(upbeat music) >> Live, from Washington DC. It's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington DC. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside of John Furrier. We are excited to welcome to the program, General Keith Alexander former NSA Director, the first Commander to lead the US Cyber Command, Four-star General with a 40 year career. Thank you so much for coming theCUBE, we are honored, we are honored to have you. >> It is an honor to be here. Thank you. >> So let's talk about cyber threats. Let's start there and have you just give us your observations, your thoughts on what are the most pressing cyber threats that keep you up at night? >> Well, so, when you think about threats, you think about Nation States, so you can go to Iran, Russia, China, North Korea. And then you think about criminal threats, well all the things like ransomware. Some of the Nation State actors are also criminals at night so they can use Nation State tools. And my concern about all the evolution of cyber-threats, is that the attacks are getting more destructive, the malware has more legs with worms and the impact on our commercial sector and our nation, increasingly bigger. So you have all those from cyber. And then I think the biggest impact to our country is the theft of intellectual property, right. That's our future. So you look out on this floor here, think about all the technical talent. Now imagine that every idea that we have, somebody else is stealing, making a product out of it, competing with us, and beating us. That's kind of what Huawei did, taking CISCO code to make Huawei, and now they're racing down that road. So we have a couple of big issues here to solve, protect our future, that intellectual property, stop the theft of money and other ideas, and protect our nation. So when you think about cyber, that's what I think about going to. Often times I'll talk about the Nation State threat. The most prevalent threats is this criminal threat and the most, I think, right now, important for us strategically is the theft of intellectual property. >> So why don't we just have a digital force to counter all this? Why doesn't, you know, we take the same approach we did when we, you know, we celebrated the 75th anniversary D-day, okay, World War II, okay, that was just recently in the news. That's a physical war, okay. We have a digital war happening whether you call it or not. I think it is, personally my opinion. I think it is. You're seeing the misinformation campaigns, financial institutions leaving England, like it's nobody's business. I mean it crippled the entire UK, that like a big hack. Who knows? But its happening digitally. Where's the forces? Is that Cyber Command? What do you do? >> So that's Cyber Command. You bring out an important issue. And protecting the nation, the reason we set up Cyber Command not just to get me promoted, but that was a good outcome. (laughing) But it was actually how do we defend the country? How do we defend ourselves in cyber? So you need a force to do it. So you're right, you need a force. That force is Cyber Command. There's an issue though. Cyber Command cannot see today, attacks on our country. So they're left to try to go after the offense, but all the offense has to do is hit over here. They're looking at these sets of targets. They don't see the attacks. So they wouldn't have seen the attack on Sony. They don't see these devastating attacks. They don't see the thefts. So the real solution to what you bring up is make it visible, make it so our nation can defend itself from cyber by seeing the attacks that are hitting us. That should help us protect companies in sectors and help us share that information. It has to be at speed. So we talk about sharing, but it's senseless for me to send you for air traffic control, a letter, that a plane is located overhead. You get it in the mail seven days later, you think, well-- >> Too late. >> That's too late. >> Or fighting blindfolded. >> That's right. >> I mean-- >> So you can't do either. And so what it gets you to, is we have to create the new norm for visibility in cyber space. This does a whole host of things and you were good to bring out, it's also fake news. It's also deception. It's all these other things that are going on. We have to make that visible. >> How do you do that, though? >> What do you do? I do that. (laughing) So the way you do it, I think, is start at the beginning. What's happening to the network? So, on building a defensible framework, you've got to be able to see the attacks. Not what you expect, but all the attacks. So that's anomaly detection. So that's one of the things we have to do. And then you have to share that at network speed. And then you have to have a machine-learning expert system AI to help you go at the speeds the attacker's going to go at. On fake-news, this is a big problem. >> Yeah. >> You know. This has, been throughout time. Somebody pointed out about, you know, George Washington, right, seven fake letters, written to say, "Oh no, I think the King's good." He never wrote that. And the reason that countries do it, like Russia, in the elections, is to change something to more beneficial for them. Or at least what they believe is more beneficial. It is interesting, MIT has done some studies, so I've heard, on this. And that people are 70% more like to re-Tweet, re-Tweet fake news than they are the facts. So. >> Because it's more sensational, because it's-- >> That's food. It's good for you, in a way. But it's tasty. >> Look at this. It's kind of something that you want to talk about. "Can you believe what these guys are doing? "That's outrageous, retweet." >> Not true. >> Not true. Oh, yeah, but it makes me mad just thinking about it. >> Right, right. >> And so, you get people going, and you think, You know, it's like going into a bar and you know, you go to him, "He thinks you're ugly." and you go to me, and you go, "He thinks you're ugly." (laughs) And so we get going and you started it and we didn't even talk. >> Right, right. >> And so that's what Russia does. >> At scale too. >> At scale. >> At the scale point. >> So part of the solution to that is understanding where information is coming from, being able to see the see the environment like you do the physical environment at speed. I think step one, if I were to pick out the logical sequence of what'll happen, we'll get to a defensible architecture over the next year or two. We're already starting to see that with other sectors, so I think we can get there. As soon as you do that, now you're into, how do I know that this news is real. It's kind of like a block-chain for facts. How do we now do that in this way. We've got to figure that out. >> We're doing our part there. But I want to get back to this topic of infrastructure, because digital, okay, there's roads, there's digital roads, there's packets moving round. You mentioned Huawei ripping off CISCO, which takes their R and D and puts it in their pockets. They have to get that. But we let fake news and other things, you've got payload, content or payload, and then you've got infrastructure distribution. Right, so, we're getting at here as that there are literally roads and bridges and digital construction apparatus, infrastructure, that needs to be understood, addressed, monitored, or reset, because you've had email that's been around for awhile. But these are new kinds of infrastructure, but the payload, malware, fake news, whatever it is. There's an interaction between payload and infrastructure. Your thoughts and reaction to that as a Commander, thinking about how to combat all this? >> I, my gut reaction, is that you're going to have to change, we will have to change, how we think about that. It's not any more roads and avenues in. It's all the environment. You know, it's like this whole thing. Now the whole world is opened up. It's like the Matrix. You open it up and there it is. It's everything. So what we have to do is think about is if it's everything, how do we now operate in a world where you have both truths and fiction? That's the harder problem. So that's where I say, if we solve the first problem, we're so far along in establishing perhaps the level so it raises us up to a level where we're now securing it, where we can begin to see now the ideas for the pedigree of information I think will come out. If you think about the amount of unique information created every year, there are digital videos that claim it's doubling every year or more. If that's true, that half of, 75% of it is fiction, we've got a big road to go. And you know there is a lot of fiction out there, so we've got to fix it. And the unfortunate part is both sides of that, both the fiction and the finding the fiction, has consequences because somebody says that "A wasn't true, "That person, you know, they're saying, he was a rapist, "he was a robber, he was a drugger," and then they find out it was all fake, but he still has that stigma. And then the person over here says, "See, they accused me of that. "They're out to get me in other areas. "They can exclaim what they want." >> But sometimes the person saying that is also a person who has a lot of power in our government, who is saying that it's fake news, when it's not fake news, or, you know what, I-- >> So that's part of the issue. >> It's a very different climate >> Some of it is fake. Some of it's not. And that's what makes it so difficult for the public. So you could say, "That piece was fake, "maybe not the other six." But the reality is, and I think this is where the media can really help. This is where you can help. How do we set up the facts? And I think that's the hardest part. >> It's the truth. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's a data problem. And you know, we've talked about this off camera in the past. Data is critical for the systems to work. The visibility of the data. Having contextual data, the behavioral data. This gets a lot of the consequences. There's real consequences to this one. Theft, IP, freedom, lives. My son was video-gaming the other day and I could hear his friends all talking, "What's your ping start word? "What's your ping time? "I got lag, I'm dead." And this is a video game. Military, lagging, is not a game. People are losing their lives, potentially if they don't have the right tactical edge, access to technology. I know this is near and dear to your heart. I want to get your reaction. The Department of Defense is deploying strategies to make our military in the field, which represents 85% infantry, I believe, some statistic around that number, is relying on equipment. Technology can help, you know, that. Your thoughts on, the same direction. >> Going to the Cloud. Their effort to go to the Cloud is a great step forward, because it addresses just what you're saying. You know, everybody used to have their own data centers. But a data center has a fixed amount of computational capability. Once you reach it, you have to get another data center, or you just live with what you've got. In the Cloud if the problem's bigger, elasticity. Just add more corridors. And you can do things now that we could never do before. Perhaps even more importantly, you can make the Clouds global. And you can see around the world. Now you're talking about encrypted data. You're talking about ensuring that you have a level of encryption that you need, accesses and stuff. For mobile forces, that's the future. You don't carry a data center around with an infantry battalion. So you want that elasticity and you need the connectivity and you need the training to go with it. And the training gets you to what we were just talking about. When somebody serves up something wrong, and this happened to me in combat, in Desert Storm. We were launched on, everybody was getting ready to launch on something, and I said, "This doesn't sound right." And I told the Division Commander, "I don't agree. "I think this is crazy. "The Iraqis are not attacking us down this line. "I think it's old news. "I think somebody's taken an old report that we had "and re-read it and said oh my God, they're coming." And when we found out that was a JSTARS, remember how the JSTARS MTI thing would off of a wire, would look like a convoy. And that's what it was. So you have to have both. >> So you were on the cusp of an attack, deploying troops. >> That's right. >> On fake information, or misinformation, not accurate-- >> Old information. >> Old information. >> Old information. >> Old, fake, it's all not relevant. >> Well what happens is somebody interprets that to be true. So it gets back to you, how do you interpret the information? So there's training. It's a healthy dose of skepticism, you know. There are aliens in this room. Well, maybe not. (laughing) >> As far as we know. >> That's what everybody. >> But what a fascinating anecdote that you just told, about being in Desert Storm and having this report come and you saying, "Guys, this doesn't sound right." I mean, how often do you harken back to your experience in the military and when you were actually in combat, versus what you are doing today in terms of thinking about these threats? >> A lot. Because in the military, when you have troops in danger your first thought is how can I do more, how can I do better, what can I do to get them the intelligence they need? And you can innovate, and pressure is great innovator. (crunching sound) And it was amazing. And our Division Commander, General Griffith, was all into that. He said, "I trust you. "Do whatever you want." And we, it was amazing. So, I think that's a good thing. Note that when you go back and look at military campaigns, there's always this thing, the victor writes the history. (laughing) So you know, hopefully, the victor will write the truthful history. But that's not always the case. Sometimes history is re-written to be more like what they would like it to be. So, this fake news isn't new. This is something where I think journalists, historians, and others, can come together and say, "You know, that don't make sense. "Let's get the facts." >> But there's so much pressure on journalists today in this 24-hour news cycle, where you're not only expected to write the story, but you're expected to be Tweeting about it, or do a podcast about it later, to get that first draft of history right. >> So it may be part of that is as the reporter is saying it, step back and say, "Here's what we've been told." You know, we used to call those a certain type of sandwich, not a good-- (laughing) If memory serves it's a sandwich. One of these sandwiches. You're getting fed that, you're thinking, "You know, this doesn't make sense. "This time and day that this would occur." "So while we've heard this report. "It's sensational. "We need to go with the facts." And that's one of the areas that I think we really got to work. >> Journalism's changing too. I can tell you, from we've talked, data drives us. We've no advertising. Completely different model. In-depth interviews. The truth is out there. The key is how do you get the truth in context to real-time information for those right opportunities. Well, I want to get before we go, and thanks for coming on, and spending the time, General, I really appreciate it. Your company that you've formed, IronNet, okay, you're applying a lot of your discipline and knowledge in military cyber and cutting-edge tech. Tell us about your company. >> So one of the things that you, we brought up, and discussed here. When I had Cyber Command, one of the frustrations that I discussed with both Secretary Gates and Secretary Panetta, we can't see attacks on our country. And that's the commercial sector needs to help go fix that. The government can't fix that. So my thought was now that I'm in the commercial sector, I'll help fix the ability to see attacks on the commercial sector so we can share it with the government. What that entails is creating a behavioral analytic system that creates events, anomalies, an expert system with machine-learning and AI, that helps you understand what's going on and the ability to correlate and then give that to the government, so they can see that picture, so they have a chance of defending our country. So step one is doing that. Now, truth and lending, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. (laughing) You know, I had this great saying, "Nothing is too hard "for those of us who don't have to do it." "How hard can this be?" Those were two of my favorite sayings. Now that I have to do it, I can say that it's hard, but it's doable. We can do this. And it's going to take some time. We are getting traction. The energy sector has been great to work with in this area. I think within a year, what we deploy with the companies, and what we push up to the Cloud and the ability to now start sharing that with government will change the way we think about cyber security. I think it's a disruptor. And we have to do that because that's the way they're going to attack us, with AI. We have to have a fast system to defend. >> I know you got to go, tight schedule here, but I want to get one quick question in. I know you're not a policy, you know, wonk, as they say, or expert. Well, you probably are an expert on policy, but if we can get a re-do on reshaping policy to enable these hard problems to be solved by entrepreneurs like yourself expertise that are coming into the space, quickly, with ideas to solve these big problems, whether it's fake news or understanding attacks. What do the policy makers need to do? Is it get out of the way? Do they rip up everything? Do they reshape it? What's your vision on this? What's your opinion? >> I think and I think the acting Secretary of Defense is taking this on and others. We've got to have a way of quickly going, this technology changes every two years or better. Our acquisition cycle is in many years. Continue to streamline the acquisition process. Break through that. Trust that the military and civilian leaders will do the right thing. Hold 'em accountable. You know, making the mistake, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, says a great thing, "Go quickly to failure so we can get "to success." And we in the military say, "If you fail, you're a dummy." No, no, try it. If it doesn't work, go on to success. So don't crush somebody because they failed, because they're going to succeed at some point. Try and try again. Persevere. The, so, I think a couple of things, ensure we fix the acquisition process. Streamline it. And allow Commanders and thought leaders the flexibility and agility to bring in the technology and ideas we need to make this a better military, a better intelligence community, and a better country. We can do this. >> All right. All right, I'm thinking Rosie the Riveter. We can do this. (laughing) >> We can do it. Just did it. >> General Alexander, thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE. (electronic music)

>> Live, from Washington, D.C. It's theCUBE, covering the AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. (futuristic music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live in Washington, D.C. for Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. This is their big show for the public sector. It's like a mini reinvent for specifically the public sector. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Stu Miniman, my co-host this segment, and Stewart Mclaurin, president of the White House Historic Association, is our guest. I heard him speak last night at a private dinner with Teresa Carlson and their top customers. Great story here, Amazon success story, but I think something more we can all relate to. Stewart, thank you for joining us and taking the time, appreciate it. >> Thanks John, it's just great to be with you. >> Okay, so let's jump into it; what's your story? You work for the White House Historical Association, which means you preserve stuff? Or, you provide access? Tell the story. >> Well, we have a great and largely untold story, and a part of our partnership with Amazon Web Services is to blow that open so more people know who we are and what we do, and have access to the White House, because it's the people's house. It doesn't belong to any one particular president; it's your house. We were founded in 1961 by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who realized that the White House needed a nonprofit, nonpartisan partner. We have no government funding whatsoever, completely private. So we fund the acquisition of art, furnishings, decorative arts for the White House, if a new rug is needed, or new draperies are needed on the State Floor, or a frame needs to be regilded. We also acquire the china, the presidential and first lady portraits that are done; we fund those. But more importantly, in my view, is our education mission that Mrs. Kennedy also started, to teach and tell the stories of White House history going back to 1792, when George Washington selected that plot of land and the architect to build that house that we know today. So we unpack those stories through publications, programs, lectures, symposia, and now this new multifaceted partnership with AWS. >> Let's talk about, first of all, a great mission. This is the people's house; I love that. But it's always the secret cloak and dagger, kind of what's going on in there? The tours are not always, they're probably packed when people go through there, but the average person on the street doesn't have access. >> Sure, well, your cable news channels handle the politics and the policy of the place. We handle the building and the history, and all that's taken place there, including innovation and technology. If you think of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and others that evolved their early technologies through the White House, about 500,000 people get a chance to go through the White House every year. And when you think about in that small space, the president and his family lives, the president and his staff work, it's the ceremonial stage upon which our most important visitors are received, and then about 500,000 people schlep through, so you imagine 500,000 people that are going through your house, and all of that takes place. But it's very important to us for people to be able to see up close and personal, and walk through these spaces where Lincoln walked, and Roosevelt worked. >> Is that what the book you have, and share the book 'cause it's really historic, and the app that you have with Amazon, I think this is a great-- >> Sure, this is a real prize from our office. Mrs. Kennedy wanted us to teach and tell the stories of White House history, and so the first thing she wanted was a guide book, because the White House never had one. So in 1962, she published this guide book with us, and this is her actual copy. Her hands held this book. This was her copy of the book. Now, we continue to update this. It's now in its 24th edition, and each new edition has the latest renovations and updates that the latest president has added. But it's now 2018. So books are great, but we want to be able to impart this information and experience to people not only around Washington, who are going through the White House, but across the country and around the world. So this app that we've developed, you get through WHExperience at the App Store, you have three different tours. If you're walking through the White House, tours are self-guided, so unless you know what you're looking at, you don't know what you're looking at. So you can hold up an image, you can see, it brings to life for you everything that you're looking at in every room. Two other types of tours; if you're outside the White House in President's Park, it will unpack and open the doors of these rooms for you virtually, so you can see the Oval Office, and the Cabinet Room, and the Blue Room, and the Green Room. If you're around the world, there's a third tour experience, but the best part of it is, empowered by Amazon recognition technology, and it allows people to take a selfie, and it analyzes that selfie against all presidential portraits and first lady portraits, and the spatial features of your face, and it will tell you you're 47% Ronald Reagan, or 27% Jackie Kennedy, and people have a lot of fun with that part of the app. >> (laughs) That's awesome. >> Stewart, fascinating stuff. You know, when I go to a museum a lot of times, it's like, oh, the book was something you get on the way home, because maybe you couldn't take photos, or the book has beautiful photos. Can you speak a little bit about how the technology's making the tours a little bit more interactive? >> Sure, well we love books, and we'll publish six hardbound books this year on the history of the White House, and those are all available at our website, whitehousehistory.org. But the three facets of technology that we're adapting with Amazon, it's the app that I've spoken about, and that has the fun gamification element of portrait analysis, but it also takes you in a deeper depth in each room, even more so than the book does. And we can update it for seasons, like we'll update it for the Fall Garden Tour, we'll update it for the Christmas decorations, we'll update it for the Easter Egg Roll. But another part of the partnership is our digital library. We have tens of thousands of images of the White House that have literally been in a domestic freezer, frozen for decades, and with AWS, we're unpacking those and digitizing them, and it's like bringing history to life for the first time. We're seeing photographs of Kennedy, Johnson, other presidents, that haven't been seen by anybody in decades, and those are becoming available through our digital library. And then third, we're launching here a chatbot, so that through a Lex and Polly technology, AWS technology, you'll be able to go to Alexa and ask questions about White House history and the spaces in the White House, or keyboard to our website and ask those questions as well. >> It's going to open up a lot of windows to the young folks in education too. >> It is. >> It's like you're one command away; Hey, Alexa! >> It takes a one-dimensional picture off of a page, or off of a website, and it gives the user an experience of touring the White House. >> Talk about your vision around modernization. We just had a conversation with the CEO of Tellus, when we're talking about government has a modernization approach, and I think Obama really put the stake in the ground on that; former President Obama. And that means something to a lot of people, for you guys it's extending it forward. But your digital strategy is about bringing the experience digitally online from historical documents, and then going forward. So is there plans in the future, for virtual reality and augmented reality, where I can pop in and-- >> That's right. We're looking to evolve the app, and to do other things that are AR and VR focused, and keep it cool and fun, but we're here in a space that's all about the future. I was talking at this wonderful talk last night, about hundreds of thousands of people living and working on Mars, and that's really great. But we all need to remember our history and our roots. History applies to no matter what field you're in, medicine, law, technology; knowing your history, knowing the history of this house, and what it means to our country. There are billions of people around the world that know what this symbol means, this White House. And those are billions of people who will never come to our country, and certainly never visit the White House. Most of them won't even meet an American, but through this app, they'll be able to go into the doors of the White House and understand it more fully. >> Build a community around it too; is there any online social component? You guys looking around that at all? >> All of this is just launched, and so we do want to build some interactive, because it's important for us to know who these people are. One simple thing we're doing with that now, is we're asking people to socially post and tag us on these comparative pictures they take with presidents and first ladies. So there's been some fun from that. >> So Stewart, one of the things I've found interesting is your association, about 50 people, and what you were telling me off-camera, there's not a single really IT person inside there, so walk us through a little bit about how this partnership began, who helps you through all of these technical decisions, and how you do some pretty fun tech on your space. >> Unfortunately, a lot of historical organizations are a little dusty, or at least perceived to be that way. And so we want to be a first mover in this space, and an influencer of our peer institutions. Later this summer, we're convening 200 presidential sites from around the country, libraries, birthplaces, childhood homes, and we're going to share with them the experience that we've had with AWS. We'll partner or collaborate with them like we're already doing with some, like the Lincoln Library in Illinois, where we have a digitization partnership with them. So with us, it's about collaboration and partnership. We are content rich, but we are reach-challenged, and a way to extend our reach and influence is through wonderful partnerships like AWS, and so that's what we're doing. Now another thing we get with AWS is we're not just hiring an IT vendor of some type. They know our mission, they appreciate our mission, and they support our mission. Teresa Carlson was at the White House with us last Friday, and she had the app, and she was going through and looking at things, and it came to life for her in a new real and fresh way, and she'd been to the White House many times on business. >> That's great; great story. And the thing is, it's very inspirational on getting these other historic sites online. It's interesting. It's a digital library, it's a digital version. So, super good. Content rich, reach-challenged; I love that line. What else is going on? Who funds you guys? How do you make it all work? Who pays the bills? Do you guys do donations, is it philanthropy, is it-- >> We do traditional philanthropy, and we'd love for anybody to engage us in that. During the Reagan Administration in 1981, someone had the brilliant idea, now if I'd been in the room when this happened, I probably would have said, "Okay, fine, do that." But thank goodness we did, because it has funded our organization all these years. And that's the creation of the annual, official White House Christmas ornament, and we feature a different president each year sequentially so we don't have to make a political decision. This year, it's Harry Truman, and that ornament comes with a booklet, and it has elements of that ornament that talk about those years in the White House. So with Truman, it depicts the south balcony, the Truman Balcony on the south portico. The Truman seal that eventually evolved into being the Presidential Seal. On the reverse is the Truman Blue Room of the White House. So these are teaching tools, and we sell a lot of those ornaments. People collect them; once you start, you can't stop. A very traditional thing, but it's an important thing, and that's been a lifeblood. Actually, Teresa Carlson chairs our National Council on White House History. John Wood, that you just had on before me, is on our National Council on White House History. These are some of our strong financial supporters who believe in our mission, and who are collaborating it with us on innovative ways, and it's great to have them involved with us because it brings life in new ways, rather than just paper books. >> Stewart, I had a non-technical question for you. According to your mission, you also obtained pieces. I'm curious; what's the mission these days? What sort of things are you pulling in? >> Well, there's a curator in the White House. It's a government employee that actually manages the White House collection. Before President and Mrs. Kennedy came into the White House, a new president could come in and get rid of anything they wanted to, and they did. That's how they funded the new, by selling the old. That's not the case anymore. With the Kennedys, there's a White House collection, like a museum, and so we'll work with the White House and take their requests. For example, a recent acquisition was an Alma Thomas painting. Alma Thomas is the first African American female artist to have a work in the White House collection; a very important addition. And to have a work in the White House collection, the artist should be deceased and the work over 25 years old, so we're getting more of the 21st century. The great artists of the American 20th century are becoming eligible to have their works in the collection. >> Stewart, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your story. It's good to see you speak, and thanks for the ornament we got last night. >> Sure. Well, you've teased this ornament. Everybody's going to want and need one now, so go to whitehousehistory.org. >> John, come on, you have to tell the audience who you got face matched recognition with on the app. >> So who did you get face matched with? >> I think I'm 20% James Buchanan, but you got the Gipper. >> I'm Ronald Reagan. Supply-side economics, trickle-down, what do they call it? Voodoo economics, was his famous thing? >> That's right. >> He had good hair, John. >> Well, you know, our job is to be story tellers, and thank you for letting us share a little bit of our story here today. We love to make good friends through our social channels, and I hope everyone will download this app and enjoy visiting the White House. >> We will help with the reach side and promote your mission. Love the mission, love history, love the digital convergence while preserving and maintaining the great history of the United States. And a great, good tool. It's going to open up-- >> Amazon gave us these stickers for everybody who had downloaded the app, so I'm officially giving you your downloaded app sticker to wear. Stu, this is yours. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks guys, really appreciate it. >> Thank so much, great mission. Check out the White House-- >> Historical Association. >> Historicalassociation.org, and get the White House app, which is WHExperience on the App Store. >> That's right. >> Okay, thanks so much. Be back with more, stay with us. Live coverage here at AWS, Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. We'll be right back. (futuristic music)

(soft click) >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at Data Privacy Day 2018 here at downtown San Francisco, the LinkedIn headquarters, gracious enough to hose this event. Bigger than last year, last year we were here for the first time at Twitter. And really the momentum continues to grow 'cause there's some big regulations coming down the pike that are really going to be into place. And have significant financial penalties, if you don't get your act together. So, we're excited to have the new Russell Schrader, the Executive Director of the National Cyber Security Alliance Organization behind this event. Russ, great to see you. >> Thank you very much for coming today, it was a great event. >> Absolutely, so, you've been on the job, this job, you said like less than two weeks. >> It's true. >> What do you think? I mean then they throw you right into the big event. >> Well, I've known the organization, I've known the event. But the staff really has done an outstanding job. They made it so easy for me, everything that they've done has just been terrific. They lined up fantastic speakers, they picked cutting edge topics, they put together a really well paced program, and it was just a terrific day for all of us to get in, really have some good discussions. >> You're off to a great start. (chuckles) >> Thank you. (both laugh) >> So you said you're familiar with your orginazation. You know, why are you here? Why did you take advantage of this opportunity? What do you kind of see as the role of this organization? And where do you see the opportunities to really make some significant impact going forward? >> Sure, the National Cyber Security Alliance is a who's who in the organization. People who really care about cyber security. Who see it as part of their social obligation. And it was a wonderful group that I'd worked with before. When I was at Visa and I see now, coming in as Executive Director, to really take it to the next level. We really are pushing, I think, on four separate areas that I think there's a lot of opportunity for it. Doing more cooperate work. Serving more consumers, more consumer education, more consumer awareness. I think working with educating staffers on the hill and in regulatory agencies in D.C. on changes and technological changes. And the cutting edge stuff. But in also, I think working academia, sort of getting involved and getting some of the scholarly, the cutting edge, the new ideas. And just preparing for what's going to happen in the next few years. >> Right, that's interesting 'cause you guys are National Cyber Security, security is often used as a reason to have less privacy. Right? It's often the excuse that the government, big brother, would used to say, you know, "We need to know what you're up to, we've got red light cameras all over the place to make sure you're not running red lights." So, it's an interesting relationship between privacy, security, and then what we're hearing more and more, really, a better linchpin to drive all this, which is, identity. So I wonder if you can share your kind of perspective on kind of the security versus privacy. Kind of trade off and debate. Or am I completely off base and they really need to run in parallel? >> Well, they do intersect a whole lot. People have talked about them being two sides of the same coin. Another speaker today said that security is a science but privacy is an art. As part of it is, you know, security is, the keeping the data in one place, the same way in as when you put it out. Sort of an integrity piece. You know, it isn't being misused, it's not being manipulated in a way and it's just not being changed. So that's a security piece. The privacy piece is people choosing what is used with that data. You know, is it to help me with an app? Is it to give me more information? Is it to give me games to play and things like that? So and that leads into a lot of different advantages in the web and on the internet. Now, identity since you put in a trifecta of big terms. >> Everything's got to be in threes, right? >> And there's three reasons for that. I think that, you know, the identity part is part of who are you. Now on the internet you can be a lot of people, right? The old cartoon was, you know, on the internet no one knows you're a dog. Well, on the internet, you can be a dog, you can be, you know, the person who you are at school, you can be the person who you are among your friends, you can be the person who you are at work. And those different selves, those different identities, are the internet of me. And we just need to make sure that you are curating your identities and sharing the information that you feel comfortable with. And that making sure that those are reaching the right people and not the wrong people. >> Right. So, there's an interesting kind of conundrum, we cover a lot of big data shows. And, you know, and there is kind of a fiduciary moral and now legal responsibility as you're collecting this data to drive some algorithm, some application that you know what you're using it for. And it's a good use of that. And you have a implicit agreement with the people providing you the data. But one the interesting things that comes up is then there's this thing where you've got that data and there's an application down the road that was not part of the original agreement. That no one even had an idea whatever happened. How does that fit in? Because as more and more of this data's getting stored. And there's actually a lot of value that can be unlocked, applying it in different ways, different applications. But, that wasn't the explicit reason that I gave it to you. >> Right, right. And that's really tricky because people have to be really vigilant. There is that education piece. That is the personal responsible piece to do business with companies and with apps that you feel comfortable with. But, you still have to trust but verify. And you do want to look into your phone, look into your PC, look into your other device. And figure out where things have changed, where things are moving. That's one of the great things about being in the Bay area today is innovation. But innovation, you just want to make sure that you are participating in it and you're in the part of innovation that's best for you. >> Okay, so, you mentioned academe, which is great, we do a lot of stuff at Stanford, we do a lot of stuff at MIT. So, as you look at kind of the academic opportunities. Kind of, where is some of the cutting edge research? Where are some of the academe focus areas that are helping advance the science of proxy? >> Well, you named two of the most forward thinking ones right there. So, I'll add to that just because we're talking about Stanford, we have to talk about Berkeley. >> Jeff: Yes. >> Right and Berkeley does have the whole group in privacy and law. On the east coast, in addition to MIT, you see George Washington is doing some things. George Mason is doing some things. And so you want to reach out to different areas. Cornell is doing things as well. So, we want to be able to figure out, where are the best ideas coming from? There are conferences already there. And maybe we can convene some papers, convene some people. And source out and give a little bit of more push and publish to people who otherwise wouldn't be getting the kind of publicity and encourage the kind of research. In privacy and in cyber security. Because there is the business and the consumer educational component. Not just, you know, the tech component to the academic work. >> So, before I let you go, last question. Where do you see is the biggest opportunity? Where's the biggest, either gap that needs to be filled, you know, kind of positive that's filling in negative, or an untapped positive that we've just barely scraped the surface of? >> Well, I think it's all about the consumer, to a large extent, to large one. You've got to figure out, how do you make your life easier. Right? Go back to the iPad introduction, nobody knew that they needed an iPad until they realized they couldn't live without it. You look at what's happened with mobile, right? Now, the idea of having a wallet, is on your phone. So, while I'm waiting in line at the grocery store, I'm checking my messages, I'm texting back and forth. And I just point my phone and I pay. Those kinds of areas are the kind of innovations that are consumer facing, that I think are really terrific. There's a lot of business work as well being done. But you have to figure out where that's going to go and I think the consumer just has a fantastic opportunity. >> Alright, well good opportunity, look forward to catching up a year from now and seeing how much progress you make. >> I think we had such a great program this year, I can't wait til next year, thank you. >> He's Russ Schrader, he's the Executive Director. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Data Privacy Day 2018 in San Francisco. Thanks for watching, we'll catch you next time. (soft electronic music)

>> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, welcome to this Cube Conversation, where we bring some of the best ideas in the industry to the Wikibon, SiliconANGLE communities as a way of catalyzing further conversation about some of the changes, and some of the opportunities that are presented by tech in a world that's digitally transforming. We're being joined today by Bobby Patrick, who's the CMO of a company called UiPath. UiPath is one of the leaders in a technology known as robotic process automation. And we're going to talk about the problems, the solutions, and the directions forward with this, what we regard as a very, very important technology on the rise. Bobby, welcome to the Cube. >> Hi Peter, great to be here. >> So Bobby, let's start with who are you? Tell us a little bit about yourself. >> Sure, Bobby Patrick, CMO, UiPath. I was CMO of the cloud business HPE prior, a Cube alumni, I guess we call them, right? And had a history of startups, in SQL space, and open source, and different transformational companies. But I was really intrigued by the idea of software robots over the last six months, and joined UiPath, and it's just been an amazing adventure to see this kind of amazing technology really deliver outcomes for companies faster than I've ever seen happen in tech in my history. >> Well let's talk about that, so, every technology that's going to be successful has to target a problem, a group of people who are trying to solve the problem, and a set of returns. So let's talk about, what is the problem that UiPath and related technologies are actually trying to address? >> Let me start at the macro level first of all. Robotic process automation is instructive trend for digital transformation. For the last three, five, seven years, vendors and companies have said, "I want to go digital." Digital, digital, digital. Right? And going digital's really difficult. Back office processes and front office processes are complex, there's a lot of human interaction involvement in it, and in the past, the way to tackle that would be IT would engage in a significant integration project, an IT project, would purchase equipment, technology, and try to rebuild and redefine the process. Robotic process automation tackles that problem of digital transformation in a very different way. It says forget the idea of going and redoing all of the systems in the data. Let's just take it from the human perspective. Let's see how does a human engage in the process today? And let's completely mimic that human interaction. Let's do that in a way that has complete accuracy, actually higher compliance, and do that in a way that's very simple. And so our technology, which has been built over a number of years, has now perfected the ability to actually replicate and emulate a human user, interacting with multiple systems, something they do every day, in the enter process, move data around, analyze data, look at the data for context, and then execute that process continuously. And that has resulted in an industry that is booming. Forrester said last year it was a $250 million industry, it'll be a $3 billion industry in three years. And UiPath is the fastest growing company in what's called RPA. >> So let me break that down a little bit. So a couple of general principles. The computing industry has always been focused on how we can substitute technology, specifically in the form of programs, for labor. And when we do that, we're able to reduce errors, we're able to speed up the activities, we have derivative opportunities to integrate things we never did before. So let me see if I got this right. What you just described is, instead of trying to substitute for that labor, by creating a net new program that has a whole bunch of static elements, we're actually going to turn these tools and apply them to the question of, how do people do things, let's substitute for the things that people do, start there. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, I mean imagine a contact center in a customer service operation for an airline. They receive an email from a customer that's complaining, about a bad flight, that contact center specialist has to look at a variety of systems to determine your status, what did we give you recently, in two days they will respond. Maybe the person's name is Michelle, and they'll respond in two days, and give you something. Well now, Michelle the software robot can do that exact same thing in a matter of minutes, with complete accuracy, and you can apply machine learning to it, and AI to it, to determine, 95% of the time, if I provide this in this situation, I'll have a happy flier, a happy member. That's what we're talking about here, which is software robots that essentially are perfecting these complex business processes both in the back office and in the front office. Often where lots of documentation's involved, lots of different systems are involved, and a human has to interact between all of those over and over. >> So, RPA, effectively, robotic process automation, effectively provides a means to mimic the work of a person. Because that's where most process engineering is done. Mimic the work of a person, codify it in a way that actually leads to a better business outcome. So that's what it is. Now take us through how does this work? Who are the people involved in the process, what does the technology do for them, how long does it take? Give us a little bit about it. >> So one of the beauties to RPA is that this doesn't require deep engineering talent to be able to build a software robot, and execute it. In fact, some of the breakthroughs in the technology that's been created at UiPath are a studio designer, which looks much like Visio, where you can drag and drop a workflow. Subject matter experts are becoming the next coders, really. Where they can actually design the workflow. There's actually a recorder function that can actually record the user-- >> That's where it starts. It starts with the recorder looking at how people are doing things and picking up that, and turning that in semantics that are meaningful to-- >> Yeah, defining a workflow. Which has exceptions, and handling. I should mention, when you're creating, or you're automating a process, there are really two kinds of robots you're designing. One is one called an attended robot, where along that workflow that robot's going to stop and ask a human a question. It's about a third of the market right now. So the process executes and a human might have to fill in some gaps alone the way. An unattended robot can run in the cloud, or on a VM in an on-premises data center, and execute that process behind the scenes, over and over and over.. So you kind of, you're building one of two. And UiPath supports both attended and unattended robots. But yes, you're designing the workflow, that workflow may interact with a variety of systems, you might receive an email and read the email, the robot reads the email. You might actually log into salesforce.com to find out if they're a customer. You might actually upload the email as a artifact, you might then download some information, put it into a PDF, and send it on. That's an example of a workflow that you're automating end to end. >> So we've got that workflow designed, what are we doing next with it? And who's doing it? >> So this is one of the beauties, too. One of the challenges in IT is projects take a long time. But in RPA-- >> Peter: And they fail. >> And they fail. What's interesting in RPA, what we've proven now, is you can pretty much begin to digitize a process in a matter of weeks. The outcomes are almost immediate. And payback periods are often six months or less. An RPA project almost self-funds itself, which is one reason why I think this is taking off so fast as well. >> So if we want to get a payback period in six months, it means that the whole notion of how fast does it take to get a group up and running on this, becomes crucial. So what is RPA typically, who's it typically targeting? Is it a professional software developer, someone with no technology expertise, business analysts, where-- >> Business analysts, definitely. You're talking line of business. You're talking finance operation. There's a lot of innovation in finance operations. How do I improve my ability to handle invoice reconciliation, and manage purchase orders, and all that paperwork and movement of data. >> So these are people that are familiar with workflows, they're familiar with process design, et cetera, but may not be familiar with coding >> These are subject matter experts. They're not familiar with coding, but they know the process really well. They know what to do when there's an exception, they know what to do in a sequence of events, and so that's why we often say subject matter experts are the next big coders, because they can actually go and learn, in fact UiPath, we have a program called an academy. Academy is on our site, we launched it last April. 35,000 people have been certified already. These are typically business analysts who go get trained, online, self-led, get a diploma, a foundational or an advanced diploma, and are RPA developers, in fact. Now you can go deep. There's C#, you can develop and you can go deep behind it. So I'm not saying there's not some ability to go really deep in certain development. But for the most part, you're a finance operation, you're an HR operation. I'll give you an example of one that just popped up yesterday. A company called West Monroe, they're a consulting firm in Chicago, they announced that they built Rosie the Robot. And Rosie the Robot, with UiPath, is a robot that onboards all their new employees. And they're doing a lot of M and A. They're growing really fast. And onboarding all the employees was a task that required a lot of people to do a very system data intensive process. Now Rosie does all that for them. Very simple example, you can then kind of zoom out and realize that really every process, most processes, have some kind of human interaction repetitiveness to them which a robot can either assist a knowledge worker, or can actually execute that entire process flawlessly. >> Now, we're not talking about technology that's really esoteric, that requires an enormous net new experience in learning from an operations staff. We're talking about technologies that can be targeted specifically to a problem, and end up generating artifacts that are familiar to what's currently in place. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, and I think what's important, so enterprise RPA really addresses two sides. One, the business side, that's trying to digitize a process and automate, maybe for cost savings, but more important than trying to apply AI. And get smarter, right? And so that's the business side. It also addresses the IT side, which is, okay, I've got to secure these robots, how do they scale, how do I manage and govern them, imagine having thousands and thousands of robots. I'll give you another example. NASA. The first robots that NASA launched, the first one, they named George Washington. And George did a-- >> Good name. >> Bunch of work for the finance group, and they got really comfortable with George. They'd walk in in the morning and say, "What has George done for me last night?" Which is awesome. But George was onboarded just like a human worker. Meaning he has to log in to different systems, just like a human worker, and by the way, his password expires every 90 days. So how do they solve that? They created the boss robot. And the boss robot's name? Constitution. Constitution changes George's password every 90 days. That's what's happening here, is you're building out your digital workforce. So IT worries, then, about how do I manage and secure, and scale, so we think about scalability, and big scale is a big challenge, but opportunity that we're focused on, tens of thousands of robots that companies will have. We often say it'll ultimately be one robot per every employee. >> So we have not, or I think you've mentioned the word, or the phrase, "AI" just once. So this is utilizing similar kinds of concept. The attended versus unattended, for example. How you go about training. But I got to believe that there's going to be a roadmap for integrating a whole bunch of these new technologies, that are capable of providing even more degrees of freedom, more functionality, how is RPA and some of these new technologies going to intersect over the course of the next few years? >> This is a really, really important question. So RPA, and enterprise RPA and UiPath, we believe it's a platform. So once you digitize that process, you can then do things with it. We've opened APIs, it's very extensible, you can integrate with a conversation API of Watson, integrate with a chat bot and have the robots do the back end work. At Exxon, they're doing IOT, and deploying sensors left and right, but all the systems in the back end are legacy systems and Excel spreadsheets. So the robots actually are the back end, supporting the deployment of IOT on the front end. So you have this amazing combination. But what people really want to do, then, is they want to look at that process and say, "How do I make it smarter? "How do I improve the productivity over time?" It's great to get that initial bump of perhaps cost savings, when you think about the robot doing, what eight FTEs did, the one robot does. So that's one thing. But the bigger thing is being able to apply data science to the process, looking for ways to mine the process, to think about how can I do the execution better? And that's when we apply machine learning to a process. Where we can actually look, instead of having a rule, in the process that executes, you actually have the experience. Where you say, oh 90% of the time it happens this way. So I'll fill the field in, instead of going and tracking down an empty field. So you can really get smarter, and really improve productivity. Peter, this is all about productivity. GE's a great example of one, that spoke at a conference of ours recently. And the first nine months, they had $25 million of productivity from the robots. The next nine months, $150 million. But this is not about cost-cutting or employees. This is about, actually, hiring. This is about getting smarter in every process. This is about eliminating errors completely. >> Well, productivity is not just a function of the denominator, which is cost. It's also a function of the work that you can perform. And so what you're saying is that utilizing these technologies, while it may displace certain laborious tasks, nonetheless, it's automating and improving the quality of a whole bunch of others, which allows people to go off and do net new things that perhaps are better in service to customers, for example. >> Yeah, one of the fast savings we're seeing from our customers is that they're actually able to use robots to fill the gap of being able to hire new employees. So that, in Japan, here's a great, Japan's almost a unique market. Japan RPA, and UiPath is used on some of the world's largest RPA projects, like SMBC Bank, or Dentsu, the advertising agency, company, there, they're using robots to address two things. One, the decaying population, so robots are filling the gap. And also, two, suicide. There are very high suicide rate because they work these amazing hours every week. Well they're actually using robots to reduce the number of hours, as the robots complement the work of the workforce in Japan. So we're really seeing, interestingly enough, is that robots are actually filling the gaps, and beginning to do work of a workforce that maybe you wish you could hire but you can't hire. So I think that trend is what we're going to see more of in 2018. >> Excellent. So, Bobby, thank you very much for coming on the Cube, here in our Palo Alto studios, and talking to us about RPA, robotic process automation. We heard a little bit about what is it, how does it work, what's the impacts of using it, and obviously, UiPath and yourself as a increasing or emerging force within an important new marketplace for enterprises and users who are trying to increase their productivity. >> Thank you, Peter. >> Once again, this is Peter Burris, in a Cube Conversation with thought leader Bobby Patrick at UiPath. Bobby, again, thanks for coming. >> Bobby: Thank you.