years ago, and I mean they've grown like wildfire, >> I'm just so a ton of talk here about skills gap. And there's tremendous skills gap. Even the machine's gonna take everybody's job. There's a whole lot of jobs are filled, but what's interesting? I mean, it's the high school angle is really weird. I mean, how do you Most high school kids haven't even kind of clued in tow, privacy and security, opting in and opting out. It's gotta be a really interesting conversation when now you bring security into that a potential career into that and directly reflects on all those things that you do on your phone. >> Well, I would argue that that's exactly the problem. Students are not exposed to cyber security, you know. They don't want the curia potentials are they really don't understand what it is we talked about. We talked about teenagers being digital natives. Really? They know how to use smartphones. They know how to use computers, but they don't understand how they work. And they don't understand the security aspects that go along with using all this technology. And I would argue that by the time a student gets into college they have a plan, right? So I have a student in college. He's he's gonna be a doctor. He knows what a doctor is. He heard of that his whole life. And in high school, he was able to get certified as a nursing assistant. We need cyber security in that same realm, right? If we start students in high school and we and we expose them to cybersecurity courses, they're all elective courses. Some of the students will latch onto it, and I'll say, Hey, this is what I want to be when I grew up. And in Virginia, we have we have this dearth of cyber security expertise and this is true across the country. In Virginia, right now, we have over 30,000 cyber security jobs that are unfilled. That's about 1/3 of the cyber security jobs in this state. And I mean, that's a serious problem, not only in Virginia but nationwide. And one of the ways to fix that is to get high school students exposed to cybersecurity classes, give them some real hands on opportunities. So they're really doing it, not just learning the words and passing the test, and I mean really again in Virginia, this is this is grown like wildfire and really thinks revolutionized cybersecurity education in the state. >> And what are some of the topics that say, a high school level, where you know you're kind of getting versed on the vocabulary and the terminology vs when they go into into college and start to take those types, of course, is >> yeah, so in Virginia, there's actually cybersecurity courses across the C T E career pathways. And so SETI is the career and technical education curricula. And so there are courses like cyber security and health care, where students learn about personal health data and how to secure that specific specific kinds of data, they learn about the regulations behind that data. There's healthcare in manufacturing, where students learn about industrial control systems and you know how those things need to be secured and how they're different from a laptop or a phone. And the way those air secured and what feeds into all of those courses is an introductory course. Cyber security fundamentals, where students learn some of the very basics they learn the terminology. They learn things like the C I. A. Triad right, confidentiality, integrity and availability of the three basic components of security that you try to maintain for any system. So they start out learning the basics. But still they're doing that hands on. So they're so they're in a network environment where they see that you know that later on in the course during Capstone exercises, they might see someone trying to attack a computer that they're that they're tasked to defend and a defender of what does that look like? What are the things that I'm going to do? That computer? You know, I might install anti virus. I might have a firewall on the computer. And how do I set that up and etcetera etcetera. So high school start with the basics. As as students progressed through their high school years, there are opportunities to take further more advanced classes in the high schools. And then when they get to college, some of those students are gonna have latched onto cyber security as a potential career field. Now, now we've got him right way, get him into the right into the right majors and into the right courses. And our hope is that that's gonna sort of kick start this pipeline of students in Virginia colleges, >> right? And then I wonder if you could >> talk a little bit about the support at the state level. And it's pretty interesting that you had him from the state level we heard earlier today about supported the state level. And it was Louisiana for for another big initiative. So you know that the fact that the governor and the Legislature are basically branding this at the state level, not the individual school district level, is a pretty strong statement of the prioritization that they're putting on this >> that has been critical to our success. If we didn't have state level support, significant state level support, there's no way we could be where we are. So the previous governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, he latched on to cyber security education as one of his signature initiatives. In fact, he was the president of the State Governors Association, and in that role he cybersecurity was one of his condition. So so he felt strongly about educating K 12 education college students feeding that cybersecurity pipeline Onda Cyberangels one of one of a handful of different initiatives. So they were veterans scholarships, and there were some community college scholarships and other other initiatives. Some of those are still ongoing so far are not. But but Cyber Range has been very successful. Funded by the state provides a service at no cost to high schools and colleges on Dad's Been >> critically, I can't help. We're at our say earlier this year, and I'm just thinking of all the CEOs that I was sitting with over the course of a couple of days that are probably looking for your phone number right now. Make introduction. But I'm curious. Are are the company's security companies. I mean, Arcee is a huge show. Amazon just had their first ever security conference means a lot of money being invested in this space. Are they behind it? Have you have you looked for in a kind of private company participation to help? Because they desperately need these employees? >> Definitely. So we've just started down that road, Really? I mean, our state funding has kept us strong to this point in our state funding is gonna continue into the foreseeable future. But you're right. There are definitely opportunities to work with industry. Certainly a DBS has been a very strong partner of our since the very beginning. They really I mean, without without the help of some, some of their cloud architects and other technical folks way could not have built what we built in the eight of us. Cloud. We've also been talking to Palo Alto about using some of their virtual appliances in our network environments. So yeah, so we're definitely going down the road of industry partners and that will continue to grow, I'm sure >> So then fast forward today to the keynote and your your announcement that now you taking it beyond just Virginia. So now it's the U. S. Cyber range. Have that come apart? Come about. What does that mean? >> Yes, So we've been We've been sharing the story of the Virginia cyber range for the last couple of years, and I goto national conferences and talk about it. And, um, just to just sort of inform other states, other other school systems what Virginia's doing. How could you? How could you potentially match what we're doing and what The question that I keep getting is I don't want to reinvent the wheel. How can I buy what you have? And that's been sort of a constant drumbeat over the last couple of years. So we decided fairly early on that we might want to try to expand beyond Virginia, and it just sort of the conditions were right about six months ago. So we set a mark on the wall, he said. In Summer of 2019 we're gonna make this available to folks outside of Virginia. And so, so again, the Virginia Cyberangels still exist. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U. S cyber range is still part of Virginia Tech. So within Virginia Tech, but we will have to we will have to essentially recoup our costs so we'll have to spend money on cloud infrastructure and We'll have to spend salary money on folks who support this effort. And so we'll recoup costs from folks that are outside of Virginia using our service. But, um, we think the costs are gonna be very competitive compared to similar efforts. And we're looking forward to some successes here. >> And do you think you're you're kind of breakthrough will be at the high school level, the You know, that underground level, you know, where do you kind of see the opportunities? You've got the whole thing covered with state support in Virginia. How does that get started in California? How's that get started here? Yeah, that's a Washington state. >> That's a great question. So really, when we started this, I thought we were building a thing for higher ed. That's my experience. I've been teaching cyber security and higher ed for several years, and I knew I knew what I would want if I was using it, and I do use it. So I teach classes at Virginia Tech Graduate program. So I I used the Virginia side in my class, and, um, what has happened is that the high schools have latched onto this as I mentioned, and Most of our users are high schools. In Virginia, we have 180. Virginia High School is using the Virgin Cyber. That's almost >> 188 1 >> 180. That's almost half the high schools in the state using the Virginia cyber age. So we think. And if you think about, you know, higher. Ed has been teaching cybersecurity classes that the faculty members who have been teaching them a lot of them have set up their own network infrastructure. They have it set up the way they want it, and it ties into their existing courseware, and you know they're going to use that, At least for now. What we provide is is something that makes it so that a high school or a community college doesn't have to figure out how to fund or figure out how to actually put this network architecture together. They just come to us. They have the flexibility of the flexibility to use, just are very basic plug and play network environments, or they have flexibility to, um, make modifications depending on how sophisticated they themselves are with with, you know, manipulating systems and many playing the network so so Our expectation is that the biggest growth is going to be in the high school market, >> right? That's great, because when you say cyber range God, finally, Donna me use it like a target range. It's like a place to go practice >> where the name comes from, right? >> Absolutely. If I finally like okay, I get it. So because it's not only the curriculum and the course where and everything else but it's actually an environment, it depends on the stage things and do things exactly >> So students could d'oh offensive, offensive and defensive cybersecurity activities. And so early on, when we were teaching students howto hack essentially in colleges, you know, there were people who were concerned about that on the military case we make for that is you can't teach somebody how to defend unless they understand how they're gonna be attacked. The same is true in this case. So all of our all of our course, where has lots of ethics and no other legal and other other discussions embedded throughout. So students understand the implications of what their actions would be if they do it somewhere else. And, um, right, these are all isolated network environments their places where students can get hands on in a place where they can essentially do whatever they want without causing trouble on the school network or on the Internet. And it's very much akin to a rifle range, >> right? Like you said, you can have different scenarios. And I would imagine there's probably gonna be competitions of you think. Fact. You know what's going on in the robotics world for lots of all these things, right? Like white hat, black hat hacker. Well, very, very exciting. David, Congratulations. And it sounds like you're well on your way. Thanks. Great. Alright, >> He's David. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were at Washington State Convention Centre just across the street at a W s. Imagine. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. >> Thanks.