(soft corporate jingle) >> Announcer: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat jingle intro) >> Welcome back to Barcelona. We're here live at the Fira. (laughs) Just amazing day two of MWC23. It's packed today. It was packed yesterday. It's even more packed today. All the news is flowing. Check out siliconangle.com. John Furrier is in the studio in Palo Alto breaking all the news. And, we are here live. Really excited to have Udayan Mukherjee who's the Senior Fellow and Chief Architect of wireless product at Network and Edge for Intel. And, Manish Singh is back. He's the CTO of Telecom Systems Business at Dell Jets. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you >> We're going to talk about greening the network. I wonder, Udayan, if you could just set up why that's so important. I mean, it's obvious that it's an important thing, great for the environment, but why is it extra important in Telco? >> Yeah, thank you. Actually, I'll tell you, this morning I had a discussion with an operator. The first thing he said, that the electricity consumption is more expensive nowadays that total real estate that he's spending money on. So, it's like that is the number one thing that if you can change that, bring that power consumption down. And, if you talk about sustainability, look what is happening in Europe, what's happening in all the electricity areas. That's the critical element that we need to address. Whether we are defining chip, platforms, storage systems, that's the number one mantra right now. You know, reduce the power. Electricity consumption, because it's a sustainable planet that we are living in. >> So, you got CapEx and OpEx. We're talking about the big piece of OpEx is now power consumption? >> Power Consumption >> That's the point. Okay, so in my experience, servers are the big culprit for power consumption, which is powered by core semiconductors and microprocessors. So, what's the strategy to reduce the power consumption? You're probably not going to reduce the bill overall. You maybe just can keep pace, but from a technical standpoint, how do you attack that? >> Yeah, there are multiple defined ways of adding. Obviously the process technology, that micro (indistinct) itself is evolving to make it more low-power systems. But, even within the silicon, the server that we develop, if you look in a CPU, there is a lot of power states. So, if you have a 32 code platform, as an example, every code you can vary the frequency and the C-states, power states. So, if you look into any traffic, whether it's a radio access network, packet code. At any given time the load is not peak. So, your power consumption, actual what we are drawing from the wall, it also needs to vary with that. So, that's how if you look into this there's a huge savings. If you go to Intel booth or Ericson booth or anyone, you will see right now every possible, the packet code, radio access network, everything network. They're talking about our energy consumption, how they're lowering this. These states, as we call it power states, C-state P-state they've built in intel chip for a long time. The cloud providers are taking advantage of it. But Telcos, with even two generation before they used to actually switch it off in the bios. I say no, we need peak. Now, that thing is changing. Now, it's all like, how do I take advantage of the built in technologies? >> I remember the enterprise virtualization, Manish, was a big play. I remember PG&E used to give rebates to customers that would install virtualized software, VMware. >> And SSDs. >> Yeah. And SSDs, you know, yes. Because, the spinning disc was, but, nowhere near with a server consumption. So, how virtualized is the telco network? And then, what I'm saying is there other things, other knobs, you can of course turn. So, what's your perspective on this as a server player? >> Yeah, absolutely. Let me just back up a little bit and start at the big picture to share what Udayan said. Here, day two, every conversation I've had yesterday and today morning with every operator, every CTO, they're coming in and first topic they're talking about is energy. And, the reason is, A, it's the right thing to do, sustainability, but, it's also becoming a P&L issue. And, the reason it's becoming a P&L issue is because we are in this energy inflationary environment where the energy costs are constantly going up. So, it's becoming really important for the service providers to really drive more efficiency onto their networks, onto their infrastructure. Number one. Two, then to your question on what all knobs need to be turned on, and what are the knobs? So, Udayan talked about within the intel, silicon, the C-states, P-states and all these capabilities that are being brought up, absolutely important. But again, if we take a macro view of it. First of all, there are opportunities to do infrastructure audit. What's on, why is it on, does it need to be on right now? Number two, there are opportunities to do infrastructure upgrade. And, what I mean by that is as you go from previous generation servers to next generation servers, better cooling, better performance. And through all of that you start to gain power usage efficiency inside a data center. And, you take that out more into the networks you start to achieve same outcomes on the network site. Think about from a cooling perspective, air cooling but for that matter, even liquid cooling, especially inside the data centers. All opportunities around PUE, because PUE, power usage efficiency and improvement on PUE is an opportunity. But, I'll take it even further. Workloads that are coming onto it, core, RAN, these workloads based on the dynamic traffic. Look, if you look at the traffic inside a network, it's not constant, it's varied. As the traffic patterns change, can you reduce the amount of infrastructure you're using? I.e. reduce the amount of power that you're using and when the traffic loads are going up. So, the workloads themselves need to become more smarter about that. And last, but not the least. From an orchestration layer if you think about it, where you are placing these workloads, and depending on what's available, you can start to again, drive better energy outcomes. And, not to forget acceleration. Where you need acceleration, can you have the right hardware infrastructures delivering the right kind of accelerations to again, improve those energy efficiency outcomes. So, it's a complex problem. But, there are a lot of levers, lot of tools that are in place that the service providers, the technology builders like us, are building the infrastructure, and then the workload providers all come together to really solve this problem. >> Yeah, Udayan, Manish mentioned this idea of moving from one generation to a new generation and gaining benefits. Out there on the street, if you will. Most of the time it's an N plus 2 migration. It's not just moving from last generation to this next generation, but it's really a generation ago. So, those significant changes in the dynamics around power density and cooling are meaningful? You talk about where performance should be? We start talking about the edge. It's hard to have a full-blown raised data center floor edge everywhere. Do these advances fundamentally change the kinds of things that you can do at the base of a tower? >> Yeah, absolutely. Manish talked about that, the dynamic nature of the workload. So, we are using a lot of this AIML to actually predict. Like for example, your multiple force in a systems. So, why is the 32 core as a system, why is all running? So, your traffic profile in the night times. So, you are in the office areas, in the night has gone home and nowadays everybody's working from remote anyway. So, why is this thing a full blown, spending the TDP, the total power and extreme powers. You bring it down, different power states, C-states. We talked about it. Deeper C-states or P-states, you bring the frequency down. So, lot of those automation, even at the base of the tower. Lot of our deployment right now, we are doing a whole bunch of massive MIMO deployment. Virtual RAN in Verizon network. All actually cell-site deployment. Those eight centers are very close to the cell-site. And, they're doing aggressive power management. So, you don't have to go to a huge data centers, even there's a small rack of systems, four to five, 10 systems, you can do aggressive power management. And, you built it up that way. >> Okay. >> If I may just build on what Udayan said. I mean if you look at the radio access network, right? And, let's start at the bottom of the tower itself. The infrastructure that's going in there, especially with Open RAN, if you think about it, there are opportunities now to do a centralized RAN where you could do more BBU pooling. And, with that, not only on a given tower but across a given given coverage area, depending on what the traffics are, you can again get the infrastructure to become more efficient in terms of what traffic, what needs are, and really start to benefit. The pooling gains which is obviously going to give you benefit on the CapEx side, but from an energy standpoint going to give you benefits on the OpEx side of things. So that's important. The second thing I will say is we cannot forget, especially on the radio access side of things, that it's not just the bottom of the tower what's happening there. What's happening on the top of the tower especially with the radio, that's super important. And, that goes into how do you drive better PA efficiency, how do you drive better DPD in there? This is where again, applying AI machine learning there is a significant amount of opportunity there to improve the PA performance itself. But then, not only that, looking at traffic patterns. Can you do sleep modes, micro sleep modes to deep sleep modes. Turning down the cells itself, depending on the traffic patterns. So, these are all areas that are now becoming more and more important. And, clearly with our ecosystem of partners we are continuing to work on these. >> So we hear from the operators, it's an OpEx issue. It's hitting the P&L. They're in search of PUE of one. And, they've historically been wasteful, they go full throttle. And now, you're saying with intelligence you can optimize that consumption. So, where does the intelligence live? Is it in the rig. Where is it all throughout the network? Is it in the silicon? Maybe you could paint a picture as to where those smarts exist. >> I can start. It's across the stack. It starts, we talked about the C-states, P-states. If you want to take advantage of that, that intelligence is in the workload, which has to understand when can I really start to clock things down or turn off the cores. If you really look at it from a traffic pattern perspective you start to really look at a rig level where you can have power. And, we are working with the ecosystem partners who are looking at applying machine learning on that to see what can we really start to turn on, turn off, throttle things down, depending on what the, so yes, it's across the stack. And lastly, again, I'll go back to cannot forget orchestration, where you again have the ability to move some of these workloads and look at where your workload placements are happening depending on what infrastructure is and what the traffic needs are at that point in time. So it's, again, there's no silver bullet. It has to be looked across the stack. >> And, this is where actually if I may, last two years a sea change has happened. People used to say, okay there are C-states and P-states, there's silicon every code. OS operating system has a governor built in. We rely on that. So, that used to be the way. Now that applications are getting smarter, if you look at a radio access network or the packet core on the control plane signaling application, they're more aware of the what is the underlying silicon power state sleep states are available. So, every time they find some of these areas there's no enough traffic there, they immediately goes to a transition. So, the workload has become more intelligent. The rig application we talked about. Every possible rig application right now are apps on xApps. Most of them are on energy efficiency. How are they using it? So, I think lot more even the last two years. >> Can I just say one more thing there right? >> Yeah. >> We cannot forget the infrastructure as well, right? I mean, that's the most important thing. That's where the energy is really getting drawn in. And, constant improvement on the infrastructure. And, I'll give you some data points, right? If you really look at the power at servers, right? From 2013 to 2023, like a decade. 85% energy intensity improvement, right? So, these gains are coming from performance with better cooling, better technology applications. So, that's super critical, that's important. And, also to just give you another data point. Apart from the infrastructure what cache layers we are running and how much CPU and compute requirements are there, that's also important. So, looking at it from a cache perspective are we optimizing the required infrastructure blocks for radio access versus core? And again, really taking that back to energy efficiency outcomes. So, some of the work we've been doing with Wind River and Red Hat and some of our ecosystem partners around that for radio access network versus core. Really again, optimizing for those different use cases and the outcomes of those start to come in from an energy utilization perspective >> So, 85% improvement in power consumption. Of course you're doing, I don't know, 2, 300% more work, right? So, let's say, and I'm just sort of spit balling numbers but, let's say that historically powers on the P&L has been, I don't know, single digits, maybe 10%. Now, it's popping up the much higher. >> Udayan: Huge >> Right? >> I mean, I don't know what the number is. Is it over 20% in some cases or is it, do you have a sense of that? Or let's say it is. The objective I presume is you're probably not going to lower the power bill overall, but you're going to be able to lower the percent of cost on the OpEx as you grow, right? I mean, we're talking about 5G networks. So much more data >> Capacity increasing. >> Yeah, and so is it, am I right about that the carriers, the best they can hope for is to sort of stay even on that percentage or maybe somewhat lower that percentage? Or, do you think they can actually cut the bill? What's the goal? What are they trying to do? >> The goal is to cut the bill. >> It is! >> And the way you get started to cut the bill is, as I said, first of all on the radio side. Start to see where the improvements are and look, there's not a whole lot there to be done. I mean, the PS are as efficient as they can be, but as I said, there are things in DPD and all that still can be improved. But then, sleep modes and all, yes there are efficiencies in there. But, I'll give you one important, another interesting data point. We did a work with ACG Research on our 16G platform. The power edge service that we have recently launched based on Intel's Sapphire Rapids. And, if you look at the study there. 30% TCR reduction, 10% in CapEx gains, 30% in OpEx gains from moving away from these legacy monolithic architectures to cloud native architectures. And, a large part of that OpEx gain really starts to come from energy to the point of 800 metric tonnes of carbon reduction to the point of you could have, and if you really translate that to around 160 homes electric use per year, right? So yes, I mean the opportunity there is to reduce the bill. >> Wow, that's big, big goal guys. We got to run. But, thank you for informing the audience on the importance and how you get there. So, appreciate that. >> One thing that bears mentioning really quickly before we wrap, a lot of these things we're talking about are happening in remote locations. >> Oh, back to that point of distributed nature of telecom. >> Yes, we talked about a BBU being at the base of a tower that could be up on a mountain somewhere. >> No, you made the point. You can't just say, oh, hey we're going to go find ambient air or going to go... >> They don't necessarily... >> Go next to a waterfall. >> We don't necessarily have the greatest hydro tower. >> All right, we got to go. Thanks you guys. Alright, keep it right there. Wall to wall coverage is day two of theCUBE's coverage of MWC 23. Stay right there, we'll be right back. (corporate outro jingle)

>> Announcer: theCube presents HPE Discover 2022 brought to you by HPE. >> Hello and welcome back to theCube's continuous coverage HPE Discover 2022 and from Las Vegas the formerly Sands Convention Center now Venetian, John Furrier and Dave Vellante here were excited to welcome in Jen Huffstetler. Who's the Chief product Sustainability Officer at Intel Jen, welcome to theCube thanks for coming on. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> You're really welcome. So you dial back I don't know, the last decade and nobody really cared about it but some people gave it lip service but corporations generally weren't as in tune, what's changed? Why has it become so top of mind? >> I think in the last year we've noticed as we all were working from home that we had a greater appreciation for the balance in our lives and the impact that climate change was having on the world. So I think across the globe there's regulations industry and even personally, everyone is really starting to think about this a little more and corporations specifically are trying to figure out how are they going to continue to do business in these new regulated environments. >> And IT leaders generally weren't in tune cause they weren't paying the power bill for years it was the facilities people, but then they started to come together. How should leaders in technology, business tech leaders, IT leaders, CIOs, how should they be thinking about their sustainability goals? >> Yeah, I think for IT leaders specifically they really want to be looking at the footprint of their overall infrastructure. So whether that is their on-prem data center, their cloud instances, what can they do to maximize the resources and lower the footprint that they contribute to their company's overall footprint. So IT really has a critical role to play I think because as you'll find in IT, the carbon footprint of the data center of those products in use is actually it's fairly significant. So having a focus there will be key. >> You know compute has always been one of those things where, you know Intel's been makes chips so that, you know heat is important in compute. What is Intel's current goals? Give us an update on where you guys are at. What's the ideal goal in the long term? Where are you now? You guys always had a focus on this for a long, long time. Where are we now? Cause I won't say the goalpost of changed, they're changing the definitions of what this means. What's the current state of Intel's carbon footprint and overall goals? >> Yeah, no thanks for asking. As you mentioned, we've been invested in lowering our environmental footprint for decades in fact, without action otherwise, you know we've already lowered our carbon footprint by 75%. So we're really in that last mile. And that is why when we recently announced a very ambitious goal Net-Zero 2040 for our scope one and two for manufacturing operations, this is really an industry leading goal. And partly because the technology doesn't even exist, right? For the chemistries and for making the silicon into the sand into, you know, computer chips yet. And so by taking this bold goal, we're going to be able to lead the industry, partner with academia, partner with consortia, and that drive is going to have ripple effects across the industry and all of the components in semiconductors. >> Is there a changing definition of Net-Zero? What that means, cause some people say they're Net-Zero and maybe in one area they might be but maybe holistically across the company as it becomes more of a broader mandate society, employees, partners, Wall Street are all putting pressure on companies. Is the Net-Zero conversation changed a little bit or what's your view on that? >> I think we definitely see it changing with changing regulations like those coming forth from the SEC here in the US and in Europe. Net-Zero can't just be lip service anymore right? It really has to be real reductions on your footprint. And we say then otherwise and even including in our supply chain goals what we've taken new goals to reduce, but our operations are growing. So I think everybody is going through this realization that you know, with the growth, how do we keep it lower than it would've been otherwise, keep focusing on those reductions and have not just renewable credits that could have been bought in one location and applied to a different geographical location but real credible offsets for where the the products manufactured or the computes deployed. >> Jen, when you talk about you've reduced already by 75% you're on that last mile. We listened to Pat Gelsinger very closely up until recently he was the number one most frequently had on theCube guest. He's been busy I guess. But as you apply that discipline to where you've been, your existing business and now Pat's laid out this plan to increase the Foundry business how does that affect your... Are you able to carry through that reduction to, you know, the new foundries? Do you have to rethink that? How does that play in? >> Certainly, well, the Foundry expansion of our business with IBM 2.0 is going to include the existing factories that already have the benefit of those decades of investment and focus. And then, you know we have clear goals for our new factories in Ohio, in Europe to achieve goals as well. That's part of the overall plan for Net-Zero 2040. It's inclusive of our expansion into Foundry which means that many, many many more customers are going to be able to benefit from the leadership that Intel has here. And then as we onboard acquisitions as any company does we need to look at the footprint of the acquisition and see what we can do to align it with our overall goals. >> Yeah so sustainable IT I don't know for some reason was always an area of interest to me. And when we first started, even before I met you, John we worked with PG&E to help companies get rebates for installing technologies that would reduce their carbon footprint. >> Jen: Very forward thinking. >> And it was a hard thing to get, you know, but compute was the big deal. And there were technologies and I remember virtualization at the time was one and we would go in and explain to the PG&E engineers how that all worked. Cause they had metrics and that they wanted to see, but anyway, so virtualization was clearly one factor. What are the technologies today that people should be paying, flash storage was another one. >> John: AI's going to have a big impact. >> Reduce the spinning disk, but what are the ones today that are going to have an impact? >> Yeah, no, that's a great question. We like to think of the built in acceleration that we have including some of the early acceleration for virtualization technologies as foundational. So built in accelerated compute is green compute and it allows you to maximize the utilization of the transistors that you already have deployed in your data center. This compute is sitting there and it is ready to be used. What matters most is what you were talking about, John that real world workload performance. And it's not just you know, a lot of specsmanship around synthetic benchmarks, but AI performance with the built in acceleration that we have in Xeon processors with the Intel DL Boost, we're able to achieve four X, the AI performance per Watts without you know, doing that otherwise. You think about the consolidation you were talking about that happened with virtualization. You're basically effectively doing the same thing with these built in accelerators that we have continued to add over time and have even more coming in our Sapphire Generation. >> And you call that green compute? Or what does that mean, green compute? >> Well, you are greening your compute. >> John: Okay got it. >> By increasing utilization of your resources. If you're able to deploy AI, utilize the telemetry within the CPU that already exists. We have customers KDDI in Japan has a great Proofpoint that they already announced on their 5G data center, lowered their data center power by 20%. That is real bottom line impact as well as carbon footprint impact by utilizing all of those built in capabilities. So, yeah. >> We've heard some stories earlier in the event here at Discover where there was some cooling innovations that was powering moving the heat to power towns and cities. So you start to see, and you guys have been following this data center and been part of the whole, okay and hot climates, you have cold climates, but there's new ways to recycle energy where's that cause that sounds very Sci-Fi to me that oh yeah, the whole town runs on the data center exhaust. So there's now systems thinking around compute. What's your reaction to that? What's the current view on re-engineering a system to take advantage of that energy or recycling? >> I think when we look at our vision of sustainable compute over this horizon it's going to be required, right? We know that compute helps to solve society's challenges and the demand for it is not going away. So how do we take new innovations looking at a systems level as compute gets further deployed at the edge, how do we make it efficient? How do we ensure that that compute can be deployed where there is air pollution, right? So some of these technologies that you have they not only enable reuse but they also enable some you know, closing in of the solution to make it more robust for edge deployments. It'll allow you to place your data center wherever you need it. It no longer needs to reside in one place. And then that's going to allow you to have those energy reuse benefits either into district heating if you're in, you know Northern Europe or there's examples with folks putting greenhouses right next to a data center to start growing food in what we're previously food deserts. So I don't think it's science fiction. It is how we need to rethink as a society. To utilize everything we have, the tools at our hand. >> There's a commercial on the radio, on the East Coast anyway, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, it's like, "What's your one thing?" And the gentleman comes on, he talks about things that you can do to help the environment. And he says, "What's your one thing?" So what's the one thing or maybe it's not just one that IT managers should be doing to affect carbon footprint? >> The one thing to affect their carbon footprint, there are so many things. >> Dave: Two, three, tell me. >> I think if I was going to pick the one most impactful thing that they could do in their infrastructure is it's back to John's comment. It's imagine if the world deployed AI, all the benefits not only in business outcomes, you know the revenue, lowering the TCO, but also lowering the footprint. So I think that's the one thing they could do. If I could throw in a baby second, it would be really consider how you get renewable energy into your computing ecosystem. And then you know, at Intel, when we're 80% renewable power, our processors are inherently low carbon because of all the work that we've done others have less than 10% renewable energy. So you want to look for products that have low carbon by design, any Intel based system and where you can get renewables from your grid to ask for it, run your workload there. And even the next step to get to sustainable computing it's going to take everyone, including every enterprise to think differently and really you know, consider what would it look like to bring renewables onto my site? If I don't have access through my local utility and many customers are really starting to evaluate that. >> Well Jen its great to have you on theCube. Great insight into the current state of the art of sustainability and carbon footprint. My final question for you is more about the talent out there. The younger generation coming in I'll say the pressure, people want to work for a company that's mission driven we know that, the Wall Street impact is going to be financial business model and then save the planet kind of pressure. So there's a lot of talent coming in. Is there awareness at the university level? Is there a course where can, do people get degrees in sustainability? There's a lot of people who want to come into this field what are some of the talent backgrounds of people learning or who might want to be in this field? What would you recommend? How would you describe how to onboard into the career if they want to contribute? What are some of those factors? Cause it's not new, new, but it's going to be globally aware. >> Yeah well there certainly are degrees with focuses on sustainability maybe to look at holistically at the enterprise, but where I think the globe is really going to benefit, we didn't really talk about the software inefficiency. And as we delivered more and more compute over the last few decades, basically the programming languages got more inefficient. So there's at least 35% inefficiency in the software. So being a software engineer, even if you're not an AI engineer. So AI would probably be the highest impact being a software engineer to focus on building new applications that are going to be efficient applications that they're well utilizing the transistor that they're not leaving zombie you know, services running that aren't being utilized. So I actually think-- >> So we got a program in assembly? (all laughing) >> (indistinct), would get really offended. >> Get machine language. I have to throw that in sorry. >> Maybe not that bad. (all laughing) >> That's funny, just a joke. But the question is what's my career path. What's a hot career in this area? Sustainability, AI totally see that. Anything else, any other career opportunities you see or hot jobs or hot areas to work on? >> Yeah, I mean, just really, I think it takes every architect, every engineer to think differently about their design, whether it's the design of a building or the design of a processor or a motherboard we have a whole low carbon architecture, you know, set of actions that are we're underway that will take to the ecosystem. So it could really span from any engineering discipline I think. But it's a mindset with which you approach that customer problem. >> John: That system thinking, yeah. >> Yeah sustainability designed in. Jen thanks so much for coming back in theCube, coming on theCube. It's great to have you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Dave Vellante for John Furrier, we're sustaining theCube. We're winding down day three, HPE Discover 2022. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Postgres vision 2021 brought to you by EDB. >> Hello everybody. Welcome back to Postgres Vision 21. My name is Dave Vellante and we're super excited to have Josh Berkus on. He's joining us, he's a leader in the Kubernetes community, extremely well-versed in containerized applications, application development, containerizing databases all things Open-source, CUBE alum, Josh Berkus welcome back to theCUBE. Great to see you again. >> Thank you. I'm glad to be here. >> Just recently, you're coming off KuberCon, we heard some of the themes from that event. There was a lot of focus on inclusion and diversity, which of course, you know, that's the Open-source ethos and a lot of discussion around designing security in, the whole conversation about shift left. That's great to see larger companies giving back, to obviously a lot of the pressure over the years on the big companies that there's a one-way street, they're actually giving back, making some investments. So we love to see that. And just Open-source continues to be the main spring of innovation. I got to say, I got to call-out and a recent Red Hat survey the state of the enterprise Open-source in 2021, 90% of technology leaders said that they're adopting Open-source and made a joke that the other 10% they're doing it they just don't know it. But so what were some of your takeaways from the event and some of the trends you're seeing but specifically as it relates to containers. >> So, I mean, you're right, one thing is this sort of return to security, the security topic again because we've had like a couple of things happen. One was, when we initially got, started doing containers or platform with Docker and with early Kubernetes and that sort of thing we got a lot of container image scan, right? So you have like Clare and Docker has a scanning thing and Amazon and Azure have their own scanning things. And people felt that was kind of good enough for a while but then we both had the solar winds hack. And the thing is like, in the meantime, we've gone from a stage where people were mostly using Kubernetes in dev to people using Kubernetes in production. And there's a lot of extra security issues and vulnerabilities that come up in an actual production environment that people just didn't necessarily think about before. And so now we're looking at adding more pieces to the security stack and making those more standard for everyone who uses Kubernetes. And I've had the chance to work with the StackRox folks since they became part of Red Hat. So it's been very exciting to look at the whole thing and look at things like container supply chain because the solar winds showed us obviously, it's not enough to necessarily just trust the vendor. You need to trust their whole supply chain. And it helps to be able to examine that supply chain. >> Yeah, it's very scary when you look at that you're absolutely right. Multiple components of malware coming into an organization through the supply chain cell forming, different signatures. And so it's great to see the community spending time on that and an emphasis on that. Now I got to cut right to the chase here, in 2018, you wrote a two-part blog series it's called Should I run Postgres in Kubernetes? Obviously it's highly relevant for this community. So I want to talk about your perspective, well, first of all, the thing I love about you is you're tactical and you can go deep, but at the same time, you can speak to a business audience. >> Thanks. >> You're welcome and thank you for writing this and communicating the way you do, but talk about when it makes sense and when it doesn't, I mean, that's kind of... My big three takeaways on the pros were simplify, simplify, simplify, especially if you're running application components and other services on Kubernetes but give us the update three years later, why should you, why shouldn't? >> You know let's actually, why don't we zoom out to an even bigger picture? Which is just honestly like every new platform that we've got, right? So when virtualization and VMware became a thing we had the same sort of decisions about when do I move my database to this, when AWS and the public cloud became a thing. I could have like, like if I had written that 12 years ago I could have written it about AWS and it would have had a lot of the same decision tree 'cause what it really sort of comes down to is the more commodifiable a particular database instance is the better candidate it is to move to an advanced infrastructure platform, and the most advanced, currently being Kubernetes. To the extent that you can describe this particular database, what it does, who needs to use it, what's in it in and a simple one pager then that's probably a really good candidate for hosting on Kubernetes. Whereas if you have a database where it's like, Hey, the entire company uses it and it's so complicated we can't describe it's inputs and outputs. That's possibly the last thing in your company that you're going to migrate to Kubernetes, because both in terms of there's less gain to be made there, because the real advantage of moving stuff to Kubernetes is your ability to automate things. The whole way I got into Kubernetes in the first place was I started out way down the line not using containers at all. I was just looking to solve the problem of how do we automate Postgres high availability. That's what I was looking for. And it started out with something I built using SaltStack called handy rep, that Casey and I built. And mostly that was a problem discovery exercise, we discovered what the hard problems were there. And then we moved from that, and then we moved from that to Docker because containers offered an encapsulation strategy because one of the problems you run into when automating high availability is the database actually down or not. And so the first thing that containers offered us was not packaging, what people usually talk about but instead of encapsulation, right, because it's a lot easier to determine is the container running or not, than is the database down or not? Because an actual Postgres database has multiple components and multiple processes that make it up. And some of those can be down without the others being down which can then make you think a database is down that's not actually shut down. And being able to put that in a container, it gives me more of a binary up or down. And then from there, I got into, okay, well but I need to automate a lot of other components. I need to automate the storage and everything else. And that led to Kubernetes. And so if you look at it in terms of deciding when you're going to migrate the database to Kubernetes you look at, can I take advantage of that automation? Is this something that my application workflow and my team organization allows me to do? And if the answer is yes, particularly, if you're in a company that's doing the full dev ops thing where you have a unified development and infra team that owns the entire stack then those people are going to be a really good candidate for moving that stack to Kubernetes. >> Got it. Okay, so let me ask you, in database especially in critical apps, your recovery's everything, when something goes wrong, you got to recover. So if I understand it correctly, just in reading and listening to you, if you've got Kubernetes expertise and you're building applications in that environment then the application components are in there. And am I inferring correctly that you're going to be able to automate and facilitate high quality recovery with certainty? >> Yeah, there's a bunch of infrastructure involved, and this is why, what enterprises do is they move things like the web front-end to Kubernetes first and is what they should do, right? That is absolutely the right order of things to do because the minute that you're looking at bringing databases in, you're now looking at your whole storage infrastructure. So that direct attack storage that was attached physically to one machine is not going to work once you've moved to a container-based cloud. You suddenly need a way to be able to attach that storage to any of the nodes in your cluster so that you can move the database around and you can have fail-over. But once you build those things up, you can't. I mean, some of the stuff that I've done, I work in the office of the CTO now at Red Hat. So I'm not in production support. So the only Postgres instance I'm supporting are ones for some Open-source projects we support like the Python project. And in those cases, it's not a high criticality database, but I'm not support, I'm not on call on the weekend. I want something where it doesn't require need to be on call in order for it to stay up. And so putting that on open shift with the Patroni fail-over driver was the answer for that. And it has failed over in the Red Hat IT team contacts me and says, "Hey, we need to move those servers. And then we'll just add a node to the cluster and delete the old node and it'll do the right thing." And I don't have to worry about it, which is really what you're going for there. >> The other thing I took away from your writing was that you suggested that a lot of the successes in areas where the Postgres databases were rather small and there were a lots of them. And so to the extent that you can automate that you're going to save yourself a lot of problems. Whereas in the flip side if you're running extremely large databases or there may be performance constraint that might be an area to be a little bit more circumspect. >> Yeah and that's absolutely true because like the other side of this, like I've worked with the dev ops people and the people who are on Heroku and that sort of thing that have one database per application, right. And those people are great candidates for migrating. But then I've also worked with the people who have a one big database for the company, where the database is three terabytes in size, it powers their reporting system and their customer's system and the web portal and everything else in one database. That's the one that's really going to be a hard call and that you might in fact, never physically migrate to Kubernetes because even if it's on Kubernetes you are going to mess with the hardware policy to give it its own dedicated machine. So in that case, what I would honestly tend to do is there's a feature in Kubernetes called service catalog that allows you to expose an external service within Kubernetes as if it were a Kubernetes service. And that's what I tend to do with those kinds of databases because it's, there's not a huge advantage in actually physically moving the database to a container. There's a bunch of steps involved and going via service catalog is a lot easier. >> But essentially you're you're speaking the same language in that example that you just gave. >> Yeah. >> Now, the other thing you pointed out at the time that you wrote this article is there's a lot of pre 1.0 kind of alpha in the Kubernetes stack and it might be prudent to if, not putting your HIPAA compliant, since it evolved. >> Yeah, if I was to update two things in the article I guess that would be one of them the other one I'll get to in a minute. So the first one is that, Kubernetes has progressed along that maturity timeline. Like we recently added the production readiness reviews as part of our feature review process. We've really improved tested adherence, so that we're not releasing with known broken tests, and a bunch of other things to make it more stable. But part of it depends on who I'm talking to because there's still degrees here. So if I'm talking to the context of the world of software then Kubernetes has reached the point of maturity that it is as stable as anything else. And if you use a release, you can assume that any sort of major issues have been worked out. The one difference with it and some other platforms people may have used is it's still young enough that backwards compatibility can be an issue. As in Kubernetes releases now three times a year, we've stepped down from four and within three releases you can find yourself needing to change API calls which means needing to refactor parts of your application. So if you compare that with some other things, like a JVM platform, when's the last time you had a major API change with a JVM platform. But you know the Kubernetes is only six years old, so that's part of that. The other thing is the question is I'm talking to the Postgres community, right? Which is within Postgres, people run the daily Postgres snapshot in production. I would not do that with Kubernetes, I would wait for release. So there's still kind of a difference there if people are coming from the Postgres community, right. Is we're used to this really extreme level of stability that we have with Postgres and Kubernetes as a much younger project isn't quite there yet. >> So that's a process, a change that you would have to be aware of if you want to take the benefits of containers with Postgres, you just have to really understand that and make that process part of your change management. >> The other thing I would say has changed is there are new opportunities in running your data warehouse, your big data databases on Kubernetes. A number of platforms, the one I'm most familiar with is Citus, because I worked with those folks that have taken advantage of Kubernetes as a deployment and management platform for their database, their big data database infrastructure, which makes sense because if you look at a lot of modern data analysis and data mining platforms that are built on top of Postgres part of how they do their work is they actually run a bunch of little Postgres instances that they federate together. And then Kubernetes becomes the tool that allows you to manage all of those little Postgres instances. So that's the sort of exception to the, should I migrate this really big database? That can be a yes, if you are migrating it to a big data platform that supports Kubernetes, then it can be a huge advantage. >> Obviously you've got the practitioner knowledge and you were working in the community. I'm wondering if you can share just thinking about sort of the motivation to move to a container environment if you're one of the Postgres folks in the audience could you share any, either anecdotal or other data on business impact, benchmarks that you've seen, some of the things that you've seen some positives there? >> If you actually look at my history when you talk about performance is one, right? And if you actually look at my history, I actually did, and for that matter of some of the folks from Percona and some of our other folks in the database field did a bunch of benchmarks of running Postgres in MySQL, on Kubernetes versus running it not on Kubernetes. And one of the advantages of containers over VMS is that there isn't any intrinsic, there's not any intrinsic sort of layer gap or virtualization that modifies your performance. In other words, if a container is using storage that's present on the node where the container is running it is using that storage through Linux. And therefore the performance is, with some caveats, performance is going to be identical to if you were running that on the host system. Now, where performance differences creep in is that you might not be able to use the same kind of storage. In that Kubernetes and containers systems in general are organized around the idea that no service is using a majority of the resources on the system, so again, if you're planning on user running a larger Postgres database that really needs all the RAM that a system has you're going to have to do a lot of tinkering with Kubernetes configuration to get the same performance, you would have a running it on a dedicated hardware now. >> Okay, but fundamentally you're saying that overhead is less with caveats, like you said, you just mentioned in the story, right? >> Yeah, well, the overhead is not any different from if you were running under the host system. So a really good example of that was, if you go back to on my lightning talking in, (indistinct) Austin, I think. I showed running a benchmark with Postgres on an AWS instance using EBS storage, both not in Kubernetes and in Kubernetes. And there was no perceptible performance difference between the two of them because it was all metered by how fast was EBS for me. >> Right, and I said less, but I should've been more specific less than say you would expect with virtualization. >> Right, and then it just comes down to a business decision, which is that if you're already on some sort of cloud storage or network storage, and again you have databases that can share hardware systems then you shouldn't really expect substantial performance differences by moving to Kubernetes. That's something that you can eliminate inside of words, but if you're going in the process going to be migrating from direct attached storage to network storage then you are going to see a performance difference but that's caused by the change in storage. Or if you're going to be moving from systems that are not shared to systems that aren't shared again you're going to see a difference from them, but it wouldn't be any different than if you did that without Kubernetes containers being involved. >> If you're using any world-class shared storage device from whatever name of big vendor, you're going to accommodate if you're racking and stacking your own flash drives or worse yet spinning disk drives that's in direct attached, that's maybe a different story, so, okay. That's good. Where would you advise people to get started with Postgres and Kubernetes? >> The nice thing is there are a number of advanced systems now, and advanced systems that are supported by the various Postgres vendors. And that can actually be a great place to get started because the systems are Open-source so you can try them out. This is, as far as I know, they're Open-source you can try them out but then if you decide you like them, you can get support. And so that would include Crunchy data. Enterprise DB has a system, and honestly, I have to admit less familiar with than the ones that Crunchy runs. StackRox is another one out of Europe that has their own system for running cloud native Postgres. And there's one I'm forgetting, and what a lot of these have to do with is taking advantage of the automation. 'Cause you can obviously can put Postgres and container play around, right? But your whole point of moving to Kubernetes in general is going to be take advantage of the automation, so you want to look at the various automation platforms and you can go ahead and do that and the one I'm most familiar with because I develop it as Patroni, is the component for automating Postgres. You do Patroni plus you do operators, it's another word that comes in here. But if you're looking at this as a business you're probably going to want something that supported or that at least there's a potential to buy support and a bunch of the different companies in the Postgres space package up these components for you into a platform. Like I know the Crunchy platform uses Patroni plus some proxy stuff, plus PG back rest plus a couple of other things to give you a sort of full automation platform for running Postgres on Kubernetes. >> Awesome, last question. Where are we in the whole container adoption, we started out kind of you've mentioned this stateless and now you're building stateful applications but still you look at the, we look at spending data with our data partners ETR and containers and container orchestration. It's it's right up there with RPA, with cloud, with AI just in terms of the attention and resource that's going in. So it's exploding. It feels like it's still early days. There's a lot of legs left, what do you see? >> Yeah, well, a lot of it is, I mean you're talking about migrating IT infrastructure, right? So where we are with Kubernetes is we have the early adopters, right? We have all the people who were at the point of building their new infrastructure when Kubernetes came out, right. And people who had major unsolved problems which is a big reason for adopting a new platform was just was no old platform for you. and so we sort of have those people and those people are already on Kubernetes and running their stuff there. And so now we're looking at the really long path of people who are not in one of those camps moving, right. And in a lot of cases, that's a matter of coinciding with other reasons why they have to look at an upgrade because even if, whether it's the gradual replacement of old applications by new ones, where you gradually all the legacy applications get offline and the new applications run in Kubernetes or sometimes it's a, "Hey we're waiting for replacement cycle." We're waiting for, we already had plans to move from on-prem to public cloud, and so we're going to move from on-prem to public cloud on Kubernetes, to make it part of the migration. And that'll be years. I still like, I have fingers into other areas, like I still know a lot of people in the nonprofit space and a lot of nonprofits just got around to adopting virtualization, right? Like they're not even at public cloud yet. I don't even talk to them about Kubernetes. There's this huge long tail in terms of adoption. The nice thing is we don't show any signs of stopping, is that one of the things that we kind of learned from earlier stuff particularly learned from our friends at OpenStack was to really really focus on the APIs, to look at who Kubernetes more as the hub of a system of an infrastructure idea with potentially unbounded growth. If you have a new concept that comes in like service mesh, service mesh is not a successor to Kubernetes. It's not an alternative to Kubernetes. It is a thing you layer on top of Kubernetes because we didn't make it exclusive. >> Right. Great, great example going back to OpenStack and thank you for bringing that in because there's lessons learned. And so Josh, we've got to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE, great conversation, you're awesome. >> Okay, good to talk to you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody, keep it right there for more content from Postgres Vision 21. My name is Dave Vellante, you're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>>covering the space and cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly. Hold on. Welcome to this special presentation with Cal poly hosting the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 virtual, um, John for your host with the cube and Silicon angle here in our Palo Alto studios with our remote guests, we couldn't be there in person, but we're going to be here remotely. Got a great session and a panel for one hour topic preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow, but a great lineup. Bill Britain, Lieutenant Colonel from the us air force, retired vice president for information technology and CIO and the director of the California cyber security Institute for Cal poly bill. Thanks for joining us, dr. Amy Fisher, who's the Dean of the college of engineering at Cal poly and trunk fam professor and researcher at the U S air force Academy. Folks, thanks for joining me today. >>Our pleasure got a great, great panel. This is one of my favorite topics preparing students for the next generation, the jobs for today and tomorrow. We've got an hour. I'd love you guys to start with an opening statement, to kick things off a bill. We'll start with you. Well, I'm really pleased to be, to start on this. Um, as the director for the cybersecurity Institute and the CIO at Cal poly, it's really a fun, exciting job because as a Polytechnic technology, as such a forefront in what we're doing, and we've had a, a wonderful opportunity being 40 miles from Vandenberg air force base to really look at the nexus of space and cyber security. And if you add into that, uh, both commercial government and civil space and cybersecurity, this is an expanding wide open time for cyber and space. In that role that we have with the cyber security Institute, we partner with elements of the state and the university. >>And we try to really add value above our academic level, which is some of the highest in the nation and to really merge down and go a little lower and start younger. So we actually are running the week prior to this showing a cybersecurity competition for high schools or middle schools in the state of California, that competition this year is based on a scenario around hacking of a commercial satellite and the forensics of the payload that was hacked and the networks associated with it. This is going to be done using products like Wireshark autopsy and other tools that will give those high school students. What we hope is a huge desire to follow up and go into cyber and cyber space and space and follow that career path. And either come to Cal poly or some other institution that's going to let them really expand their horizons in cybersecurity and space for the future >>Of our nation. >>Bill, thanks for that intro, by the way, it's gonna give you props for an amazing team and job you guys are doing at Cal poly, that Dex hub and the efforts you guys are having with your challenge. Congratulations on that great work. Thank you >>Star team. It's absolutely amazing. You find that much talent in one location. And I think Amy is going to tell you she's got the same amount of talent in her staff. So it's, it's a great place to be. >>Amy flasher. You guys have a great organization down there, amazing curriculum, grazing people, great community, your opening statement. >>Hello everybody. It's really great to be a part of this panel on behalf of the Cal poly college of engineering here at Cal poly, we really take preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow completely seriously. And we claim that our students really graduate. So they're ready day one for their first real job, but that means that in getting them to that point, we have to help them get valuable and meaningful job experience before they graduate, but through our curriculum and through multiple internship or summer research opportunities. So we focus our curriculum on what we call a learn by doing philosophy. And this means that we have a combination of practical experience and learn by doing both in and out of the classroom. And we find that to be really critical for preparing students for the workforce here at Cal poly, we have more than 6,000 engineering students. >>We're one of the largest undergraduate engineering schools in the country. Um, and us news ranks us the eighth best undergraduate engineering program in the, in the country and the top ranked state school. We're really, really proud that we offer this impactful hands on engineering education that really exceeds that of virtually all private universities while reaching a wider audience of students. We offer 14 degree programs and really we're talking today about cyber and space. And I think most of those degree programs can really make an impact in the space and cybersecurity economy. And this includes not only things like Aero and cyber directly, but also electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, materials, engineering, even manufacturing, civil and biomedical engineering. As there's a lot of infrastructure needs that go into supporting launch capabilities. Our aerospace program graduates hundreds of aerospace engineers, and most of them are working right here in California. >>I'm with many of our corporate partners, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon space, X, Virgin, galactic JPL, and so many other places where we have Cal poly engineer's impacting the space economy. Our cybersecurity focus is found mainly in our computer science and software engineering programs. And it's really a rapidly growing interest among our students. Computer science is our most popular major and industry interest and partnerships are integrated into our curriculum. And we do that oftentimes through support from industry. So we have partnerships with Northrop Grumman for professorship and a cyber lab and from PG and E for critical infrastructure, cybersecurity lab, and professorship. And we think that industry partnerships like these are really critical to preparing students for the future as the field's evolving so quickly and making sure we adapt our facilities and our curriculum to stay in line with what we're seeing in industry is incredibly important. >>In our aerospace program, we have an educational partnership with the air force research labs. That's allowing us to install new high performance computing capabilities and a space environments lab. That's going to enhance our satellite design capabilities. And if we talk about satellite design, Cal poly is the founding home of the cube sat program, which pioneered small satellite capabilities. And we remain the worldwide leader in maintaining the cube set standard. And our student program has launched more cube sets than any other program. So here again, we have this learn by doing experience every year for dozens of aerospace, electrical, computer science, mechanical engineering students, and other student activities that we think are just as important include ethical hacking through our white hat club, Cal poly space systems, which does really, really big rocket launches and our support program for women in both of these fields like wish, which is women in software and hardware. >>Now, you know, really trying to bring in a wide variety of people into these fields is incredibly important and outreach and support to those demographics. Traditionally underrepresented in these fields is going to be really critical to future success. So by drawing on the lived experiences by people with different types of backgrounds, while we develop the type of culture and environment where all of us can get to the best solution. So in terms of bringing people into the field, we see that research shows, we need to reach kids when they're in late elementary and middle schools to really overcome that cultural bias that works against diversity in our fields. And you heard bill talking about the cyber cybersec, the California cybersecurity institutes a year late cyber challenge. There's a lot of other people who are working to bring in a wider variety of, uh, of people into the field, like girl Scouts, which has introduced dozens of new badges over the past few years, including a whole cybersecurity series of badges and a concert with Palo Alto networks. So we have our work cut out for us, but we know what we need to do. And if we're really committed to prep properly preparing the workforce for today and tomorrow, I think our future is going to be bright. I'm looking forward to our discussion today. >>Yeah, you got a flashy for great, great comment, opening statement and congratulations. You got the right formula down there, the right mindset, and you got a lot of talent and community as well. Thank thank you for that opening statement. Next step from Colorado Springs, trunk fam, who's a professor and researcher. The us air force Academy is doing a lot of research around the areas that are most important for the intersection of space and technology trunk. >>Good afternoon, first electric and Cal poli for the opportunity. And today I want to go briefly about cyber security in S application. Whenever we talk about cyber security, the impression is got yes, a new phew that is really highly complex involving a lot of technical area. But in reality, in my personal opinion, it is in be complex because involve many disciplines. The first thing we think about is computer engineering and computer networking, but it's also involving communication sociology, law practice. And this practice of cyber security goes in on the info computer expert, but it's also info everybody else who has a computing device that is connected to the internet. And this participation is obviously every body in today's environment. When we think about the internet, we know that is a good source of information, but come with the convenience of information that we can access. >>We are constantly faced in being from the internet. Some of them, we might be aware of some of them we might not be aware of. For example, when we search on the internet, a lot of time, our browser will be saved and gotten this site is not trusted. So we will be more careful. What about the sites that we trusted? We know getting those salad chicken sites, but they're not a hundred percent good at proof. What happened? It was all side, uh, attack by hacker. And then they will be a silent source that we might not be aware of. So in the reality, we need to be more practicing the, um, cyber security from our SIBO point of view and not from a technical point of view. When we talk about space application, we should know that all the hardware, a computer based tool by computer system and therefore the hardware and the software must go through some certification process so that they can be record that air with the flight. >>What the, when we know that in the certification process is focusing on the functionality of the hardware and software, but one aspect that is explicitly and implicitly required is the security of those components. And we know that those components have to be connected with the ground control station and be communication is through the air, through the layby or signal. So anybody who has access to those communication regular signal will be able to control the space system that we put up there. And we certainly do not want our system to be hijacked by a third party. >>I'm not going to aspect of cybersecurity is we try to design the space system in a very strong manner. So it's almost impossible to hack in, but what about some August week system that might be connected to so strong system? For example, the spare system will be connected to the ground control station and on the ground control station, we have the human controller in those people have cell phone. They are allowed to use cell phones for communication, but at the same time, they are connected to the internet, to the cell phone and their cell phone might be connected to the computer that control the flight software and hardware. So what I want to say is that we try to build strong system and we protected them, but there will be some weaker system that we could not intended, but exists to be connected to our strong system. And those are the points that hacker will be trying to attack. If we know how to control the access to those points, we will be having a much better system for the space system. And when we see the cybersecurity that is requiring the participation everywhere, it's important to Merck that there is a source of opportunity for students to engage the workforce. To concede the obviously student in engineering can focus their knowledge and expertise to provide technological solution, to protect the system that we view. But we also >>Have students in business who can focus to write a business plan to reach the market. We also have student in law who can focus policy governing the cyber security. And we also have student in education who can focus the expert. She should be saying how to teach cyber security practice and students can focus the effort to implement security measures and it implies job opportunity. >>Thank you trunk for those great comments, great technology opportunities, but interesting as well as the theme that we're seeing across the entire symposium and in the virtual hallways that we're hearing conversations and you pointed out some of them, dr. Fleischer did as well. And bill, you mentioned it. It's not one thing. It's not just technology, it's different skills. And, um, Amy, you mentioned that computer science is the hottest degree, but you have the hottest aerospace program in the world. I mean, so all of this is kind of balancing it's interdisciplinary. It's a structural change before we get into some of the, um, how they prepare the students. Can you guys talk about some of the structural changes that are modern now in preparing, um, in these opportunities because societal impact is a law potentially impact it's, it's how we educate there's no cross-discipline skillsets. It's not just get the degree, see out in the field bill, you want to start. >>Well, what's really fun about this job is, is that in the air force, uh, I worked in the space and missile business and what we saw was a heavy reliance on checklist format, security procedures, analog systems, and what we're seeing now in our world, both in the government and the commercial side, uh, is a move to a digital environment. And the digital environment is a very quick and adaptive environment. And it's going to require a digital understanding. Matter of fact, um, the, uh, under secretary of the air force for acquisition, uh, rev recently referenced the need to understand the digital environment and how that's affecting acquisition. So as, as both Amy, um, and trunk said, even business students are now in the >>Cybersecurity business. And, and so, again, what we're seeing is, is the change. Now, another phenomenon that we're seeing in the space world is there's just so much data. Uh, one of the ways that we addressed that in the past was to look at high performance computing. It was a lot stricter control over how that worked, but now what we're seeing these adaptation of cloud cloud technologies in space support, space, data, command, and control. Uh, and so what we see is a modern space engineer who asked to understand digital, has to understand cloud and has to understand the context of all those with a cyber environment. That's really changing the forefront of what is a space engineer, what is a digital engineer and what does a future engineer, both commercial or government? So I think the opportunity for all of these things is really good, particularly for a Polytechnic air force Academy and others that are focusing on a more, uh, widened experiential level of cloud and engineering and other capabilities. >>And I'll tell you the part that as the CIO, I have to remind everybody, all this stuff works for the it stuff. So you've got to understand how your it infrastructures are tied and working together. Um, as we noted earlier, one of the things is, is that these are all relays from point the point, and that architecture is part of your cybersecurity architecture. So again, every component has now become a cyber aware cyber knowledgeable, and in what we'd like to call as a cyber cognizant citizen, where they have to understand the context, patients chip software, that the Fleischer talk about your perspective, because you mentioned some of the things that computer science. Remember when I'm in the eighties, when I got my computer science degree, they call the software engineers, and then you became software developers. And then, so again, engineering is the theme. If you're engineering a system, there's now software involved, um, and there's also business engineering business models. So talk about some of your comments was, you mentioned, computer science is hot. You got the aerospace, you've got these multidisciplines you got definitely diversity as well. It brings more perspectives in as well. Your thoughts on these structural interdisciplinary things. >>I think this is, this is really key to making sure that students are prepared to work in the workforce is looking at the, the blurring between fields no longer are you just a computer scientist, no longer are you just an aerospace engineer? You really have to have an expertise where you can work with people across disciplines. All of these, all of these fields are just working with each other in ways we haven't seen before. And bill brought up data, you know, data science is something that's cross cutting across all of our fields. So we want engineers that have the disciplinary expertise so that they can go deep into these fields, but we want them to be able to communicate with each and to be able to communicate across disciplines and to be able to work in teams that are across disciplines. You can no longer just work with other computer scientists or just work with other aerospace engineers. >>There's no part of engineering that is siloed anymore. So that's how we're changing. You have to be able to work across those, those disciplines. And as you, as Tron pointed out, you know, ethics has to come into this. So you can no longer try to fully separate what we would traditionally have called the, the liberal arts and say, well, that's over there in general education. No ethics is an important part of what we're doing and how we integrate that into our curriculum. So it was communication. So is working on public policy and seeing where all of these different aspects tied together to make the impact that we want to have in the world. So it, you no longer can work solo in these fields. >>Great point. And bill also mentioned the cloud. One thing about the cloud that showed us as horizontal scalability has created a lot of value and certainly data is now horizontal Trung. You mentioned some of the things about cryptography for the kids out there. I mean, you can look at the pathway for career. You can do a lot of tech and, but you don't have to go deep. Sometimes you can go, you can go as deep as you want, but there's so much more there. Um, what technology do you see, how it's going to help students in your opinion? >>Well, I'm a professor in computer science, so I'd like to talk out a little bit about computer programming. Now we, uh, working in complex project. So most of the time we design a system from scratch. We view it from different components and the components that we have either we get it from or some time we get it from the internet in the open source environment, it's fun to get the source code and then work to our own application. So now when we are looking at a Logie, when we talk about encryption, for example, we can easily get the source code from the internet. And the question is, is safe to use those source code. And my, my, my question is maybe not. So I always encourage my students to learn how to write source score distribution, where that I learned a long time ago before I allow them to use the open source environment. And one of the things that they have to be careful, especially with encryption is be quote that might be hidden in the, in the source, get the download here, some of the source. >>So open source, it's a wonderful place to be, but it's also that we have to be aware of >>Great point before we get into some of the common one quick thing for each of you like to get your comments on, you know, the there's been a big movement on growth mindset, which has been a great, I'm a big believer in having a growth mindset and learning and all that good stuff. But now that when you talk about some of these things that we're mentioning about systems, there's, there's an, there's a new trend around a systems mindset, because if everything's now a system distributed systems, now you have space in cyber security, you have to understand the consequences of changes. And you mentioned some of that Trung in changes in the source code. Could you guys share your quick opinions on the, the idea of systems thinking, is that a mindset that people should be looking at? Because it used to be just one thing, Oh, you're a systems guy or galley. There you go. You're done. Now. It seems to be in social media and data. Everything seems to be systems. What's your take dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you. >>Uh, I'd say it's a, it's another way of looking at, um, not being just so deep in your discipline. You have to understand what the impact of the decisions that you're making have on a much broader, uh, system. And so I think it's important for all of our students to get some exposure to that systems level thinking and looking at the greater impact of the decision that they're making. Now, the issue is where do you set the systems boundary, right? And you can set the systems boundary very close in and concentrate on an aspect of a design, or you can continually move that system boundary out and see, where do you hit the intersections of engineering and science along with ethics and public policy and the greater society. And I think that's where some of the interesting work is going to be. And I think at least exposing students and letting them know that they're going to have to make some of these considerations as they move throughout their career is going to be vital as we move into the future. Bill. What's your thoughts? >>Um, I absolutely agree with Amy and I think there's a context here that reverse engineering, um, and forensics analysis and forensics engineering are becoming more critical than ever, uh, the ability to look at what you have designed in a system and then tear it apart and look at it for gaps and holes and problem sets, or when you're given some software that's already been pre developed, checking it to make sure it is, is really going to do what it says it's going to do. That forensics ability becomes more and more a skillset that also you need the verbal skills to explain what it is you're doing and what you found. So the communication side, the systems analysis, >>The forensics analysis side, >>These are all things that are part of that system >>Approach that I think you could spend hours on. And we still haven't really done great job on it. So it's a, it's. One of my fortes is the really the whole analysis side of forensics and it reverse engineering >>Try and real quick systems thinking. >>Well, I'd like to share with you my experience. When I worked in the space patient program at NASA, we had two different approaches. One is a down approach where we design it from the system general point of view, where we put components to complex system. But at the same time, we have the bottom up approach where we have Ken Chile who spent time and effort the individual component. And they have to be expert in those Chinese component. That might be general component the gallery. And in the space station program, we bring together the welcome up engineer, who designed everything in detail in the system manager who manage the system design from the top down. And we meet in the middle and took the idea with compromise a lot of differences. Then we can leave a display station that we are operating to be okay, >>Great insight. And that's the whole teamwork collaboration that, that was mentioning. Thanks so much for that insight. I wanted to get that out there because I know myself as a, as a parent, I'm always trying to think about what's best for my kids in their friends, as they grow up into the workforce. I know educators and leaders in industry would love to know some of the best practices around some of the structural changes. So thanks for that insight, but this topics about students and helping them prepare. Uh, so we heard, you know, be, be multiple discipline, broaden your horizons, think like systems top down, bottom up, work together as a team and follow the data. So I got to ask you guys, there's a huge amount of job openings in cybersecurity. It's well documented and certainly at the intersection of space and cyber, it's only gonna get bigger, right? You're going to see more and more demand for new types of jobs. How do we get high school and college students interested in security as a career at the flagship? We'll start with you in this one. >>I would say really one of the best ways to get students interested in the career is to show them the impact that it's going to have. There's definitely always going to be students who are going to want to do the technology for the technology sake, but that will limit you to a narrow set of students. And by showing that the greater impact that these types of careers are going to have on the types of problems that you're going to be able to solve and the impact you're going to be able to have on the world, around you, that's the word that we really need to get out. And a wide variety of students really respond to these messages. So I think it's really kind of reaching out at the, uh, the elementary, the middle school level, and really kind of getting this idea that you can make a big difference, a big positive difference in the field with some of these careers is going to be really critical. >>Real question, follow up. What do you think is the best entry point? You mentioned middle squad in here, elementary school. This comes, there's a lot of discussions around pipelining and we're going to get into women in tech and under-represented matters later, but you know, is it too early or what's the, what's your feeling on this? >>My feeling is the earlier we can normalize it the better the, uh, if you can normalize an interest in, in computers and technology and building an elementary school, that's absolutely critical. But the dropoff point that we're seeing is between what I would call like late elementary and early middle school. Um, and just kind of as an anecdote, I, for years ran an outreach program for girl Scouts in grades four and five and grade six, seven, and eight. And we had a hundred slots in each program. And every year the program would sell out for girls in grades four and five, and every year we'd have spots remaining in grades six, seven, and eight. And that's literally where the drop-off is occurring between that late elementary and that middle school range. So that's the area that we need to target to make sure we keep those young women involved and interested as we move forward. >>Bill, how are we going to get these kids interested in security? You mentioned a few programs you got. Yeah. I mean, who wants to, who wouldn't want to be a white hat hacker? I mean, yeah, that sounds exciting. Yeah. Great questions. Let's start with some basic principles though. Is let me ask you a question, John, a name for me, one white hat, good person hacker. The name who works in the space industry and is an exemplar for students to look up to, um, you, um, Oh man. I'm hearing really. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't imagine because the answer we normally get is the cricket sound. So we don't have individuals we've identified in those areas for them to look up to. I was going to be snarky and say, most white hackers won't even use their real name, but, um, there's a, there's an aura around their anonymity here. >>So, so again, the real question is, is how do we get them engaged and keep them engaged? And that's what Amy was pointing out too. Exactly the engagement and sticking with it. So one of the things that we're trying to do through our competition on the state level and other elements is providing connections. We call them ambassadors. These are people in the business who can contact the students that are in the game or in that, uh, challenge environment and let them interact and let them talk about what they do and what they're doing in life would give them a challenging game format. Um, a lot of computer based training, um, capture the flag stuff is great, but if you can make it hands on, if you can make it a learn by doing experiment, if you can make it am personally involved and see the benefit as a result of doing that challenge and then talk to the people who do that on a daily basis, that's how you get them involved. >>The second part is as part of what we're doing is, is we're involving partnership companies in the development of the teams. So this year's competition that we're running has 82 teams from across the state of California, uh, of those 82 teams at six students team, middle school, high school, and many of those have company partners. And these are practitioners in cybersecurity who are working with those students to participate. It's it's that adult connectivity, it's that visualization. Um, so at the competition this year, um, we have the founder of Def con red flag is a participant to talk to the students. We have Vince surf as who is of course, very well known for something called the internet to participate. It's really getting the students to understand who's in this. Who can I look up to and how do I stay engaged with them? >>There's definitely a celebrity aspect of it. I will agree. I mean, the influencer aspect here with knowledge is key. Can you talk about, um, these ambassadors and, and, and how far along are you on that program? First of all, the challenge stuff is anything gamification wise. We've seen that with hackathons is just really works well. Grades, bonding, people who create together kinda get sticky and get very high community aspect to it. Talking about this ambassador thing. What does that industry is that academic >>Absolutely partners that we've identified? Um, some of which, and I won't hit all of them. So I'm sure I'll short changes, but, uh, Palo Alto, Cisco, um, Splunk, um, many of the companies in California and what we've done is identified, uh, schools, uh, to participate in the challenge that may not have a strong STEM program or have any cyber program. And the idea of the company is they look for their employees who are in those school districts to partner with the schools to help provide outreach. It could be as simple as a couple hours a week, or it's a team support captain or it's providing computers and other devices to use. Uh, and so again, it's really about a constant connectivity and, uh, trying to help where some schools may not have the staff or support units in an area to really provide them what they need for connectivity. What that does gives us an opportunity to not just focus on it once a year, but throughout the year. So for the competition, all the teams that are participating have been receiving, um, training and educational opportunities in the game of education side, since they signed up to participate. So there's a website, there's learning materials, there's materials provided by certain vendor companies like Wireshark and others. So it's a continuum of opportunity for the, >>You know, I've seen just the re randomly, just going to random thought, you know, robotics clubs are moving den closer into that middle school area, in fact Fleischer. And certainly in high schools, it's almost like a varsity sport. E-sports is another one. My son just combined made the JV at the college Dean, you know, it's big and it's up and serious. Right. And, um, it's fun. This is the aspect of fun. It's hands on. This is part of the culture down there you learn by doing, is there like a group? Is it like, um, is it like a club? I mean, how do you guys organize these bottoms up organically interest topics? >>So, so here in the college of engineering, uh, when we talk about learning by doing, we have learned by doing both in the classroom and out of the classroom. And if we look at the, these types of, out of the classroom activities, we have over 80 clubs working on all different aspects of many of these are bottom up. The students have decided what they want to work on and have organized themselves around that. And then they get the leadership opportunities. The more experienced students train in the less experienced students. And it continues to build from year after year after year with them even doing aspects of strategic planning from year to year for some of these competitions. So, yeah, it's an absolutely great experience. And we don't define for them how their learned by doing experiences should be, we want them to define it. And I think the really cool thing about that is they have the ownership and they have the interest and they can come up with new clubs year after year to see which direction they want to take it. And, you know, we will help support those clubs as old clubs fade out and new clubs come in >>Trunk real quick. Before we go on the next, uh, talk track, what, what do you recommend for, um, middle school, high school or even elementary? Um, a little bit of coding Minecraft. I mean, what, how do you get them hooked on the fun and the dopamine of, uh, technology and cybersecurity? What's your, what's your take on that? >>On, on this aspect, I like to share with you my experience as a junior high and high school student in Texas, the university of Texas in Austin organized a competition for every high school in Texas. If we phew from poetry to mathematics, to science, computer engineering, but it's not about with university of Texas. The university of Texas is on the serving SSN for the final competition that we divide the competition to be strict and then regional, and then spit at each level, we have local university and colleges volunteering to host it competition and make it fun. >>Also students with private enterprises to raise funding for scholarship. So students who see the competition they get exposed to so they can see different option. They also get a scholarship when they attend university in college. So I've seen the combination in competition aspect would be a good thing to be >>Got the engagement, the aspiration scholarship, you know, and you mentioned a volunteer. I think one of the things I'll observe is you guys are kind of hitting this as community. I mean, the story of Steve jobs and was, was building the Mac, they call it bill Hewlett up in Palo Alto. It was in the phone book and they scoured some parts from them. That's community. This is kind of what you're getting at. So this is kind of the formula we're seeing. So the next question I really want to get into is the women in technology, STEM, underrepresented minorities, how do we get them on cybersecurity career path? Is there a best practices there, bill, we'll start with you? >>Well, I think it's really interesting. First thing I want to add is if I could have just a clarification, what's really cool that the competition that we have and we're running, it's run by student from Cal poly. Uh, so, you know, Amy referenced the clubs and other activities. So many of the, uh, organizers and developers of the competition that we're running are the students, but not just from engineering. So we actually have theater and liberal arts majors and technology for liberal arts majors who are part of the competition. And we use their areas of expertise, set design, and other things, uh, visualization of virtualization. Those are all part of how we then teach and educate cyber in our game effication and other areas. So they're all involved in their learning as well. So we have our students teaching other students. So we're really excited about that. And I think that's part of what leads to a mentoring aspect of what we're providing, where our students are mentoring the other students. And I think it's also something that's really important in the game. Um, the first year we held the game, we had several all girl teams and it was really interesting because a, they, they didn't really know if they could compete. I mean, this is their, their reference point. We don't know if they did better than anybody. I mean, they, they knocked the ball out >>Of the park. The second part then is building that confidence level that they can going back and telling their cohorts that, Hey, it's not this thing you can't do. It's something real that you can compete and win. And so again, it's building that comradery, that spirit, that knowledge that they can succeed. And I think that goes a long way and an Amy's programs and the reach out and the reach out that Cal poly does to schools to develop. Uh, I think that's what it really is going to take. It. It is going to take that village approach to really increase diversity and inclusivity for the community. >>That's the flusher. I'd love to get your thoughts. You mentioned, um, your, your outreach program and the dropoff, some of those data, uh, you're deeply involved in this. You're passionate about it. What's your thoughts on this career path opportunity for STEM? >>Yeah, I think STEM is an incredible career path opportunity for so many people. There's so many interesting problems that we can solve, particularly in cyber and in space systems. And I think we have to meet the kids where they are and kind of show them, you know, what the exciting part is about it, right. But, you know, bill was, was alluding to this. And when he was talking about, you know, trying to name somebody that you can can point to. And I think having those visible people where you can see yourself in that is, is absolutely critical and those mentors and that mentorship program. So we use a lot of our students going out into California, middle schools and elementary schools. And you want to see somebody that's like you, somebody that came from your background and was able to do this. So a lot of times we have students from our national society of black engineers or a society of Hispanic professional engineers or our society of women engineers. >>We have over a thousand members, a thousand student members in our society of women engineers who were doing these outreach programs. But like I also said, it's hitting them at the lower levels too. And girl Scouts is actually distinguishing themselves as one of the leading STEM advocates in the country. And like I said, they developed all these cybersecurity badges, starting in kindergarten. There's a cybersecurity badge for kindergarten and first graders. And it goes all the way up through late high school, the same thing with space systems. And they did the space systems in partnership with NASA. They did the cybersecurity and partnership with Palo Alto networks. And what you do is you want to build these, these skills that the girls are developing. And like bill said, work in and girl led teams where they can do it. And if they're doing it from kindergarten on, it just becomes normal. And they never think, well, this is not for me. And they see the older girls who are doing it and they see a very clear path leading them into these careers. >>Yeah. It's interesting. You used the word normalization earlier. That's exactly what it is. It's life, you get life skills and a new kind of badge. Why wouldn't learn how to be a white, white hat hacker, or have fun or learn new skills just in, in the, in the grind of your fun day. Super exciting. Okay. Trung your thoughts on this. I mean, you have a diverse diversity. It brings perspective to the table in cybersecurity because you have to think like the other, the adversary, you got to be the white headed hippie, a white hat, unless you know how black hat thinks. So there's a lot of needs here for more, more, more points of view. How are we going to get people trained on this from under represented minorities and women? What's your thoughts? >>Well, as a member of, I took a professional society of directed pool in the electronic engineer. You have the, uh, we participate in the engineering week. We'll be ploy our members to local junior high school and high school to talk about our project, to promote the discovery of engineering. But at the same time, we also participate in the science fair that we scaled up flex. As the squad organizing our engineer will be mentoring students, number one, to help them with the part check, but number two, to help us identify talents so that we can recruit them further into the field of STEM. One of the participation that week was the competition of the, what they call future CV. We're still going, we'll be doing a CT on a computer simulation. And in recent year we promote ops smart CV where CT will be connected the individual houses to be added in through the internet. >>And we want to bring awareness of cybersecurity into competition. So we deploy engineer to supervise the people, the students who participate in the competition, we bring awareness, not in the technical be challenged level, but in what we've called the compound level. So speargun will be able to know what is, why to provide cyber security for the smart city that they are building. And at the same time, we were able to identify talent, especially talent in the minority and in the room. And so that we can recruit them more actively. And we also raise money for scholarship. We believe that scholarship is the best way to get students to continue education in Epic college level. So with scholarship, it's very easy to recruit them, to give you and then push them to go further into the cyber security Eylea. >>Yeah. I mean, you know, I see a lot of the parents like, Oh, my kid's going to go join the soccer team, >>Private lessons, and maybe look at a scholarship >>Someday. Well, they only do have scholarships anyway. I mean, this is if they spent that time doing other things, it's just, again, this is a new lifestyle, like the girl Scouts. And this is where I want to get into this whole silo breaking down because Amy, you brought this up and bill, you were talking about as well, you've got multiple stakeholders here with this event. You got, you know, public, you got private and you've got educators. It's the intersection of all of them. It's again, that those, if those silos break down the confluence of those three stakeholders have to work together. So let's, let's talk about that. Educators. You guys are educating young minds, you're interfacing with private institutions and now the public. What about educators? What can they do to make cyber better? Cause there's no real manual. I mean, it's not like this court is a body of work of how to educate cybersecurity is maybe it's more recent, it's cutting edge, best practices, but still it's an, it's an evolving playbook. What's your thoughts for educators, bill? We'll start with you. >>Well, I don't really, I'm going to turn it off. >>I would say, I would say as, as educators, it's really important for us to stay on top of how the field is evolving, right? So what we want to do is we want to promote these tight connections between educators and our faculty and, um, applied research in industry and with industry partnerships. And I think that's how we're going to make sure that we're educating students in the best way. And you're talking about that inner, that confluence of the three different areas. And I think you have to keep those communication lines open to make sure that the information on where the field is going and what we need to concentrate on is flowing down into our educational process. And that, that works in both ways that, you know, we can talk as educators and we can be telling industry what we're working on and what are types of skills our students have and working with them to get the opportunities for our students to work in industry and develop those skills along the way as well. >>And I think it's just all part of this is really looking at, at what's going to be happening and how do we get people talking to each other and the same thing with looking at public policy and bringing that into our education and into these real hands on experiences. And that's how you really cement this type of knowledge with students, not by not by talking to them and not by showing them, but letting them do it. It's this learn by doing and building the resiliency that it takes when you learn by doing. And sometimes you learn by failing, but you just up and you keep going. >>And these are important skills that you develop along the way >>You mentioned, um, um, sharing too. That's the key collaborating and sharing knowledge. It's an open, open world and everyone's collaborating feel private public partnerships. I mean, there's a real private companies. You mentioned Palo Alto networks and others. There's a real intersection there there's, they're motivated. They could, the scholarship opportunities, trunk points to that. What is the public private educator view there? How do companies get involved? What's the benefit for them? >>Well, that's what a lot of the universities are doing is to bring in as part of either their cyber centers or institutes, people who are really focused on developing and furthering those public private partnerships. That's really what my role is in all these things is to take us to a different level in those areas, uh, not to take away from the academic side, but to add additional opportunities for both sides. Remember in a public private partnership, all entities have to have some gain in the process. Now, what I think is really interesting is the timing on particularly this subject space and cyber security. This has been an absolute banner year for space. The Stanhope of space force, the launch of commercial partnership, leaving commercial platforms, delivering astronauts to the space station, recovering them and bringing back the ability of a commercial satellite platform to be launched a commercial platforms that not only launch, but return back to where they're launched from. >>These are things that are stirring the hearts of the American citizens, the kids, again, they're getting interested, they're seeing this and getting enthused. So we have to seize upon that and we have to find a way to connect that public private partnerships is the answer for that. It's not one segment that can handle it all. It's all of them combined together. If you look at space, space is going to be about commercial. It's going to be about civil moving from one side of the earth, to the other via space. And it's about government. And what's really cool for us. All those things are in our backyard. Yeah. That's where that public private comes together. The government's involved, the private sector is involved. The educators are involved and we're all looking at the same things and trying to figure out like this forum, what works best to go to the future. >>You know, if people are bored and they want to look for an exciting challenge, he couldn't have laid it out any clearer. It's the most exciting discipline. It hits everything. I mean, we just talk about space. GPS is everything we do is well tested. Do with satellites. >>I have to tell you a story on that, right? We have a very unique GPS story right in our backyard. So our sheriff is the son of the father of GPS for the air force. So you can't get better than that when it comes to being connected to all those platforms. So we, we really want to say, you know, this is so exciting for all of us because >>It gives everybody a job for a long time. >>You know, the kids that don't think tick toxic, exciting, wait til they see what's going on here with you guys, this program, trunk final word on this from the public side, you're at the air force. You're doing research. Are you guys opening it up? Are you integrating into the private and educational sectors? How do you see that formula playing out? And what's the best practice for students and preparing them? >>I think it's the same in athlete university CP in the engineering program will require our students to be final project before graduation. And in this kind of project, we send them out to work in the private industry. The private company got sponsor. Then they get the benefit of having an intern working for them and they get the benefit of reviewing the students as the prospective employee in the future. So it's good for the student to gain practical experience working in this program. Some, some kind of, we call that a core program, some kind, we call that a capstone program and the company will accept the students on a trial PRCS, giving them some assignment and then pay them a little bit of money. So it's good for the student to earn some extra money, to have some experience that they can put on their resume when they apply for the final of the job. >>So the collaboration between university and private sector is really important. We, when I joined a faculty, normally they already exist that connection. It came from. Normally it came from the Dean of engineering who would whine and dine with companies. We work relationship and sign up women, but it's approach to do a good performance so that we can be credibility to continue the relationship with those company and the students that we selected to send to those company. We have to make sure that they will represent the university. Well, they will go a good job and they will make a good impression. >>Thank you very much for great insight, trunk, bill, Amy, amazing topic. I'd like to end this session with each of you to make a statement on the importance of cybersecurity to space. We'll go Trung bill and Amy Truong, the importance of cybersecurity space statement. >>We know that it's affecting components that we are using and we are connecting to. And normally we use them for personal purpose. But when we connect to the important system that the government public company put into space, so it's really important to practice cyber security and a lot of time, it's very easy to know concept. We have to be careful, but in reality, we tend to forget to partnership the way we forget how to ride safely. And with driving a car, we have a program called defensive driving that requires every two or three years to get. We can get discount. >>We are providing the cyber security practice, not to tell people about the technology, but to remind them not practicing cybersecurity. And it's a requirement for every one of us, bill, the importance of cyber security to space. It's not just about young people. It's about all of us as we grow and we change as I referenced it, you know, we're changing from an analog world to a digital world. Those of us who have been in the business and have hair that looks like mine. We need to be just as cognizant about cybersecurity practice as the young people, we need to understand how it affects our lives and particularly in space, because we're going to be talking about people, moving people to space, moving payloads, data, transfer all of those things. And so there's a whole workforce that needs to be retrained or upskilled in cyber that's out there. So the opportunity is ever expensive for all of us, Amy, the importance of cybersecurity space, >>Uh, and the, the emphasis of cybersecurity is space. Just simply, can't be over emphasized. There are so many aspects that are going to have to be considered as systems get ever more complex. And as we pointed out, we're putting people's lives at stake here. This is incredibly, incredibly complicated and incredibly impactful, and actually really exciting the opportunities that are here for students and the workforce of the future to really make an enormous impact on the world around us. And I hope we're able to get that message out to students, to children >>Today. But these are my really interesting fields that you need to consider. >>Thank you very much. I'm John foray with the cube and the importance of cybersecurity and space is the future of the world's all going to happen in and around space with technology, people and society. Thank you to Cal poly. And thank you for watching the Cypress of computer security and space symposium 2020.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering >>space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Over On Welcome to this Special virtual conference. The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from the Cube. I'm John for your host and master of ceremonies. Got a great topic today in this session. Really? The intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic and this conversation is the cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup. We have Jeff Armstrong's the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly Jeffrey. Thanks for jumping on and Bang. Go ahead. The second director of C four s R Division. And he's joining us from the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition Sustainment Department of Defense, D O D. And, of course, Steve Jake's executive director, founder, National Security Space Association and managing partner at Bello's. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session. We got an hour conversation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. >>So we got a virtual event here. We've got an hour, have a great conversation and love for you guys do? In opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity in space, Jeff will start with you. >>Well, thanks very much, John. It's great to be on with all of you. Uh, on behalf Cal Poly Welcome, everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission to Cal Poly. Whether that means traditional undergraduates, master students are increasingly mid career professionals looking toe up, skill or re skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers ready Day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves is lucky to be on California's beautiful central Coast. But in recent years, as we have developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, we have discovered that our location is even more advantages than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than u C. Santa Barbara, and the base represents the southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air force base have partner to support regional economic development to encourage the development of a commercial spaceport toe advocate for the space Command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because because both parties stand to benefit Vandenberg by securing new streams of revenue, workforce and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students, and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the Central Coast and the US, creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called Reach, which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to camp to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that is facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has has long been an important defense contractor, an important partner to Cal poly funding scholarships and facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years north of grimness funded scholarships for Cal Poly students this year, their funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars program, Cal Poly Scholars, a support both incoming freshman is transfer students. These air especially important because it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal, and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernized the U. S. I. C B M Armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. How Polly is partnered with many private companies, such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cybersecurity Institute, College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber ready workforce by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment, side by side with military, law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG and E, most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry as a rough approximation. More than 4500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace and defense as their employment sector on linked in, and it's not just our engineers and computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow Panelists not too long ago, >>are >>speaking to bang, we learned that Rachel sins, one of our liberal arts arts majors, is working in his office. So shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates sword extraordinary heights such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International space station later this year as I close. All of which is to say that we're deeply committed the workforce, development and redevelopment that we understand the value of public private partnerships and that were eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state in the nation and our past efforts in space, cybersecurity and links to our partners at as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cybersecurity. Thank you so much, John. >>President, I'm sure thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique progressive. You and wanna tip your hat to you guys over there. Thank you very much for those comments. Appreciate it. Bahng. Department of Defense. Exciting you gotta defend the nation spaces Global. Your opening statement. >>Yes, sir. Thanks, John. Appreciate that day. Thank you, everybody. I'm honored to be this panel along with President Armstrong, Cal Poly in my long longtime friend and colleague Steve Jakes of the National Security Space Association, to discuss a very important topic of cybersecurity workforce development, as President Armstrong alluded to, I'll tell you both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the N S. A have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them in training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs. A swell Asare collective National security Earlier today, during Session three high, along with my colleague Chris Hansen discussed space, cyber Security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferations of hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites providing a variety of services, including communications allowing for global Internet connectivity. S one example within the O. D. We continue to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you one of the enabling technologies eyes the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used unemployed for the U. D. Certainly not lost on Me is the fact that Cal Poly Pioneer Cube SATs 2020 some years ago, and they set the standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the valiant benefit gained way ahead of everybody else, it seems, and Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steve's I colleague, current CEO Mr Bill Britain, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Uh, earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's Cyber Innovation Challenge. In June works Cal Poly host California Mill and high school students and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the pandemic change the plan. Why I truly look forward. Thio feature events such as these Thio participating. Now I want to recognize my good friend Steve Jakes, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here over two decades or so, who was in acknowledge space expert and personally, I truly applaud him for having the foresight of years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology but Polly policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operational izing space. Space is our newest horrifying domain. That's not a secret anymore. Uh, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains such as land, air and sea, obviously all of strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict they will need to be. They will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts in a joint operation. We must succeed. All to defending space is critical as critical is defending our other operational domains. Funny space is no longer the sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly, as I discussed in the previous session, commercial space is taking the lead a lot of different areas, including R and D, A so called new space, so cyber security threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. Three US considers and federal access to and freedom to operate in space vital to advancing security, economic prosperity, prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country. That's making cyberspace an inseparable component. America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space force ah, year ago or so as the newest military service is like the other services. Its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect us and allied interest in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. Imagine combining that US space force with the U. S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of space and cyberspace operation strengthened U D capabilities and integrate and bolster d o d cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires had trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy as well as high technical skill set much like we're seeing in stem, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now the D. O. D. Is recognized the importance of the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage his growth Back in 2013 the deputy secretary of defense signed the D. O d cyberspace workforce strategy to create a comprehensive, well equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the D. O. D and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program or site up. It's an exchange programs, which is very interesting, in which a private sector employees can naturally work for the D. O. D. In a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas are important to the d. O. D. A key responsibility of cybersecurity community is military leaders on the related threats and cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talk about rapid that position, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation. Likewise, cybersecurity must keep up with this challenge to cyber security. Needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent investing the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity, workforce, streets, future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John. Thank you. >>Thank you so much bomb for those comments and you know, new challenges and new opportunities and new possibilities and free freedom Operating space. Critical. Thank you for those comments. Looking forward. Toa chatting further. Steve Jakes, executive director of N. S. S. A Europe opening statement. >>Thank you, John. And echoing bangs thanks to Cal Poly for pulling these this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, we on behalf the association delighted and honored Thio be on this panel with President Armstrong along with my friend and colleague Bonneau Glue Mahad Something for you all to know about Bomb. He spent the 1st 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve. Very few people do that. So bang on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your long life long devotion to service to our nation. We really appreciate that and I also echo a bang shot out to that guy Bill Britain, who has been a long time co conspirator of ours for a long time and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly Bill, keep it up. But professor arms trying to keep a close eye on him. Uh, I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by by President Armstrong and bahng. Uh, in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. Um, we all recently reflected again on that tragic 9 11 surprise attack on our homeland. And it's an appropriate time, we think, to take pause while the percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or babies then For the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9 11 has taught us a lot to include to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open to include those quote eyes and ears from space, making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect. Protecting our nation requires we work in a cybersecurity environment at all times. But, you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see him. No, sir, We see Space launches man there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch, they become invisible. So what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well, to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine by Bonds and my good friend Chuck Beans. Chuck. It's a space guy, actually had Bonds job a fuse in the Pentagon. He is now chairman and chief strategy officer at York Space Systems, and in his spare time he's chairman of the small satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand. So I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article. Uh, they're afraid somewhat. So these are Chuck's words. Let's talk about average Joe and playing Jane. Before heading to the airport for a business trip to New York City, Joe checks the weather forecast informed by Noah's weather satellites to see what pack for the trip. He then calls an uber that space app. Everybody uses it matches riders with drivers via GPS to take into the airport, So Joe has lunch of the airport. Unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made with the help of precision farming made possible through optimized irrigation and fertilization, with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS on the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, aided by GPS and nose weather satellites. And Joe makes his meeting on time to join his New York colleagues in a video call with a key customer in Singapore made possible by telecommunication satellites. Around to his next meeting, Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting to another to the other side of town. So he calmly tells Syria to adjust the destination, and his satellite guided Google maps redirects him to the new location. That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite. The report details a meeting among world leaders discussing the developing crisis in Syria. As it turns out, various forms of quote remotely sensed. Information collected from satellites indicate that yet another band, chemical weapon, may have been used on its own people. Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary as they cruise across the Atlantic, made possible again by communications satellites and Joe's parents can enjoy the call without even wondering how it happened the next morning. Back home, Joe's wife, Jane, is involved in a car accident. Her vehicle skids off the road. She's knocked unconscious, but because of her satellite equipped on star system, the crash is detected immediately and first responders show up on the scene. In time, Joe receives the news books. An early trip home sends flowers to his wife as he orders another uber to the airport. Over that 24 hours, Joe and Jane used space system applications for nearly every part of their day. Imagine the consequences if at any point they were somehow denied these services, whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. And each of these satellite applications used in this case were initially developed for military purposes and continue to be, but also have remarkable application on our way of life. Just many people just don't know that. So, ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to chuck beans, well, the United States has a proud heritage being the world's leading space faring nation, dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Today we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to quote, wash and listen, provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation and timing from our GPS system. Much of what you heard in Lieutenant General J. T. Thompson earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also our also to our quality of life is Chuck told us. We simply no longer could live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversary like adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing ketchup while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2000 and seven, China demonstrated it's a set system by actually shooting down is one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counter space systems to disrupt hours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to bay well as Bond mentioned, the United States has responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and in Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational you United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located. Vandenberg Air Force Base Combined with our intelligence community today, we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space. And that's a very, very good thing. Commence, really. On the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association devoted solely to supporting the national security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the D C area, but we have arms and legs across the country, and we are loaded with extraordinary talent. In scores of Forman, former government executives, So S s a is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway ranging from a number of thought provoking policy. Papers are recurring space time Webcast supporting Congress's Space Power Caucus and other main serious efforts. Check us out at NSS. A space dot org's One of our strategic priorities in central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development. Just like cow calling. We will work with our U. S. Government customers, industry leaders and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry and two assistant mentoring and training as their careers. Progress on that point, we're delighted. Be delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with him very soon. So students stay tuned something I can tell you Space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry work force is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists, method and mathematicians, but also with a large non technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets things thes systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board from cost estimating cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal and many other support. Tasker Integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff, no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. When summary as bang had mentioned Aziz, well, there is a great deal of exciting challenges ahead we will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead, and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Richard Branson are in the game, stimulating new ideas in business models, other private investors and start up companies. Space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and microelectronics now allows the potential for a plethora of small SAT systems to possibly replace older satellites the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much, and I look forward to the further conversation. >>Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool. It's relevant. But it's important, as you pointed out, and you're awesome story about how it impacts our life every day. So I really appreciate that great story. I'm glad you took the time Thio share that you forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you. But that would add that to the story later. Great stuff. My first question is let's get into the conversations because I think this is super important. President Armstrong like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bang and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives. Through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation. There are opportunities now with with research and grants, and this is, ah, funding of innovation that it's highly accelerate. It's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >>Yeah, I really appreciate that And appreciate the comments of my colleagues on it really boils down to me to partnerships, public private partnerships. You mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockie Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Space six JPL, also member of organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science, and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity in space but those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward at Cal Poly Aziz mentioned we've been involved with Cube set. Uh, we've have some secure work and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Uh, those partnerships are essential not only for getting the r and d done, but also the students, the faculty, whether masters or undergraduate, can be involved with that work. Uh, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during Covic or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or our industry. Uh, and then they're even better equipped, uh, to hit the ground running. And of course, we'd love to see even more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that a secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical, and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest and all demographics of California and the US into this field, uh, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential, and our goal is to grow them just like I know other colleagues and C. S u and the U C are planning to dio, >>you know, just as my age I've seen I grew up in the eighties, in college and during that systems generation and that the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives. They were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bond talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud. And Bezos was mentioned. Elon Musk. Sir Richard Branson. You got new ideas coming in from the outside. You have an accelerated clock now on terms of the innovation cycles, and so you got to react differently. You guys have programs to go outside >>of >>the Defense Department. How important is this? Because the workforce that air in schools and our folks re skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table. So share your thoughts. >>No, thanks, John. Thanks for the opportunity responded. And that's what you hit on the notes back in the eighties, R and D in space especially, was dominated by my government funding. Uh, contracts and so on. But things have changed. As Steve pointed out, A lot of these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork funding R and D. So they're taking the lead. So what we can do within the deal, the in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done on. Uh, since they're they're, you know, paving the way to new new approaches and new way of doing things. And I think we can We could certainly learn from that. And leverage off of that saves us money from an R and D standpoint while benefiting from from the product that they deliver, you know, within the O D Talking about workforce development Way have prioritized we have policies now to attract and retain talent. We need I I had the folks do some research and and looks like from a cybersecurity workforce standpoint. A recent study done, I think, last year in 2019 found that the cybersecurity workforce gap in the U. S. Is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened off getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like assess a professor Armstrong indicated, because we're gonna need them to be in place. Uh, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so, Uh, on top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with with stamps students, we can't afford not to have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within the with the not only deal with the but the commercial side as well. Thank you. >>How's the gap? Get? Get filled. I mean, this is the this is again. You got cybersecurity. I mean, with space. It's a whole another kind of surface area, if you will, in early surface area. But it is. It is an I o t. Device if you think about it. But it does have the same challenges. That's kind of current and and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap Get filled, Steve Or President Armstrong? I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What is some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >>Steve, go ahead. I'll follow up. >>Okay. Thanks. I'll let you correct. May, uh, it's a really good question, and it's the way I would. The way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it up front. And it comes with our teaching, etcetera across the board and from from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it. We've gotta have secure systems with everything we do and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them. Eyes is so paramount to the whole the whole cycle, and and that's kind of and it really takes focused attention. And we continue to use the word focus from an NSS, a perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce on the government side, but not nearly enough of them. And likewise on industry side. We could use Maura's well, but when you get down to it, you know we can connect dots. You know that the the aspect That's a Professor Armstrong talked about earlier toe where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that. That network at that ecosystem the will of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power not just of one or two companies, but our our entire membership to help out >>President >>Trump. Yeah, I would. I would also add it again. It's back to partnerships that I talked about earlier. One of our partners is high schools and schools fortune Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of, uh, administrations in California across party lines and education. Their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly and visit our learned by doing lab and you, you've got to get students interested in stem at a early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running. And that's exacerbated and really stress. Now, with this covert induced recession, California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation. But that is that has dropped this year or reasons. We all understand, uh, due to Kobe, and so our partnerships, our creativity on making sure that we help those that need the most help financially uh, that's really key, because the gaps air huge eyes. My colleagues indicated, you know, half of half a million jobs and you need to look at the the students that are in the pipeline. We've got to enhance that. Uh, it's the in the placement rates are amazing. Once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, uh, placement rates are like 94%. >>Many of our >>engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just gonna take key partnerships working together. Uh, and that continued partnership with government, local, of course, our state of CSU on partners like we have here today, both Stephen Bang So partnerships the thing >>e could add, you know, the collaboration with universities one that we, uh, put a lot of emphasis, and it may not be well known fact, but as an example of national security agencies, uh, National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber, the Fast works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate its 45 future cyber first responders as an example, so that Zatz vibrant and healthy and something that we ought Teoh Teik, banjo >>off. Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point. I'd like to define what is a public private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped. It's a modern error. Things air accelerated get you got security. So you get all these things kind of happen is a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business. Andi in the public sector. So >>what is what >>is a modern public private partnership? What does it look like today? Because people are learning differently, Covert has pointed out, which was that we're seeing right now. How people the progressions of knowledge and learning truth. It's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public private partnership and some some examples and improve points? Can you can you guys share that? We'll start with the Professor Armstrong. >>Yeah. A zai indicated earlier. We've had on guy could give other examples, but Northup Grumman, uh, they helped us with cyber lab. Many years ago. That is maintained, uh, directly the software, the connection outside its its own unit so that students can learn the hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses, and I know that that has already had some considerations of space. But that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public private partnership has benefits to both entities. Uh, in the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the is the talent, the talent that is, that is needed, what we've been working on for years of the, you know, that undergraduate or master's or PhD programs. But now it's also spilling into Skilling and re Skilling. As you know, Jobs. Uh, you know, folks were in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago. But it also spills into other aspects that can expand even mawr. We're very fortunate. We have land, there's opportunities. We have one tech part project. We're expanding our tech park. I think we'll see opportunities for that, and it'll it'll be adjusted thio, due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before Cove it. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important. Um, I wanna make sure that I'm driving across the bridge. Or or that that satellites being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training, uh, to do that and that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on a campus, getting that experience expanding and as adult. And we're gonna need those public private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these stem and engineering fields. >>It's interesting People in technology can work together in these partnerships in a new way. Bank Steve Reaction Thio the modern version of what a public, successful private partnership looks like. >>If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically, Dodi's has have had, ah, high bar thio, uh, to overcome, if you will, in terms of getting rapid pulling in your company. This is the fault, if you will and not rely heavily in are the usual suspects of vendors and like and I think the deal is done a good job over the last couple of years off trying to reduce the burden on working with us. You know, the Air Force. I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days where companies come in, do a two hour pitch and immediately notified of a wooden award without having to wait a long time. Thio get feedback on on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best. Thio strengthen that partnership with companies outside the main group of people that we typically use. >>Steve, any reaction? Comment to add? >>Yeah, I would add a couple of these air. Very excellent thoughts. Uh, it zits about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone. You know, the world that Bond and Bond lives in and I used to live in in the past has been quite structured. It's really about we know what the threat is. We need to go fix it, will design it says we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Um, life is so much more complicated than that. And so it's it's really to me. I mean, you take you take an example of the pitch days of bond talks about I think I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, uh, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks in academia. Because we are all in this together in a lot of ways, for example. I mean, we just sent the paper to the White House of their requests about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective? And we hope Thio embellish on this over time once the the initiative matures. But we have a piece of it, for example, is the thing we call clear for success getting back Thio Uh, President Armstrong's comments at the collegiate level. You know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program they grabbed kids in their their underclass years identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this. Get them scholarships. Um, um, I have a job waiting for them that their contract ID for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with S C I clearance. We believe that could be done so, and that's an example of ways in which the public private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on Day one. We think those kind of things can happen. It just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, give them giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can like these days. >>That's a great point, E. President. >>I just want to jump in and echo both the bank and Steve's comments. But Steve, that you know your point of, you know, our graduates. We consider them ready Day one. Well, they need to be ready Day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's that's exciting, uh, and needed very much needed mawr of it. Some of it's happening, but way certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans, >>and that's a great example of good Segway. My next question. This kind of reimagining sees work flows, eyes kind of breaking down the old the old way and bringing in kind of a new way accelerated all kind of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue, and this is the next topic. How can we employ new creative solutions? Because, let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern. You know the programs you get you particularly through the system. This is this is multiple disciplines. Cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart and math and have, ah, degree in anthropology and even the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new new world. What are some creative approaches that >>you know, we're >>in the workforce >>is quite good, John. One of the things I think that za challenge to us is you know, we got somehow we got me working for with the government, sexy, right? The part of the challenge we have is attracting the right right level of skill sets and personnel. But, you know, we're competing oftentimes with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples of a big deal. And those are the same talents. We need to support a lot of programs we have in the U. D. So somehow we have to do a better job to Steve's point off, making the work within the U. D within the government something that they would be interested early on. So I tracked him early. I kind of talked about Cal Poly's, uh, challenge program that they were gonna have in June inviting high school kid. We're excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security, and so on those air something. So I think we have to do it. Continue to do what were the course the next several years. >>Awesome. Any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be on idea, or just a kind of stoked the ideation out their internship. So obviously internships are known, but like there's gotta be new ways. >>I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier getting students in high school, uh, and aligning them sometimes. Uh, that intern first internship, not just between the freshman sophomore year, but before they inter cal poly per se. And they're they're involved s So I think that's, uh, absolutely key. Getting them involved many other ways. Um, we have an example of of up Skilling a redeveloped work redevelopment here in the Central Coast. PG and e Diablo nuclear plant as going to decommission in around 2020 24. And so we have a ongoing partnership toe work on reposition those employees for for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond. Uh, but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the up skilling and re Skilling uh, on I think that's where you know, we were talking about that Purdue University. Other California universities have been dealing with online programs before cove it and now with co vid uh, so many more faculty or were pushed into that area. There's going to be much more going and talk about workforce development and up Skilling and Re Skilling The amount of training and education of our faculty across the country, uh, in in virtual, uh, and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >>I want to get your guys thoughts on one final question as we in the in the segment. And we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where you know, SAS business model subscription. That's on the business side. But >>one of The >>things that's clear in this trend is technology, and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at the world now we're living in co vid um, Cal Poly. You guys have remote learning Right now. It's a infancy. It's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity to enable new ways to collaborate, Right? So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed? How these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery higher to build the workforce? These air opportunities? How do you guys view this new digital transformation? >>Well, I think there's there's a huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium. We're filming this on one day, and it's going to stream live, and then the three of us, the four of us, can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing. And I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this this symposium, I think there's more and more that we can do from a Cal poly perspective with our pedagogy. So you know, linked to learn by doing in person will always be important to us. But we see virtual. We see partnerships like this can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in person time, decrease the time to degree enhanced graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps or students that don't have the same advantages. S so I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the up Skilling and Re Skilling, where employees air all over, they can be reached virtually then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. Eso I'm I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's gonna be different with every university with every partnership. It's one. Size does not fit all. >>It's so many possibilities. Bond. I could almost imagine a social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the d o. D. Possibly in the future. But >>these are the >>kind of kind of crazy ideas that are needed. Are your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross policy? >>I think technology is gonna be revolutionary here, John. You know, we're focusing lately on what we call digital engineering to quicken the pace off, delivering capability to warfighter. As an example, I think a I machine language all that's gonna have a major play and how we operate in the future. We're embracing five G technologies writing ability Thio zero latency or I o t More automation off the supply chain. That sort of thing, I think, uh, the future ahead of us is is very encouraging. Thing is gonna do a lot for for national defense on certainly the security of the country. >>Steve, your final thoughts. Space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people. Your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity >>Such a great question in such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Um echoing are my colleague's sentiments. I would add to it. You know, a lot of this has I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. Um, you know, we're not attuned to doing things fast. Uh, but the dramatic You know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now. I think it ties back Thio hoping Thio, convince some of our senior leaders on what I call both sides of the Potomac River that it's worth taking these gamble. We do need to take some of these things very way. And I'm very confident, confident and excited and comfortable. They're just gonna be a great time ahead and all for the better. >>You know, e talk about D. C. Because I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies in Congress and Senate. So I was getting job when I say that. Sorry. Presidential. Go ahead. >>Yeah, I know. Just one other point. Uh, and and Steve's alluded to this in bonded as well. I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships. That doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And I would also I have a zoo. You talk about technology. I have to reflect on something that happened in, uh, you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing a traditional data a data warehouse, data storage data center, and we partner with a W S. And thank goodness we had that in progress on it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before Cove. It hit on with this partnership with the digital transformation hub. So there is a great example where, uh, we we had that going. That's not something we could have started. Oh, covitz hit. Let's flip that switch. And so we have to be proactive on. We also have thio not be risk averse and do some things differently. Eyes that that is really salvage the experience for for students. Right now, as things are flowing, well, we only have about 12% of our courses in person. Uh, those essential courses, uh, and just grateful for those partnerships that have talked about today. >>Yeah, and it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these air themes that expand into space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you. very much for sharing your insights. I know. Bang, You're gonna go into the defense side of space and your other sessions. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time for great session. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. >>I'm John Furry with the Cube here in Palo Alto, California Covering and hosting with Cal Poly The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special presentation with Cal Poly hosting the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE and SiliconANGLE here in our Palo Alto studios with our remote guests. We couldn't be there in person, but we're going to be here remote. We got a great session and a panel for one hour, topic preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Got a great lineup. Bill Britton, Lieutenant Colonel from the US Air Force, retired vice president for information technology and CIO and the director of the California Cybersecurity Institute for Cal Poly. Bill, thanks for joining us. Dr. Amy Fleischer, who's the dean of the College of Engineering at Cal Poly, and Trung Pham, professor and researcher at the US Air Force Academy. Folks, thanks for joining me today. >> Our pleasure. >> Got a great- >> Great to be here. >> Great panel. This is one of my favorite topics. >> Thank you for the opportunity. >> Preparing students for the next generation, the jobs for today and tomorrow. We got an hour. I'd love you guys to start with an opening statement to kick things off. Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I'm really pleased to be, to start on this as the director for the Cybersecurity Institute and the CIO at Cal Poly, it's really a fun, exciting job, because as a polytechnic, technology has such a forefront in what we're doing, and we've had a wonderful opportunity being 40 miles from Vandenberg Air Force Base to really look at the nexus of space and cybersecurity. And if you add into that both commercial, government, and civil space and cybersecurity, this is an expanding wide open time for cyber and space. In that role that we have with the Cybersecurity Institute, we partner with elements of the state and the university, and we try to really add value above our academic level, which is some of the highest in the nation, and to really merge down and go a little lower and start younger. So we actually are running the week prior to this showing a cybersecurity competition for high schools and middle schools in the state of California. That competition this year is based on a scenario around hacking of a commercial satellite and the forensics of the payload that was hacked and the networks associated with it. This is going to be done using products like Wireshark, Autopsy, and other tools that will give those high school students what we hope is a huge desire to follow up and go into cyber and cyberspace and space and follow that career path and either come to Cal Poly or some other institution that's going to let them really expand their horizons in cybersecurity and space for the future of our nation. >> Bill, thanks for that intro. By the way, I just want to give you props for an amazing team and job you guys are doing at Cal Poly, the DxHub and the efforts you guys are having with your challenge. Congratulations on that great work. >> Thank you. It's a rock star team. It's absolutely amazing to find that much talent at one location. And I think Amy's going to tell you, she's got the same amount of talent in her staff, so it's a great place to be. >> Dr. Amy Fleischer. You guys have a great organization down there, amazing curriculum, amazing people, great community. Your opening statement. >> Hello everybody. It's really great to be a part of this panel on behalf of the Cal Poly College of Engineering. Here at Cal Poly, we really take preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow completely seriously, and we can claim that our students really graduate so they're ready day one for their first real job. But that means that in getting them to that point, we have to help them get valuable and meaningful job experience before they graduate, both through our curriculum and through multiple internship or summer research opportunities. So we focus our curriculum on what we call a learn by doing philosophy. And this means that we have a combination of practical experience and learn by doing both in and out of the classroom. And we find that to be really critical for preparing students for the workforce. Here at Cal Poly, we have more than 6,000 engineering students. We're one of the largest undergraduate engineering schools in the country. And US News ranks us the eighth best undergraduate engineering program in the country and the top ranked state school. We're really, really proud that we offer this impactful hands-on engineering education that really exceeds that of virtually all private universities while reaching a wider audience of students. We offer 14 degree programs, and really, we're talking today about cyber and space, and I think most of those degree programs can really make an impact in the space and cybersecurity economy. And this includes not only things like aero and cyber directly, but also electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, materials engineering, even manufacturing, civil, and biomedical engineering, as there's a lot of infrastructure needs that go into supporting launch capabilities. Our aerospace program graduates hundreds of aerospace engineers and most of them are working right here in California with many of our corporate partners, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, JPL, and so many other places where we have Cal Poly engineers impacting the space economy. Our cybersecurity focus is found mainly in our computer science and software engineering programs, and it's really a rapidly growing interest among our students. Computer science is our most popular major, and industry interests and partnerships are integrated into our cyber curriculum, and we do that oftentimes through support from industry. So we have partnerships with Northrop Grumman for professorship in a cyber lab and from PG&E for critical infrastructure cybersecurity lab and professorship. And we think that industry partnerships like these are really critical to preparing students for the future as the field is evolving so quickly and making sure we adapt our facilities and our curriculum to stay in line with what we're seeing in industry is incredibly important. In our aerospace program, we have an educational partnership with the Air Force Research Labs that's allowing us to install new high-performance computing capabilities and a space environments lab that's going to enhance our satellite design capabilities. And if we talk about satellite design, Cal Poly is the founding home of the CubeSat program, which pioneered small satellite capabilities, And we remain the worldwide leader in maintaining the CubeSat standard, and our student program has launched more CubeSats than any other program. So here again we have this learn by doing experience every year for dozens of aerospace, electrical, computer science, mechanical engineering students, and other student activities that we think are just as important include ethical hacking through our white hat club, Cal Poly Space Systems, which does really, really big rocket launches, and our support program for women in both of these fields, like WISH, which is Women In Software and Hardware. Now, you know, really trying to bring in a wide variety of people into these fields is incredibly important, and outreach and support to those demographics traditionally underrepresented in these fields is going to be really critical to future success. So by drawing on the lived experiences by people with different types of backgrounds will we develop the type of culture and environment where all of us can get to the best solution. So in terms of bringing people into the field, we see that research shows we need to reach kids when they're in late elementary and middle schools to really overcome that cultural bias that works against diversity in our fields. And you heard Bill talking about the California Cybersecurity Institute's yearly cyber challenge, and there's a lot of other people who are working to bring in a wider variety of people into the field, like Girl Scouts, which has introduced dozens of new badges over the past few years, including a whole cybersecurity series of badges in concert with Palo Alto Networks. So we have our work cut out for us, but we know what we need to do, and if we're really committed to properly preparing the workforce for today and tomorrow, I think our future is going to be bright. I'm looking forward to our discussion today. >> Thank you, Dr. Fleischer, for a great comment, opening statement, and congratulations. You got the right formula down there, the right mindset, and you got a lot of talent, and community, as well. Thank you for that opening statement. Next up, from Colorado Springs, Trung Pham, who's a professor and researcher at the US Air Force Academy. He's doing a lot of research around the areas that are most important for the intersection of space and technology. Trung. >> Good afternoon. First I'd like to thank Cal Poly for the opportunity. And today I want to go briefly about cybersecurity in space application. Whenever we talk about cybersecurity, the impression is that it's a new field that is really highly complex involving a lot of technical area. But in reality, in my personal opinion, it is indeed a complex field because it involves many disciplines. The first thing we think about is computer engineering and computer networking, but it's also involving communication, sociology, law practice. And this practice of cybersecurity doesn't only involve computer expert, but it's also involve everybody else who has a computing device that is connected to the internet, and this participation is obviously everybody in today's environment. When we think about the internet, we know that it's a good source of information but come with the convenience of information that we can access, we are constantly facing danger from the internet. Some of them we might be aware of. Some of them we might not be aware of. For example, when we search on the internet, a lot of time our browser will be saying that this site is not trusted, so we will be more careful. But what about the sites that we trusted? We know that those are legitimate sites, but they're not 100% bulletproof. What happen if those site are attacked by a hacker and then they will be a silent source of danger that we might not be aware of. So in the reality, we need to be more practicing the cybersecurity from our civil point of view and not from a technical point of view. When we talk about space application, we should know that all the hardware are computer-based or controlled by by computer system, and therefore the hardware and the software must go through some certification process so that they can be rated as airworthy or flightworthy. When we know that in the certification process is focusing on the functionality of the hardware and software, but one aspect that is explicitly and implicitly required is the security of those components. And we know that those components have to be connected with the ground control station, and the communication is through the air, through the radio signal, so anybody who has access to those communication radio signal will be able to control the space system that we put up there. And we certainly do not want our system to be hijacked by a third party. Another aspect of cybersecurity is that we try to design the space system in a very strong manner so it's almost impossible to hack in. But what about some other weak system that might be connected to the strong system? For example, the space system will be connected to the ground control station, and on the ground control station, we have the human controller, and those people have cell phone. They are allowed to use cell phone for communication. But at the same time, they are connected to the internet through the cell phone, and their cell phone might be connected to the computer that control the flight software and hardware. So what I want to say is we try to build strong system and we've protected them, but there will be some weaker system that we could not intended but exists to be connected to our strong system, and those are the points the hacker will be trying to attack. If we know how to control the access to those weak points, we will be having a much better system for the space system. And when we see the cybersecurity that is requiring the participation everywhere it's important to notice that there is a source of opportunity for students who enter the workforce to consider. Obviously students in engineering can focus their knowledge and expertise to provide technological solution to protect the system that we view. But we also have students in business who can focus their expertise to write business plan so that they can provide a pathway for the engineering advances to reach the market. We also have student in law who can focus their expertise in policy governing the internet, governing the cybersecurity practice. And we also have student in education who can focus their expertise to design how to teach cybersecurity practice, and student in every other discipline can focus their effort to implement security measure to protect the system that they are using in their field. So it's obvious that cybersecurity is everywhere and it implies job opportunity everywhere for everybody in every discipline of study. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trung, for those great comments. Great technology opportunities. But interesting, as well, is the theme that we're seeing across the entire symposium and in the virtual hallways that we're hearing conversations, and you pointed out some of them. Dr. Fleischer did, as well. And Bill, you mentioned it. It's not one thing. It's not just technology. It's different skills. And Amy, you mentioned that computer science is the hottest degree, but you have the hottest aerospace program in the world. I mean, so all this is kind of balancing. It's interdisciplinary. It's a structural change. Before we get into some of the, how they prepare the students, can you guys talk about some of the structural changes that are modern now in preparing in these opportunities, because societal impact is a, law potentially impact, it's how we educate. There's now cross-discipline skill sets. It's not just get the degree, see you out in the field. Bill, you want to start? >> Well, what's really fun about this job is that in the Air Force, I worked in the space and missile business, and what we saw was a heavy reliance on checklist format, security procedures, analog systems, and what we're seeing now in our world, both in the government and the commercial side, is a move to a digital environment, and the digital environment is a very quick and adaptive environment, and it's going to require a digital understanding. Matter of fact, the undersecretary of Air Force for acquisition recently referenced the need to understand the digital environment and how that's affecting acquisition. So as both Amy and Trung said, even business students are now in the cybersecurity business. And so again, what we're seeing is the change. Now, another phenomenon that we're seeing in the space world is there's just so much data. One of the ways that we addressed that in the past was to look at high-performance computing. There was a lot stricter control over how that worked. But now what we're seeing is adaptation of cloud, cloud technologies in space support, space data, command and control. And so what we see is a modern space engineer who has to understand digital, has to understand cloud, and has to understand the context of all those with a cyber environment. That's really changing the forefront of what is a space engineer, what is a digital engineer, and what is a future engineer, both commercial or government. So I think the opportunity for all of these things is really good, particularly for a polytechnic, Air Force Academy, and others that are focusing on a more widened experiential level of cloud and engineering and other capabilities. And I'll tell you the part that as the CIO I have to remind everybody, all this stuff works with the IT stuff. So you've got to understand how your IT infrastructures are tied and working together. As we noted earlier, one of the things is that these are all relays from point to point, and that architecture is part of your cybersecurity architecture. So again, every component has now become a cyber aware, cyber knowledgeable, and what we like to call as a cyber cognizant citizen where they have to understand the context. (speaking on mute) >> (indistinct) software Dr. Fleischer, talk about your perspective, 'cause you mentioned some of the things about computer science. I remember in the '80s when I got my computer science degree, they called us software engineers and then you became software developers. And then, so again, engineering is the theme. If you're engineering a system, there's now software involved, and there's also business engineering, business models. So talk about some of your comments, 'cause you mentioned computer science is hot. You got the aerospace. You got these multi-disciplines. You got definitely diversity, as well, brings more perspectives in, as well. Your thoughts on these structural interdisciplinary things? >> I think this is really key to making sure that students are prepared to work in the workforce is looking at the blurring between fields. No longer are you just a computer scientist. No longer are you just an aerospace engineer. You really have to have an expertise where you can work with people across disciplines. All of these fields are just working with each other in ways we haven't seen before. And Bill brought up data. You know, data science is something that's cross-cutting across all of our fields. So we want engineers that have the disciplinary expertise that they can go deep into these fields, but we want them to be able to communicate with each other and to be able to communicate across disciplines and to be able to work in teams that are across disciplines. You can no longer just work with other computer scientists or just work with other aerospace engineers. There's no part of engineering that is siloed anymore. So that's how we're changing. You have to be able to work across those disciplines. And as you, as Trung pointed out, ethics has to come into this. So you can no longer try to fully separate what we would traditionally have called the liberal arts and say, well, that's over there in general education. No, ethics is an important part of what we're doing and how we integrate that into our curriculum. So is communication. So is working on public policy and seeing where all these different aspects tie together to make the impact that we want to have in the world. So you no longer can work solo in these fields. >> That's great point. And Bill also mentioned the cloud. One thing about the cloud that's showed us is horizontal scalability has created a lot of value, and certainly data is now horizontal. Trung, you mentioned some of the things about cryptography for the kids out there, I mean, you can look at the pathway for career. You can do a lot of tech, but you don't have to go deep sometimes. You can as deep as you want, but there's so much more there. What technology do you see that's going to help students, in your opinion? >> Well, I'm a professor in computer science, so I like to talk a little bit about computer programming. Now we are working in complex projects. So most of the time we don't design a system from scratch. We build it from different components, and the components that we have, either we get it from vendors or sometimes we get it from the internet in the open source environment. It's fun to get the source code and then make it work to our own application. So now when we are looking at cryptology, when we talk about encryption, for example, we can easily get the source code from the internet. And the question, is it safe to use those source code? And my question is maybe not. So I always encourage my students to learn how to write source code the traditional way that I learned a long time ago before I allow them to use the open source environment. And one of the things that they have to be careful especially with encryption is the code that might be hidden in the source that they downloaded. Some of the source might be harmful. It might open up back gate for a hacker to get in later. We've heard about these back gates back then when Microsoft designed the operating system with the protection of encryption, and it is true that is existing. So while open source code is a wonderful place to develop complex system, but it's also a dangerous place that we have to be aware of. >> Great point. Before we get into the comments, one quick thing for each of you I'd like to get your comments on. There's been a big movement on growth mindset, which has been a great big believer in having a growth mindset and learning and all that good stuff. But now when you talk about some of these things we're mentioning about systems, there's a new trend around a systems mindset, because if everything's now a system, distributed systems now you have space and cybersecurity, you have to understand the consequences of changes. And you mention some of that, Trung, in changes in the source code. Could you guys share your quick opinions on the of systems thinking? Is that a mindset that people should be looking at? Because it used to be just one thing. Oh, you're a systems guy or gal. There you go. You're done. Now it seems to be in social media and data, everything seems to be systems. What's your take? Dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you. >> I'd say it's another way of looking at not being just so deep in your discipline. You have to understand what the impact of the decisions that you're making have on a much broader system. And so I think it's important for all of our students to get some exposure to that systems level thinking and looking at the greater impact of the decision that they're making. Now, the issue is where do you set the systems boundary, right? And you can set the systems boundary very close in and concentrate on an aspect of a design, or you can continually move that system boundary out and see where do you hit the intersections of engineering and science along with ethics and public policy and the greater society. And I think that's where some of the interesting work is going to be. And I think at least exposing students and letting them know that they're going to have to make some of these considerations as they move throughout their career is going to be vital as we move into the future. >> Bill, what's your thoughts? >> I absolutely agree with Amy. And I think there's a context here that reverse engineering and forensics analysis and forensics engineering are becoming more critical than ever. The ability to look at what you have designed in a system and then tear it apart and look at it for gaps and holes and problem sets. Or when you're given some software that's already been pre-developed, checking it to make sure it is really going to do what it says it's going to do. That forensics ability becomes more and more a skillset that also you need the verbal skills to explain what it is you're doing and what you found. So the communication side, the systems analysis side, the forensics analysis side, these are all things that are part of system approach that I think you could spend hours on and we still haven't really done a great job on it. So it's one of my fortes is really the whole analysis side of forensics and reverse engineering. >> Trung, real quick, systems thinking, your thoughts. >> Well, I'd like to share with you my experience when I worked in the space station program at NASA. We had two different approaches. One is a compound approach where we design it from the system general point of view where we put components together to be a complex system. But at the same time, we have the (indistinct) approach where we have an engineer who spent time and effort building individual component and they have to be expert in those tiny component that general component they deliver. And in the space station program, we bring together the (indistinct) engineer who designed everything in detail and the system manager who managed the system design from the top down, and we meet in the middle, and together we compromised a lot of differences and we delivered the space station that we are operating today. >> Great insight. And that's the whole teamwork collaboration that Dr. Fleischer was mentioning. Thanks so much for that insight. I wanted to get that out there because I know myself as a parent, I'm always trying to think about what's best for my kids and their friends as they grow up into the workforce. I know educators and leaders in industry would love to know some of the best practices around some of the structural changes. So thanks for that insight. But this topic's about students and helping them prepare. So we heard be multiple discipline, broaden your horizons, think like systems, top down, bottom up, work together as a team, and follow the data. So I got to ask you guys, there's a huge amount of job openings in cybersecurity. It's well-documented. And certainly with the intersection of space and cyber, it's only going to get bigger, right? You're going to see more and more demand for new types of jobs. How do we get high school and college students interested in security as a career? Dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you on this one. I would say really one of the best ways to get students interested in a career is to show them the impact that it's going to have. There's definitely always going to be students who are going to want to do the technology for the technology's sake, but that will limit you to a narrow set of students, and by showing the greater impact that these types of careers are going to have on the types of problems that you're going to be able to solve and the impact you're going to be able to have on the world around you, that's the word that we really need to get out. And a wide variety of students really respond to these messages. So I think it's really kind of reaching out at the elementary, the middle school level, and really kind of getting this idea that you can make a big difference, a big positive difference in the field with some of these careers, is going to be really critical. >> Real question to follow up. What do you think is the best entry point? You mentioned middle. I didn't hear elementary school. There's a lot of discussions around pipelining, and we're going to get into women in tech and underrepresented minorities later. But is it too early, or what's your feeling on this? >> My feeling is the earlier we can normalize it, the better. If you can normalize an interest in computers and technology and building in elementary school, that's absolutely critical. But the drop-off point that we're seeing is between what I would call late elementary and early middle school. And just kind of as an anecdote, I for years ran an outreach program for Girl Scouts in grades four and five and grade six, seven, and eight. And we had 100 slots in each program. And every year the program would sell out for girls in grades four and five, and every year we'd have spots remaining in grades six, seven, and eight. And that's literally where the drop-off is occurring between that late elementary and that middle school range. So that's the area that we need to target to make sure we keep those young women involved and interested as we move forward. >> Bill, how are we going to get these kids interested in security? You mentioned a few programs you got. >> Yeah. >> I mean, who wouldn't want to be a white hat hacker? I mean, that sounds exciting. >> So yeah, great questions. Let's start with some basic principles, though, is let me ask you a question, John. Name for me one white hat, good person hacker, the name, who works in the space industry and is an exemplar for students to look up to. >> You? >> Oh man, I'm feeling really... >> I'm only, I can't imagine a figure- >> (indistinct) the answer because the answer we normally get is the cricket sound. So we don't have individuals we've identified in those areas for them to look up to. >> I was going to be snarky and say most white hackers won't even use their real name, but... >> Right, so there's an aura around their anonymity here. So again, the real question is how do we get them engaged and keep them engaged? And that's what Amy was pointing out to exactly, the engagement and sticking with it. So one of the things that we're trying to do through our competition on the state level and other elements is providing connections. We call them ambassadors. These are people in the business who can contact the students that are in the game or in that challenge environment and let 'em interact and let 'em talk about what they do and what they're doing in life. But give them a challenging game format. A lot of computer-based training, capture the flag stuff is great, but if you can make it hands-on, if you can make it a learn by doing experiment, if you can make it personally involved and see the benefit as a result of doing that challenge and then talk to the people who do that on a daily basis, that's how you get them involved. The second part is part of what we're doing is we're involving partnership companies in the development of the teams. So this year's competition that we're running has 82 teams from across the state of California. Of those 82 teams at six students a team, middle school, high school, and many of those have company partners, and these are practitioners in cybersecurity who are working with those students to participate. It's that adult connectivity. It's that visualization. So at the competition this year, we have the founder of Defcon Red Flag is a participant to talk to the students. We have Vint Cerf, who is, of course, very well-known for something called the internet, to participate. It's really getting the students to understand who's in this, who can I look up to, and how do I stay engaged with them? >> There's definitely a celebrity aspect of it, I will agree. I mean, the influencer aspect here with knowledge is key. Can you talk about these ambassadors, and how far along are you on that program? First of all, the challenge stuff is, anything gamification-wise, we've seen that with hackathons, it just really works well. Creates bonding. People who create together can get sticky and get very high community aspect to it. Talk about this ambassador thing. What is that, industry, is that academic? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> What is this ambassador thing? >> Industry partners that we've identified, some of which, and I won't hit all of 'em, so I'm sure I'll short change this, but Palo Alto, Cisco, Splunk, many of the companies in California, and what we've done is identified schools to participate in the challenge that may not have a strong STEM program or have any cyber program. And the idea of the company is they look for their employees who are in those school districts to partner with the schools to help provide outreach. It could be as simple as a couple hours a week, or it's a team support captain or it's providing computers and other devices to use. And so again, it's really about a constant connectivity and trying to help where some schools may not have the staff or support units in an area to really provide them what they need for connectivity. What that does is it gives us an opportunity to not just focus on it once a year, but throughout the year. So for the competition, all the teams that are participating have been receiving training and educational opportunities in the gamification side since they signed up to participate. So there's a website, there's learning materials, there's materials provided by certain vendor companies like Wireshark and others. So it's a continuum of opportunity for the students. >> You know, I've seen, just randomly, just got a random thought. Robotics clubs are moving then closer into that middle school area, Dr. Fleischer, and in certainly in high schools, it's almost like a varsity sport. E-sports is another one. My son just called me. "I made the JV at the college team." It's big and serious, right? And it's fun. This is the aspect of fun. It's hands-on. This is part of the culture down there. Learn by doing. Is there, like, a group? Is it, like, a club? I mean, how do you guys organize these bottoms-up organically interest topics? >> So here in the college of engineering, when we talk about learn by doing, we have learned by doing both in the classroom and out of the classroom. And if we look at these types of out of the classroom activities, we have over 80 clubs working on all different aspects, and many of these are bottom-up. The students have decided what they want to work on and have organized themselves around that. And then they get the leadership opportunities. The more experienced students train the less experienced students. And it continues to build from year after year after year with them even doing aspects of strategic planning from year to year for some of these competitions. Yeah, it's an absolutely great experience. And we don't define for them how their learn by doing experiences should be. We want them to define it. And I think the really cool thing about that is they have the ownership and they have the interest and they can come up with new clubs year after year to see which direction they want to take it, and we will help support those clubs as old clubs fade out and new clubs come in. >> Trung, real quick, before we go on the next talk track, what do you recommend for middle school, high school, or even elementary? A little bit of coding, Minecraft? I mean, how do you get 'em hooked on the fun and the dopamine of technology and cybersecurity? What's your take on that? >> On this aspect, I'd like to share with you my experience as a junior high and high school student in Texas. The university of Texas in Austin organized a competition for every high school in Texas in every field from poetry to mathematics to science, computer engineering. But it's not about the University of Texas. The University of Texas is only serving as a center for the final competition. They divide the competition to district and then regional and then state. At each level, we have local university and colleges volunteering to host the competition and make it fun for the student to participate. And also they connected the students with private enterprises to raise fund for scholarship. So student who see the competition is a fun event for them, they get exposed to different university hosting the event so that they can see different option for them to consider college. They also get a promise that if they participate, they will be considered for scholarship when they attend university and college. So I think the combination of fun and competition and the scholarship aspect will be a good thing to entice the student to commit to the area of cybersecurity. >> Got the engagement, the aspiration, scholarship, and you mentioned a volunteer. I think one of the things I'll observe is you guys are kind of hitting this as community. I mean, the story of Steve Jobs and Woz building the Mac, they called Bill Hewlett up in Palo Alto. He was in the phone book. And they scoured some parts from him. That's community. This is kind of what you're getting at. So this is kind of the formula we're seeing. So the next question I really want to get into is the women in technology, STEM, underrepresented minorities, how do we get them on cybersecurity career path? Is there a best practices there? Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I think it's really interesting. First thing I want to add is, if I could, just a clarification. What's really cool, the competition that we have and we're running, it's run by students from Cal Poly. So Amy referenced the clubs and other activities. So many of the organizers and developers of the competition that we're running are the students, but not just from engineering. So we actually have theater and liberal arts majors and technology for liberal arts majors who are part of the competition, and we use their areas of expertise, set design and other things, visualization, virtualization. Those are all part of how we then teach and educate cyber in our gamification and other areas. So they're all involved and they're learning, as well. So we have our students teaching other students. So we're really excited about that. And I think that's part of what leads to a mentoring aspect of what we're providing where our students are mentoring the other students. And I think it's also something that's really important in the game. The first year we held the game, we had several all-girl teams, and it was really interesting because A, they didn't really know if they could compete. I mean, this is their reference point. We don't know if. They did better than anybody. I mean, they just, they knocked the ball out of the park. The second part, then, is building that confidence level that can, going back and telling their cohorts that, hey, it's not this obtuse thing you can't do. It's something real that you can compete and win. And so again, it's building that camaraderie, that spirit, that knowledge that they can succeed. And I think that goes a long way. And Amy's programs and the reach out and the reach out that Cal Poly does to schools to develop, I think that's what it really is going to take. It is going to take that village approach to really increase diversity and inclusivity for the community. >> Dr. Fleischer, I'd love to get your thoughts. You mentioned your outreach program and the drop-off, some of those data. You're deeply involved in this. You're passionate about it. What's your thoughts on this career path opportunity for STEM? >> Yeah, I think STEM is an incredible career path opportunity for so many people. There's so many interesting problems that we can solve, particularly in cyber and in space systems. And I think we have to meet the kids where they are and kind of show them what the exciting part is about it, right? But Bill was alluding to this when he was talking about trying to name somebody that you can point to. And I think having those visible people where you can see yourself in that is absolutely critical, and those mentors and that mentorship program. So we use a lot of our students going out into California middle schools and elementary schools. And you want to see somebody that's like you, somebody that came from your background and was able to do this. So a lot of times we have students from our National Society of Black Engineers or our Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers or our Society of Women Engineers, which we have over 1,000 members, 1,000 student members in our Society of Women Engineers who are doing these outreach programs. But like I also said, it's hitting them at the lower levels, too, and Girl Scouts is actually distinguishing themselves as one of the leading STEM advocates in the country. And like I said, they developed all these cybersecurity badges starting in kindergarten. There's a cybersecurity badge for kindergartener and first graders. And it goes all the way up through late high school. The same thing with space systems. And they did the space systems in partnership with NASA. They did the cybersecurity in partnership with Palo Alto Networks. And what you do is you want to build these skills that the girls are developing, and like Bill said, work in girl-led teams where they can do it, and if they're doing it from kindergarten on, it just becomes normal, and they never think, well, this is not for me. And they see the older girls who are doing it and they see a very clear path leading them into these careers. >> Yeah, it's interesting, you used the word normalization earlier. That's exactly what it is. It's life, you get life skills and a new kind of badge. Why wouldn't you learn how to be a white hat hacker or have some fun or learn some skills? >> Amy: Absolutely. >> Just in the grind of your fun day. Super exciting. Okay, Trung, your thoughts on this. I mean, you have a diverse, diversity brings perspective to the table in cybersecurity because you have to think like the other guy, the adversary. You got to be the white hat. You can't be a white hat unless you know how black hat thinks. So there's a lot of needs here for more points of view. How are we going to get people trained on this from underrepresented minorities and women? What's your thoughts? >> Well, as a member of the IEEE Professional Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, every year we participate in the engineering week. We deploy our members to local junior high school and high school to talk about our project to promote the study of engineering. But at the same time, we also participate in the science fair that the state of Texas is organizing. Our engineer will be mentoring students, number one, to help them with the project, but number two, to help us identify talent so that we can recruit them further into the field of STEM. One of the participation that we did was the competition of the, what they call Future City, where students will be building a city on a computer simulation. And in recent year, we promote the theme of smart city where city will be connected the individual houses and together into the internet. And we want to bring awareness of cybersecurity into that competition. So we deploy engineer to supervise the people, the students who participate in the competition. We bring awareness not in the technical detail level, but in what we've call the compound level so student will be able to know what required to provide cybersecurity for the smart city that they are building. And at the same time, we were able to identify talent, especially talent in the minority and in the woman, so that we can recruit them more actively. And we also raise money for scholarship. We believe that scholarship is the best way to entice student to continue education at the college level. So with scholarship, it's very easy to recruit them to the field and then push them to go further into the cybersecurity area. >> Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of the parents like, oh, my kid's going to go join the soccer team, we get private lessons, and maybe they'll get a scholarship someday. Well, they only do half scholarships. Anyway. I mean, if they spent that time doing these other things, it's just, again, this is a new life skill, like the Girl Scouts. And this is where I want to get into this whole silo breaking down, because Amy, you brought this up, and Bill, you were talking about it, as well. You got multiple stakeholders here with this event. You've got public, you've got private, and you've got educators. It's the intersection of all of them. It's, again, if those silos break down, the confluence of those three stakeholders have to work together. So let's talk about that. Educators. You guys are educating young minds. You're interfacing with private institutions and now the public. What about educators? What can they do to make cyber better? 'Cause there's no real manual. I mean, it's not like this court is a body of work of how to educate cybersecurity. Maybe it's more recent. There's cutting edge best practices. But still, it's an evolving playbook. What's your thoughts for educators? Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I'm going to turn to Amy and let her go first. >> Let you go. >> That's fine. >> I would say as educators, it's really important for us to stay on top of how the field is evolving, right? So what we want to do is we want to promote these tight connections between educators and our faculty and applied research in industry and with industry partnerships. And I think that's how we're going to make sure that we're educating students in the best way. And you're talking about that inner, that confluence of the three different areas. And I think you have to keep those communication lines open to make sure that the information on where the field is going and what we need to concentrate on is flowing down into our educational process. And that works in both ways, that we can talk as educators and we can be telling industry what we're working on and what types of skills our students have and working with them to get the opportunities for our students to work in industry and develop those skills along the way, as well. And I think it's just all part of this really looking at what's going to be happening and how do we get people talking to each other? And the same thing with looking at public policy and bringing that into our education and into these real hands-on experiences. And that's how you really cement this type of knowledge with students, not by talking to them and not by showing them, but letting them do it. It's this learn by doing and building the resiliency that it takes when you learn by doing. And sometimes you learn by failing, but you just pick up and you keep going. And these are important skills that you develop along the way. >> You mentioned sharing, too. That's the key. Collaborating and sharing knowledge. It's an open world and everyone's collaborating. Bill, private-public partnerships. I mean, there's a real, private companies, you mentioned Palo Alto Networks and others. There's a real intersection there. They're motivated. They could, there's scholarship opportunities. Trung points to that. What is the public-private educator view there? How do companies get involved and what's the benefit for them? >> Well, that's what a lot of the universities are doing is to bring in as part of either their cyber centers or institutes people who are really focused on developing and furthering those public-private partnerships. That's really what my role is in all these things is to take us to a different level in those areas, not to take away from the academic side, but to add additional opportunities for both sides. Remember, in a public-private partnership, all entities have to have some gain in the process. Now, what I think is really interesting is the timing on particularly this subject, space and cybersecurity. This has been an absolute banner year for space. The standup of Space Force, the launch of commercial partnership, you know, commercial platforms delivering astronauts to the space station, recovering them, and bringing them back. The ability of a commercial satellite platform to be launched. Commercial platforms that not only launch but return back to where they're launched from. These are things that are stirring the hearts of the American citizens, the kids, again, they're getting interested. They're seeing this and getting enthused. So we have to seize upon that and we have to find a way to connect that. Public-private partnerships is the answer for that. It's not one segment that can handle it all. It's all of them combined together. If you look at space, space is going to be about commercial. It's going to be about civil. Moving from one side of the Earth to the other via space. And it's about government. And what's really cool for us, all those things are in our backyard. That's where that public-private comes together. The government's involved. The private sector's involved. The educators are involved. And we're all looking at the same things and trying to figure out, like this forum, what works best to go to the future. >> You know, if people are bored and they want to look for an exciting challenge, you couldn't have laid it out any clearer. It's the most exciting discipline. It's everything. I mean, we just talk about space. GPS is, everything we do is involved, has to do with satellites. (laughs) >> I have to tell you a story on that right? We have a very unique GPS story right in our backyard. So our sheriff is the son of the father of GPS for the Air Force. So you can't get better than that when it comes to being connected to all those platforms. So we really want to say, you know, this is so exciting for all of us because it gives everybody a job for a long time. >> You know, the kids that think TikTok's exciting, wait till they see what's going on here with you guys, this program. Trung, final word on this from the public side. You're at the Air Force. You're doing research. Are you guys opening it up? Are you integrating into the private and educational sectors? How do you see that formula playing out? And what's the best practice for students and preparing them? >> I think it's the same in every university in the engineering program will require our students to do the final project before graduation. And in this kind of project, we send them out to work in the private industry, the private company that sponsor them. They get the benefit of having an intern working for them and they get the benefit of reviewing the students as the prospective employee in the future. So it's good for the student to gain practical experience working in this program. Sometimes we call that a co-op program. Sometimes we call that a capstone program. And the company will accept the student on a trial basis, giving them some assignment and then pay them a little bit of money. So it's good for the student to earn some extra money, to have some experience that they can put on their resume when they apply for the final, for the job. So the collaboration between university and private sector is really important. When I join a faculty normally there already exist that connection. It came from normally, again, from the dean of engineering, who would wine and dine with companies, build up relationship, and sign up agreement. But it's us professor who have to do the (indistinct) approach to do a good performance so that we can build up credibility to continue the relationship with those company and the student that we selected to send to those company. We have to make sure that they will represent the university well, they will do a good job, and they will make a good impression. >> Thank you very much for a great insight, Trung, Bill, Amy. Amazing topic. I'd like to end this session with each of you to make a statement on the importance of cybersecurity to space. We'll go Trung, Bill, and Amy. Trung, the importance of cybersecurity to space, brief statement. >> The importance of cybersecurity, we know that it's affecting every component that we are using and we are connecting to, and those component, normally we use them for personal purpose, but when we enter the workforce, sometimes we connect them to the important system that the government or the company are investing to be put into space. So it's really important to practice cybersecurity, and a lot of time, it's very easy to know the concept. We have to be careful. But in reality, we tend to forget to to practice it the way we forget how to drive a car safely. And with driving a car, we have a program called defensive driving that requires us to go through training every two or three years so that we can get discount. Every organization we are providing the annual cybersecurity practice not to tell people about the technology, but to remind them about the danger of not practicing cybersecurity and it's a requirement for every one of us. >> Bill, the importance of cybersecurity to space. >> It's not just about young people. It's about all of us. As we grow and we change, as I referenced it, we're changing from an analog world to a digital world. Those of us who have been in the business and have hair that looks like mine, we need to be just as cognizant about cybersecurity practice as the young people. We need to understand how it affects our lives, and particularly in space, because we're going to be talking about people, moving people to space, moving payloads, data transfer, all of those things. And so there's a whole workforce that needs to be retrained or upskilled in cyber that's out there. So the opportunity is ever expansive for all of us. >> Amy, the importance of cybersecurity in space. >> I mean the emphasis of cybersecurity is space just simply can't be over emphasized. There are so many aspects that are going to have to be considered as systems get ever more complex. And as we pointed out, we're putting people's lives at stake here. This is incredibly, incredibly complicated and incredibly impactful, and actually really exciting, the opportunities that are here for students and the workforce of the future to really make an enormous impact on the world around us. And I hope we're able to get that message out to students and to children today, that these are really interesting fields that you need to consider. >> Thank you very much. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, and the importance of cybersecurity and space is the future of the world's all going to happen in and around space with technology, people, and society. Thank you to Cal Poly, and thank you for watching the Cybersecurity and Space Symposium 2020. (bright music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's The Cube, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special virtual conference, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from The Cube. I'm John Furey, your host and master of ceremony's got a great topic today, and this session is really the intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic, and this conversation is a cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup, we've Jeff Armstrong is the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. Jeffrey, thanks for jumping on and Bong Gumahad. The second, Director of C4ISR Division, and he's joining us from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition and sustainment of Department of Defense, DOD, and of course Steve Jacques is Executive Director, founder National Security Space Association, and managing partner at Velos. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session, we've got an hour of conversation, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So we've got a virtual event here, we've got an hour to have a great conversation, I'd love for you guys to do an opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity and space, Jeff, we'll start with you. >> Well, thanks very much, John, it's great to be on with all of you. On behalf of Cal Poly, welcome everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission at Cal Poly, whether that means traditional undergraduates, masters students, or increasingly, mid-career professionals looking to upskill or re-skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers, ready day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves as lucky to be on California's beautiful central coast, but in recent years, as we've developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, We have discovered that our location is even more advantageous than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than UC Santa Barbara and the base represents the Southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air Force Base have partnered to support regional economic development, to encourage the development of a commercial space port, to advocate for the space command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because both parties stand to benefit. Vandenberg, by securing new streams of revenue, workforce, and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the central coast and the U.S., creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called REACH which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that has facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has as long been an important defense contractor and an important partner to Cal Poly, funding scholarships in facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years, Northrop Grumman has funded scholarships for Cal Poly students. This year, they're funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars Program. Cal Poly scholars support both incoming freshmen and transfer students. These are especially important, 'cause it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented, and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernize the U.S. ICBM armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting... Protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. Cal Poly has partnered with many private companies such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web Services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part, through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cyber Security Institute College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber-ready workforce, by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment side by side with military law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG&E most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry. As a rough approximation, more than 4,500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace or defense as their employment sector on LinkedIn. And it's not just our engineers in computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow panelists not too long ago, speaking to Bong, we learned that Rachel Sims, one of our liberal arts majors is working in his office, so shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates soar to extraordinary heights, such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International Space Station later this year. As I close, all of which is to say that we're deeply committed to workforce development and redevelopment, that we understand the value of public-private partnerships, and that we're eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state and the nation, in our past efforts in space, cyber security and links to our partners at, as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cyber security. Thank you so much, John. >> President Armstrong, thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique, progressive view and want to tip a hat to you guys over there, thank you very much for those comments, appreciate it. Bong, Department of Defense. Exciting, you've got to defend the nation, space is global, your opening statement. >> Yes, sir, thanks John, appreciate that. Thank you everybody, I'm honored to be in this panel along with Preston Armstrong of Cal Poly and my longtime friend and colleague Steve Jacques of the National Security Space Association to discuss a very important topic of a cybersecurity workforce development as President Armstrong alluded to. I'll tell you, both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the NSSA have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them and training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs, as well as our collective national security. Earlier today, during session three, I, along with my colleague, Chris Samson discussed space cyber security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferation of hundreds, if not thousands of satellites, providing a variety of services including communications, allowing for global internet connectivity, as one example. Within DOD, we continued to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you, one of the enabling technologies, is the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used and employed for DOD. Certainly not lost on me is the fact that Cal Poly pioneered CubeSats 28, 27 years ago, and they set a standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the value and benefit gained way ahead of everybody else it seems. And Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I'm especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steven's colleague, the current CIO, Mr. Bill Britton, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's cyber innovation challenge in June, Oops, Cal Poly hosts California middle, and high school students, and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid, unfortunately, the pandemic changed the plan, but I truly look forward to future events such as these, to participate in. Now, I want to recognize my good friend, Steve Jacques, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here, over two decades or so, who was an acknowledged space expert and personally I've truly applaud him for having the foresight a few years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology, but policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operationalizing space. Space, it certainly was fortifying domain, it's not a secret anymore, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains, such as land, air, and sea, obviously all are strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict, they will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts, and in a joint operation, we must succeed in all. So defending space is critical, as critical as to defending our other operational domains. Funny, space is the only sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly as I discussed in a previous session, commercial space is taking the lead in a lot of different areas, including R&D, the so-called new space. So cybersecurity threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. The U.S. considers and futhered access to and freedom to operate in space, vital to advancing security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country, thus making cyberspace an inseparable component of America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space Force a year ago or so as the newest military service. Like the other services, its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interest in space and to provide spacecape builders who joined force. Imagine combining that U.S. Space Force with the U.S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of the space and cyberspace operation, strengthen DOD capabilities and integrate and bolster a DOD cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires a trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy, as well as a high technical skill set. Much like we're seeing in STEM, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now, the DOD has recognized the importance to the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage its growth. Back in 2013, the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a DOD Cyberspace Workforce Strategy, to create a comprehensive, well-equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now, this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the DOD and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program, or CITE that it's an exchange program, which is very interesting in which a private sector employee can naturally work for the DOD in a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas, important to the DOD. A key responsibility of the cyber security community is military leaders, unrelated threats, and the cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talked about rapid acquisition, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation, likewise, cyber security must keep up with this challenge. So cyber security needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent, invest in the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity workforce for the future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John, thank you. >> Thank you so much, Bob for those comments and, you know, new challenges or new opportunities and new possibilities and freedom to operate in space is critical, thank you for those comments, looking forward to chatting further. Steve Jacques, Executive Director of NSSA, you're up, opening statement. >> Thank you, John and echoing Bongs, thanks to Cal Poly for pulling this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, on behalf of the association, I'm delighted and honored to be on this panel of President Armstrong, along with my friend and colleague, Bong Gumahad. Something for you all to know about Bong, he spent the first 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve, very few people do that. So Bong, on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your lifelong devotion to service to our nation, we really appreciate that. And I also echo a Bong shout out to that guy, Bill Britton. who's been a long time co-conspirator of ours for a long time, and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly, Bill, keep it up. But Professor Armstrong, keep a close eye on him. (laughter) I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by President Armstrong and Bong. And in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. We all recently reflected again on that tragic 9/11 surprise attack on our homeland and it's an appropriate time we think to take pause. While a percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or were babies then, for the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9/11 has taught us a lot to include, to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open, to include those "eyes and ears from space," making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect, protecting our nation requires we work in a cyber secure environment at all times. But you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see 'em. Now sure, we see space launches, man, there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch they become invisible, so what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine, by Bongs and my good friend, Chuck Beames, Chuck is a space guy, actually had Bongs job a few years in the Pentagon. He's now Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at York Space Systems and in his spare time, he's Chairman of the Small Satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand, so I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article, paraphrase somewhat, so these are Chuck's words. "Let's talk about average Joe and plain Jane. "Before heading to the airport for a business trip "to New York city, Joe checks the weather forecast, "informed by NOAA's weather satellites, "to see what to pack for the trip. "He then calls an Uber, that space app everybody uses, "it matches riders with drivers via GPS, "to take him to the airport. "So Joe has launched in the airport, "unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made "with the help of precision farming "made possible to optimize the irrigation and fertilization "with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS. "On the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, "aided by GPS and NOAA's weather satellites "and Joe makes his meeting on time "to join his New York colleagues in a video call "with a key customer in Singapore, "made possible by telecommunication satellites. "En route to his next meeting, "Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting "to the other side of town. "So he calmly tells Siri to adjust the destination "and his satellite-guided Google maps redirect him "to the new location. "That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite, "report details of meeting among world leaders, "discussing the developing crisis in Syria. "As it turns out various forms of "'remotely sensed information' collected from satellites "indicate that yet another banned chemical weapon "may have been used on its own people. "Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents "and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary "as they cruise across the Atlantic, "made possible again by communication satellites "and Joe's parents can enjoy the call "without even wondering how it happened. "The next morning back home, "Joe's wife, Jane is involved in a car accident. "Her vehicle skids off the road, she's knocked unconscious, "but because of her satellite equipped OnStar system, "the crash is detected immediately, "and first responders show up on the scene in time. "Joe receives the news, books an early trip home, "sends flowers to his wife "as he orders another Uber to the airport. "Over that 24 hours, "Joe and Jane used space system applications "for nearly every part of their day. "Imagine the consequences if at any point "they were somehow denied these services, "whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. "In each of these satellite applications used in this case, "were initially developed for military purposes "and continued to be, but also have remarkable application "on our way of life, just many people just don't know that." So ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to Chuck Beames. Well, the United States has a proud heritage of being the world's leading space-faring nation. Dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, today, we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to "watch and listen," provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation, and timing from our GPS system, much of which you heard in Lieutenant General JT Thomson's earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also to our quality of life. As Chuck told us, we simply no longer can live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing catch up while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2007, China demonstrated its ASAT system by actually shooting down one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counterspace systems to disrupt ours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to be. Well, as a Bong mentioned, the United States have responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and the Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Combined with our intelligence community, today we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space, and that's a very, very good thing. Commensurately on the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association, devoted solely to supporting the National Security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the DC area, but we have arms and legs across the country and we are loaded with extraordinary talent in scores of former government executives. So NSSA is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway, ranging from a number of thought-provoking policy papers, our recurring spacetime webcasts, supporting Congress's space power caucus, and other main serious efforts. Check us out at nssaspace.org. One of our strategic priorities and central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development, just like Cal-Poly. We will work with our U.S. government customers, industry leaders, and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry, and to assist in mentoring and training as their careers progress. On that point, we're delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with them very soon. So students stay tuned, something I can tell you, space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry workforce is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists and mathematicians, but also with a large non-technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets these systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board, from cost estimating, cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal, and many other support tasks that are integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce, tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff and no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. In summary, as Bong had mentioned as well, there's a great deal of exciting challenges ahead. We will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, are in the game, stimulating new ideas and business models. Other private investors and startup companies, space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and micro electronics now allows a potential for a plethora of small sat systems to possibly replace older satellites, the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much and I look forward to the further conversation. >> Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool, it's relevant, but it's important as you pointed out in your awesome story about how it impacts our life every day so I really appreciate that great story I'm glad you took the time to share that. You forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you, but we'll add that to the story later, great stuff. My first question is, let's get into the conversations, because I think this is super important. President Armstrong, I'd like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bong and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation, there are opportunities now with research and grants, and this is a funding of innovation that is highly accelerated, it's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >> Yeah, I really appreciate that and appreciate the comments of my colleagues. And it really boils down to me to partnerships, public-private partnerships, you have mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Space X, JPL, also member of an organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity and space. But those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward. At Cal Poly, as mentioned, we've been involved with CubeSat, we've have some secure work, and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Those partnerships are essential, not only for getting the R&D done, but also the students, the faculty, whether they're master's or undergraduate can be involved with that work, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during COVID or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or industry, and then they're even better equipped to hit the ground running. And of course we'd love to see more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest in all demographics of California and the U.S. into this field, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential and our goal is to grow them just like I know our other colleagues in the CSU and the UC are planning to do. >> You know, just as my age I've seen, I grew up in the eighties and in college and they're in that system's generation and the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives, they were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bong, talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud and Bezos was mentioned, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, you got new ideas coming in from the outside, you have an accelerated clock now in terms of the innovation cycles and so you got to react differently, you guys have programs to go outside of the defense department, how important is this because the workforce that are in schools and/or folks re-skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table, so share your thoughts. >> No, thanks Johnny, thanks for the opportunity to respond to, and that's what, you know, you hit on the nose back in the 80's, R&D and space especially was dominated by government funding, contracts and so on, but things have changed as Steve pointed out, allow these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork, funding R&D so they're taking the lead, so what we can do within the DOD in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done. And since they're, you know, paving the way to new approaches and new way of doing things and I think we can certainly learn from that and leverage off of that, saves us money from an R&D standpoint, while benefiting from the product that they deliver. You know, within DOD, talking about workforce development, you know, we have prioritized and we have policies now to attract and retain the talent we need. I had the folks do some research and it looks like from a cybersecurity or workforce standpoint, a recent study done, I think last year in 2019, found that the cyber security workforce gap in U.S. is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened, getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like Professor Armstrong indicated because we're going to need them to be in place, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so. On top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with STEM students. We can't afford not have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within DoD, not only DoD but the commercial side as well, thank you. >> How's the gap get filled, I mean, this is, again, you've got cybersecurity, I mean, with space it's a whole other kind of surface area if you will, it's not really surface area, but it is an IOT device if you think about it, but it does have the same challenges, that's kind of current and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap get filled, Steve or President Armstrong, I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What are some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >> Steve, go ahead., I'll follow up. >> Okay, thanks, I'll let you correct me. (laughter) It's a really good question, and the way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it upfront and it comes with our teaching, et cetera, across the board. And from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it, we've got to have secure systems in everything we do, and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them is so paramount to the whole cycle. And that's kind of, it really takes a focused attention and we continue to use the word focus from an NSSA perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce, on the government side, but not nearly enough of them and likewise on the industry side, we could use more as well, but when you get down to it, you know, we can connect dots, you know, the aspects that Professor Armstrong talked about earlier to where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that network, that ecosystem if you will, of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power, not just of one or two companies, but of our entire membership thereabout. >> President Armstrong-- >> Yeah, I would also add it again, it's back to the partnerships that I talked about earlier, one of our partners is high schools and schools Fortune, Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of administrations in California across party lines and education, their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly, and visit our learned-by-doing lab. And you've got to get students interested in STEM at an early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid, so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running and that's exacerbated and really stress now with this COVID induced recession. California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation, but that has brought this year for reasons all understand due to COVID. And so our partnerships, our creativity, and making sure that we help those that need the most help financially, that's really key because the gaps are huge. As my colleagues indicated, you know, half a million jobs and I need you to look at the students that are in the pipeline, we've got to enhance that. And the placement rates are amazing once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, placement rates are like 94%. Many of our engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just going to take a key partnerships working together and that continued partnership with government local, of course, our state, the CSU, and partners like we have here today, both Steve and Bong so partnerships is the thing. >> You know, that's a great point-- >> I could add, >> Okay go ahead. >> All right, you know, the collaboration with universities is one that we put on lot of emphasis here, and it may not be well known fact, but just an example of national security, the AUC is a national centers of academic excellence in cyber defense works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate and certify future cyber first responders as an example. So that's vibrant and healthy and something that we ought to take advantage of. >> Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point, 'cause I'd like to define, you know, what is a public-private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped, it's a modern era, things are accelerated, you've got security, so you've got all of these things kind of happenning it's a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business and in the public sector. So what is a modern public-private partnership and what does it look like today because people are learning differently. COVID has pointed out, which is that we're seeing right now, how people, the progressions of knowledge and learning, truth, it's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public-private partnership and some examples and some proof points, can you guys share that? We'll start with you, Professor Armstrong. >> Yeah, as I indicated earlier, we've had, and I could give other examples, but Northrop Grumman, they helped us with a cyber lab many years ago that is maintained directly, the software, the connection outside it's its own unit so the students can learn to hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses and I know that that has already had some considerations of space, but that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public-private partnership has benefits to both entities and the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the talent. The talent that is needed, what we've been working on for years of, you know, the undergraduate or master's or PhD programs, but now it's also spilling into upskilling and reskilling, as jobs, you know, folks who are in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago, but it also spills into other aspects that can expand even more. We're very fortunate we have land, there's opportunities, we have ONE Tech project. We are expanding our tech park, I think we'll see opportunities for that and it'll be adjusted due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before COVID. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important, I want to make sure that I'm driving across a bridge or that satellite's being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training to do that in that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on campus, getting that experience, expanding it as an adult, and we're going to need those public-private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these STEM and engineering fields. >> It's interesting people and technology can work together and these partnerships are the new way. Bongs too with reaction to the modern version of what a public successful private partnership looks like. >> If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically DOD's had a high bar to overcome if you will, in terms of getting rapid... pulling in new companies, miss the fall if you will, and not rely heavily on the usual suspects, of vendors and the like, and I think the DOD has done a good job over the last couple of years of trying to reduce that burden and working with us, you know, the Air Force, I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days, where companies come in, do a two-hour pitch and immediately notified of, you know, of an a award, without having to wait a long time to get feedback on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best to strengthen that partnership with companies outside of the main group of people that we typically use. >> Steve, any reaction, any comment to add? >> Yeah, I would add a couple and these are very excellent thoughts. It's about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone, you know, the world that Bong and I, Bong lives in and I used to live in the past, has been quite structured. It's really about, we know what the threat is, we need to go fix it, we'll design as if as we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Life is so much more complicated than that and so it's really, to me, I mean, you take an example of the pitch days of Bong talks about, I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks and academia, because we are all in this together in a lot of ways. For example, I mean, we just sent a paper to the white house at their request about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective and we hope to embellish on this over time once the initiative matures, but we have a piece of it for example, is a thing we call "clear for success," getting back to president Armstrong's comments so at a collegiate level, you know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program that grabs kids in their underclass years, identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this, get them scholarships, have a job waiting for them that they're contracted for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with an SCI clearance. We believe that can be done, so that's an example of ways in which public-private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on day one. We think those kinds of things can happen, it just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can, like pitch days. >> That's a great point, it's a good segue. Go ahead, President Armstrong. >> I just want to jump in and echo both the Bong and Steve's comments, but Steve that, you know, your point of, you know our graduates, we consider them ready day one, well they need to be ready day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's exciting and needed, very much needed more of it, some of it's happening, but we certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans. >> And that's a great example, a good segue. My next question is kind of re-imagining these workflows is kind of breaking down the old way and bringing in kind of the new way, accelerate all kinds of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue and this is the next topic, how can we employ new creative solutions because let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern, you know, the programs and you'd matriculate through the system. This is multiple disciplines, cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart in math and have a degree in anthropology and be one of the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new, new world, what are some creative approaches that's going to work for you? >> Alright, good job, one of the things, I think that's a challenge to us is, you know, somehow we got me working for, with the government, sexy right? You know, part of the challenge we have is attracting the right level of skill sets and personnel but, you know, we're competing, oftentimes, with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples is a big deal. And those are the same talents we need to support a lot of the programs that we have in DOD. So somehow we have do a better job to Steve's point about making the work within DOD, within the government, something that they would be interested early on. So attract them early, you know, I could not talk about Cal Poly's challenge program that they were going to have in June inviting high school kids really excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security and so on. Those are some of the things that I think we have to do and continue to do over the course of the next several years. >> Awesome, any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be an idea, or just to kind of stoke the ideation out there? Internships, obviously internships are known, but like, there's got to be new ways. >> Alright, I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier, getting students in high school and aligning them sometimes at first internship, not just between the freshman and sophomore year, but before they enter Cal Poly per se and they're involved. So I think that's absolutely key, getting them involved in many other ways. We have an example of upskilling or work redevelopment here in the central coast, PG&E Diablo nuclear plant that is going to decommission in around 2024. And so we have a ongoing partnership to work and reposition those employees for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the upskilling and reskilling, and I think that's where, you know, we were talking about that Purdue University, other California universities have been dealing with online programs before COVID, and now with COVID so many more Faculty were pushed into that area, there's going to be a much more going and talk about workforce development in upskilling and reskilling, the amount of training and education of our faculty across the country in virtual and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >> I want to get your guys' thoughts on one final question as we end the segment, and we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where, you know, SAS business model subscription, and that's on the business side, but one of the things that's clear in this trend is technology and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at a world now, we're living in COVID, and Cal Poly, you guys have remote learning right now, it's at the infancy, it's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity enable new ways to encollaborate, So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed, how these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery, hire, develop the workforce, these are opportunities, how do you guys view this new digital transformation? >> Well, I think there's huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium, we're filming this on Monday and it's going to stream live and then the three of us, the four of us can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing and I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this symposium. I think there's more and more that we can do. From a Cal Poly perspective, with our pedagogy so, you know, linked to learn by doing in-person will always be important to us, but we see virtual, we see partnerships like this, can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in-person time, decrease the time to degree, enhance graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps for students that don't have the same advantages. So I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the upskilling and reskilling, where employees are all over, they can re be reached virtually, and then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. So I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's going to be different with every university, with every partnership. It's one size does not fit all, There's so many possibilities, Bong, I can almost imagine that social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, and have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the DOD possibly in the future. But these are the kind of crazy ideas that are needed, your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross-pollination. >> I think technology is going to be revolutionary here, John, you know, we're focusing lately on what we call visual engineering to quicken the pace of the delivery capability to warfighter as an example, I think AI, Machine Language, all that's going to have a major play in how we operate in the future. We're embracing 5G technologies, and the ability for zero latency, more IOT, more automation of the supply chain, that sort of thing, I think the future ahead of us is very encouraging, I think it's going to do a lot for national defense, and certainly the security of the country. >> Steve, your final thoughts, space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people, your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity. >> Such a great question and such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Echoing my colleagues sentiments, I would add to it, you know, a lot of this has, I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. You know, we're not attuned to doing things fast, but the dramatic, you know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now, I think it ties back to, hoping to convince some of our senior leaders and what I call both sides of the Potomac river, that it's worth taking this gamble, we do need to take some of these things you know, in a very proactive way. And I'm very confident and excited and comfortable that this is going to be a great time ahead and all for the better. >> You know, I always think of myself when I talk about DC 'cause I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies than in Congress and Senate, so (laughter)I always get in trouble when I say that. Sorry, President Armstrong, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, just one other point and Steve's alluded to this and Bong did as well, I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships, that doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And also, as you talk about technology, I have to reflect on something that happened and you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing traditional data, a data warehouse, data storage, data center and we partnered with AWS and thank goodness, we had that in progress and it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before COVID hit, and with this partnership with the digital transformation hub, so there's a great example where we had that going. That's not something we could have started, "Oh COVID hit, let's flip that switch." And so we have to be proactive and we also have to not be risk-averse and do some things differently. That has really salvaged the experience for our students right now, as things are flowing well. We only have about 12% of our courses in person, those essential courses and I'm just grateful for those partnerships that I have talked about today. >> And it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these are themes that expand the space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing your insights, I know Bong, you're going to go into the defense side of space in your other sessions. Thank you gentlemen, for your time, for a great session, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you all. I'm John Furey with The Cube here in Palo Alto, California covering and hosting with Cal Poly, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, thanks for watching. (bright atmospheric music)

>>from the Cube Studios in >>Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. Hi. I'm stupid, man. And welcome to a cube conversation. I'm coming to you from our Boston area studio. Happy to welcome to the program. First time guest on the program. Francis Mattis. He is the vice president of engineering at Pensando. Francis. Thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Good to be here. All >>right. So, Frances, you and I actually overlapped. Ah, you know, some of the companies who work with, you know, if anybody familiar with Pensando, you have worked with some of the mpls team over the years through some of those spin ins, but for our audience, give us a little bit about your background. You know, what brought you to help and be part of the team that you started pensando? >>Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I started my career with Advanced Micro Devices in the mid nineties, got out of school, really wanted to build micro processors. And so, Andy, being in Austin, Texas, and be going to ls you for undergrad was perfect sort of alignment. And so I got to say M. D and Austin built K five worked on that team or kind of team with K seven. And, uh, when I came out to California to help with K, and that brought me to California. And then we got into the dot com era and and being a A and B fighting intel, so to speak, seemed like a hard battle. And so, with the dot com era coming, I just saw this perfect opportunity to jump into the Internet. And so that's how we got into building Internet and data communications equipment, went to the show on systems. We talked a little bit about that earlier, and that got me into storage. From there, I got into a company called on GMO, which was building fibre channel sand equipment. So built chips there, and I got to know the Mpls team there. I always say they hired me off the street. And from that point on, while we've been together since Jews 1001 So 19 years, yeah. Yeah, and I've been building silicon with them and systems for almost 20 years now. So we had quite a journey. Yeah, it's been fun. Great >>stuff. Yeah, you know it's going back, you know, niche on talking about ice scuzzy. You know, in the networking world, you know, it's a little bit of a dark arts in general for most people, you know, understanding the networking protocols and all the various pieces and three and four letter acronyms aren't something that most people are familiar with. Pensando, I'm curious. You know what? You know, networking In general, you're like, I work on Internet stuff and we're the tubes that, you know, Things go around. So when when you describe pensando, you know how to explain that to the people that maybe aren't deep into East, west, south, over on under underlay protocols? >>Yeah, absolutely. So for me, pensando was kind of the sort of the culmination of all the things I've done in my career processing, you know, being able to build compute engines that have programmable, starting with microprocessors, being able to do storage and storage networking with Andy on no, we build a computer with druva and the virtualization layers around the Ethernet interfaces in the adapter with what was really our first smart nick, Um, in 6 4007 timeframe and then with STN in CNI, all of these elements kind of came together. These multiple different layers in the infrastructure stack, if you will, and so pensando for me. What was interesting was the explosion of scale in both space and time with the advent of, let's say, 25 gig 50 gig 100 gig to the server, the notion of very dense computing on in each rack and the need for very high scale After doing all of these technologies and seeing where silicon kind of started to fall in place, I was 16 centimeter. It seemed that bringing this kind of technology to the edge very low power with sort of an end to end security architecture and to end policy engine architecture, distributed services as we're doing all seem to naturally fit into place. And the cloud was already proving this morning when I say the cloud, I mean, the hyper scaler is like Amazon and Microsoft. We are already building these platforms. And so yeah, it dawned on me that, uh I didn't think this was possible unless you built the entire platform. We built the entire system. If you build any one piece, the market transition would take a lot longer. And I think this is true. In technology, history tends to repeat itself, starting with mainframes. When IBM built an entire computer and that built the entire computer, HP built these people. So these kinds of things, um, are important if you want to really push a market transition. And so pensando became this opportunity to take all of these things that I've done in my past life and bring them together in a way that would give a complete stack for the purposes of what I call the new computer, which is basically the data center. And so, um, you know, when my mom asks me, you know, what is it that you're doing? I said, Well, it's just imagine the computer you have right now and multiplying by thousands and thousands stacking in Iraq, and anyone can use it at any one time. And we provide the infrastructure and the mechanisms to be able to Teoh, orchestrate and control that very, very high speed layers. So I don't know if that was a long answer. >>No, no, no. It's fascinating stuff, and you know, when I look at the industry, you know cloud. Of course. Is that just make a wave? That changed the way a lot of people look at this. The way we architect things, there was this belief for a number of years. Well, you know, I'm going to go from this complicated mess that I had in my own data centers and cloud was going to be, you know, inexpensive and easy. And I don't think anybody thinks about inexpensive and easy when they look at cloud computing these days, then add edge into these environments. So I guess what I'm asking is, you know, today's environment, you know, we know I t always is additive. So I have various pieces that I need to put together. You talked about building platforms, and how can it be a complete stack? So companies like Oracle, you know, for many years said we can do everything from the silicon all the way up through your application. Amazon in many ways does the same thing they can. You can build everything on Amazon, but they built out their ecosystem. So how does Pensando fit into this? You know, multi cloud, multi dimensional multi vendor. >>So yeah, so that's a good question. so So one of the things we wanted to do is to be able to bring a systematic management layer two header Genius, beauty. And what I mean by that is in any enterprise data center, modern data center, you're gonna have multiple types of computing. You're gonna have virtual machines, you're gonna have their metal, and you're gonna have containers, or at least in the last, say, three or four years. Chances are you'll have some containers and moving there. And so what we wanted to do was be able to Brighton Infrastructure a management mechanism where all of these head Virginia's types of computing could be managed the same way with respect to policy. What I mean by policy is sort of this declarative or intent based model of I have declared what I'd like to see, whether that the network policy or and and security with data in motion and be able to plot apply it in a distributed manner. Across these different types of hetero genius elements, the cloud has the advantage that it's homogenous for the most part. I mean, they own the entire infrastructure and they can control everything on their now our systems will obviously manage the marginal systems as well, and in many ways that's easier. But bringing together these this notion of heterogeneity these types of computing with one management plane one type of interface for the operator, specifically the networking services operator, was fundamental. That and then the second thing is being able to bring the scale and speed to the edge. So a top of rack switch or something in the in the middle of the network is obviously very dense in terms of this Iot capability. So the silicon area that you spend building a high speed switch is really spent for the most part on the Iot, unless typically, 30 to 40% of the area will be Iot and the rest will be very much hardwired control protocols. We know that as we go to STN services and we want, uh, let's say software defined mechanisms in terms of what the policy looks like, what the protocols look like. The ability to change over time in the lifespan of the computer, which is 3 to 5 years, are you want that to be programmable, very difficult to apply a very dense scale in the core of the network. And so it was an obvious move to bring that to the edge where we could plug it into the server effectively, just like we did. Really? In the UCS system. Uh, no system. >>Yeah, some some really tough engineering challenges. You know, for the longest time, it was very predictable in the networking world, You know, you go from one gig to 10 gig. You know, there was a little discussion how we went the next step, whether, you know, 25 50 40 and 100 gig now. But you talk about containerized architectures. You talk about distributed systems with edge. Things change at a much smaller granular level and change much more frequently. So what are some of the design principles and challenges that you make sure that you're ready for what's happening today but also knowing that, you know, technology changes there always coming, and you need to be able to handle, You know, that next thing. Yeah, >>that's right. Yes. So, uh, I think part of the biggest challenges we have are around power with respect to design power. And then what is the usefulness of each transistor? So, um, when you you have sort of a scale of flexibility. See, views are the most flexible, obviously, but have probably the least performance in them. PG A's are pretty useful in terms of its flexibility, but not very dense in terms of its logic capability. And then you have hardwired a six, which are extremely dense, very much purpose built logic, but completely inflexible. And so the design challenge it was put in front of us is how do we find that sweet spot of extremely programmable, extremely flexible, but still having a cost profile that didn't look like an F PGA And God knows the benefits of the CPU. And and that's where this sort of this notion of domain specific processing came in, which is okay, well, if we're going to solve a few problems, we're going to solve them well. And those few problems are going to be we're gonna bring PC services. We're going to bring networking services. We're going to bring stories, services. We're gonna bring security services around the edge of the computer so that we can offload or let's say, partition correctly the computing problem in a data center. And to do that, we knew a core of sea views wasn't going to do a job that's basically borrowing from this guy to pay this other guy. Right? So what we wanted to do was bring this notion of domain specific processing, and that's where our design challenges came in, which is okay, So now we build around this language called P four, What is the most optimal way to pack? The most amount of threads are processing elements into the silicon while managing the memory bandwidth, which is obviously, you know, packet processing is it has been said to be embarrassingly parallel, which is true. However, the memory bandwidth is insane. And so how do we build a system that insurance that memory is not the bottleneck? Obviously, we're producing a lot of data or, uh, computing a lot of data. And so So these were some of our design challenges. All of that within a power envelope where this part of this device could sit at the edge inside of a computer within a typical power profiling by PC, a attached card in a modern computer. So that was a huge design challenge for us. >>Yeah, I'd love to hear, you know, it was a multi year journey toe solution. And I think of the old World. It was very much a hardware centric 18 to 24 months for design and all the tape out you need to do on this. Sounds like obviously there is still hardware, but it is more software driven. Then it would have been, you know, 10 years ago. So give us some of the ups and downs in that journey. Love to hear any. Any stories that you can share their Well, yeah, I >>think you know, good question. It's always there's always ups and downs in anything you do, especially in the start up. And I think one of the biggest challenges we we've faced is, uh, the exact hardware software boundary. So what is it that you want in hardware? What is it that you want in software And, uh, you know, one of the greatest assets and our company depends on who are the people. We have amazing software and hardware architects who work extremely well together because most of us have been together for so long. So, um, so that always helps when you start to partition the problem. We spent the first year of Pensando, which was basically 2017. The company was founded really thinking through this problem, would it for for all the problems, we wanted to solve the goals that were given to us and and security. Okay, so I want to be able to terminate TCP and initiate TLS connections. What's the right architecture for that? I want to be able to do storage off load and be able to provide encryption of data at rest data in motion. I want to be able to do compression these kinds of things. What's the right part of our software boundary for that? What do we what do we hardwire in silicon versus what we make it programmable and silicon, obviously, but still through a computing engine. And so we spent the first year of the company really thinking through those different partitioning problems, and that was definitely a challenge. And we spent a lot of time and and, uh, you helped me conference rooms and white boards figuring that out. And then 2018. The challenge there was now taking this architecture, this sort of technology substrate, if you will that we built and then executing on it, making sure that it was actually going to yield what we hope that would that we would be able to provide the services. When we talk about El four firewall at line rate, that's completely programmable. Uh, we achieved that. Can we do load balancing? And we do all of it with this before processing engine and the innovations we brought before satisfy all of these requirements we put for us. And so 2018 was really about execution. And there you always have. The challenge is in execution. In terms of, you know, things are going to go wrong. It's not. It's not. If it's when and then how do you deal with it? And so again, um, I would say the biggest challenge and execution is, uh, containing the changes. You know, it's so easy for things to change, especially when you're trying to really build a software platform right, because it's always easy to sort of kick the can and say we'll deal with that later and software. But we know that given what we're trying to do, which is build a system that is highly performance, um, you can't get that. Can you have to deal with it when it comes in. So we spend a lot of time doing performance analysis, making sure that all these applications we were building we're going t yield the right performance. And so that was quite a challenge. And then 2019 was kind of the year of shaping the product. Really lots of product design. Okay, now that we have this technology and it does these, he says that we wanted to do these pieces meaning services. What are all the different ways we can shake this product after talking to customers for, you know, months and months and months. You know, Sony is very much custom, customer driven customer centric. So we we were fortunate enough that we got to spend a lot of time with customers and then that brings us out of challenges, right? Because every customer has a unique problems and so I don't know how to reform this product around a solution that solves quite a bit of problems that really brings value. And so that was the those are the challenges in 2019 which we overcame. Now, obviously we have several releases that we've come out with already. We've got a six and the chips and the It's all there now. So now, 2020. Unfortunately, covitz here, But this is this is a year of growth. This is the year that we really bring it out into the world with our partners and our customers and show how this technology has been developed and benefit will benefit customers over over the next years. Two years. >>Frances really appreciate the insight there. Yeah, that that discussion of the hardware versus software brings back memories for May. Lots of heated debates. A CIO What? One of lines you know we've used on the Cube many times is you know, you know, software will eventually work. Hardware will eventually break. So those trade rto >>taught me something over time ago. He said that uh huh, hardware is hard to change. Software is hard to stop changing. So >>that that's a great one to All right, So you gave us through the last three years journey. Give us a little bit. Look, you know, on the next three years and where you expect pensando to be going >>Sure. Where I see pensando in the next three years as we go through this market transition is uh, both a market leader in a thought leader in terms of the next wave of data center edge computing, whether the, uh in the service provider space, whether it be in the enterprise space or whether it be in the cloud space, the hyper hyper scale of space. As I was mentioning in the beginning, we had when we were talking about, uh, the journey. Market transitions of this major really require understanding the entire stack. If you provide a piece and someone else provides a piece, you will eventually get there. But it's a matter of when, and by the time you get there, there's probably something new. So, you know, uh, time in and of itself is an innovation in this area, especially when you're dealing with the market transition like this. And so we've been fortunate enough that we're building the entire system when we go from the transistors to the rest of the FBI's way, have the entire staff. And so where I see us in three years is not only being a market leader in this space, but also being a thought leader in terms of what does domain specific processing look like at the edge. Um, you know, what are the tools? What are the techniques for? Really a z save? Democratizing the cloud bringing, bringing this technology to everyone. >>Excellent. Well, hey, Frances, That has been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the journey so far and I can't wait to see you. How? Thanks for going >>forward. Yeah, we're excited, and I appreciate it. Thank you for your time to. All >>right, check out the cube dot net. We've got lots of back catalogue with pensando. Also, I'm stew minimum. And thank you for watching the Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to You by spunk >>Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're live here in Las Vegas for Splunk dot com. I'm John Ferrier with Q two great guests. Tim would Bury, director of state and local affairs for Splunk and Charlie Crocker, CEO Zone Haven. Very innovative. Start up doing some incredible things with Splunk Ventures Financing Summerlee Financing around Really check for good guys. Welcome. Thank you, Charlie. First, explain what you guys are doing real quick because I think this is a great example of what I've been seeing now for two years now. But now, in the past year, renaissance of entrepreneurial activity around mission driven tech for good, where entrepreneurs are using the cloud and sass models and platforms like Splunk to stand up Mission Value Commission >>value. I like the term. Explain what you're doing. So simply put, we're building in evacuation planning and support to. So right now, there are more stronger fires happening. Over the last five years, we've had more than half of California's most destructive wildfires happened just in the last five years. So it's it's mission critical that we figure this out. Now the's fires air. So big goal is really just to get people out of harm's way. And that's a difficult job to figure out at three in the morning with a map on the hood of a pickup truck. So we're building Zillah ways for fire. There's no ways for five ways has got public safety >>people no ways. But the thing is, is that yesterday I was watching on TV and Pacific Palisades, California air drop of water on the canyon, right before house, and I see the people running right. You like running for their lives. There was a serious business. Exactly. You guys are trying to provide system >>we're trying to do. What we've built are a set of zones, the ability for the Fire Department, law enforcement and, oh yes, to work on customizing hyper local evacuation plans, hyperlocal down to the neighborhood level and then we're scaling that statewide. So how do you make sure that this fire department on these three law enforcement groups are coordinated before and how do they have the conversation with community before the event happens? If we can save five minutes at the time, the event happens, we're going to save lives. >>So this is really about making efficiency around the first responders on the scene from leveraging data which maps or their >>maps, data dynamic data, telemetry, data where the fire's gonna go simulations for how the fire could potentially grow. Who needs to get out of harm's way first. What's that gonna do to the traffic and Road Network? Talk >>about the original story. Then we get to this plug involvement, the origination stories you're sitting around. You're talking to friends in the business. >>So we have colleagues and friends that are in the business and many of them, you know, from the Silicon Valley these guys are innovative leaders in in fire on. They've got a lot of really good ideas on how to make their jobs better. >>They >>don't have a tech team, they don't have a tech arms. So we literally said, Look, we'll come in and we'll make work what your vision is, and that started to expand on. Now we started to move from these smaller jurisdictions. Too much larger >>jurisdictions. Data is driving the future. That's a tagline I'm reading. I've seen the new branding by the way, the new brains very strong, by the way. Love it, Thank you. So this is a good example of data driven value constituency fire professionals. That's all they think about is how to make people save put, get in harm's way to try to solve the fires. They don't have tech teams. You don't have a data center they don't have, like with boot up a consulting. To come into a waterfall of a meeting by that sign is just, Yeah, you can't just do that. They can't stand up. How did you guys get involved in this? It's data driven, obviously. What's the story? >>Way, Say, dated everything. We really mean it. It's really you know, it's a personal story for me. I am on the government affairs team here. It's flowing, so I manage relationships with governors and mayors, and these are the issues that they care about right When the city's burning down, the mayor cares about that. The governor, This is you know, one of the governor in California's major initiatives is trying to find solutions on wildfires. I met Charlie, my hometown. Orinda, California Aren't Fire Chief in that town was one of sort of the outside advisers working with Charlie on this idea. And we're and I met him at a house party where the fire chief was telling me to trim my trees back and shrubs back. And then I was at a conference three days later that same fire chief, Dave Liniger. I was on a panel with folks from a super computer lab and NASA and M i t was like, you know, my fire chiefs, Still the smartest guy in that panel. I gotta meet this guy. A few weeks later, we were literally in the field doing these concepts with sensors and data. Super savvy folks. Some of the other folks from Cal Fire there. Dr. Cox was with us today. Here on. You know, we've just been collaborating the whole time and seeing you know that that Splunk and really put some fire power power behind these guys and we see like, Look, they've got the trust of these customers and we need to make sure this idea happens. It's a great idea, and it's gonna save lives. >>It's crazy way did a test burn where we run a small burn on a day where we're very confident it won't grow. Put the sensors out right next to a school in Arena. It was his kid's school. >>Yeah, I have a kindergartner that goes to that school, so >>it's slightly personal for you. I could >>be I could be said that this is just me protecting my own. But it is something that I think will save lives around the world. >>First of all, this, there is huge human safety issues on both sides. The ire safety put in harm's way. Those professionals go out all day long, putting their lives at risk to save human, the other human beings. And so that's critical. But if you look at California, this other impact cost impact rolling blackouts because they can't instrument the lines properly just because of the red red flag warnings off wind. I mean, I could be disrupted businesses, disruptive safety. So so PG and e's not doing us any favors either. Sound so easy. Just fix it. >>It sounds easy, but I think with be Jeannie, it's interesting way do need to prevent wildfires and really any way that we can. But like you said, if we could bring more data to the problem maybe we can have the blackouts be smaller. You know, they don't have to be a CZ big. >>There's certainly no lack of motivation to find solutions to this issue. There are lives on the line. There's billions of dollars on the line that these types of solutions own haven a part of part of what is going to fix it. But there are many very large stake holders that need these solutions very quickly. >>Well, you know the doers out there making it happen of the people in the front lines on the people they're trying to protect our cities, our citizens on this sounds like a great example of tech for good, where you guys are doing an entrepreneurial efforts with people who need it. There's a business, miles, not free non profit. You're gonna get paid. It's a business model behind. >>There is a business bottle behind it, and I think the value proposition is only beginning to be understood, right? There were so many missions in so many different ways. Wildfires are massive. You can come at him from satellite, come at him from on the ground. We're working with the people on the ground who need to get people out of harm's way. We're focusing on making their jobs easier, so they're safer and they get people out >>more quickly. You guys in the tech business, we always talking. We go. These events were re platforming our business. A digital transformation. You know all the buzz, right? Right. This is actually an acute example of what I would call re platforming life because you're taking a really life example. Fire California Fire forest There, out in the trees trimming thing is all real life. This isn't like, you know, some digital website. >>We certainly I mean, I've been in the data business for more more time than I can remember, and we've got the tools, tools, like Splunk tools. Like Amazon Web service is we've got the data. There's satellites all over. We've got smart people in machine learning way. Need to start applying that to do good, right? It exists. We do not need to go invent new technology right now in order to solve this problem, >>Charlie, really inspired by your position and your your posture. I want you to spend more time talking about that feature because you're an entrepreneur. You're not just detect for good social justice Warrior, You're an experienced data entrepreneur, applying it to a social good project. It's not like I'm gonna change the world, you actually doing it. There's a path for other entrepreneurs to make money to do good things fast. Talk about the journey because with cloud computing, it's not like a 10 year horizon. There's a path for immediate benefit. I >>mean the pat. So I mean in terms of creating a profitable venture. We're a young company way feel like we have a good, good direction way feel like there is a market for this way. Also feel like there's public private partnerships Here is well, I think that we can take the same solutions that we have here and apply them to campuses. You could apply it to, you know, a biotech campus, a university campus. You could apply it to a military base, right? There's insurance could be involved in this because insurance risk people are losing insurance in their homes as well. So you know, there's a lot of different angles that we can take for this exact same. Say >>that what's the expression dated to everything. Yet this is an example of taking data on applying it to some use case. >>A very specific cool evacuation neighborhood evacuation and really building the community fabric so that people take care of each other and can get out together. Where are the vulnerable populations in that zone? Who's gonna go respond to those If if the fire department can't come in, right, How are we gonna get those people out? >>I love the vision. You guys were also for putting some cash in their spunk. Ventures. Congratulations. Talk about the product. Where you guys at using Splunk. You putting data sensors out there, You leveraging existing data. Both take us through some of the nuts and bolts of what's going on the >>price. So part of it is building out some data sets. So there are some data sets that don't exist. But the government and the counties and the private sector have built out a huge corpus of data around where the buildings are, where the people are, where the cell phones are, where the traffic is. So we're able to leverage that information as we have it today. Technology. We're using the Amazon stack. It's easy for us to spin up databases. It's easy for us to build out and expand, as as we grow online with Splunk were able to have a place for all this real time data toe land. And for us to be able to build a P I's to pull it out very >>simply having a conversation with Teresa Carlson, who runs Amazon Web sites. Public sector variety of these things of projects are popping up. Check for good. That's for profit. It helps people and the whole idea of time to value with cloud and flunks. Platform of leveraging diverse data making Data Realtor whether it's real time, time, serious data or using a fabric surge or accelerated processing capabilities is that you can get the value quicker. So if you got an idea for you to wait two years of just e whether it was it a hit or not, you can illiterate now. So this idea of the start of agile startup is now being applied to these public sadly like things. So it's everything >>you spot on, and you know the unique element of Splunk with some of these data sources way don't necessarily know which ones are gonna be the right ones. We're talking about satellite data, sensor data. Some of this on. Part of it is we're building an outdoor smoke alarm, right? No one's ever done that before. So, you know, with court nature of Splunk technology being able to easily, you know, try to see if that is the right data source is critical, giving people the man with two go try to make this happen. >>You guys are a great example of zone haven, Charlie, You and your team of what I call a reconfiguration of the value creation of startups. You don't need to have full stack develop. You got half the stack and Amazon domain expertise in the inertial properties flipped around from being software on this intellectual mode to domain specific intellectual property. You took the idea of firefighters and you're implementing their idea into your domain expertise using scale and data to create a viable, busy >>other thing. I want to throw in there, though, and this is something that people often forget a big part of our investments going to be in user experience. This thing needs to be usable by the masses. It cannot be a complicated solution. >>You X is the new software data is the new code, but anyone can start a company if they have an innovative idea. You don't have to have a unique algorithm that could be a use case to solve a problem. >>If you have a very Calgary them, you can put it on Splunk Platform or Amazons platform and scale it. >>This is going to change, I think, the economic landscape of what I call tech for good now. But it's entrepreneurship redefined. You guys are great working example of that. Congratulations on the vision. Thank you to you and your team. Thanks for coming on the Q. Thanks for sharing. It's great to be here. It's a great example of what's going on with data for everything. Of course, this acute were cute for everything. We go to all the events of smart people and get the data and share that with you here in Las Vegas for dot com. 10 years of conference our seventh year, I'm John Ferrier. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break

>>From San Francisco. It's the cube covering PagerDuty summit 2019 brought to you by PagerDuty. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff, Rick here with the cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at PagerDuty summit, the fourth year, the show third year. The cube being here. I think they finally outgrown the Western st Francis. We've got to have a better, a bigger venue but we're really excited to have our next guest doing super, super important work. We learned about this company a couple of weeks back at AWS. Imagine non profit, the Polaris company and we are happy to have Nancy Maguire. She's the CEO. >>Oh Nancy, great to see you Jeff. It's fantastic to be here. Thanks so much for having me and it's great to be back at the PagerDuty summit a second year in a row. Last year I was here last year. I'm on the big stage, is it? I've grown the venue. Are we ready to move to a larger, possibly a larger venue next year? They're doing incredible work. So really a really fortunate to interview Brad a couple of weeks ago. So for people that didn't see that, don't know players. Give us kind of the overview about what you guys are up to. What's your mission? Absolutely. So Polaris is an organization dedicated to ending human trafficking and restoring freedom to survivors. So for those that may not know what we're talking about when we talk about human trafficking is three main categories. Anybody who is forced to work against their will by means of force, fraud or coercion. >>Any adult in the commercial sex trade by means of force, fraud or coercion, and any minor, anyone 17 or younger in the commercial sex trade. And the way we think about this issue is in two halves that are complimentary. One is on the response side, we've got 25 million people around the world who fit that definition that I just described. And so it's about individual case management and helping to get them out of those situations. The way Polaris works on the response side of the issue is by operating to U S national human trafficking hotline. This is the nerve center for the anti-trafficking movement in the United States where we work 24 seven to connect to victims and survivors to the services they need to get help, stay safe, and began to rebuild their lives. So that's half of the story. The other half of the story is we recognize that the response side, while absolutely invaluable, doesn't get at solutions to the problems. >>So we work on longer term solutions to the issue of human trafficking. And the way we do that is through data and technology. So we haven't asked one of the largest data sets on human trafficking in the U S and we've mined that data for insight about how trafficking works. So we've learned there are 25 distinct types in the U S alone. We've then dug deeper to understand what are the legitimate businesses and industries that traffickers are using for their crimes. And those include social media, hotels, motels, transportation, financial services among others. And then we take those insights. We work with private sector companies, public sector, and law enforcement to get to upstream strategies to prevent and disrupt this issue at scale. So, unfortunately we don't have three days to dig through the that good list. But let's, let's unpack some of it cause it's super, super important on the, uh, on the data side, cause we're here at PG. >>So what are the types of data that you guys are looking at? The buildings mall and it was fascinating, Brad's conversation about the multiple kind of business models that you guys have have defined as was, was it lightning for sure. So what types of data are you looking at? Where are you getting the data? What are you doing with it? Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first thing to know is that this is a clandestine issue. And for so long the field has been data poor and it's been really hard to unpack what we mean by sex trafficking and labor trafficking to wrap our arms around the problem. And so we've had these really significant breakthroughs just in the last few years with a, by understanding that there are these 25 types. And that was through mining over 35,000 cases that we worked on on the national hotline over the years. >>And that our second major research initiative was to augment that with surveys and focus groups with survivors. So those with lived experience have now informed the data set and some examples of what we've learned, how our traffickers using hotels and motels for their operations, how do they use credit cards, how do they use buses and planes and trains and rideshares and how are victims recruited on social media. And conversely, how can they reach out for help, including through our hotline. Um, and so we're starting to really get granular about the nature of this problem. And then where are those key intersection points? Where do we have leverage? And a big part of the answer is, is the private sector, right? Right. So, uh, you know, the kind of the intersection from the clandestine in the dark and secret, you know, to, to the public, as you said, were things like credit cards or they need to get on planes. >>So they need hotels. It's a pretty interesting way to address the problem because there are these little, little, little points where they pop up into the light. Absolutely. So when you're doing that in your building, the longer term strategy one, it's to get the other, the people out of there. But are you trying to change the business models? I mean, how, what are some of these kind of longer term reservoirs? Absolutely. So right now the equation that traffickers perceive is this is the financial crime, right? It's not just a human rights abuse, right? Right. The equation they perceive is that this is high profit, low risk. We've flipped that equation. For instance, when financial institutions are tuned into, I have the built in red flag indicators for all the different types of trafficking that they might see. So it makes it simply too difficult for, or too risky for traffickers to bank and move their money. >>So that's one example. Another is in the realm of social media. So we've understood how traffickers are exploiting victims on social media. It can look like anything from grooming and recruitment on in sex trafficking to um, fake, uh, job ads on social media as well. So as we can help to inform social media companies, again working in tandem with victims and survivors to put those lived experiences into and leverage those insights into solutions, we can make change that equation for traffickers to it is simply too difficult and too risky to recruit online and push them to sort of more old school systems of recruitment that those are the sorts of upstream things that we believe are really going to change. Change the game, right? So it's recruiting, it's taking their money away, it's making it expensive for them to operate a lot of those types of, exactly. >>And the real focus is on these six systems and industries that we've identified. And tech is really a crucial, obviously social media companies, hotels, motels, transportation. Um, and for instance, one of the, one of our partners is Delta airlines and so they have been, I think one of the exemplars and really looking at this issue holistically and being all in from the CEO on down and leveraging again, why we think the private sector is so crucial is they've got the resources, the customer base, the engaged employees. Um, they've got the brand. And so for instance, what Delta does is they've trained all 60 plus thousand employees on how to, how to spot and detect human trafficking and what to do. They engage their customer base through PSA is and people can donate miles including that ended up, um, helping victims and survivors on our hotline to get flights to get out of their situations, um, and resources to, to support the hotline to scale. >>Um, and so it really takes that, we think the private sector is a huge piece of, of the puzzle and sort of bringing it back to the tech industry. The tech industry is uniquely position again with the tools, the resources that know how to actually supercharge this movement because it's going to be data in technology that's going to get us to scale. Right? Yeah. The, the Delta story is amazing. If for people that haven't seen it, um, you know, the CEO got completely behind this, basically train the entire company and other passengers to look for these anomalies. And, and what came up, some of the conversations in Seattle is it's really not that hard because you've got your business travelers and you got your families and you got these things that don't really fit. And that's, I don't know what percentage of the total flights, but it's a lot. >>So these things, if you're paying attention, it should be a lot easier to identify. So PagerDuty specifically, what are you guys doing with PagerDuty? Absolutely. Polaris and the broader anti-trafficking movement is engaged in a digital transformation. And so for us, that's on the response side, both on our hotline and on our data side so we can supercharge that learning and insight development. PagerDuty is central to our ability to, um, increase our efficiency on the hotline. It's, it's uh, uh, the hotline itself is composed of a number of different technologies. We cannot have any of those technologies go down because minutes and seconds matter on a crisis hotline. So PagerDuty helps us be as efficient as we can be in escalating urgent issues so they can immediately begin being worked on by our technical team. We don't lose those seconds and minutes and hours, um, as in sort of the, the old school model. >>So it's, it's part of our broader strategy and we've already been able to identify significant efficiency gains as a result when, when it's a response situation that someone's, someone got the number, they've got it, they got an opportunity to try to get out. What's the total time? Usually between they pick, picking up the phone and you giving them some action, which I don't know what the action is, runaway or somebody coming to get you or you know, it really depends on the situation. Um, of course if we're talking about a minor or a situation with imminent harm, um, but we can be talking about something, you know, an extraction or somebody getting to help within a matter of minutes. In other instances, safety planning at the victim and survivors wishes takes place over a period of calls over a period of contact. Sometimes it takes, it can take months or years to work up the courage to get to that point. >>So we do have ongoing communications with victims and survivors over time to support them, uh, to, to leave when they're, when they're ready. Right. Well, Nancy, it's such, it's such important, important work, not necessarily the most positive thing, but I'm sure there's a lot of great positive stories when you're helping these, these people get out of these crazy stories. Well, absolutely. And I think, you know, there was so much reason to be optimistic. This is a really unique moment in time and it's part of why I joined Polaris and joined this anti-trafficking movement is we're seeing, we're seeing unprecedented engagement from the private sector that I mentioned I think is absolutely critical to solving this issue when we've had real breakthroughs with the data so that we can get so much more granular and understanding how it works. So there's now really, as the time, I mean as, as as Jennifer said, she talking about digital transformation this morning, being a team sport, we think the anti-trafficking movement needs to be a team sport, right? >>We want to draw that circle a much bigger stick. Who's in that? Then we invite private sector technology companies and all of you out there to join us. Good. Well, hopefully we're helping get the word out and um, and again, you know, thank you for, for, for what you're doing. It's super important and it's much more pervasive and broad than, than I had ever imagined, perhaps some of these conversations. So thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right. She's Nancy. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're a PagerDuty summit in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat jazzy music) >> Announcer: From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE studios for another CUBE conversation. Here where we go in depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry. I'm Donald Klein, today I'm here with Tom Stepien, CEO of Primus Power. We're going to talk about the state of clean tech. Tom, welcome to the show. >> Great to be here, thank you very much, Don. >> Okay, great, well look, we're going to kind of get into the state of climate change, and what's happening and why the solutions that you provide are kind of important, but first just why don't you just give a quick overview of Primus Power and what you guys do. >> Sure, so Primus Power is a stationary energy storage company. Our flow batteries work on both sides of the meter, the utility side, the guys who are supplying electricity, and the behind the meter side, the folks who use electricity, like this studio. And what we do is offer a solution that allows that allows you to optimize your electricity use. You charge the batteries typically when the price of electricity is low, and the usage is low, and then you pull from those batteries, instead of the grid, when the grid prices are high, and the cost is high. >> Donald: Okay. >> And that allows our customers to save money on both sides. >> Excellent, and so just quickly, who's the you, who's the customers here, who are the primary focus that you're selling to? >> Sure, sure, so the utilities are PG&E, the utility that's putting electrons to this studio, to smaller utilities, there's several thousand utilities in the US and then worldwide, of course. Folks who are supplying electricity. Also think about renewable plants, right, Solar-Plus storage, wind farms have curtailment problems because wind is gusty, tends to show up at the wrong time sometimes. You can save wind when it's extra, and then dispatch it when timers low. So renewables projects are customers. And then homeowners are customers. I lost power on the way here this morning, if I had a battery in my garage or by the side of my house I would have been able to keep the lights on and the garage door open. >> Okay, excellent, okay, all right. Well, lets, lets talk about kind of clean tech, right? So everybody's interested in what's happening with climate change, it's kind of front and center in the news cycle these days. California's actually been a real leader in implementing legislation to accelerate the adoption of Grid-tied storage solutions to make better use of renewable energy, correct? >> They sure have, absolutely. The California Energy Commission has been a leader in this space, the CPUC that governs the three investor owned utilities in California, initially 8-10 years ago put out a very important law that Nancy Skinner lead, relative to using storage and mandating storage in chunks for the three IOU's over the next 10 years. >> Interesting. >> We have exceeded those goals, I think it has helped drive down the cost of storage. It's helped companies like Primus blossom because it's created a market. Other states have jumped on that bandwagon, New York has, you know, done that, Oregon has storage goals, and many other states also, and it's helped improve the technology for sure. >> Interest, but so California's really been leading the charge since 2010 in this area? >> Yes, yes, I travel a lot, I've been to China, and Europe, and Kazakhstan, and all places. Everyone asks me, "What's happening in California?" If you look at Bloomberg numbers about energy storage, California is broken out and often the leader. South Korea did a lot last year, but within the US, California leads for sure, and will continue to do so. >> Interesting, and then they doubled up on those numbers again back in 2016, is that right? >> They are, they're continuing to up the goals, right? As a state we now have a carbon free goal. Wisconsin just this morning I read is also moving to carbon free goals under Energy Mix. So California has led for sure, but other cities, Chicago has a goal, other states are following, but it all has started here, for sure. >> And just talk about this connection between, kind of, a carbon free energy solution and grid-tied battery solutions, what is the connection? How do the batteries help with making states carbon free? >> Yeah, for sure, so solar is the least expensive way of generating electricity, full stop, right? What Germany did years ago with Feed-in Tariff and has driven down the cost is actually somewhat similar to what California did and helped drive down the cost and improve the technology. It is now at a point where it is the cheapest form, it is less expensive to put in a new solar plant than to run some of these gas plants. >> Interesting. >> California has no coal, got rid of that years ago, but has a lot of gas. Point in fact, in earlier this year in the Southern California Edison district the California Public Utility Commission, the guys who rule the utilities, said, "No, no, no, lets not put a couple hundred million dollars "to update and refurbish some of these gas plants, stop, "instead lets move that toward energy storage." >> Interesting. >> So here's how it's going to look in the future, you have solar, right? And we all know the low, low cost of that, right? Next Era Energy, using some of their numbers, because their the largest, one of the largest developers in the US, has the 20 year power purchase agreement price of solar by itself, is $25 to $35 a megawatt hour, right? Really low, so two and a half cents a kilowatt hour, right? I pay 10, 12, 18 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity at my home, depending on the uses. So, wow, right, it's an order of magnitude less than that. And then we all know what solar looks like, right? It's great during the day, but there's two dynamics that are important with solar. One are clouds, right? If you lose power because clouds go over, that intermittency is a problem. Quick acting batteries can take that out. The second one that everyone knows is the solar parabola tends to fall down when the sun sets, well what do you do for the other, either 12 or 18 hours of the day? And that's where batteries of a different type come in that gets charged in the middle of the day with that extra electricity from the peak and dissipated at night. >> Okay. >> That is the grid of the future, for sure. >> And you can do this both at a residential level, right? But also at a distribution center, replacing an older, kind of, you know, peak generation plant? >> Absolutely, right, and if you look at the refurbishments that are happening up and down the coast here in California, that's exactly what they're moving towards, and here in California we have a utility that got into a bit of trouble because of some of the wildfires and not maintaining some of the lines as we all have read about. Now they are publishing and turning off parts of the grid, if there are wildfire concerns. That is going to drive the use of storage at home, and the tariffs also are going to encourage that, right? Where you are encouraged economically to save extra electricity if you have panels on your roof, and then use that at night. So it's helping drive that market, and it's the right way to go. >> Interesting, so both in terms of houses that are in, sort of, forested areas, right, they're going to need this type of local energy storage solution. You've also got replacing the, kind of, peaker plants with using grid-tied storage to be able to push out energy over the grid, right? So these are going to be increasing use cases, so we're going to see battery installations both at plants and also in homes, but all of these battery solutions they're all tied to the cloud, correct? They're all tied to the internet, they're effectively functioning as IOT devices at the edge. Maybe talk a little bit about how that works and how, what the benefits are from a leveraging those types of technologies. >> Sure, yeah, so yes you're absolutely right, they are at all points of the grid, and different types of batteries for different functions. And it's fascinating, there is a whole class of companies that, of course, are emerging on the battery scene, right? Lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries like Primus, etc., and other types, really long thermal batteries are going to be coming, but then there's the class of the software companies that are helping manage these assets because you need to smartly charge and discharge. Sometimes driven by weather signals. Okay, it's going to be really windy tonight so I want to enter tonight with an empty battery if I'm a wind farm down in Palm Springs so I can take that extra wind and put it into the battery. Sometimes they're driven by economic signals, right? Because it's a really hot day and the prices of producing electricity are going to be high, so therefore I can take a different type of action. >> Interesting. >> And they will control those assets, batteries, on either side of the grid and make intelligent choices, driven by economics to provide the best outcome for, again, either the utility or the homeowner, maybe even the neighbors, right? At some point we're going to be able to share electricity. Why can't I use my neighbors panels if they're out of town for two weeks, and they can do the same when I'm out of town? So that will all come here over time. >> And that's all being enabled by a new class of software companies that are really treating these energy solutions as, kind of, you know, IOT devices. >> Absolutely, and they, it's a great model because it's just another IP address, right, and there's some attributes that it has and you understand the batteries and you can make economic decision. So think of it like a trading platform if you will. So those are emerging, you know, there's some really fascinating companies that are young and starting but off to a great start on those tasks. >> Excellent, okay, so why don't we just talk a little bit about Primus Power itself for a second. So you're in particular type of energy solution. Why don't you talk about that, and how you differ from some of the other providers that are out there? >> Sure, so there's lots of different types of batteries, right, and one thing to mention, that there's no perfect battery. There's always trade offs on batteries, right?. You always, of course, get less out than you put in, because you can't create energy. So there's efficiency differences. We're probably all familiar, the audience here is, with lithium ion batteries, with the Powerwall and Sonin and some, you know famous companies. SolarEdge has done a great job putting batteries with solar, or just having batteries by themselves. Those batteries today, most of the market is lithium ion. Lithium ion is 20-30 years old, first showed up on the Sony Handycam, very bankable, very proven, but like all batteries, have trade offs. We know the fade that we've experienced with our laptops and our cell phones-- >> Absolutely. >> Which is lithium ion. That's okay, because you can buy a new iPhone every three years, but if you have that on the grid, not so good, you don't want to go out to the substation every three years with a new set of batteries. Well, there's also fire concerns. There were 30-40 fires in South Korea last year, lithium ion based, and there was a big one earlier this year in Surprise, Arizona, bit of a Surprise down there, it sent some firefighters to the hospital. So that's some of the strengths and weaknesses of lithium ion. A flow battery, like ours, gets its name because we flow a liquid electrolyte, and a typical flow battery has two tanks and you're moving liquid from one tank to the other take through a reaction chamber, that's a stack of electrodes, and you plate a metal, we plate Zinc, other people plate iron, or you're playing tennis with electrons. This is high school chemistry coming back to haunt all of us, you're changing valance states of Vanadium, for example, Primus, if I talk about that difference, is unique in that it only has a single tank because we exploit the density differences in our electrolyte, kind of got a oil and vinegar separation going on, and we don't have a membrane in our stack of electrodes, so it's about half the cost, half of the price compared to other batteries. It's earlier, right? That's our biggest detriment is that we're not quite at bankable scale yet, we'll get there, right? As a young company you have to earn your stripes and get the UL certification and get enough things out there to do that. But there will be a number of winners in this space. Lithium ion is really good for certain applications, flow generally is good for daily discharges, think solar plus storage, deep discharge, multiple hour 4, 5, 6, 8 hour storage, and then there's going to be week long batteries that might be thermal based. There's a company that's moving, got a nice round of funding last week that's blocks of concrete around because you can, just like the pumped hydro you can move water up and down depending on the price of electricity and the use, you can move concrete blocks up and down. Spend energy moving it up, and then use gravity as your friend when you need electricity from the concrete battery. >> So, so in terms of future battery economy, like with multiple types of solutions for different sort of use cases right? >> Exactly. >> Whether sort of transportation or handheld, right, to residential, to grid-tied, etc.-- >> Absolutely, sure, and it will be drive by economics and then, you can't have a concrete battery in downtown San Francisco but you could in the middle of the Mojave-- >> Understood. >> So it would be-- >> Understood-- >> Absolutely-- >> Okay, so in order to kind of let you go here why don't you just talk a little bit about Primus, how you, where you guys are at in terms of your own evolution. How much deploy battery pods do you have out there in the world today? >> Sure, so Primus is at a stage now where we are growing. We're trying to grow at the right rate, because you don't want to get too far ahead of yourselves. We have systems up and down California, at some projects that have been put at waste water treatment centers, right, where we can help optimize the economics of the waste water treatment centers. They have components that are spending electricity they have solar, okay, batteries can help improve those economics. We have them at utilities that are testing them to see, "Okay, how well do these work?" Many of these new battery companies are where we are, where our customers are a try before you buy or a test before you invest type of a situation. We have a battery in China at one of China's largest wind turbine provider. Wind curtailment is acute in certain provinces in China. In fact in one of the provinces, Qinghai, in northwest China they passed a law a couple years ago that said "every new wind turbine has to have "a battery with it," so that's created a market there. >> Okay. >> There's also, we will be coming out with a residential version for some of the same reasons we mentioned about the wildfire concerns. >> Excellent, and so just give a sense how big, you talked about your pipeline and how many kind of quoted sales you've got out there. Just give us, the audience, a rough idea of what kind of pipeline you're looking at. >> Sure, so as a company we're moving from single digit million type of revenue that we did last year, to double digit million that we want to do next year. That translates into roughly 200-300 of our systems. Our systems, by the way, are think of a large washing machine, two meters, by two meters, by two meters. We have, in our pipeline of projects that we've quoted, more than a billion dollars worth of projects, a lot of solar-plus storage, a couple years from now. We won't get them all, for sure, but it shows the really strong interest in solutions like ours. >> Excellent, well exciting stuff Tom. Thank you for coming into TheCUBE and having a conversation with us. Appreciate you taking the time. >> Don, thank you very much, it was wonderful, really appreciate it! >> Donald Klein, thank you for joining us for another CUBE conversation, we'll see you next time. (upbeat jazzy music)

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the Cube covering artists. A conference twenty nineteen brought to you by for scout. >> Hey, welcome back already, Geoffrey here with the Cube were in downtown San Francisco at the brand new Open. I think it's finally complete. Mosconi Center for our conference. Twenty nineteen were really excited this year. For the first time ever in the four Scout booth, we've been coming to our say for a long time. We had Mike on last last year by Caesar. President Seo >> for scout. I appreciate you having me >> because we had the last year and you're so nice. You You invited us to the way we must both done something right? Absolutely it Also, before we get too far into it, Congratulations. Doing some homework. The stock is going well. You're making acquisitions, You said it's the anniversary of going out in public. So things are things are looking good for Four. Scout >> things have been good. We've been public company now for four quarters. We've beaten, raised on every metric we had out there. So we're feeling good about >> life. So I don't think the security threats are going down. I don't think you're Tamas is shrinking by any stretch of the imagination. Definitely >> does not feel like the threat landscape is getting less challenging these days, right? I mean, when you look at all the geopolitical stuff going on between the US and China and Russia, that that usually spills into the cybersecurity world and kind of makes things a little bit more tense, >> right? So the crazy talk and all confidence now is machine learning an a I and obviously one of the big themes that came up, we had a great interview. A googol is you just can't hire enough professionals regardless of the field, especially in this one to take care of everything So automation, really key. Hey, I really key. But the same time the bad guys have access to many of the same tools so that you're in the middle of this arm raise. How are you? You kind of taken a strategic view of machine learning an A I in this world. >> So what's amazing about cyber security in two thousand nineteen is the fact that the pace of innovation is exploding at an unprecedented rate, Right? I mean, we're bringing Maur devices online every quarter now, then the first ten years of the Internet combined. So the pace of adoption of new technologies is really what is driving the need for machine learning and a I a human being. Historically, in the cybersecurity world, most corporations approach was, I'm gonna have a whole bunch of different cyber products. They all have their own dashboards. I'm going to build this thing called a cyber Operations Center of Sock. That is going to be the input of all those. But a human being is going to be involved in a lot of the research and prioritization of attacks. And I think just the volume and sophistication of the breaches these days and attacks is making those same companies turn towards automation. You have to be willing to let your cyber security products take action on their own and machine learning in a I play a very large roll back. >> Yeah, it's really interesting because there's very few instances where the eye in the M L actually generate an action. Oftentimes will generate a flag, though they'll bring in a human to try to make one of the final analysis. But it's not, not often that way, actually give them the power to do something. Is that changing? Do you see that changing are people more accepting of that when you can't give it up that >> control when you when you look at for scouts kind of core value Proposition the category that were in his device. Visibility in control device visibility. What's on the network control? When I find something that shouldn't be, there are customers. Want to block that so way? Have a front row seat on watching customers that for decades have been unwilling to allow cybersecurity products to actually take action, turning our product on everyday and allowing us to do exactly that. So when we look at the way that they approached the breaches in every one of these scenarios, they're trying to figure out how they can augment the personal staff they have with products that can provide that level of intelligence >> on nothing to >> see over and over is that people are so falih. Fallible interview to Gala Grasshopper A couple of years he was one hundred percent a social engineering her way into any company that she tried. She had a kind of cool trick. She looked at Instagram photos. He would see the kind of browser that you had, and you know the company picnic. Paige won't let me in. Can you please try this? You're one hundred percent success. So you guys really act in a very different way. You're kind of after the breaches happened. You're sensing and taking action, not necessarily trying to maintain that that print Big Mo >> we're actually on the front end were before the breach takes place. So the way our product works is way plug into the network and then we turned that network ten years ago. A CEO would would would control everything on their networks. They would buy servers and load them with products and put them in their data centers. And they bite, you know, end points and they give those to their to their employees. Those same CEOs now need to allow everything to connect and try to make sense of this growing number of devices. So both the role that we play is preventative. We are on the front end. When a device first joins that network, you need to make sure that device is allowed to be there. So before we worry about what credentials that device is trying to log in with, let's make sure that's a device that the company wants to be on the network to begin with. So to your point, exactly your right. I mean, I think my CFO and I probably every week have some very sophisticated email that makes it sound like one of us asked the other to approve a check request. But it's but they're getting good and you're right. They go on the They know that I went to Villanova, where I'm a Phish fan, and they'll leverage some form of thing. All Post online has tried to make that seem a little bit more personalized, but our philosophy is a company is very basic, which is you need situational awareness of what devices are allowed to be on that network to begin with. If you get that in place, there's a lot less examples that what you described a couple of minutes >> ago and that you said to really instinct philosophy, having kind of an agent list methodology to identify and profile everything that's connected to the network, as opposed to having having you know an OS or having a little bug on there, Which would put you in good shape for this operations technology thing, which is such a critical piece of the i O. T and the I O T transfer >> there. Now there's there's no doubt, You know, that's one of the most fourth sight ful things that, for Scout has ever done is we made the decision to go Agent Lis ten years ago, Way saw that the world was moving from you, Nick and and Lenox and Windows and all of these basic operating systems that were open and only a few of them to the world that we're in today, where every TV has a different operating system, every OT manufacturer has their own operating system, right? It's example I uses that is the Google, you know, the nest thermostat where you you, you buy that, you put it on the wall of your house, you pair with your network, and it's sitting right on line next to your work laptop, right? And and there's been Brit breaches shown that attacks can come in through a device like that and get on to a more more trusted asset, right? So just having that situational awareness is a big part to begin with. But, oh, teams, let's talk about OT for a couple of seconds is almost in front of us post Wanna cry? I am seeing almost every sea, so in the world not having had but the cyber responsibilities for OT being pulled into the O. T part of the business. And it makes sense. You know that the when you watch it a cry, a breach like Wanna cry? Most companies didn't think they bought something from Windows. They thought they bought a controller from Siemens or Gear, one of the larger manufacturers. What they realized on wanna cry was that those controllers have embedded versions of an old operating system from Microsoft called X that had vulnerabilities. And that's how it was exploited so that the approach of devices being online, which changing in front of us, is not just the volume of devices. But they're not open anymore. So the Agent Lis approach of allowing devices to connect to the network and then using the network to do our thing and figure out what's on it makes us a really relevant and big player in that world of coyote and don't. So >> do you have to hold their hand when they when they break the air gap and connect the TV into the Heidi to say it'll be okay. We'll be able to keep an eye on these things before you go. You know, you talk about air gaps all the time is such a kind of fundamental security paradigm in the old way. But now the benefits of connectivity are outweighing, you know, the potential cost of very >> difficult, right? I mean, one of the examples I always uses. PG and E are local power company here. We're up until a few years ago, they'd have a human being. A band would come to your house and knock on your door, and all they wanted to do is get in your garage to read your meter, right? So they could bill you correctly. And then they put smart meters on the side of our houses. And I'm sure the roo I for them was incredible because they got rid of their entire fleet as a result, but recognized that my house is Theo T grid, now connected back to the side, which is Billy. So there's just so many examples in this connected world that we're in. Companies want to do business online, but online means interconnectivity. Interconnectivity means OT and connected so Yes, you're absolutely right. There's many companies believe they have systems air gapped off from each other. Most of those same cos once they get for Scout Live recognized they actually were not air gapped off from each other to begin with. That's part of the role that we play. >> This cure is to get your >> take. You talk to a lot of sizes about how kind of the the types of threats you know have evolved more recently. You know, we saw the stuff with presidential campaign. The targets and what they're trying to do has changed dramatically over the last several years in terms of what the bad guys actually want to do once they get in where they see the value. So how has that changed? No, it's not directly because you guys don't worry about what they're trying to do bad. You want to protect everything. But how is that kind of change from the size of perspective? >> Our customers are government's financial service companies, health care companies, manufacturing companies. Because every one of those companies, I mean, it sounds basic. But if you knew the bad thing was plugged into your network, doing something bad you would've blocked it. You didn't know it was there to begin with. So we actually have a role in all types of threats. But when you look at the threat landscape, it's shifted your right. I mean, ten years ago, it was mostly I p theft. You were hearing examples of somebody's blueprints being stolen before they got their product into the market. WeII. Then soft financial threat shifted. That's still where the bulk of it is today, right? No, they ransomware attacks. I mean, they're all money motivated. The swift breaches. They're all about trying to get a slice of money and more money moves online that becomes a good hunting ground for cybersecurity attackers. Right? But what? What is now being introduced? A CZ? Well, as all the geopolitical stuff. And I think you know with, with our commander in chief being willing to be online, tweeting that with other organism governments worldwide having a more social footprint, now that's on the table. And can you embarrass somebody? And what does that mean? And can you divide parties? But, yeah, there's there's a lot of different reasons for people to be online. What's amazing is the attacks behind them are actually fairly consistent. The mechanisms used right toe actually achieve those that you know that you know the objectives are actually quite similar. >> I'm curious from the site's perspective >> and trying to measure r A Y and, you know, kind of where they should invest in, not a vest, How the changing kind of value proposition of the things that they that are at risk really got to change the dynamic because they're not just feeling a little bit of money. You know, these air, these are much more complex and squishy kind of value propositions. If you're trying to influence our election or you're trying to embarrass somebody or you know, >> that's kind of different from anything. If it's state funded sheriff, it's believed to be state funded. It typically has a different roo. I model behind it, right, and there's different different organizations. But, you know, like on the OT side that you described a second ago, right? Why is OT so hot right now? Because it's one thing to have a bunch of employees have their laptops compromised with something you don't want to be on their right. It's embarrassing. Your emails get stolen it's embarrassing. It's a very different thing when you bring down a shipping line. When a company can't shift, you know can't ship their products. So the stakes are so high on the OT side for organizations that you know, they are obviously put a lot of energy and doing these days. >> You need talk about autonomous vehicles, you know, misreading signs and giving up control. And you know what kinds of things in this feature? Right, Mike? So if we let you go, you're busy. Guy, get thanks >> for having us in the booth. What do your superiors for twenty nineteen, you know for us at Four Scout, the priorities are continuing to execute. You know, we grow our business thirty three percent. Last year. We achieved free cash flow profitability, which is the first time in the company's history. So way of obligation to our investment community. And we intend to run a good, solid business from a product perspective. Our priorities are right in the category of device visibility and control its one of things. When you look around this conferences, you know cos cos had to be careful. They don't increase their product size too quickly. Before they have the financial means to do so. And we just see such a large market in helping answer that question. What is on my network? That's our focus, and we want to do it across the extent that enterprise at scale. >> Yeah, I've sought interesting quote from you on one of their earnings calls that I thought was was needed. A lot of people complain What, you go public. You're on the ninety day shot clock in that that becomes a focus. But your your take on it was now that everything's exposed country spending an already how much spinning a marketing I'm in shipping, it sails that it forces you to really take a deeper look and to make tougher decisions and to make sure you guys are prioritizing your resource is in the right way, knowing that a lot of other people now are making those judgments. >> You know, Listen, the process of raising money and then going public is that you have to be willing to understand that you have an investment community, but you have an obligation to share a lot of detail about the business. But from the other side of that, I get a chance to sit in front of some of the smartest people on the planet that look att my peer companies and me and then provide us input on areas that they're either excited about are concerned about. That's amazing input for me and helps me drive the business. And again, we're trying to build this into a big, organically large cybersecurity business, which is a rare thing these days. And we're quite were very how aboutthe trajectory that we're on. >> Right? Well, Mike, thank you. Like just out with smart people like, you know, I appreciate it and learned a lot. So you congrats on this very much. >> Sorry. He's Mike. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were in the Fourth Scout booth at RC North America. Mosconi Center. Or in the north North Hall. Just find the Seibu. Thanks for watching. >> We'LL see you next time.

I'm from San Juan Puerto Rico it's the cube covering coin agenda brought to you by silicon angle hello everyone welcome to special cube covers we're here exclusive conversations at coin agenda we just had blockchain unbound Puerto Rico is where we're at and we'll covering all the trends and latest news and analysis and cryptocurrency blockchain decentralized internet my next guest is Dan Bates founder and president of impact PPA Dan great to have you on thanks John glad to be here so one of the trends I'm noticing is a couple things flight to quality on the ico side first of all lot of the Deadwood's being pushed aside by the community still some stuff out there that you know might not have a business model but good entrepreneurs doing it then you start to see real use cases emerging I interviewed Green Chain they're disrupting how produce grains movement between suppliers and buyers and other impact mission driven stuff like how do you solve the energy crisis right we're in Puerto Rico right the grids half alive everyone knows that you're doing something really compelling take a minute to explain what you guys are doing is you have a token up and running what are you guys doing what's your value proposition so what we do is we've created a system by which you can now have renewable energy delivered to developing nations and we've taken the intermediary out of the equation whereby the world bank historically would take years to fund a project if they would do that they're big trepidation was how do you get paid at the end of the day so what we've done is we've come up with a solution that allows for generation of rent you know with the energy using renewables and track it all the way through to a payment rail if you will that a user can now prepay for energy on their mobile device it's m-pesa if you know what end pace is in Africa 70% of the transactions in Africa are done on a mobile device we are decentralized and pace up for energy so ok mobile app I get out you everyone can think about BRR and all the benefits and Airbnb brings you just have stuff happened talk about what's under the hood what's actually disruptive about what you guys are doing give some specifics because you're tying into Isis and jittering energy using the blocks you have a token how does it all work okay so what we do is in in the in the ability to fund the project getting the World Bank getting USA USA ID out of the equation what we now allow for is the community typically we are very liberal or tend to skew liberal right we actually believe that climate change is real and we want to help support these economies and these new types of you know betterment of the planet right but we don't expect that to be a philanthropic effort so people will buy the impact token which will fund projects that will then create what we're doing right now it's an AR C 20 of what we call a gen credit not a secondary token it's a credit that allows people to access the ledger so a guy will go down to the store just like he does right now and he charges his phones with more minutes or with a data plan it's fiat to a plan a digital currency we do the same thing it's now fiat into a gen credit we call it that allows them and transact with the blockchain so we get identity we get reputation we get trust and honesty about those transactions using the blockchain okay so where does the energy come from because the energy sources now are interesting because you're seeing people do great amazing things solar panels wind farming they see an Asia top of the apartment buildings there's a lot of wind yeah generally but how do they move that power into the market all right so what we do is right now we're using wind and solar rooftop or micro grid for instance we just finished a project in Haiti doing 150 kilowatts for a town called les a wha they haven't had power in two years a hurricane matthew prior to Hurricane Maria coming through Puerto Rico Puerto Rico's in a similar situation right so we created this micro grid using their existing infrastructure of transmission to distribution then we put smart meters on the home that smart meter connects to the blockchain and now people can have power at their homes pay-as-you-go awesome so what I've been to some of the hurdles you guys have had obviously to me it's a no-brainer of energy being tokenized is that makes such sense why wouldn't you want to do that obviously these regulatory issues that are incumbent legacy Dogma or or specific legislation of paperwork what not where's the efficiencies being automated away with the blockchain and what are some of the hurdles that you guys have gone through to get to this point all right so we work in the emerging economies of the world oftentimes there is not the kind of regulation that we have in the US or in the developed world like the EU something like that so when we go out to remote we go out to remote places like you know in Kenya and Ethiopia Latin America wherever it might be we don't have some of the Institute's that you would have if you were trying to set this up in Palo Alto I don't have to worry about PG&E and an interconnect and an off take and all that so what we do is that we'll go out set up a micro grid we're giving power to people who may have never had it before so all those regulatory layers are stripped away they're grateful for it that can they pay for it yes they can't afford to go buy a solar panel and a wind turbine on batteries and inverters nor would they know how to hook it all up yeah but they know that if they can buy power on a cellphone like they're already doing for other goods and services now we've got a game-changer Dan talk about the token economics I get this the payment rail piece mobile app no-brainer I get that check okay easy to use now I want to as a buyer of energy there's a token I some children there where's the other side of the marketplace how does that token economics work do you just take us through a use case and walk us through that example sure so as I said the impact token is our base token that will be the the value token that purchasers will buy in order to fund projects once we go beyond that and we now have what we call a Jen credit it may not be a token in the traditional sense or a coin it's a credit that allows us to transact with the ledger that way we can know about these people one of the greatest opportunities that we feel that we have in the marketplace is identity and reputation you have a billion two people who don't have a connection what if we could learn about those billion too and understand how they use power and where they use power so Jen credits kind of off chain management that you're doing you write to the ledger for in term util access right for that Tran action I got to ask you about things like spoofing why can't I just take your energy this is where the tokens become interesting because I mean it should solve the spoofing problem well right and you know energy energy needs to be passed down copper it's got to go on a wire that doesn't mean somebody's not going to cut the wire and bootleg it and all that stuff smoothing is not going to be the problem in this case it is a physical connection that needs to be made our smart meters allow for us to turn on or off let that connection by the user right if he doesn't pay you don't forget it yeah you know there's vandalism they're stuffed all over the world and we have methods in place to try and mitigate that as much as possible you you saw our platform that we're building we're tokenizing our media business amazing you liked it was good thanks for the plug there I was an aspirin and we were talking last night about our you know generational gap between us and our kids and you have your son here and your son's working with you my sons Alex working with us we have a young team as well I want you to talk about someone who's so experienced in the business you've done a lot of variety adventures from you know film to entertainment technology us older veterans it's the polite way to say it have seen the movie before they've seen the waves this is a huge way but this wave is gonna be can surf a few of them hang ten on our boards but this wave is really gonna be powered and led by the younger generation what's your thoughts share your vision of the role that the younger generation has to take here and what makes them capable in your mind okay so I'm gonna answer that question two ways first of all I'm so enamored with what the younger generation is trying to do with this corruption let's change the existing paradigm and make something better that's what blockchain allows for all sorts of industries goods and services right it's gonna be amazing what these guys come up with that's one of the things I love about doing this thing right I'm an old guy and I get to hang around these young people makes me feel young again yeah but the other thing that we have and I think you share it as well as we have to offer to these young guys experience right it's not like we're gonna go out to a market that we don't know about and try and explore it for success you know I've been in the renewables business for ten years delivering projects to 35 countries I got my boots on the ground I got my hands dirty doing this for 10 years now and I think the other part of that building this project and making it successful is the team that we've put together behind it we have an advisor who advises presidents dr. Michael Dorsey that's really important that's valuable that he understands the global marketplace the way he does the other one is Vinay Gupta who has been in blockchain since the 90s and has always wanted to work in the developing world with a block came distributed ledger technology that's really important I think I want to just double down and we amplify that point this is not a young man's game only exclusively it's such this markets attracting alpha entrepreneurs older veterans because as you said earlier it disrupts every vertical that's right so experience and mentorship bringing people together that can help that's right celebrate the disruption that's right driven by the young guys cool I love that but it's not like Zuckerberg made this one comment oh if you're not under the age of 30 then you don't know such delivery he got his ass handed to him on that but in this case this market is open and willing to learn and the disruptions the mission that's right and this team matters that's our experience the makeup of your board makeup of your advisors since a roll for everybody look experiences capital right it is its own virtual currency having been in all these countries having worked with presidents having worked in the 90s you know since the 90s and what that is valuable it's intangible but it is valuable dan I think we just invented a new category in the ico category an advisor tokens [Laughter] cottage industry believe tokens anyway but imagine if you could actually measure an advisor yeah the quality of adviser and the roles that they play absolutely as a token that's coming up next in our our next I see oh hey I really appreciate what you're doing I love how you work with your son father-son team you recognize the role of how the generations can shift together love it love your mission thank you thanks for sharing the news coverage here in Puerto Rico been here on the island all week getting the best stories the best people sharing them with you were open content that's the cube doing our part here at coin agenda for one day we're not gonna be you tomorrow go to Vegas just came back from watching unbound great stuff John let me give you the the URL if you don't mind no problem please if you want to go learn more about us impact PPI calm great job impact PBA calm is the cube live coverage here in Puerto Rico more after this short break

(upbeat techno music) >> And welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're having a CUBE Conversation in our Palo Alto Studios. We're excited to have our next guest, who is an ABIE award winner from the Grace Hopper Celebration. Would've been competing in early October, we tried to get her on then, schedules didn't mesh so it took us a few months, but we're really excited to have our next guest. She's Mercedes Soria, she is a VP of Software Engineering for Knightscope. Mercedes, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you, I am so happy to be here. >> Absolutely, so, congratulations again on your award of leadership and part of the winnings of that is you got to keynote in front of 18,000 people. So A, What was your impression of Grace Hopper and B, how did you like keynoting in front of 18,000 folks? >> Yes, how was Grace Hopper, it was a huge community of women in technology. I was so excited to be there, everybody was just looking up to women, everybody was trying to help each other. How do you go forward in your career, and I was really focused on STEM careers, which is one of my passions. So I was so glad to be there. And how it was to keynote in front of 18,000 people, so I hadn't done that before, so I can check it off my bucket list, that was one thing. And it was amazing, there were so many women who just clapped and they just kept supporting it and I had to stop several times while I was giving the speech, so it was once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm very grateful for. >> It's an amazing accomplishment, again, congratulations, and it's amazing show, if you haven't been to Grace Hopper, you have to sign up, how fast you say it sold out? >> Mercedes: 25 minutes. >> 25 minutes, oh. Go to anitaborg. or anitab.org now, that's right, they changed the URL, yeah, I'll have to check it out. So let's jump in about Knightscope. So for the people who aren't familiar, go the website, knightscope.com, a bunch of really cool fun stuff, tell us about what Knightscope's all about. >> So Knightscope is a company that is trying to cut the crime cost to the US in half. So most people don't know that the US spends about one trillion dollars a year just to deal with crime in the US, so our goal at Knightscope is to cut that in half with the use of new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics. A group is software plus hardware plus humans, so we take the good things that humans do, which is make strategic decisions, the good things that machines do, which is do the monotonous work and store data for a very long time, and we combine those to try to help with crime. >> Right, so that's a nice explanation. The short answer is, if you go to the website, it's all rolled up into these cool robots that look like C-3PO, and I'm wondering if there's a little man inside there, but we'll get into that later. But I think it's a really interesting concept because you are bringing together many of the hot topics in technology right now, so one of'em just with robotics. You got these robots of various shapes and sizes, but as you said, really, it's the synergy of the robots with the people that give kind of a one plus one makes three effect. How is it, where are those points of intersection, and how does the robot help the human do a better job, and how does the human help the robot do a better job? >> So the robot helps the human because, in this case, security guards have to walk around the same places all day long, right, they have their route, they do that all day long and they get very, very bored, and they get to the point where they don't care anymore and they just scan a badge and then that is the job, right? So that's what the robots do, which is, they don't mind going around the same area all day long, recording data, recording video. That's where the synergy is. Now what the robots, at this point, can do is make a decision in terms of, okay, I have this five things, should I make an alarm to my supervisor and say a guard needs to come. The robot only provides information, so all of that information that we provide is so the human can make a decision on what to do next. >> And does it feed into, I mean obviously these are big security systems that already exist inside these big buildings and these big facilities. Does your robot tie back into those facilities, is it a different layer on top of it, how does it work with the existing security infrastructure that's already in place? >> So the existing security infrastructure is a bit separate at this time. There is a project that we're working on in terms to integrate because there's so many security systems out there, for a start up like us, we need to be very smart in terms of where we spend our resources. So we got to do studies and figure out which were the better senders, the better companies that we need to partner with to do that. But at this point, it's a separate tool, so you open it and all the gear you need is a current browser, you can open it from anywhere in the world, and your security people can look at all the data the machine has collected. >> Right, so the other interesting piece that you're tying together via these machines is really this combination of AI and ML, artificial intelligence, machine learning, but also your background is in user interface, so it can't just be happening in the background because these machines need to do their job, executing through and with people, on the UI side and the security guards and the security infrastructure behind them. So as you've introduced more AI and machine learning into the software components that you can drive the UI, how is that changing the world, how is the UI world changing because now you've got so much more data and so much more kind of compute behind that before it even gets to the actual user that's interfacing with it? >> Yeah so the UI's a little more rich these days, it used to be a webpage and HTML and JavaScript page, and that's all it did, right, but now we have a lot more information that we can provide. For example, we have machine learning algorithms that detect if there's people in an image, so I don't only tell you this is my video, but I also give you a picture of the person that I just saw, and then I tell you, hey, this is what I saw. It makes your experience a lot more incursive. >> Right, and another potential integration point, right obviously with photos in the security system for IDs and passes and all those things. >> Yeah, even face detection at some point as well is very important for us. >> Now you have four different models, why do you have so many models, what's the use cases that would drive you to have four different models? Hard to support four models instead of one as a startup. >> Yeah so our customers have very different needs. Crime doesn't happen just in a shopping mall, crime happens at PG&E offices, it happens at the mall, it happens at different locations, it could be outside, it could be inside, it could be in a hospital, it can be in a parking lot, so what we tried to do was to cover all of those potential places where crime will be. So with that we have four products; we have the K5, which is our first product. It goes into ADA compliant environments like hospitals and data centers, it's a big robot and mainly used for things like a parking lot to detect license plates, to make sure that it's monitoring all the outside. Our second product is the K3 which is a smaller machine, and what it does is mainly goes inside, it can go through a door and it can do things like monitoring who's at the office at night, raising an alert if there was a fire, stuff that happens inside. We have the K7 which goes to outside places where you have things like speed bumps, you have different kind of terrain, gravel or other type. And then the K1 which is our static model that what we're working on that for the future is to have concealed weapon detection at that point, which is something that is very useful for places that have, like for hospitals, when somebody comes in, they want to be able to know if these people are armed. >> Right, I'm just curious if you can share where customers have seen the most impact, the most benefit by using one of your robots. What specific behaviors have just been a game changer when they put in the Knightscope robot? >> Yeah, so I can't tell you the actual customer, that is something >> No, no, that's okay. >> That we can't say, but I would tell you one example. We have, for example, a hospital and this place is open 24/7, obviously the emergency room, and when they will have, it's down in LA, so they will have at least one break-in every week at the parking lot. So we put our machines there and the past seven months that they have been there, they got zero, they got no break-ins. And the nurses now feel safer going to their cars, people feel safer going there at night, so that is one example. We also had an example of a shopping mall where there was a guy who was basically exposing himself and nobody could catch him because he would drive, as soon as he saw a security guard, he would drive out. So we were able to catch that person as well. There are some people to steal merchandise, so they came, they stole something, they left, and the very next day, they come back and they try to sell this back to the mall people, so by seeing who these people are then determining that they came back to the mall, we were able to apprehend them as criminals. >> Right, on the first example, on the parking lot example, does the robot have active deterrents that it can do, can it sound alarms, light lights, to make people feel safer in a parking lot, that's very different than just monitoring things? >> Yeah so what the robot does is, it has a sound that it's all day it's playing that sound, there's a lot of lights, the lights change color based on what's happening around the robot. Another thing that we have that helps a lot of people feel safe, we have a push-to-talk functionality, so if you were feeling something was wrong at night, you can push that button and you can directly talk to the people at the security operation center. They can walk you through what to do, they can follow you while you go to your car, there's different functionality that we have that helps people feel that they're safe outside. >> Right, and on the shoplifting one, it's interesting 'cause lots of stores have cameras, right, that's not a new thing. So what did your system do differently that the regular camera that they had in there before probably would've filmed the person but didn't necessarily wasn't firing off the alert, recognizing they were back again, did somebody go in and manually type in this particular person's a shoplifter. How did you guys take it to a much different level than just kind of a static security cam? >> So the main thing that you should keep in mind for static cameras is there's always black spots, blind spots, there's no way that they can see everything, and mainly you have cameras inside of the shops, you don't have them outside, so what we did is, we not only saw that we not only got the video of the person inside of the shop, but we saw them when they came outside, we saw them when they were moving, all of this is recorded in video and that we can then match them and see the people who were. Another thing that we do that cameras don't do is we can detect your mobile devices, anything that has that's looking for a network, we can identify that device, and that is always for you and that is always for that device, so we can match those devices when they come in. >> You shouldn't have waited this long but one of the most interesting things about the company and what you guys do, and it's highlighted by what you just said, is the way you go to market. People are not buying these robots, right, you offer the robots as a service, so really interesting model and really brings up interesting things like you said where you can do all kinds of software upgrades, you can do hardware upgrades, you can do all types of changes to the actual unit that the customer just benefits, it's a classic SAS model. So how did you get to that stage and how do people like having, now, kind of a simple monthly payment with all the upgrades and constant, I would imagine, a lot of upgrades coming pretty consistently? Pretty interesting way to go to market, how's that received in the market? >> It's very well, people really accepted, especially when it's new technology. We decided from the beginning that we wanted to be, to own the whole technology stack, and even the robot itself because we knew there would be a lot of upgrades, we knew there would be changes and we wanted to serve our customers in the very best way that was possible. So to help people adopt new technology, we help them with how do they perceive it on a daily basis. If you come to somebody and says they want you to buy a hundred thousand dollar robot, uh, you don't know what that's going to be, but if you said, I charge you ten dollars an hour and give you a robot, that not only changes software every other week, it changes hardware every six months, and you have whatever robot will fit your needs the best. People are really accepting of that model, to the point that all the companies are jumping into the same thing. >> It's really interesting because then it begs where you guys will develop as a company, you know, are you are robotics company, are you a software company, are you a software monitoring company, do you become really a security AI company that pulls from lots of different data and lots of different sources? It really opens up a broad range of opportunities for you guys in which you want to go or where you find your most expertise or where the market takes you. Pretty exciting way to go to market. >> Yeah so what we decided to was we wanted to be the Apple of security guards, so what Apple does is they have their software, their hardware, they own all of it, and therefore they have a very loyal following. We want to be that for security guards, so we own the whole environment, we make changes when we wanted to, and then we go to market that way. >> Okay, that's a great story and again it's knightscope.com, they're fun pictures for one, but it's a great story. But before I let you go, Telly would not be happy if I didn't take a few minutes to talk about your journey. How did you get here, VP of Software Engineering? You know, software's eating the world, it's a great place to be, you've got a solutions based system, but really it's a bunch of metal wrapped up with software inside. So how did you get here, and I wonder if you can share a little bit of your journey to become VP of Software Engineering? >> Yeah so I'm an immigrant, I'm not from the US. I was born South America, and when you're in South America and somebody tells you, hey there's an opportunity for you to go study in the US, you take that opportunity. So I came to the US to study for college, I had a Bachelors in Computer Science and then a Masters in Computer Science. >> Where did you go to school? >> I went to Middle Tennessee State University, and like I said, when somebody tells you, you're going to the US, you don't ask questions, you just go. >> So who made you that offer, how did that come about? >> My university in Ecuador, where I was from, they had an agreement with the university in Tennesee. So they would send students back and forth in an exchange program. >> So you're a good student, they identified you as having great potential and you got picked for that program? >> So 5,000 people apply for 20 spots when I applied. >> Wow. >> So 20 of us came, and out of the 20, the only two people who are staying in the US, my sister and I, we're twins, I have a twin sister. >> 'Cause you ask your sister for support, maybe? Twin sister. >> If I really, it probably had a lot to do with it. And then with technology, I found my way into Knightscope, and Knightscope is a really good company for women in technology specifically, and that is some of the work that I pushed myself to do. Our women in technology numbers are about 25% to 28% of the company which is a huge number for Silicon Valley. So we hire women, we try to mentor them, I myself take time to spend time with them, and then help them get a career that they're excited about. >> And when did you discover your affinity for computer science? It's always a great debate as to when is the best time, or when is the optimal time, or the most popular time for young girls and eventually young women to get involved in STEM? What was your experience? >> So I live with my uncle in Ecuador and my mother, so I always knew I wanted to do something structured, and at the beginning, he was an architect, so I thought I would be an architect, but then I started reading some science fiction books and the closest thing for me to science fiction, making that a reality, was a career in computer science and technology. So that's how I started, and that has led me to, now, Knightscope, and we're doing the most advanced technology that is out there, we're out there with artificial intelligence, we have machine learning, all of the technologies that are out there, robotics, we are using them to put them to use for the greater good. Our job is to keep America safe, and we all are working towards that goal. >> But I think you just want to make something fun that looked like C-3PO. >> It's more like R2-D2 actually, and if you want to see more, go to knightscope.com. >> Okay, and final question. So you're advice, more general advice, to older girls or young women, in terms of what they should do if they want to get into this or why they should consider a career in STEM if they haven't already. >> A career in STEM is very, very rewarding. You're going to be doing sometimes things that nobody else has done ever before. You're out there in front of everything that's happening with technology, and it's actually exciting. When you find other women that do what you want to do, look at people's backgrounds, look at what they've done, look what they're trying to accomplish, and then, make sure that you get into their lives and they'll help you through it. There's a lot of women who would be happy to help out and one of those is me, I'd be glad to help people out. >> Well, Mercedes, thank you so much, again, for spending some time. Congratulations on the award and comin' in and tellin' us your story and educating us more on Knightscope. >> Thank you, and if anybody wants to know, knightscope.com, they can find all about our technology. >> Alright, she's Mercedes, I'm Jeff Frick, we've been having a CUBE conversation in Palo Alto, thanks for watching, we'll catch you next time. (light techno music)