>>Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Supercomputing Conference 2022, otherwise known as SC 22 here in Dallas, Texas. This is day three of our coverage, the final day of coverage here on the exhibition floor. I'm Dave Nicholson, and I'm here with my co-host, tech journalist extraordinaire, Paul Gillum. How's it going, >>Paul? Hi, Dave. It's going good. >>And we have a wonderful guest with us this morning, Dr. Panda from the Ohio State University. Welcome Dr. Panda to the Cube. >>Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot to >>Paul. I know you're, you're chopping at >>The bit, you have incredible credentials, over 500 papers published. The, the impact that you've had on HPC is truly remarkable. But I wanted to talk to you specifically about a product project you've been working on for over 20 years now called mva, high Performance Computing platform that's used by more than 32 organ, 3,200 organizations across 90 countries. You've shepherded this from, its, its infancy. What is the vision for what MVA will be and and how is it a proof of concept that others can learn from? >>Yeah, Paul, that's a great question to start with. I mean, I, I started with this conference in 2001. That was the first time I came. It's very coincidental. If you remember the Finman Networking Technology, it was introduced in October of 2000. Okay. So in my group, we were working on NPI for Marinette Quadrics. Those are the old technology, if you can recollect when Finman was there, we were the very first one in the world to really jump in. Nobody knew how to use Infin van in an HPC system. So that's how the Happy Project was born. And in fact, in super computing 2002 on this exhibition floor in Baltimore, we had the first demonstration, the open source happy, actually is running on an eight node infinite van clusters, eight no zeros. And that was a big challenge. But now over the years, I means we have continuously worked with all infinite van vendors, MPI Forum. >>We are a member of the MPI Forum and also all other network interconnect. So we have steadily evolved this project over the last 21 years. I'm very proud of my team members working nonstop, continuously bringing not only performance, but scalability. If you see now INFIN event are being deployed in 8,000, 10,000 node clusters, and many of these clusters actually use our software, stack them rapid. So, so we have done a lot of, like our focuses, like we first do research because we are in academia. We come up with good designs, we publish, and in six to nine months, we actually bring it to the open source version and people can just download and then use it. And that's how currently it's been used by more than 3000 orange in 90 countries. And, but the interesting thing is happening, your second part of the question. Now, as you know, the field is moving into not just hvc, but ai, big data, and we have those support. This is where like we look at the vision for the next 20 years, we want to design this MPI library so that not only HPC but also all other workloads can take advantage of it. >>Oh, we have seen libraries that become a critical develop platform supporting ai, TensorFlow, and, and the pie torch and, and the emergence of, of, of some sort of default languages that are, that are driving the community. How, how important are these frameworks to the, the development of the progress making progress in the HPC world? >>Yeah, no, those are great. I mean, spite our stencil flow, I mean, those are the, the now the bread and butter of deep learning machine learning. Am I right? But the challenge is that people use these frameworks, but continuously models are becoming larger. You need very first turnaround time. So how do you train faster? How do you do influencing faster? So this is where HPC comes in and what exactly what we have done is actually we have linked floor fighters to our happy page because now you see the MPI library is running on a million core system. Now your fighters and tenor four clan also be scaled to to, to those number of, large number of course and gps. So we have actually done that kind of a tight coupling and that helps the research to really take advantage of hpc. >>So if, if a high school student is thinking in terms of interesting computer science, looking for a place, looking for a university, Ohio State University, bruns, world renowned, widely known, but talk about what that looks like from a day on a day to day basis in terms of the opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in, in the kind of work that you do. What is, what does that look like? And is, and is that, and is that a good pitch to for, for people to consider the university? >>Yes. I mean, we continuously, from a university perspective, by the way, the Ohio State University is one of the largest single campus in, in us, one of the top three, top four. We have 65,000 students. Wow. It's one of the very largest campus. And especially within computer science where I am located, high performance computing is a very big focus. And we are one of the, again, the top schools all over the world for high performance computing. And we also have very strength in ai. So we always encourage, like the new students who like to really work on top of the art solutions, get exposed to the concepts, principles, and also practice. Okay. So, so we encourage those people that wish you can really bring you those kind of experience. And many of my past students, staff, they're all in top companies now, have become all big managers. >>How, how long, how long did you say you've been >>At 31 >>Years? 31 years. 31 years. So, so you, you've had people who weren't alive when you were already doing this stuff? That's correct. They then were born. Yes. They then grew up, yes. Went to university graduate school, and now they're on, >>Now they're in many top companies, national labs, all over the universities, all over the world. So they have been trained very well. Well, >>You've, you've touched a lot of lives, sir. >>Yes, thank you. Thank >>You. We've seen really a, a burgeoning of AI specific hardware emerge over the last five years or so. And, and architectures going beyond just CPUs and GPUs, but to Asics and f PGAs and, and accelerators, does this excite you? I mean, are there innovations that you're seeing in this area that you think have, have great promise? >>Yeah, there is a lot of promise. I think every time you see now supercomputing technology, you see there is sometime a big barrier comes barrier jump. Rather I'll say, new technology comes some disruptive technology, then you move to the next level. So that's what we are seeing now. A lot of these AI chips and AI systems are coming up, which takes you to the next level. But the bigger challenge is whether it is cost effective or not, can that be sustained longer? And this is where commodity technology comes in, which commodity technology tries to take you far longer. So we might see like all these likes, Gaudi, a lot of new chips are coming up, can they really bring down the cost? If that cost can be reduced, you will see a much more bigger push for AI solutions, which are cost effective. >>What, what about on the interconnect side of things, obvi, you, you, your, your start sort of coincided with the initial standards for Infin band, you know, Intel was very, very, was really big in that, in that architecture originally. Do you see interconnects like RDMA over converged ethernet playing a part in that sort of democratization or commoditization of things? Yes. Yes. What, what are your thoughts >>There for internet? No, this is a great thing. So, so we saw the infinite man coming. Of course, infinite Man is, commod is available. But then over the years people have been trying to see how those RDMA mechanisms can be used for ethernet. And then Rocky has been born. So Rocky has been also being deployed. But besides these, I mean now you talk about Slingshot, the gray slingshot, it is also an ethernet based systems. And a lot of those RMA principles are actually being used under the hood. Okay. So any modern networks you see, whether it is a Infin and Rocky Links art network, rock board network, you name any of these networks, they are using all the very latest principles. And of course everybody wants to make it commodity. And this is what you see on the, on the slow floor. Everybody's trying to compete against each other to give you the best performance with the lowest cost, and we'll see whoever wins over the years. >>Sort of a macroeconomic question, Japan, the US and China have been leapfrogging each other for a number of years in terms of the fastest supercomputer performance. How important do you think it is for the US to maintain leadership in this area? >>Big, big thing, significantly, right? We are saying that I think for the last five to seven years, I think we lost that lead. But now with the frontier being the number one, starting from the June ranking, I think we are getting that leadership back. And I think it is very critical not only for fundamental research, but for national security trying to really move the US to the leading edge. So I hope us will continue to lead the trend for the next few years until another new system comes out. >>And one of the gating factors, there is a shortage of people with data science skills. Obviously you're doing what you can at the university level. What do you think can change at the secondary school level to prepare students better to, for data science careers? >>Yeah, I mean that is also very important. I mean, we, we always call like a pipeline, you know, that means when PhD levels we are expecting like this even we want to students to get exposed to, to, to many of these concerts from the high school level. And, and things are actually changing. I mean, these days I see a lot of high school students, they, they know Python, how to program in Python, how to program in sea object oriented things. Even they're being exposed to AI at that level. So I think that is a very healthy sign. And in fact we, even from Ohio State side, we are always engaged with all this K to 12 in many different programs and then gradually trying to take them to the next level. And I think we need to accelerate also that in a very significant manner because we need those kind of a workforce. It is not just like a building a system number one, but how do we really utilize it? How do we utilize that science? How do we propagate that to the community? Then we need all these trained personal. So in fact in my group, we are also involved in a lot of cyber training activities for HPC professionals. So in fact, today there is a bar at 1 1 15 I, yeah, I think 1215 to one 15. We'll be talking more about that. >>About education. >>Yeah. Cyber training, how do we do for professionals? So we had a funding together with my co-pi, Dr. Karen Tom Cook from Ohio Super Center. We have a grant from NASA Science Foundation to really educate HPT professionals about cyber infrastructure and ai. Even though they work on some of these things, they don't have the complete knowledge. They don't get the time to, to learn. And the field is moving so fast. So this is how it has been. We got the initial funding, and in fact, the first time we advertised in 24 hours, we got 120 application, 24 hours. We couldn't even take all of them. So, so we are trying to offer that in multiple phases. So, so there is a big need for those kind of training sessions to take place. I also offer a lot of tutorials at all. Different conference. We had a high performance networking tutorial. Here we have a high performance deep learning tutorial, high performance, big data tutorial. So I've been offering tutorials at, even at this conference since 2001. Good. So, >>So in the last 31 years, the Ohio State University, as my friends remind me, it is properly >>Called, >>You've seen the world get a lot smaller. Yes. Because 31 years ago, Ohio, in this, you know, of roughly in the, in the middle of North America and the United States was not as connected as it was to everywhere else in the globe. So that's, that's pro that's, I i it kind of boggles the mind when you think of that progression over 31 years, but globally, and we talk about the world getting smaller, we're sort of in the thick of, of the celebratory seasons where, where many, many groups of people exchange gifts for varieties of reasons. If I were to offer you a holiday gift, that is the result of what AI can deliver the world. Yes. What would that be? What would, what would, what would the first thing be? This is, this is, this is like, it's, it's like the genie, but you only get one wish. >>I know, I know. >>So what would the first one be? >>Yeah, it's very hard to answer one way, but let me bring a little bit different context and I can answer this. I, I talked about the happy project and all, but recently last year actually we got awarded an S f I institute award. It's a 20 million award. I am the overall pi, but there are 14 universities involved. >>And who is that in that institute? >>What does that Oh, the I ici. C e. Okay. I cycle. You can just do I cycle.ai. Okay. And that lies with what exactly what you are trying to do, how to bring lot of AI for masses, democratizing ai. That's what is the overall goal of this, this institute, think of like a, we have three verticals we are working think of like one is digital agriculture. So I'll be, that will be my like the first ways. How do you take HPC and AI to agriculture the world as though we just crossed 8 billion people. Yeah, that's right. We need continuous food and food security. How do we grow food with the lowest cost and with the highest yield? >>Water >>Consumption. Water consumption. Can we minimize or minimize the water consumption or the fertilization? Don't do blindly. Technologies are out there. Like, let's say there is a weak field, A traditional farmer see that, yeah, there is some disease, they will just go and spray pesticides. It is not good for the environment. Now I can fly it drone, get images of the field in the real time, check it against the models, and then it'll tell that, okay, this part of the field has disease. One, this part of the field has disease. Two, I indicate to the, to the tractor or the sprayer saying, okay, spray only pesticide one, you have pesticide two here. That has a big impact. So this is what we are developing in that NSF A I institute I cycle ai. We also have, we have chosen two additional verticals. One is animal ecology, because that is very much related to wildlife conservation, climate change, how do you understand how the animals move? Can we learn from them? And then see how human beings need to act in future. And the third one is the food insecurity and logistics. Smart food distribution. So these are our three broad goals in that institute. How do we develop cyber infrastructure from below? Combining HP c AI security? We have, we have a large team, like as I said, there are 40 PIs there, 60 students. We are a hundred members team. We are working together. So, so that will be my wish. How do we really democratize ai? >>Fantastic. I think that's a great place to wrap the conversation here On day three at Supercomputing conference 2022 on the cube, it was an honor, Dr. Panda working tirelessly at the Ohio State University with his team for 31 years toiling in the field of computer science and the end result, improving the lives of everyone on Earth. That's not a stretch. If you're in high school thinking about a career in computer science, keep that in mind. It isn't just about the bits and the bobs and the speeds and the feeds. It's about serving humanity. Maybe, maybe a little, little, little too profound a statement, I would argue not even close. I'm Dave Nicholson with the Queue, with my cohost Paul Gillin. Thank you again, Dr. Panda. Stay tuned for more coverage from the Cube at Super Compute 2022 coming up shortly. >>Thanks a lot.

(upbeat music) >> Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to the CUBE's day one coverage of VMware Explorer 22, live from San Francisco. I'm Lisa Martin. Dave Nicholson is back with me. Welcome back to the set. We're pleased to welcome William Bell as our next guest. The executive vice president of products at Phoenix NAP. William, welcome to the CUBE. Welcome back to the CUBE. >> Thank you, thank you so much. Happy to be here. >> Talk to us a little, and the audience a little bit about Phoenix NAP. What is it that you guys do? Your history, mission, value prop, all that good stuff. >> Absolutely, yeah. So we're global infrastructures as a service company, foundationally, we are trying to build pure play infrastructure as a service, so that customers that want to adopt cloud infrastructure but maybe don't want to adopt platform as a service and really just, you know, program themselves to a specific API can have that cloud adoption without that vendor lock in of a specific platform service. And we're doing this in 17 regions around the globe today. Yeah, so it's just flexible, easy. That's where we're at. >> I like flexible and easy. >> Flexible and easy. >> You guys started back in Phoenix. Hence the name. Talk to us a little bit about the evolution of the company in the last decade. >> Yeah, 100%. We built a data center in Phoenix expecting that we could build the centralized network access point of Phoenix, Arizona. And I am super proud to say that we've done that. 41 carriers, all three hyperscalers in the building today, getting ready to expand. However, that's not the whole story, right. And what a lot of people don't know is we founded an infrastructure as a service company, it's called Secured Servers no longer exists, but we founded that company the same time and we built it up kind of sidecar to Phoenix NAP and then we merged all of those together to form this kind of global infrastructure platform that customers can consume. >> Talk to us about the relationship with VMware. Obviously, here we are at VMware Explore. There's about seven... We're hearing 7,000 to 10,000 people here. People are ready to be back to hear from VMware and it's partner ecosystem. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that we have this huge history with VMware that maybe a lot of people don't know. We were one of the first six, the SPPs in 2011 at the end of the original kind of data center, whatever, vCloud data center infrastructure thing that they did. And so early on, there was only 10 of us, 11 of us. And most of those names don't exist anymore. We're talking, Terramark, Blue Lock, some of these guys. Good companies, but they've been bought or whatnot. And here's plucky Phoenix NAP, still, you know, offering great VMware cloud services for customers around the globe. >> What are some of the big trends that you're seeing in the market today where customers are in this multi-cloud world? You know this... I love the theme of this event. The center of the multi-cloud universe. Customers are in that by default. How do you help them navigate that and really unlock the value of it? >> Yeah, I think for us, it's about helping customers understand what applications belong where. We're very, very big believers both in the right home. But if you drill down on that right home for right applicator or right application, right home, it's more about the infrastructure choices that you're making for that application leads to just super exciting optimizations, right. If you, as an example, have a large media streaming business and you park it in a public called hyperscaler and you just eat those egress fees, like it's a big deal. Right? And there are other ways to do that, right. If you need a... If your application needs to scale from zero cores to 15,000 cores for an hour, you know, there are hyperscalers for that, right. And people need to learn how to make that choice. Right app, right home, right infrastructure. And that's kind of what we help them do. >> It's interesting that you mentioned the concept of being a pure play in infrastructure as a service. >> Yeah. >> At some point in the past, people would have argued that infrastructure as a service only exists because SaaS isn't good enough yet. In other words, if there's a good enough SaaS application then you don't want IaaS because who wants to mess around with IaaS, infrastructures as a service. Do you have customers who look at what they're developing as so much a core of what their value proposition is that they want to own it? I mean, is that a driving factor? >> I would challenge to say that we're seeing almost every enterprise become a SaaS company. And when that transition happens, SaaS companies actually care a lot about the cost basis, efficiency, uptime of their application. And ultimately, while they don't want to be in the data center business anymore, it doesn't mean that they want to pay someone else to do things that they feel wholly competent in doing. And we're seeing this exciting transition of open source technologies, open source platforms becoming good enough that they don't actually have to manage a lot of things. They can do it in software and the hardware's kind of abstracted. But that actually, I would say is a boon for infrastructure as a service, as an independent thing. It's been minimized over the years, right. People talk about hyperscalers as being cloud infrastructure companies and they're not. They're cloud platform companies, right. And the infrastructure is high quality. It is easy to access and scale, right, but it's ultimately, if you're just using one of those hyperscalers for that infrastructure, building VMs and doing a bunch of things yourself, you're not getting the value out of that hyperscaler. And ultimately that infrastructure's very expensive if you look at it that way. >> So it's interesting because if you look at what infrastructure consists of, which is hardware and software-- >> Yeah. >> People who said, eh, IaaS as is just a bridge to a bright SaaS future, people also will make the argument that the hardware doesn't matter anymore. I imagine that you are doing a lot of optimization with both hardware and stuff like the VMware cloud stack that you deploy as a VCPP partner. >> Absolutely, yeah. >> So to talk about that. >> Absolutely. >> I mean, you agree. I mean, if I were to just pose a question to you, does hardware still matter? Does infrastructure still matter? >> Way more than people think. >> Well, there you go. So what are you doing in that arena, specifically with VCPP? >> Yeah, absolutely. And so I think a good example of that, right, so last VMworld in person, 2019, we showcased a piece of technology that we had been working with Intel on for about two years at the time which was Intel persistent memory DC, persistent memory. Right? And we launched the first VMware cloud offering to have Intel DC persistent memory onboard. So that customers with the VMs that needed that technology could leverage it with the integrations in vSphere 6.7 and ultimately in seven more, right. Now I do think that was maybe a swing and a miss technology potentially but we're going to see it come back. And that specialized infrastructure deployment is a big part of our business, right. Helping people identify, you know, this application, if you'd have this accelerator, this piece of infrastructure, this quality of network can be better, faster, cheaper, right. That kind of mentality of optimization matters a lot. And VMware plays a critical role in that because it still gives the customer the operational excellence that they need without having to do everything themselves, right. And our customers rely on that a lot from VMware to get that whole story, operationally efficient, easy to manage, automated. All those things make a lot of difference to our VMware customers. >> Speaking of customers, what are you hearing, if anything, from customers, VMware customers that are your joint customers about the Broadcom acquisition? Are they excited about it? Are they concerned about it? And how do you talk about that? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that everyone that's in the infrastructure business is doing business with Broadcom, all right. And we've had so many businesses that we've been engaged with that have ultimately been a acquiree. I can say that this one feels different only in the size of the acquisition. VMware carries so much weight. VMware's brand exceeds Broadcom's brand, in my opinion. And I think ultimately, I don't know anything that's not public, right-- >> Well, they rebranded. By the way, on the point of brand, they rebranded their software business, VMware. >> Yeah. I mean, that's what I was going to say. That was the word on the street. I don't know if there's beneficial. Is that a-- >> Well, that's been-- >> But that's the word, right? >> That's what they've said. Well, but when a Avago acquired Broadcom they said, "we'll call ourselves Broadcom." >> Absolutely. Why wouldn't you? >> So yeah. So I imagine that what's been reported is likely-- >> Likely. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think that makes a ton of sense and we can start to see even more great intellectual property in software. That's where, you know, all of these businesses, CA, Symantec, VMware and all of the acquisitions that VMware has made, it's a great software intellectual property platform and they're going to be able to get so much more value out of the leadership team that VMware has here, is going to make a world of difference to the Broadcom software team. Yeah, so I'm very excited, you know. >> It's a lot of announcements this morning, a lot of technical product announcements. What did you hear in that excites you about the evolution of VMware as well as the partnership and the value in it for your customers? >> You know, one of our fastest growing parts of our business is this metal as a service infrastructure business and doing very, very... Using very specific technologies to do very interesting things, makes a big difference in our world and for our customers. So anything that's like smartNICs, disaggregated hypervisor, accelerators as a first class citizen in VMware, all that stuff makes the Phoenix NAP story better. So I'm super excited about that, right. Yeah. >> Well, it's interesting because VCPP is not a term that people who are not insiders know of. What they know is that there are services available in hyperscale cloud providers where you can deploy VMware. Well, you know, VMware cloud stack. Well, you can deploy those VMware cloud stacks with you. >> Absolutely. >> In exactly the same manner. However, to your point, all of this talk about disaggregation of CPU, GPU, DPU, I would argue with it, you're in a better position to deploy that in an agile way than a hyperscale cloud provider would be and foremost, I'm not trying to-- >> No, yeah. >> I'm not angling for a job in your PR department. >> Come on in. >> But the idea that when you start talking about something like metal as a service, as an adjunct or adjacent to a standard deployment of a VMware cloud, it makes a lot of sense. >> Yeah. >> Because there are people who can't do everything within the confines of what the STDC-- >> Yes. >> Consists of. >> Absolutely. >> So, I mean... Am I on the right track? >> No, you are 100% hitting it. I think that that point you made about agility to deliver new technology, right, is a key moment in our kind of delivery every single year, right. As a new chip comes out, Intel chip or Accelerator or something like that, we are likely going to be first to market by six months potentially and possibly ever. Persistent memory never launched in public cloud in any capacity but we have customers running on it today that is providing extreme value for their business, right. When, you know, the discreet GPUs coming from the just announced Flex series GPU from Intel, you're likely not going to see them in public cloud hyperscalers quickly, right. Over time, absolutely. We'll have them day one. Isolate came out, you could get it in our metal as a service platform the morning it launched on demand, right. Those types of agility points, they're not... Because they're hyperscale by nature. If they can't hyperscale it, they're not doing it, right. And I think that that is a very key point. Now, as it comes in towards VMware, we're driving this intersection of building that VCF or VMware cloud foundation which is going to be a key point of the VMware ecosystem. As you see this transition to core based licensing and some of the other things that have been talked about, VMware cloud foundation is going to be the stack that they expect their customers to adopt and deliver. And the fact that we can automate that, deliver it instantaneously in a couple of hours to hardware that you don't need to own, into networks you don't need to manage, but yet you are still in charge, keys to the kingdom, ready to go, just like you're doing it in your own data center, that's the message that we're driving for. >> Can you share a customer example that you think really just shines a big flashlight on the value that you guys are delivering? >> We definitely, you know, we had the pleasure of working with Make-A-Wish foundation for the last seven years. And ultimately, you know, we feel very compelled that every time we help them do something unique, different or what not, save money, that money's going into helping some child that's in need, right. And so we've done so many things together. VMware has stepped up as the plate over the years, done so many things with them. We've sponsored stuff. We've done grants, we've done all kinds of things. The other thing I would say is we are helping the City of Hope and Translational Genomics Research Institute on sequencing single cell RNA so that they can fight COVID, so that they can build cure, well, not cures but build therapies for colon cancer and things like that. And so I think that, you know, this is a driving light for us internally is helping people through efficiency and change. And that's what we're looking for. We're looking for more stories like that. We're looking... If you have a need, we're looking for people to come to us and say, "this is my problem. This is what this looks like. Let us see if we can find a solution that's a little bit different, a little bit out of the box and doesn't have to change your business dramatically." Yeah. >> And who are you talking to within customers? Is this a C level conversation? >> Yeah, I mean, I would say that we would love it to be... I think most companies would love to have that, you know, CFO conversation with every single customer. I would say VPs of engineering, increasingly, especially as we become more API centric, those guys are driving a lot of those purchasing decisions. Five years ago, I would've said director of IT, like director of IT. Now today, it's like VP of engineering, usually software oriented folks looking to deliver some type of application on top of a piece of hardware or in a cloud, right. And those guys are, you know, I guess, that's even another point, VMware's doing so much work on the API side that they don't get any credit for. Terraform, Ansible, all these integrations, VMware doing so much in this area and they just don't get any credit for it ever, right. It's just like, VMware's the dinosaur and they're just not, right. But that's the thing that people think of today because of the hype of the hyperscaler. I think that's... Yeah. >> When you're in customer conversations, maybe with prospects, are you seeing more customers that have gone all in on a hyperscaler and are having issues and coming to you guys saying help, this is getting way too expensive? >> Yeah, I think it's the unexpected growth problem or even the expected growth problem where they just thought it would be okay, but they've suffered some type of competitive pressure that they've had to optimize for and they just didn't really expect it. And so, I think that increasingly we are finding organizations that quickly adopted public cloud. If they did a full digital transformation of their business and then transformation of their applications, a lot of them now feel very locked in because every application is just reliant on x hyperscaler forever, or they didn't transform anything and they just migrated and parked it. And the bills that are coming in are just like, whoa like, how is that possible? We are typically never recommending get out of the public cloud. We are just... It's not... If I say the right home for the right application, it's by default saying that there are right applications for hyperscalers. Parking your VMware environment that you just migrated to a hyperscaler, not the right application. You know, I would love you to be with me but if you want to do that, at least go to VMC on AWS or go to OCVS or GCVE or any of those. If that's going to go with a Google or an Amazon and that's just the mandate and you're going to move your applications, don't just move them into native. Move them into a VMware solution and then if you still want to make that journey, that full transformation, go ahead and make it. I would still argue that that's not the most efficient way but, you know, if you're going to do anything, don't just dump it all into cloud, the native hyperscaler stuff. >> Good advice. >> So what do typical implementations look like with you guys when you're moving on premises environments into going back to the VCPP, STDC model? >> Absolutely. Do you have people moving and then transforming and re-platforming? What does that look like? What's the typical-- >> Yeah. I mean, I do not believe that anybody has fully made up their mind if exactly where they want to be. I'm only going to be in this cloud. It's an in the close story, right. And so even when we get customers, you know, we firmly believe that the right place to just pick up and migrate is to a VCPP cloud. Better cost effectiveness, typically better technology, you know service, right. Better service, right. We've been part of VMware for 12 years. We love the technology behind VMC's, now AWS is fantastic, but it's still just infrastructure without any help at all right, right. They're going to be there to support their technology but they're not going to help you with the other stuff. We can do some of those things. And if it's not us, it's another VCPP provider that has that expertise that you might need. So yes, we help you quickly, easily migrate everything to a VMware cloud. And then you have a decision point to make. You're happy where you are, you are leveraging public cloud for a certain applications. You're leveraging VMware cloud offerings for the standard applications that you've been running for years. Do you transform them? Do you keep them? What do you do? All those decisions can be made later. But I stress that repurchasing all your hardware again, staying inside your colo and doing everything yourself, it is for me, it's like a company telling me they're going to build a data center for themselves, single tenant data center. Like no one's doing that, right. But there are more options out there than just I'm going to go to Azure, right. Think about it. Take the time, assess the landscape. And VMware cloud providers as a whole, all 17,000 of us or whatever across the globe, people don't know that group of individuals of the companies is the third or fourth potentially largest cloud in the world. Right? That's the power of the VMware cloud provider ecosystem. >> Last question for you as we wrap up here. Where can the audience go to learn more about Phoenix NAP and really start test driving with you guys? >> Absolutely. Well, if you come to phoenixnap.com, I guarantee you that we will re-target you and you can click on a banner later if you don't want to stay there. (Lisa laughs) But yeah, phoenixnap.com has all the information that you need. We also put out tons of helpful content. So if you're looking for anything technology oriented and you're just, "I want to upgrade to Ubuntu," you're likely going to end up on a phoenixnap.com website looking for that. And then you can find out more about what we do. >> Awesome, phoenixnap.com. William, thank you very much for joining Dave and me, talking about what you guys are doing, what you're enabling customers to achieve as the world continues to evolve at a very dynamic pace. We appreciate your insights. >> Absolutely, thank you so much >> For our guest and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching the CUBE live from VMware Explorer, 2022. Dave and I will be joined by a guest consultant for our keynote wrap at the end of the day in just a few minutes. So stick around. (upbeat music)

>>Mm. >>Okay. Hello, and welcome to the Cubes Coverage of the International Women in Tech Showcase featuring National Women's Day. I'm John for a host of the Cube. We have a great guest here of any theory a PJ head of aerospace and satellite for A W S A P J s Asia Pacific in Japan. Great to have you on many thanks for joining us. Talk about Space and International Women's Day. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks, John. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. >>So obviously, aerospace space satellite is an area that's growing. It's changing. AWS has made a lot of strides closure, and I had a conversation last year about this. Remember when Andy Jassy told me about this initiative to 2.5 years or so ago? It was like, Wow, that makes a lot of sense Ground station, etcetera. So it just makes a lot of sense, a lot of heavy lifting, as they say in the satellite aerospace business. So you're leading the charge over there in a p J. And you're leading women in space and beyond. Tell us what's the Storey? How did you get there? What's going on. >>Thanks, John. Uh, yes. So I need the Asia Pacific business for Clint, um, as part of Amazon Web services, you know, that we have in industry business vertical that's dedicated to looking after our space and space customers. Uh, my journey began really? Three or four years ago when I started with a W s. I was based out of Australia. Uh, and Australia had a space agency that was being literally being born. Um, and I had the great privilege of meeting the country's chief scientist. At that point. That was Dr Alan Finkel. Uh, and we're having a conversation. It was really actually an education conference. And it was focused on youth and inspiring the next generation of students. Uh, and we hit upon space. Um, and we had this conversation, and at that stage, we didn't have a dedicated industry business vertical at A W s well supported space customers as much as we did many other customers in the sector, innovative customers. And after the conversation with Dr Finkel, um, he offered to introduce me, uh, to Megan Clark, who was back back then the first CEO of the Australian Space Agency. So that's literally how my journey into space started. We had a conversation. We worked out how we could possibly support the Australian Space Agency's remit and roadmap as they started growing the industry. Uh, and then a whole industry whole vertical was set up, clinic came on board. I have now a global team of experts around me. Um, you know, they've pretty much got experience from everything creating building a satellite, launching a satellite, working out how to down link process all those amazing imagery that we see because, you know, um, contrary to what a lot of people think, Uh, space is not just technology for a galaxy far, far away. It is very much tackling complex issues on earth. Um, and transforming lives with information. Um, you know, arranges for everything from wildfire detection to saving lives. Um, smart, smart agriculture for for farmers. So the time of different things that we're doing, Um, and as part of the Asia Pacific sector, uh, my task here is really just to grow the ecosystem. Women are an important part of that. We've got some stellar women out here in region, both within the AWS team, but also in our customer and partner sectors. So it's a really interesting space to be. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of opportunities and there's an incredible amount of growth so specific, exciting space to be >>Well, I gotta say I'm super inspired by that. One of the things that we've been talking about the Cuban I was talking to my co host for many, many years has been the democratisation of digital transformation. Cloud computing and cloud scale has democratised and change and level the playing field for many. And now space, which was it's a very complex area is being I want kind of democratised. It's easier to get access. You can launch a satellite for very low cost compared to what it was before getting access to some of the technology and with open source and with software, you now have more space computing things going on that's not out of reach. So for the people watching, share your thoughts on on that dynamic and also how people can get involved because there are real world problems to solve that can be solved now. That might have been out of reach, but now it's cloud. Can you share your thoughts. >>That's right. So you're right, John. Satellites orbiting There's more and more satellites being launched every day. The sensors are becoming more sophisticated. So we're collecting huge amounts of data. Um, one of our customers to cut lab tell us that we're collecting today three million square kilometres a day. That's gonna increase to about three billion over the next five years. So we're already reaching a point where it's impossible to store, analyse and make sense of such massive amounts of data without cloud computing. So we have services which play a very critical role. You know, technologies like artificial intelligence machine learning. Help us help these customers build up products and solutions, which then allows us to generate intelligence that's serving a lot of other sectors. So it could be agriculture. It could be disaster response and recovery. Um, it could be military intelligence. I'll give you an example of something that's very relevant, and that's happening in the last couple of weeks. So we have some amazing customers. We have Max our technologies. They use a W S to store their 100 petabytes imagery library, and they have daily collection, so they're using our ground station to gather insight about a lot of changing conditions on Earth. Usually Earth observation. That's, you know, tracking water pollution, water levels of air pollution. But they're also just tracking, um, intelligence of things like military build up in certain areas. Capella space is another one of our customers who do that. So over the last couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, uh, we've been watching, uh, images that have been collected by these commercial satellites, and they've been chronicling the build up, for instance, of Russian forces on Ukraine's borders and the ongoing invasion. They're providing intelligence that was previously only available from government sources. So when you talk about the democratisation of space, high resolution satellite images are becoming more and more ridiculous. Um, I saw the other day there was, uh, Anderson Cooper, CNN and then behind him, a screenshot from Capella, which is satellite imagery, which is very visible, high resolution transparency, which gives, um, respected journalists and media organisations regular contact with intelligence, direct intelligence which can help support media storytelling and help with the general public understanding of the crisis like what's happening in Ukraine. And >>I think on that point is, people can relate to it. And if you think about other things with computer vision, technology is getting so much stronger. Also, there's also metadata involved. So one of the things that's coming out of this Ukraine situation not only is tracking movements with the satellites in real time, but also misinformation and disinformation. Um, that's another big area because you can, uh, it's not just the pictures, it's what they mean. So it's well beyond just satellite >>well, beyond just satellite. Yeah, and you know, not to focus on just a crisis that's happening at the moment. There's 100 other use cases which were helping with customers around the globe. I want to give you a couple of other examples because I really want people to be inspired by what we're doing with space technology. So right here in Singapore, I have a company called Hero Factory. Um, now they use AI based on Earth observation. They have an analytics platform that basically help authorities around the region make key decisions to drive sustainable practises. So change detection for shipping Singapore is, you know, it's lots of traffic. And so if there's oil spills, that can be detected and remedy from space. Um, crop productivity, fruit picking, um, even just crop cover around urban areas. You know, climate change is an increasing and another increasing, uh, challenges global challenge that we need to tackle and space space technology actually makes it possible 15 50% of what they call e CVS. Essential climate variables can only be measured from space. So we have companies like satellite through, uh, one of our UK customers who are measuring, um, uh, carbon emissions. And so the you know, the range of opportunities that are out there, like you said previously untouched. We've just opened up doors for all sorts of innovations to become possible. >>It totally is intoxicating. Some of the fun things you can discuss with not only the future but solving today's problems. So it's definitely next level kind of things happening with space and space talent. So this is where you start to get into the conversation like I know some people in these major technical instance here in the US as sophomore second year is getting job offers. So there's a There's a there's a space race for talent if you will, um and women talent in particular is there on the table to So how How can you share that discussion? Because inspiration is one thing. But then people want to know what to do to get in. So how do you, um how do you handle the recruiting and motivating and or working with organisations to just pipeline interest? Because space is one of the things you get addicted to. >>Yeah. So I'm a huge advocate for science, technology, engineering, math. We you know, we highlights them as a pathway into space into technology. And I truly believe the next generation of talent will contribute to the grand challenges of our time. Whether that climate change or sustainability, Um, it's gonna come from them. I think I think that now we at Amazon Web services. We have several programmes that we're working on to engage kids and especially girls to be equipped with the latest cloud skills. So one of the programmes that we're delivering this year across Singapore Australia uh, we're partnering with an organisation called the Institute for Space Science, Exploration and Technology and we're launching a programme called Mission Discovery. It's basically students get together with an astronaut, NASA researcher, technology experts and they get an opportunity to work with these amazing characters, too. Create and design their own project and then the winning project will be launched will be taken up to the International space station. So it's a combination of technology skills, problem solving, confidence building. It's a it's a whole range and that's you know, we that's for kids from 14 to about 18. But actually it, in fact, because the pipeline build is so important not just for Amazon Web services but for industry sector for the growth of the overall industry sector. Uh, there's several programmes that were involved in and they range from sophomore is like you said all the way to to high school college a number of different programmes. So in Singapore, specifically, we have something called cloud Ready with Amazon Web services. It's a very holistic clouds killing programme that's curated for students from primary school, high school fresh graduates and then even earlier careers. So we're really determined to work together closely and it the lines really well with the Singapore government's economic national agenda, um so that that's one way and and then we have a tonne of other programmes specifically designed for women. So last year we launched a programme called She Does It's a Free online training learning programme, and the idea is really to inspire professional women to consider a career in the technology industry and show them pathways, support them through that learning process, bring them on board, help drive a community spirit. And, you know, we have a lot of affinity groups within Amazon, whether that's women in tech or a lot of affinity groups catering for a very specific niches. And all of those we find, uh, really working well to encourage that pipeline development that you talk about and bring me people that I can work with to develop and build these amazing solutions. >>Well, you've got so much passion. And by the way, if you have, if you're interested in a track on women in space, would be happy to to support that on our site, send us storeys, we'll we'll get We'll get them documented so super important to get the voices out there. Um and we really believe in it. So we love that. I have to ask you as the head of a PJ for a W S uh aerospace and satellite. You've you've seen You've been on a bunch of missions in the space programmes of the technologies. Are you seeing how that's trajectory coming to today and now you mentioned new generation. What problems do you see that need to be solved for this next generation? What opportunities are out there that are new? Because you've got the lens of the past? You're managing a big part of this new growing emerging business for us. But you clearly see the future. And you know, the younger generation is going to solve these problems and take the opportunities. What? What are they? >>Yes, Sometimes I think we're leaving a lot, uh, to solve. And then other times, I think, Well, we started some of those conversations. We started those discussions and it's a combination of policy technology. We do a lot of business coaching, so it's not just it's not just about the technology. We do think about the broader picture. Um, technology is transferring. We know that technology is transforming economies. We know that the future is digital and that diverse backgrounds, perspective, skills and experiences, particularly those of women minority, the youth must be part of the design creation and the management of the future roadmaps. Um, in terms of how do I see this going? Well, it's been sort of we've had under representation of women and perhaps youth. We we just haven't taken that into consideration for for a long time now. Now that gap is slowly becoming. It's getting closer and closer to being closed. Overall, we're still underrepresented. But I take heart from the fact that if we look at an agency like the US Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, that's a relatively young space agency in your A. I think they've got about three or 400 people working for them at this point in time, and the average age of that cohort John, is 28. Some 40% of its engineers and scientists are women. Um, this year, NASA is looking to recruit more female astronauts. Um, they're looking to recruit more people with disabilities. So in terms of changing in terms of solving those problems, whatever those problems are, we started the I guess we started the right representation mix, so it doesn't matter. Bring it on, you know, whether it is climate change or this ongoing crisis, productive. Um, global crisis around the world is going to require a lot more than just a single shot answer. And I think having diversity and having that representation, we know that it makes a difference to innovation outputs. We know that it makes a difference to productivity, growth, profit. But it's also just the right thing to do for so long. We haven't got it right, and I think if we can get this right, we will be able to solve the majority of some of the biggest things that we're looking at today. >>And the diversity of problems in the diversity of talent are two different things. But they come together because you're right. It's not about technology. It's about all fields of study sociology. It could be political science. Obviously you mentioned from the situation we have now. It could be cybersecurity. Space is highly contested. We dated long chat about that on the Last Cube interview with AWS. There's all these new new problems and so problem solving skills. You don't need to have a pedigree from Ivy League school to get into space. This is a great opportunity for anyone who can solve problems because their new No one's seen them before. >>That's exactly right. And you know, every time we go out, we have sessions with students or we're at universities. We tell them, Raise your voices. Don't be afraid to use your voice. It doesn't matter what you're studying. If you think you have something of value to say, say it. You know, by pushing your own limits, you push other people's limits, and you may just introduce something that simply hasn't been part of before. So your voice is important, and we do a lot of lot of coaching encouraging, getting people just to >>talk. >>And that in itself is a great start. I think >>you're in a very complex sector, your senior leader at AWS Amazon Web services in a really fun, exciting area, aerospace and satellite. And for the young people watching out there or who may see this video, what advice would you have for the young people who are trying to navigate through the complexities of now? Third year covid. You know, seeing all the global changes, um, seeing that massive technology acceleration with digital transformation, digitisation it's here, digital world we're in. >>It could >>be confusing. It could be weird. And so how would you talk to that person and say, Hey, it's gonna be okay? And what advice would you give? >>It is absolutely going to be okay. Look, from what I know, the next general are far more fluent in digital than I am. I mean, they speak nerd. They were born speaking nerd, so I don't have any. I can't possibly tell them what to do as far as technology is concerned because they're so gung ho about it. But I would advise them to spend time with people, explore new perspectives, understand what the other is trying to do or achieve, and investing times in a time in new relationships, people with different backgrounds and experience, they almost always have something to teach you. I mean, I am constantly learning Space tech is, um it's so complicated. Um, I can't possibly learn everything I have to buy myself just by researching and studying. I am totally reliant on my community of experts to help me learn. So my advice to the next generation kids is always always in this time in relationships. And the second thing is, don't be disheartened, You know, Um this has happened for millennia. Yes, we go up, then we come down. But there's always hope. You know, there there is always that we shape the future that we want. So there's no failure. We just have to learn to be resilient. Um, yeah, it's all a learning experience. So stay positive and chin up, because we can. We can do it. >>That's awesome. You know, when you mentioned the Ukraine in the Russian situation, you know, one of the things they did they cut the Internet off and all telecommunications and Elon Musk launched a star linked and gives them access, sending them terminals again. Just another illustration. That space can help. Um, and these in any situation, whether it's conflict or peace and so Well, I have you here, I have to ask you, what is the most important? Uh uh, storeys that are being talked about or not being talked about are both that people should pay attention to. And they look at the future of what aerospace satellite these emerging technologies can do for the world. What's your How would you kind of what are the most important things to pay attention to that either known or maybe not being talked about. >>They have been talked about John, but I'd love to see more prominent. I'd love to see more conversations about stirring the amazing work that's being done in our research communities. The research communities, you know, they work in a vast area of areas and using satellite imagery, for instance, to look at climate change across the world is efforts that are going into understanding how we tackle such a global issue. But the commercialisation that comes from the research community that's pretty slow. And and the reason it's loads because one is academics, academics churning out research papers. The linkage back into industry and industry is very, um, I guess we're always looking for how fast can it be done? And what sort of marginal profit am I gonna make for it? So there's not a lot of patients there for research that has to mature, generate outputs that you get that have a meaningful value for both sides. So, um, supporting our research communities to output some of these essential pieces of research that can Dr Impact for society as a whole, Um, maybe for industry to partner even more, I mean, and we and we do that all the time. But even more focus even more. Focus on. And I'll give you a small example last last year and it culminated this earlier this month, we signed an agreement with the ministry of With the Space Office in Singapore. Uh, so it's an MOU between AWS and the Singapore government, and we are determined to help them aligned to their national agenda around space around building an ecosystem. How do we support their space builders? What can we do to create more training pathways? What credits can we give? How do we use open datasets to support Singaporeans issues? And that could be claimed? That could be kind of change. It could be, um, productivity. Farming could be a whole range of things, but there's a lot that's happening that is not highlighted because it's not sexy specific, right? It's not the Mars mission, and it's not the next lunar mission, But these things are just as important. They're just focused more on earth rather than out there. >>Yeah, and I just said everyone speaking nerd these days are born with it, the next generations here, A lot of use cases. A lot of exciting areas. You get the big headlines, you know, the space launches, but also a lot of great research. As you mentioned, that's, uh, that people are doing amazing work, and it's now available open source. Cloud computing. All this is bringing to bear great conversation. Great inspiration. Great chatting with you. Love your enthusiasm for for the opportunity. And thanks for sharing your storey. Appreciate it. >>It's a pleasure to be with you, John. Thank you for the opportunity. Okay. >>Thanks, Manny. The women in tech showcase here, the Cube is presenting International Women's Day celebration. I'm John Ferrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Mm mm.

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> UiPath has had a long, strange trip to IPO. How so you ask? Well, the company was started in 2005. But it's culture, is akin to a frenetic startup. The firm shunned conventions and instead of focusing on a narrow geographic area to prove its product market fit before it started to grow, it aggressively launched international operations prior to reaching unicorn status. Well prior, when it had very little revenue, around a million dollars. Today, more than 60% of UiPath business is outside of the United States. Despite its headquarters being in New York city. There's more, according to recent SEC filings, UiPath total revenue grew 81% last year. But it's free cash flow, is actually positive, modestly. Wait, there's more. The company raised $750 million in a Series F in early February, at a whopping $35 billion valuation. Yet, the implied back of napkin valuation, based on the number of shares outstanding after the offering multiplied by the proposed maximum offering price per share yields evaluation of just under 26 billion. (Dave chuckling) And there's even more to this crazy story. Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE Insights, Powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis we'll share our learnings, from sifting through hundreds of pages (paper rustling) of UiPath's red herring. So you didn't have to, we'll share our thoughts on its market, its competitive position and its outlook. Let's start with a question. Mark Roberge, is a venture capitalist. He's a managing director at Stage 2 Capital and he's also a teacher, a professor at the B-School in Harvard. One of his favorite questions that he asks his students and others, is what's the best way to grow a company? And he uses this chart to answer that question. On the vertical axis is customer retention and the horizontal axis is growth to growth rate and you can see he's got modest and awesome and so forth. Now, so I want to let you look at it for a second. What's the best path to growth? Of course you want to be in that green circle. Awesome retention of more than 90% and awesome growth but what's the best way to get there? Should you blitz scale and go for the double double, triple, triple blow it out and grow your go to market team on the horizontal axis or should be more careful and focus on nailing retention and then, and only then go for growth? What do you think? What do you think most VCs would say? What would you say? When you want to maybe run the table, capture the flag before your competitors could get there or would you want to take a more conservative approach? What would Daniel Dines say the CEO of UiPath? Again, I'll let you think about that for a second. Let's talk about UiPath. What did they do? Well, I shared at the top that the company shunned conventions and expanded internationally, very rapidly. Well before it hit escape velocity and they grew like crazy and it got out of control and he had to reign it in, plug some holes, but the growth didn't stop, go. So very clearly based on it's performance and reading through the S1, the company has great retention. It uses a metric called gross retention rate which is at 96 or 97%, very high. Says customers are sticking with it. So maybe that's the right formula go for growth and grow like crazy. Let chaos reign, then reign in the chaos as Andy Grove would say. Go fast horizontally, and you can go vertically. Let me tell you what I think Mark Roberge would say, he told me you can do that. But churn is the silent killer of SaaS companies and perhaps the better path is to nail product market fit. And then your retention metrics, before you go into hyperbolic growth mode. There's all science behind this, which may be antithetical to the way many investors want to roll the dice and go for super growth, like go fast or die. Well, it worked for UiPath you might say, right. Well, no. And this is where the story gets even more interesting and long and strange for UiPath. As we shared earlier, UiPath was founded in 2005 out of Bucharest Romania. The company actually started as a software outsourcing startup. It called the company, DeskOver and it built automation libraries and SDKs for companies like Microsoft, IBM and Google and others. It also built automation scripts and developed importantly computer vision technology which became part of its secret sauce. In December 2015, DeskOver changed its name to UiPath and became a Delaware Corp and moved its headquarters to New York City a couple of years later. So our belief is that UiPath actually took the preferred path of Mark Roberge, five ticks North, then five more East. They slow-cooked for the better part of 10 years trying to figure out what market to serve. And they spent that decade figuring out their product market fit. And then they threw gas in the fire. Pretty crazy. All right, let's take a peak (chuckling) at the takeaways from the UiPath S1 the numbers are impressive. 580 million ARR with 65% growth. That asterisk is there because like you, we thought ARR stood for annual recurring revenue. It really stands for annualized renewal run rate. annualized renewal run rate is a metric that is one of UiPath's internal KPIs and are likely communicate that publicly over time. We'll explain that further in a moment. UiPath has a very solid customer base. Nearly 8,000, I've interviewed many of them. They're extremely happy. They have very high retention. They get great penetration into the fortune 500, around 63% of the fortune 500 has UiPath. Most of UiPath business around 70% comes from existing customers. I always say you're going to get more money out of existing customers than new customers but everybody's trying to go out and get new customers. But UiPath I think is taking a really interesting approach. It's their land and expand and they didn't invent that term but I'll come back to that. It kind of reminds me of the early days of Tableau. Actually I think Tableau is an interesting example. Like UiPath, Tableau started out as pretty much a point tool and it had, but it had very passionate customers. It was solving problems. It was simplifying things. And it would have bid into a company and grow and grow. Now the market fundamentals for UiPath are very good. Automation is super hot right now. And the pandemic has created an automation mandate to date and I'll share some data there as well. UiPath is a leader. I'm going to show you the Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA. That's kind of a good little snapshot. UiPath pegs it's TAM at 60 billion dollars based on some bottoms up calculations and some data from Bain. Pre-pandemic, we pegged it at over 30 billion and we felt that was conservative. Post-pandemic, we think the TAM is definitely higher because of that automation mandate, it's been accelerated. Now, according to the S1, UiPath is going to raise around 1.2 billion. And as we said, if that's an implied valuation that is lower than the Series F, so we suspect the Series F investors have some kind of ratchet in there. UiPath needed the cash from its Series F investors. So it took in 750 million in February and its balance sheet in the S1 shows about 474 million in cash and equivalent. So as I say, it needed that cash. UiPath has had significant expense reductions that we'll show you in some detail. And it's brought in some fresh talent to provide some adult supervision around 70% of its executive leadership team and outside directors came to the company after 2019 and the company's S1, it disclosed that it's independent accounting firm identified last year what it called the "material weakness in our internal controls over financial report relating to revenue recognition for the fiscal year ending 2018, caused by a lack of oversight and technical competence within the finance department". Now the company outlined the steps it took to remediate the problem, including hiring new talent. However, we said that last year, we felt UiPath wasn't quite ready to go public. So it really had to get its act together. It was not as we said at the time, the well-oiled machine, that we said was Snowflake under Mike Scarpelli's firm operating guidance. The guy's the operational guru, but we suspect the company wants to take advantage of this mock market. It's a good time to go public. It needs the cash to bolster its balance sheet. And the public offering is going to give it cache in a stronger competitive posture relative to its main new competitor, autumn newbie competitor Automation Anywhere and the big whales like Microsoft and others that aspire and are watching what UiPath is doing and saying, hey we want a piece of that action. Now, one other note, UiPath's CEO Daniel Dines owns 100% of the class B shares of the company and has a 35 to one voting power. So he controls the company, subject of course to his fiduciary responsibilities but if UiPath, let's say it gets in trouble financially, he has more latitude to do secondary offerings. And at the same time, it's insulated from activist shareholders taking over his company. So lots of detail in the S1 and we just wanted to give you some of those highlights. Here are the pretty graphs. If whoever wrote this F1 was a genius. It's just beautiful. As we said, ARR, annualized renewal run rate all it does is it annualizes the invoice amount from subscriptions in the maintenance portion of the revenue. In other words, the parts that are recurring revenue, it excludes revenue from support and perpetual license. Like one-time licenses and services is just kind of the UiPath's and maybe that's some sort of legacy there. It's future is that recurring revenue. So it's pretty similar to what we think of as ARR, but it's not exact. Lots of customers with a growing number of six and seven figure accounts and a dollar-based net retention of 145%. This figure represents the rate of net expansion of the UiPath ARR, from existing listing customers over a 12 month period. Translation. This says UiPath's existing customers are spending more with the company, land and expand and we'll share some data from ETR on that. And as you can see, the growth of 86% CAGR over the past nine quarters, very impressive. Let's talk about some of the fundamentals of UiPath's business. Here's some data from the Brookings Institute and the OECD that shows productivity statistics for the US. The smaller charts in the right are for Germany and Japan. And I've shared some similar data before the US showed in the middle there. Showed productivity improvements with the personal productivity boom in the mid to late 90s. And it spilled into the early 2000s. But since then you can see it's dropped off quite significantly. Germany and Japan are also under pressure as are most developed countries. China's labor productivity might show declines but it's level, is at level significantly higher than these countries, April 16th headline of the Wall Street Journal says that China's GDP grew 18% this quarter. So, we've talked about the snapback in post-COVID and the post-isolation economy, but these are kind of one time bounces. But anyway, the point is we're reaching the limits of what humans can do alone to solve some of the world's most pressing challenges. And automation is one key to shifting labor away from these more mundane tasks toward more productive and more important activities that can deliver lasting benefits. This according to UiPath, is its stated purpose to accelerate human achievement, big. And the market is ready to be automated, for the most part. Now the post-isolation economy is increasingly going to focus on automation to drive toward activity as we've discussed extensively, I got to share the RPA Magic Quadrant where nearly everyone's a winner, many people are of course happy. Many companies are happy, just to get into the Magic Quadrant. You can't just, you have to have certain criteria. So that's good. That's what I mean by everybody wins. We've reported extensively on UiPath and Automation Anywhere. Yeah, we think we might shuffle the deck a little bit on this picture. Maybe creating more separation between UiPath and Automation Anywhere and the rest. And from our advantage point, UiPath's IPO is going to either force Automation Anywhere to respond. And I don't know what its numbers are. I don't know if it's ready. I suspect it's not, we'd see that already but I bet you it's trying to get there. Or if they don't, UiPath is going to extend its lead even further, that would be our prediction. Now personally, I would have Pegasystems higher on the vertical. Of course they're not an IPO, RPA specialist, so I kind of get what Gartner is doing there but I think they're executing well. And I'd probably, in a broader context I'd probably maybe drop blue prism down a little bit, even though last year was a pretty good year for the company. And I would definitely have Microsoft looming larger up in the upper left as a challenger more than a visionary in my opinion, but look, Gartner does good work and its analysts are very deep into this stuff, deeper than I am. So I don't want to discount that. It's just how I see it. Let's bring in the ETR data and show some of the backup here. This is a candlestick chart that shows the components of net score, which is spending momentum, however, ETR goes out every quarter. Says you're spending more, you're spending less. They subtract the lesses from the mores and that's net score. It's more complicated than that, but that's that blue line that you see in the top and yes it's trending downward but it's still highly elevated. We'll talk about that. The market share is in the yellow line at the bottom there. That green represents the percentage of customers that are spending more and the reds are spending less or replacing. That gray is flat. And again, even though UiPath's net score is declining, it's that 61%, that's a very elevated score. Anything over 40% in our view is impressive. So it's, UiPath's been holding in the 60s and 70s percents over the past several years. That's very good. Now that yellow line market share, yes it dips a bit, but again it's nuanced. And this is because Microsoft is so pervasive in the data stat. It's got so many mentions that it tends to somewhat overwhelm and skew these curves. So let's break down net score a little bit. Here's another way to look at this data. This is a wheel chart we show this often it shows the components of net score and what's happening here is that bright red is defection. So look at it, it's very small that wouldn't be churn. It's tiny. Remember that it's churn is the killer for software companies. And so that forest green is existing customers spending more at 49%, that's big. That lime green is new customers. So again, it's from the S1, 70% of UiPath's revenue comes from existing customers. And this really kind of underscores that. Now here's more evidence in the ETR data in terms of land and expand. This is a snapshot from the January survey and it lines up UiPath next to its competitors. And it cuts the data just on those companies that are increasing spending. It's so that forest green that we saw earlier. So what we saw in Q1 was the pace of new customer acquisition for UiPath was decelerating from previous highs. But UiPath, it shows here is outpacing its competition in terms of increasing spend from existing customers. So we think that's really important. UiPath gets very high scores in terms of customer satisfaction. There's, I've talked to many in theCUBE. There's places on the web where we have customer ratings. And so you want to check that out, but it'll confirm that the churn is low, satisfaction is high. Yeah, they get dinged sometimes on pricing. They get dinged sometimes, lately on service cause they're growing so fast. So, maybe they've taken the eye off the ball in a couple of counts, but generally speaking clients are leaning in, they're investing heavily. They're creating centers of excellence around RPA and automation, and UiPath is very focused on that. Again, land and expand. Now here's further evidence that UiPath has a strong account presence, even in accounts where its competitors are presence. In the 149 shared accounts from the Q1 survey where UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Microsoft have a presence, UiPath's net score or spending velocity is not only highly elevated, it's relative momentum, is accelerating compared to last year. So there's some really good news in the numbers but some other things stood out in the S1 that are concerning or at least worth paying attention to. So we want to talk about that. Here is the income statement and look at the growth. The company was doing like 1 million dollars in 2015 like I said before. And when it started to expand internationally it surpassed 600 million last year. It's insane growth. And look at the gross profit. Gross margin is almost 90% because revenue grew so rapidly. And last year, its cost went down in some areas like its services, less travel was part of that. Now jump down to the net loss line. And normally you would expect a company growing at this rate to show a loss. The street wants growth and UiPath is losing money, but it's net loss went from 519 million, half a billion down to only 92 million. And that's because the operating expenses went way down. Now, again, typically a company growing at this rate would show corresponding increases in sales and marketing expense, R&D and even G&A but all three declined in the past 12 months. Now reading the notes, there was definitely some meaningful savings from no travel and canceled events. UiPath has great events around the world. In fact theCUBE, Knock Wood is going to be at its event in October, in Las Vegas at the Bellagio . So we're stoked for that. But, to drop expenses that precipitously with such high growth, is kind of strange. Go look at Snowflake's income statement. They're in hyper-growth as well. We like to compare it to Snowflake is a very well-run company and it's in hyper-growth mode, but it's sales and marketing and R&D and G&A expense lines. They're all growing along with that revenue. Now, perhaps they're growing at a slower rate. Perhaps the percent of revenue is declining as it should as they achieve operating leverage but they're not shrinking in absolute dollar terms as shown in the UiPath S1. So either UiPath has applied some magic automation mojo to it's business (chuckling). Like magic beans or magic grits with my cousin Vinny. Maybe it has found the Holy grail of operating leverage. It's a company that's all about automation or the company was running way too hot on the expense side and had a cut and clean up its income statement for the IPO and conserve some cash. Our guess is the latter but maybe there's a combination there. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt. And just to add a bit more to this long, strange trip. When have you seen an explosive growth company just about to go public, show positive cashflow? Maybe it's happened, but it's rare in the tech and software business these days. Again, go look at companies like Snowflake. They're not showing positive cashflow, not yet anyway. They're growing and trying to run the table. So you have to ask why is UiPath operating this way? And we think it's because they were so hot and burning cash that they had to reel things in a little bit and get ready to IPO. It's going to be really interesting to see how this stock reacts when it does IPO. So here's some things that we want you to pay attention to. We have to ask. Is this IPO, is it window dressing? Or did UiPath again uncover some new productivity and operating leverage model. I doubt there's anything radically new here. This company doesn't want to miss the window. So I think it said, okay, let's do this. Let's get ready for IPO. We got to cut expenses. It had a lot of good advisors. It surrounded itself with a new board. Extended that board, new management, and really want to take advantage of this because it needs the cash. In addition, it really does want to maintain its lead. It's got Automation Anywhere competing with it. It's got Microsoft looming large. And so it wants to continue to lead. It's made some really interesting acquisitions. It's got very strong vision as you saw in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and obviously it's executing well but it's really had to tighten things up. So we think it's used the IPO as a fortune forcing function to really get its house in order. Now, will the automation mandate sustain? We think it will. The forced match to digital worked, it was effective. It wasn't pleasant, but even in a downturn we think it will confer advantage to automation players and particularly companies like UiPath that have simplified automation in a big way and have done a great job of putting in training, great freemium model and has a culture that is really committed to the future of humankind. It sounds ambitious and crazy but talk to these people, you'll see it's true. Pricing, UiPath had to dramatically expand or did dramatically expand its portfolio and had to reprice everything. And I'm not so worried about that. I think it'll figure that pricing out for that portfolio expansion. My bigger concern is for SaaS companies in general. I don't like SaaS pricing that has been popularized by Workday and ServiceNow, and Salesforce and DocuSign and all these companies that essentially lock you in for a year or two and basically charge you upfront. It's really is a one-way street. You can't dial down. You can only dial up. It's not true Cloud pricing. You look at companies like Stripe and Datadog and Snowflake. It is true Cloud pricing. It's consumption pricing. I think the traditional SaaS pricing model is flawed. It's very unfairly weighted toward the vendors and I think it's going to change. Now, the reason we put cloud on the chart is because we think Cloud pricing is the right way to price. Let people dial up and dial down, let them cancel anytime and compete on the basis of your product excellence. And yeah, give them a price concession if they do lock in. But the starting point we think should be that flexibility, pay by the drink. Cancel anytime. I mentioned some companies that are doing that as well. If you look at the modern SaaS startups and the forward-thinking VCs they're really pushing their startups to this model. So we think over time that the term lock-in model is going to give way to true consumption-based pricing and at the clients option, allow them to lock-in for a better price, way better model. And UiPath's Cloud revenue today is minimal but over time, we think it's going to continue to grow that cloud. And we think it will force a rethink in pricing and in revenue recognition. So watch for that. How is the street going to react to Daniel Dines having basically full control of the company? Generally, we feel that that solid execution if UiPath can execute is going to outweigh those concerns. In fact, I'm very confident that it will. We'll see, I kind of like what the CEO says has enough mojo to say (chuckling) you know what, I'm not going to let what happened to for instance, EMC happen to me. You saw Michael Dell do that. You saw just this week they're spinning out VMware, he's maintaining his control. VMware Dell shareholders get get 40.44 shares for every Dell share they're holding. And who's the biggest shareholder? Michael Dell. So he's, you got two companies, one chairman. He's controlling the table. Michael Dell beat the great Icahn. Who beats Carl Icahn? Well, Michael Dell beats Carl Icahn. So Daniel Dines has looked at that and says, you know what? I'm not just going to give up my company. And the reason I like that with an if, is that we think will allow the company to focus more on the long-term. The if is, it's got to execute otherwise it's so much pressure and look, the bottom line is that UiPath has really favorable market momentum and fundamentals. But it is signing up for the 90 day short clock. The fact that the CEO has control again means they can look more long term and invest accordingly. Oftentimes that's easier said than done. It does come down to execution. So it is going to be fun to watch (chuckling). That's it for now, thanks to the community for your comments and insights and really always appreciate your feedback. Remember, I publish each week on Wikibon.com and siliconangle.com and these episodes are all available as podcasts. All you got to do is search for the Breaking Analysis podcast. You can always connect with me on Twitter @dvellante or email me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com or comment on my LinkedIn posts. And we'll see you in clubhouse. Follow me and get notified when we start a room, which we've been doing with John Furrier and Sarbjeet Johal and others. And we love to riff on these topics and don't forget, please check out etr.plus for all the survey action. This is Dave Vellante, for theCUBE Insights Powered by ETR. Be well everybody. And we'll see you next time. (gentle upbeat music)

>>Yeah, yeah. >>Welcome back. I'm so excited to introduce our next session empowerment through inclusion, reimagining society and technology. This is a topic that's personally very near and dear to my heart. Did you know that there's only 2% of Latinas in technology as a Latina? I know that there's so much more we could do collectively to improve these gaps and diversity. I thought spot diversity is considered a critical element across all levels of the organization. The data shows countless times. A diverse and inclusive workforce ultimately drives innovation better performance and keeps your employees happier. That's why we're passionate about contributing to this conversation and also partnering with organizations that share our mission of improving diversity across our communities. Last beyond, we hosted the session during a breakfast and we packed the whole room. This year, we're bringing the conversation to the forefront to emphasize the importance of diversity and data and share the positive ramifications that it has for your organization. Joining us for this session are thought spots Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindy Housing and Ruhollah Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Thank you, Paola. So many >>of you have journeyed with me for years now on our efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the data and analytic space. And >>I would say >>over time we cautiously started commiserating, eventually sharing best practices to make ourselves and our companies better. And I do consider it a milestone. Last year, as Paola mentioned that half the room was filled with our male allies. But I remember one of our Panelists, Natalie Longhurst from Vodafone, suggesting that we move it from a side hallway conversation, early morning breakfast to the main stage. And I >>think it was >>Bill Zang from a I G in Japan. Who said Yes, please. Everyone else agreed, but more than a main stage topic, I want to ask you to think about inclusion beyond your role beyond your company toe. How Data and analytics can be used to impact inclusion and equity for the society as a whole. Are we using data to reveal patterns or to perpetuate problems leading Tobias at scale? You are the experts, the change agents, the leaders that can prevent this. I am thrilled to introduce you to the leading authority on this topic, Rou Ha Benjamin, associate professor of African studies at Princeton University and author of Multiple Books. The Latest Race After Technology. Rou ha Welcome. >>Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you today, and I thought I would just kick things off with some opening reflections on this really important session theme. And then we could jump into discussion. So I'd like us to as a starting point, um, wrestle with these buzzwords, empowerment and inclusion so that we can have them be more than kind of big platitudes and really have them reflected in our workplace cultures and the things that we design in the technologies that we put out into the world. And so to do that, I think we have to move beyond techno determinism, and I'll explain what that means in just a minute. Techno determinism comes in two forms. The first, on your left is the idea that technology automation, um, all of these emerging trends are going to harm us, are going to necessarily harm humanity. They're going to take all the jobs they're going to remove human agency. This is what we might call the techno dystopian version of the story and this is what Hollywood loves to sell us in the form of movies like The Matrix or Terminator. The other version on your right is the techno utopian story that technologies automation. The robots as a shorthand, are going to save humanity. They're gonna make everything more efficient, more equitable. And in this case, on the surface, he seemed like opposing narratives right there, telling us different stories. At least they have different endpoints. But when you pull back the screen and look a little bit more closely, you see that they share an underlying logic that technology is in the driver's seat and that human beings that social society can just respond to what's happening. But we don't really have a say in what technologies air designed and so to move beyond techno determinism the notion that technology is in the driver's seat. We have to put the human agents and agencies back into the story, the protagonists, and think carefully about what the human desires worldviews, values, assumptions are that animate the production of technology. And so we have to put the humans behind the screen back into view. And so that's a very first step and when we do that, we see, as was already mentioned, that it's a very homogeneous group right now in terms of who gets the power and the resource is to produce the digital and physical infrastructure that everyone else has to live with. And so, as a first step, we need to think about how to create more participation of those who are working behind the scenes to design technology now to dig a little more a deeper into this, I want to offer a kind of low tech example before we get to the more hi tech ones. So what you see in front of you here is a simple park bench public bench. It's located in Berkeley, California, which is where I went to graduate school and on this particular visit I was living in Boston, and so I was back in California. It was February. It was freezing where I was coming from, and so I wanted to take a few minutes in between meetings to just lay out in the sun and soak in some vitamin D, and I quickly realized, actually, I couldn't lay down on this bench because of the way it had been designed with these arm rests at intermittent intervals. And so here I thought. Okay, the the armrest have, ah functional reason why they're there. I mean, you could literally rest your elbows there or, um, you know, it can create a little bit of privacy of someone sitting there that you don't know. When I was nine months pregnant, it could help me get up and down or for the elderly, the same thing. So it has a lot of functional reasons, but I also thought about the fact that it prevents people who are homeless from sleeping on the bench. And this is the Bay area that we were talking about where, in fact, the tech boom has gone hand in hand with a housing crisis. Those things have grown in tandem. So innovation has grown within equity because we haven't thought carefully about how to address the social context in which technology grows and blossoms. And so I thought, Okay, this crisis is growing in this area, and so perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to make sure that people don't sleep on the benches by the way that they're designed and where the where they're implemented and So this is what we might call structural inequity. By the way something is designed. It has certain effects that exclude or harm different people. And so it may not necessarily be the intense, but that's the effect. And I did a little digging, and I found, in fact, it's a global phenomenon, this thing that architects called hostile architecture. Er, I found single occupancy benches in Helsinki, so only one booty at a time no laying down there. I found caged benches in France. And in this particular town. What's interesting here is that the mayor put these benches out in this little shopping plaza, and within 24 hours the people in the town rallied together and had them removed. So we see here that just because we have, uh, discriminatory design in our public space doesn't mean we have to live with it. We can actually work together to ensure that our public space reflects our better values. But I think my favorite example of all is the meter bench. In this case, this bench is designed with spikes in them, and to get the spikes to retreat into the bench, you have to feed the meter you have to put some coins in, and I think it buys you about 15 or 20 minutes. Then the spikes come back up. And so you'll be happy to know that in this case, this was designed by a German artists to get people to think critically about issues of design, not just the design of physical space but the design of all kinds of things, public policies. And so we can think about how our public life in general is metered, that it serves those that can pay the price and others are excluded or harm, whether we're talking about education or health care. And the meter bench also presents something interesting. For those of us who care about technology, it creates a technical fix for a social problem. In fact, it started out his art. But some municipalities in different parts of the world have actually adopted this in their public spaces in their parks in order to deter so called lawyers from using that space. And so, by a technical fix, we mean something that creates a short term effect, right. It gets people who may want to sleep on it out of sight. They're unable to use it, but it doesn't address the underlying problems that create that need to sleep outside in the first place. And so, in addition to techno determinism, we have to think critically about technical fixes that don't address the underlying issues that technology is meant to solve. And so this is part of a broader issue of discriminatory design, and we can apply the bench metaphor to all kinds of things that we work with or that we create. And the question we really have to continuously ask ourselves is, What values are we building in to the physical and digital infrastructures around us? What are the spikes that we may unwittingly put into place? Or perhaps we didn't create the spikes. Perhaps we started a new job or a new position, and someone hands us something. This is the way things have always been done. So we inherit the spike bench. What is our responsibility when we noticed that it's creating these kinds of harms or exclusions or technical fixes that are bypassing the underlying problem? What is our responsibility? All of this came to a head in the context of financial technologies. I don't know how many of you remember these high profile cases of tech insiders and CEOs who applied for Apple, the Apple card and, in one case, a husband and wife applied and the husband, the husband received a much higher limit almost 20 times the limit as his wife, even though they shared bank accounts, they lived in Common Law State. And so the question. There was not only the fact that the husband was receiving a much better interest rate and the limit, but also that there was no mechanism for the individuals involved to dispute what was happening. They didn't even know what the factors were that they were being judged that was creating this form of discrimination. So in terms of financial technologies, it's not simply the outcome that's the issue. Or that could be discriminatory, but the process that black boxes, all of the decision making that makes it so that consumers and the general public have no way to question it. No way to understand how they're being judged adversely, and so it's the process not only the product that we have to care a lot about. And so the case of the apple cart is part of a much broader phenomenon of, um, racist and sexist robots. This is how the headlines framed it a few years ago, and I was so interested in this framing because there was a first wave of stories that seemed to be shocked at the prospect that technology is not neutral. Then there was a second wave of stories that seemed less surprised. Well, of course, technology inherits its creator's biases. And now I think we've entered a phase of attempts to override and address the default settings of so called racist and sexist robots, for better or worse. And here robots is just a kind of shorthand, that the way people are talking about automation and emerging technologies more broadly. And so as I was encountering these headlines, I was thinking about how these air, not problems simply brought on by machine learning or AI. They're not all brand new, and so I wanted to contribute to the conversation, a kind of larger context and a longer history for us to think carefully about the social dimensions of technology. And so I developed a concept called the New Jim Code, which plays on the phrase Jim Crow, which is the way that the regime of white supremacy and inequality in this country was defined in a previous era, and I wanted us to think about how that legacy continues to haunt the present, how we might be coding bias into emerging technologies and the danger being that we imagine those technologies to be objective. And so this gives us a language to be able to name this phenomenon so that we can address it and change it under this larger umbrella of the new Jim Code are four distinct ways that this phenomenon takes shape from the more obvious engineered inequity. Those were the kinds of inequalities tech mediated inequalities that we can generally see coming. They're kind of obvious. But then we go down the line and we see it becomes harder to detect. It's happening in our own backyards. It's happening around us, and we don't really have a view into the black box, and so it becomes more insidious. And so in the remaining couple minutes, I'm just just going to give you a taste of the last three of these, and then a move towards conclusion that we can start chatting. So when it comes to default discrimination. This is the way that social inequalities become embedded in emerging technologies because designers of these technologies aren't thinking carefully about history and sociology. Ah, great example of this came Thio headlines last fall when it was found that widely used healthcare algorithm affecting millions of patients, um, was discriminating against black patients. And so what's especially important to note here is that this algorithm healthcare algorithm does not explicitly take note of race. That is to say, it is race neutral by using cost to predict healthcare needs. This digital triaging system unwittingly reproduces health disparities because, on average, black people have incurred fewer costs for a variety of reasons, including structural inequality. So in my review of this study by Obermeyer and colleagues, I want to draw attention to how indifference to social reality can be even more harmful than malicious intent. It doesn't have to be the intent of the designers to create this effect, and so we have to look carefully at how indifference is operating and how race neutrality can be a deadly force. When we move on to the next iteration of the new Jim code coded exposure, there's attention because on the one hand, you see this image where the darker skin individual is not being detected by the facial recognition system, right on the camera or on the computer. And so coated exposure names this tension between wanting to be seen and included and recognized, whether it's in facial recognition or in recommendation systems or in tailored advertising. But the opposite of that, the tension is with when you're over included. When you're surveiled when you're to centered. And so we should note that it's not simply in being left out, that's the problem. But it's in being included in harmful ways. And so I want us to think carefully about the rhetoric of inclusion and understand that inclusion is not simply an end point. It's a process, and it is possible to include people in harmful processes. And so we want to ensure that the process is not harmful for it to really be effective. The last iteration of the new Jim Code. That means the the most insidious, let's say, is technologies that are touted as helping US address bias, so they're not simply including people, but they're actively working to address bias. And so in this case, There are a lot of different companies that are using AI to hire, create hiring software and hiring algorithms, including this one higher view. And the idea is that there there's a lot that AI can keep track of that human beings might miss. And so so the software can make data driven talent decisions. After all, the problem of employment discrimination is widespread and well documented. So the logic goes, Wouldn't this be even more reason to outsource decisions to AI? Well, let's think about this carefully. And this is the look of the idea of techno benevolence trying to do good without fully reckoning with what? How technology can reproduce inequalities. So some colleagues of mine at Princeton, um, tested a natural learning processing algorithm and was looking to see whether it exhibited the same, um, tendencies that psychologists have documented among humans. E. And what they found was that in fact, the algorithm associating black names with negative words and white names with pleasant sounding words. And so this particular audit builds on a classic study done around 2003, before all of the emerging technologies were on the scene where two University of Chicago economists sent out thousands of resumes to employers in Boston and Chicago, and all they did was change the names on those resumes. All of the other work history education were the same, and then they waited to see who would get called back. And the applicants, the fictional applicants with white sounding names received 50% more callbacks than the black applicants. So if you're presented with that study, you might be tempted to say, Well, let's let technology handle it since humans are so biased. But my colleagues here in computer science found that this natural language processing algorithm actually reproduced those same associations with black and white names. So, too, with gender coded words and names Amazon learned a couple years ago when its own hiring algorithm was found discriminating against women. Nevertheless, it should be clear by now why technical fixes that claim to bypass human biases are so desirable. If Onley there was a way to slay centuries of racist and sexist demons with a social justice box beyond desirable, more like magical, magical for employers, perhaps looking to streamline the grueling work of recruitment but a curse from any jobseekers, as this headline puts it, your next interview could be with a racist spot, bringing us back to that problem space we started with just a few minutes ago. So it's worth noting that job seekers are already developing ways to subvert the system by trading answers to employers test and creating fake applications as informal audits of their own. In terms of a more collective response, there's a federation of European Trade unions call you and I Global that's developed a charter of digital rights for work, others that touches on automated and a I based decisions to be included in bargaining agreements. And so this is one of many efforts to change their ecosystem to change the context in which technology is being deployed to ensure more protections and more rights for everyday people in the US There's the algorithmic accountability bill that's been presented, and it's one effort to create some more protections around this ubiquity of automated decisions, and I think we should all be calling from more public accountability when it comes to the widespread use of automated decisions. Another development that keeps me somewhat hopeful is that tech workers themselves are increasingly speaking out against the most egregious forms of corporate collusion with state sanctioned racism. And to get a taste of that, I encourage you to check out the hashtag Tech won't build it. Among other statements that they have made and walking out and petitioning their companies. Who one group said, as the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit in terms of education, which is my own ground zero. Um, it's a place where we can we can grow a more historically and socially literate approach to tech design. And this is just one, um, resource that you all can download, Um, by developed by some wonderful colleagues at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York and the goal of this interventionist threefold to develop an intellectual understanding of how structural racism operates and algorithms, social media platforms and technologies, not yet developed and emotional intelligence concerning how to resolve racially stressful situations within organizations, and a commitment to take action to reduce harms to communities of color. And so as a final way to think about why these things are so important, I want to offer a couple last provocations. The first is for us to think a new about what actually is deep learning when it comes to computation. I want to suggest that computational depth when it comes to a I systems without historical or social depth, is actually superficial learning. And so we need to have a much more interdisciplinary, integrated approach to knowledge production and to observing and understanding patterns that don't simply rely on one discipline in order to map reality. The last provocation is this. If, as I suggested at the start, inequity is woven into the very fabric of our society, it's built into the design of our. Our policies are physical infrastructures and now even our digital infrastructures. That means that each twist, coil and code is a chance for us toe. We've new patterns, practices and politics. The vastness of the problems that we're up against will be their undoing. Once we accept that we're pattern makers. So what does that look like? It looks like refusing color blindness as an anecdote to tech media discrimination rather than refusing to see difference. Let's take stock of how the training data and the models that we're creating have these built in decisions from the past that have often been discriminatory. It means actually thinking about the underside of inclusion, which can be targeting. And how do we create a more participatory rather than predatory form of inclusion? And ultimately, it also means owning our own power in these systems so that we can change the patterns of the past. If we're if we inherit a spiked bench, that doesn't mean that we need to continue using it. We can work together to design more just and equitable technologies. So with that, I look forward to our conversation. >>Thank you, Ruth. Ha. That was I expected it to be amazing, as I have been devouring your book in the last few weeks. So I knew that would be impactful. I know we will never think about park benches again. How it's art. And you laid down the gauntlet. Oh, my goodness. That tech won't build it. Well, I would say if the thoughts about team has any saying that we absolutely will build it and will continue toe educate ourselves. So you made a few points that it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. So unintentional has as big an impact. Um, how do we address that does it just start with awareness building or how do we address that? >>Yeah, so it's important. I mean, it's important. I have good intentions. And so, by saying that intentions are not the end, all be all. It doesn't mean that we're throwing intentions out. But it is saying that there's so many things that happened in the world, happened unwittingly without someone sitting down to to make it good or bad. And so this goes on both ends. The analogy that I often use is if I'm parked outside and I see someone, you know breaking into my car, I don't run out there and say Now, do you feel Do you feel in your heart that you're a thief? Do you intend to be a thief? I don't go and grill their identity or their intention. Thio harm me, but I look at the effect of their actions, and so in terms of art, the teams that we work on, I think one of the things that we can do again is to have a range of perspectives around the table that can think ahead like chess, about how things might play out, but also once we've sort of created something and it's, you know, it's entered into, you know, the world. We need to have, ah, regular audits and check ins to see when it's going off track just because we intended to do good and set it out when it goes sideways, we need mechanisms, formal mechanisms that actually are built into the process that can get it back on track or even remove it entirely if we find And we see that with different products, right that get re called. And so we need that to be formalized rather than putting the burden on the people that are using these things toe have to raise the awareness or have to come to us like with the apple card, Right? To say this thing is not fair. Why don't we have that built into the process to begin with? >>Yeah, so a couple things. So my dad used to say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so that's >>yes on. In fact, in the book, I say the road to hell is paved with technical fixes. So they're me and your dad are on the same page, >>and I I love your point about bringing different perspectives. And I often say this is why diversity is not just about business benefits. It's your best recipe for for identifying the early biases in the data sets in the way we build things. And yet it's such a thorny problem to address bringing new people in from tech. So in the absence of that, what do we do? Is it the outside review boards? Or do you think regulation is the best bet as you mentioned a >>few? Yeah, yeah, we need really need a combination of things. I mean, we need So on the one hand, we need something like a do no harm, um, ethos. So with that we see in medicine so that it becomes part of the fabric and the culture of organizations that that those values, the social values, have equal or more weight than the other kinds of economic imperatives. Right. So we have toe have a reckoning in house, but we can't leave it to people who are designing and have a vested interest in getting things to market to regulate themselves. We also need independent accountability. So we need a combination of this and going back just to your point about just thinking about like, the diversity on teams. One really cautionary example comes to mind from last fall, when Google's New Pixel four phone was about to come out and it had a kind of facial recognition component to it that you could open the phone and they had been following this research that shows that facial recognition systems don't work as well on darker skin individuals, right? And so they wanted Thio get a head start. They wanted to prevent that, right? So they had good intentions. They didn't want their phone toe block out darker skin, you know, users from from using it. And so what they did was they were trying to diversify their training data so that the system would work better and they hired contract workers, and they told these contract workers to engage black people, tell them to use the phone play with, you know, some kind of app, take a selfie so that their faces would populate that the training set, But they didn't. They did not tell the people what their faces were gonna be used for, so they withheld some information. They didn't tell them. It was being used for the spatial recognition system, and the contract workers went to the media and said Something's not right. Why are we being told? Withhold information? And in fact, they told them, going back to the park bench example. To give people who are homeless $5 gift cards to play with the phone and get their images in this. And so this all came to light and Google withdrew this research and this process because it was so in line with a long history of using marginalized, most vulnerable people and populations to make technologies better when those technologies are likely going toe, harm them in terms of surveillance and other things. And so I think I bring this up here to go back to our question of how the composition of teams might help address this. I think often about who is in that room making that decision about sending, creating this process of the contract workers and who the selfies and so on. Perhaps it was a racially homogeneous group where people didn't want really sensitive to how this could be experienced or seen, but maybe it was a diverse, racially diverse group and perhaps the history of harm when it comes to science and technology. Maybe they didn't have that disciplinary knowledge. And so it could also be a function of what people knew in the room, how they could do that chest in their head and think how this is gonna play out. It's not gonna play out very well. And the last thing is that maybe there was disciplinary diversity. Maybe there was racial ethnic diversity, but maybe the workplace culture made it to those people. Didn't feel like they could speak up right so you could have all the diversity in the world. But if you don't create a context in which people who have those insights feel like they can speak up and be respected and heard, then you're basically sitting on a reservoir of resource is and you're not tapping into it to ensure T to do right by your company. And so it's one of those cautionary tales I think that we can all learn from to try to create an environment where we can elicit those insights from our team and our and our coworkers, >>your point about the culture. This is really inclusion very different from just diversity and thought. Eso I like to end on a hopeful note. A prescriptive note. You have some of the most influential data and analytics leaders and experts attending virtually here. So if you imagine the way we use data and housing is a great example, mortgage lending has not been equitable for African Americans in particular. But if you imagine the right way to use data, what is the future hold when we've gotten better at this? More aware >>of this? Thank you for that question on DSO. You know, there's a few things that come to mind for me one. And I think mortgage environment is really the perfect sort of context in which to think through the the both. The problem where the solutions may lie. One of the most powerful ways I see data being used by different organizations and groups is to shine a light on the past and ongoing inequities. And so oftentimes, when people see the bias, let's say when it came to like the the hiring algorithm or the language out, they see the names associated with negative or positive words that tends toe have, ah, bigger impact because they think well, Wow, The technology is reflecting these biases. It really must be true. Never mind that people might have been raising the issues in other ways before. But I think one of the most powerful ways we can use data and technology is as a mirror onto existing forms of inequality That then can motivate us to try to address those things. The caution is that we cannot just address those once we come to grips with the problem, the solution is not simply going to be a technical solution. And so we have to understand both the promise of data and the limits of data. So when it comes to, let's say, a software program, let's say Ah, hiring algorithm that now is trained toe look for diversity as opposed to homogeneity and say I get hired through one of those algorithms in a new workplace. I can get through the door and be hired. But if nothing else about that workplace has changed and on a day to day basis I'm still experiencing microaggressions. I'm still experiencing all kinds of issues. Then that technology just gave me access to ah harmful environment, you see, and so this is the idea that we can't simply expect the technology to solve all of our problems. We have to do the hard work. And so I would encourage everyone listening to both except the promise of these tools, but really crucially, um, Thio, understand that the rial kinds of changes that we need to make are gonna be messy. They're not gonna be quick fixes. If you think about how long it took our society to create the kinds of inequities that that we now it lived with, we should expect to do our part, do the work and pass the baton. We're not going to magically like Fairy does create a wonderful algorithm that's gonna help us bypass these issues. It can expose them. But then it's up to us to actually do the hard work of changing our social relations are changing the culture of not just our workplaces but our schools. Our healthcare systems are neighborhoods so that they reflect our better values. >>Yeah. Ha. So beautifully said I think all of us are willing to do the hard work. And I like your point about using it is a mirror and thought spot. We like to say a fact driven world is a better world. It can give us that transparency. So on behalf of everyone, thank you so much for your passion for your hard work and for talking to us. >>Thank you, Cindy. Thank you so much for inviting me. Hey, I live back to you. >>Thank you, Cindy and rou ha. For this fascinating exploration of our society and technology, we're just about ready to move on to our final session of the day. So make sure to tune in for this customer case study session with executives from Sienna and Accenture on driving digital transformation with certain AI.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit Online. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. I wish we could be there in person, but we're doing remote because of the COVID and the pandemic. We've got a great guest, Paul Grist. Worldwide Public Sector, Head of Education International for AWS. Paul, thank you for coming on remotely. >> Great to be here, John. >> There's a lot of disruption in the education space this year with universities and schools still uncertain about what the future will look like. What are some of the biggest trends you're seeing? >> John, what we've seen is the rapid adoption of technology and the growth of flexible online learning, learning that can take place anytime, anywhere. What we've seen is universities, national education systems, and schools rapidly migrating systems and content to the cloud, spinning up new applications. And we've seen companies that provide technology and content and platforms, the ed techs and publishers of the world, increasing their capacity, increasing their capability to deliver new applications to education. >> What is some of this research that you're finding out there? >> Yeah. You know, a time of much change and things happening very, very fast. We responded fast to the changes, John. Got a load of customer conversations together, looking at speeches by educationalists who were responding to the changes at some of the online events that spun up very quickly at places like the University of Buckingham, ASU, JSV, Inside Higher Education, places like Blackboard World. And really just talked to those leaders about their responses to the change, what kinds of things they were doing, and brought that together into the research. It's underpinned by some in-depth research and insights from education reports and articles too. >> Thanks Paul, really appreciate it. Having that research is critical. I know you guys do a lot of work on that. I know you got some news, take a quick plug for the new research that's coming out. You guys just put out today, just take a minute to quickly explain what it's about and how to find it. >> We're publishing today some new research that shows the seven key emerging trends in this new world of education. Check it out on the AWS website. Two key trends, flexible learning and the new world of employability. >> So you guys got a lot of data. It's great with Amazon, got a lot of customers. Good to see you guys getting that research. The question I have for you Paul is, what amount of the research shows really the COVID situation? Because there's before COVID, there's kind of during, and then there's going to be a post-COVID mode. Was that prior research in place with COVID or after COVID? Can you share kind of the update on the relevance of your research? >> Yeah, I think the sector has changed. The sector has gone through the fastest change it's ever gone through. And undoubtedly most of the issues, most of the challenges and opportunities in the sector, predate the pandemic. But what we've seen is COVID accelerate many of the challenges and the opportunities, but also bring new opportunities. >> Yeah, one of the things we've seen with education is the disruption, and the forcing function with COVID. There's a problem, we all know what it is. It's important, there's consequences for those. And you can quantify the disruption with real business value and certainly student impact. There's been downsides with remote education. More teacher-parent involvement and students having to deal with isolation, less social interaction. How do you guys see that? Or what is Amazon doing to solve these problems? Can you talk about that? >> Yeah. I think you know, education is very much a people business. And what we've been trying to do is partner with organizations to ensure that the people are kept at the center of the business. So working with organizations such as LS, sorry, Los Angeles United School District in the US to spin up a call center to allow students to contact their tutors. And parents to interact with tutors, to get questions answered. >> So one of the challenges these academic institutions are facing is speed, it's pace of change. What's going on with competition? How are they competing? How are universities and colleges staying relevant? Obviously there's a financial crisis involved. There's also the actual delivery aspect of it. More and more mergers. You're starting to see ecosystem changes. Can you talk about what's going on in the educational ecosystem? >> Yeah I mean, educational institutions are being forced to rethink their business models. It's an international marketplace in higher education. It's been a growing marketplace for many, many years. That suddenly stopped overnight, so every university has had to rethink about where their revenues are coming from, where the students are coming from. There's been some surprises too. I mean in the UK, actually international enrollments are up post-COVID because one of the strange side effects of COVID is without being able to travel, there's actually a cost saving for students. And so we've seen universities in the UK benefit from students who want to study, perhaps travel and the cost of study was too high previously. Now being able to study remotely. It's an unexpected and unintended consequence. But it kind of shows how there are opportunities for all organizations during this time. >> Many countries had to cancel exams altogether this year, which has been a big, huge problem. I mean people are outraged and people want to learn. It's been, you know, the silver lining in all this is that you have the internet (laughs). You have the cloud. I want to get your thoughts. How are universities and schools dealing with this challenge? Because you have a multi-sided marketplace. You've got the institutions, you've got the students, you got the educators, they all have to be successful. How are universities dealing with this challenge? >> Yeah I think, you know, teaching and learning has been online for 20, 30 years. And I think a lot of organizations have adopted online teaching and learning. But I think assessment is the one big area of education that remains to be made available at scale at low cost. So most assessment is still a pen-and-paper-based. There's big trust and identity issues. And what we're seeing through this COVID change is organizations really getting to grip with both of those issues. So, having the confidence to put assessment online, to make it available at scale, and then also having the confidence to tackle trust and identity questions. So who is taking the exam, where are they sitting? Can we be sure that it's actually that person taking that exam? So you know, the rise of things like proctoring technologies giving organizations the opportunity to assess remotely. >> How has this crisis affected research at academic institutions? Because certainly we know that if you need a lab or something, certainly we're seeing students need to be physically in person. But with remote and all those changes going on with the scale and the pace of change, how has research at academic institutions been impacted? >> Yeah I mean, research has always been a really collaborative activity, but we've seen that collaboration increase. It's had to increase. Researchers have had to go remote. Many of them work in labs. They haven't been able to do that. They've needed to spin up applications and new technologies in the cloud to continue working. But what we're seeing is governments taking an increased interest in the research being applicable, making sure that it leads to innovation which is meaningful. Getting much more involved and insisting that the research is made available now. And of course there's no place that that's clearer than in health research and trying to find a cure for COVID. And then secondly, we're seeing that research is becoming much more collaborative not just across institutions but also countries. So one of the great projects we're involved in at the moment is with the University of Adelaide who are collaborating with researchers from the Breeding and Acclimatization Institute in Poland on a project to study the increase in crop yield of wheat. >> One of the things that's coming out of this, whether it's research or students is open online courses, virtual capabilities. But a concept called stackable learning. Can you explain what that is? >> Yeah. We're in a global marketplace in education and there's increased competition between universities and education providers to make new types of certificates and online badges available. We know that employers are looking for ever more agile methods of scaling and upskilling. And stackable learning is a concept that's been around for a couple of decades now, where learning is broken down into smaller chunks, put together in a more personalized way from a number of different providers. Spun up very, very quickly to respond to need and then delivered to students. We're seeing some of the big providers like edX and Coursera who, again have been around for over a decade become really prominent in the provision of some of these stackable credentials. Their systems run on the cloud. They're easy to access, in many, many cases they're free. We're seeing an increasing number of employers and education institutions adopt and embed these types of delivery systems into their curriculum. >> Totally a fan of stackable learning, it's called the Lego model, whatever I call it. But also online brings the nonlinear progressions. The role of data is super important. So I'm very bullish on education being disrupted by cloud providers and new apps. So you know, I wanted to call that out because I think it's super important. Let me get to a really important piece that it has to be addressed, and I want to get your thoughts on. Cyber security. Okay, cyber attacks and privacy of students are two areas that are super important for institutions to address. What's your reaction to that? >> Yeah, I mean the use of more technology becomes, you know again, a target for cyber attack and unfortunately it's an increasing phenomenon. Simply put, every organization needs to put security first. Needs to operate as a security-first organization. They need to adopt technologies, people and processes that can protect their investments. And work with data management vendors, cloud vendors who've got the compliances and the common privacy and security frameworks such as GDPR in place to make sure that they provide secure services. AWS's security offerings include auditing, login and identity management, data encryption capabilities that offer more transparency and control, to allow institutions protect student data. >> Super important, thanks for sharing. Finally, what's the steps institutions can take to close the digital divide because now some people are taking gap years. Research is changing. People might not even have PCs or internet connections. There's still, this exposes the haves and have nots. What steps can institutions take to do their part? >> Yeah, digital learning is here to stay, John. We've learned that many learners do not have access to technology necessary for online learning. Whether those are devices or a reliable internet connection. But again, you know governments, states, educational authorities have all turned their attention to these issues over the last few months. And we're seeing organizations partner with technology providers that can provide internet connections. Partners in AWS, such as Kajeet who've installed hotspot devices on buses to deploy in areas with no connectivity. You know whether that's a place like Denver, Colorado or whether it's a place, you know, in Nigeria in Africa, remote connection remains a problem everywhere. And we're seeing everybody addressing that issue now. >> Paul, great to have you on theCUBE and sharing your insights on what's going on in international education. Final question for you. In your own words, why is this year at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online important? What's the most important story that people should walk away in this educational industry? >> The most important story, John, is it's a time of incredible change but also incredible opportunity. And we're seeing organizations who have wanted to change, who've wanted to deliver more to their students, who want to deliver a greater experience, who want to access more students and have much greater reach. Now with the appetite to do that. re:Invent is a great opportunity to work with AWS, to understand what's going on with our partners, with our customers. And look at some of the common solutions for the challenges that they're looking to solve. >> Paul Grist, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Worldwide Head of Education for International AWS. Thank you for sharing. >> Thanks John, great to be here. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Online Summit. Remote, virtual, this is theCUBE virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(radio calls) >> Announcer: From around the globe, its theCUBE covering Space & Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal poly. Hello, welcome back to theCUBE virtual coverage with Cal Poly for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium, a day four and the wrap up session, keynote session with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis. She's here to deliver her keynote speech on the topic of California's role in supporting America's Cybersecurity future. Eleni, take it away. >> Thank you, John, for the introduction. I am Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. It is an honor to be part of Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. As I speak kind of Pierre with the governor's office of business and economic development is available on the chat, too ready to answer any questions you might have. California and indeed the world are facing significant challenges right now. Every day we are faced with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that is ensued. We have flattened the curve in California and are moving in the right direction but it is clear that we're not out of the woods yet. It is also impossible right now to escape the reality of climate change from the fire sparked by exceptionally rare, dry lightening events to extreme heat waves threatening public health and putting a strain on our electricity grid. We see that climate change is here now. And of course we've been recently confronted with a series of brutal examples of institutionalized racism that have created an awakening among people of all walks of life and compelled us into the streets to march and protest. In the context of all this, we cannot forget that we continue to be faced with other less visible but still very serious challenges. Cybersecurity threats are one of these. We have seen cities, companies and individuals paralyzed by attacks costing time and money and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity. Our state agencies, local governments, police departments, utilities, news outlets and private companies from all industries are target. The threats around cybersecurity are serious but not unlike all the challenges we face in California. We have the tools and fortitude to address them. That is why this symposium is so important. Thank you, Cal Poly and all the participants for being here and for the important contributions you bring to this conference. I'd like to also say a few words about California's role in America's future in space. California has been at the forefront of the aerospace industry for more than a century through all the major innovations in aerospace from wooden aircraft, to World War II Bombers, to rockets and Mars rovers. California has played a pivotal role. Today, California is the number one state in total defense spending, defense contract spending and total number of personnel. It is estimated the Aerospace and Defense Industry, provides $168 billion in economic impact to our state. And America's best trained and most experienced aerospace and technology workforce lives here in California. The fact that the aerospace and defense sector, has had a strong history in California is no accident. California has always had strong innovation ecosystem and robust infrastructure that puts many sectors in a position to thrive. Of course, a big part of that infrastructure is a skilled workforce. And at the foundation of a skilled workforce is education. California has the strongest system of public higher education in the world. We're home to 10 university of California campuses, 23 California State university campuses and 116 California Community Colleges. All told nearly 3 million students are enrolled in public higher education. We also have world renowned private universities including the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University numbers one and three in the country for aerospace engineering. California also has four national laboratories and several NASA facilities. California possesses a strong spirit of innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Half of all venture capital funding in the United States, goes to companies here in California. Lastly, but certainly no less critical to our success, California is a diverse state. 27% of all Californians are foreign born, 27% more than one in four of our population of 40 million people are immigrants from another country, Europe central and South America, India, Asia, everywhere. Our rich cultural diversity is our strength and helps drive our economy. As I look to the future of industries like cybersecurity and the growing commercial space industry, I know our state will need to work with those industries to make sure we continue to train our workforce for the demands of an evolving industry. The office of the lieutenant governor has a unique perspective on higher education and workforce development. I'm on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board of Trustees. And as of about two weeks ago, the Community Colleges Board of Governors. The office of the lieutenant governor is now the only office that is a member of every governing board, overseeing our public higher education system. Earlier in the symposium, we heard a rich discussion with Undersecretary Stewart Knox from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency about what the state is doing to meet the needs of space and cybersecurity industries. As he mentioned, there are over 37,000 job vacancies in cybersecurity in our state. We need to address that gap. To do so, I see an important role for public private partnerships. We need input from industry and curriculum development. Some companies like Lockheed Martin, have very productive partnerships with universities and community colleges that train students with skills they need to enter aerospace and cyber industries. That type of collaboration will be key. We also need help from the industry to make sure students know that fields like cybersecurity even exist. People's early career interests are so often shaped by the jobs that members of their family have or what they see in popular culture. With such a young and evolving field like cybersecurity, many students are unaware of the job opportunities. I know for my visits to university campuses that students are hungry for STEM career paths where they see opportunities for good paying jobs. When I spoke with students at UC Merced, many of them were first generation college students who went through community college system before enrolling in a UC and they gravitated to STEM majors. With so many job opportunities available to STEM students, cybersecurity ought to be one that they are aware of and consider. Since this symposium is being hosted by Cal Poly, I wanted to highlight the tremendous work they're doing as leaders in the space and cybersecurity industry. Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute, does incredible work bringing together academia, industry and government training the next generation of cyber experts and researching emerging cybersecurity issues. As we heard from the President of Cal Poly, Jeff Armstrong the university is in the perfect location to contribute to a thriving space industry. It's close to Vandenberg Air Force Base and UC Santa Barbara and could be home to the future permanent headquarters of US Space Command. The state is also committed to supporting this space industry in the Central Coast. In July, the State of California, Cal poly US-based force and the others signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a commercial space port at Vandenberg Air Force Base and to develop a master plan to grow the commercial space industry in the region. Governor Newsom has made a commitment to lift up all regions of the state. And this strategy will position the Central Coast to be a global leader in the future of the space industry. I'd like to leave you with a few final thoughts, with everything we're facing. Fires, climate change, pandemic. It is easy to feel overwhelmed but I remain optimistic because I know that the people of the State of California are resilient, persistent, and determined to address our challenges and show a path toward a better future for ourselves and our families. The growth of the space industry and the economic development potential of projects like the Spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base, our great example of what we can look forward to. The potential for the commercial space industry to become a $3 trillion industry by mid century, as many experts predict is another. There are so many opportunities, new companies are going to emerge doing things we never could have dreamed of today. As Lieutenant General John Thompson said in the first session, the next few years of space and cyber innovation are not going to be a pony ride at the state fair, they're going to be a rodeo. We should all saddle up. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much, Eleni. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your participation and all your support to you and your staff. You guys doing a lot of work, a lot going on in California but cybersecurity and space as it comes together, California's playing a pivotal role in leading the world and the community. Thank you very much for your time. >> Okay, this session is going to continue with Bill Britton. Who's the vice president of technology and CIO at Cal Poly but more importantly, he's the director of the cyber institute located at Cal Poly. It's a global organization looking at the intersection of space and cybersecurity. Bill, let's wrap this up. Eleni had a great talk, talking about the future of cybersecurity in America and its future. The role California is playing, Cal Poly is right in the Central Coast. You're in the epicenter of it. We've had a great lineup here. Thanks for coming on. Let's put a capstone on this event. >> Thank you, John. But most importantly, thanks for being a great partner helping us get this to move forward and really changing the dynamic of this conversation. What an amazing time we're at, we had quite an unusual group but it's really kind of the focus and we've moved a lot of space around ourselves. And we've gone from Lieutenant General Thompson and the discussion of the opposition and space force and what things are going on in the future, the importance of cyber in space. And then we went on and moved on to the operations. And we had a private company who builds, we had the DOD, Department Of Defense and their context and NASA and theirs. And then we talked about public private partnerships from President Armstrong, Mr. Bhangu Mahad from the DOD and Mr. Steve Jacques from the National Security Space Association. It's been an amazing conference for one thing, I've heard repeatedly over and over and over, the reference to digital, the reference to cloud, the reference to the need for cybersecurity to be involved and really how important that is to start earlier than just at the employment level. To really go down into the system, the K through 12 and start there. And what an amazing time to be able to start there because we're returning to space in a larger capacity and it's now all around us. And the lieutenant governor really highlighted for us that California is intimately involved and we have to find a way to get our students involved at that same level. >> I want to ask you about this inflection point that was a big theme of this conference and symposium. It was throughout the interviews and throughout the conversations, both on the chat and also kind of on Twitter as well in the social web. Is that this new generation, it wasn't just space and government DOD, all the normal stuff you see, you saw JPL, the Hewlett Foundation, the Defense Innovation Unit, Amazon Web Services, NASA. Then you saw entrepreneurs come in, who were doing some stuff. And so you had this confluence of community. Of course, Cal Poly had participated in space. You guys does some great job, but it's not just the physical face-to-face show up, gets to hear some academic papers. This was a virtual event. We had over 300 organizations attend, different organizations around the world. Being a virtual event you had more range to get more people. This isn't digital. This symposium isn't about Central California anymore. It's global. >> No, it really has gone. >> What really happened to that? >> It's really kind of interesting because at first all of this was word of mouth for this symposium to take place. And it just started growing and growing and the more that we talk to organizations for support, the more we found how interconnected they were on an international scale. So much so that we've decided to take our cyber competition next year and take it globally as well. So if in fact as Major General Shaw said, this is about a multinational support force. Maybe it's time our students started interacting on that level to start with and not have to grow into it as they get older, but do it now and around space and around cybersecurity and around that digital environment and really kind of reduce the digital dividing space. >> Yeah, General Thompson mentioned this, 80 countries with programs. This is like the Olympics for space and we want to have these competitions. So I got great vision and I love that vision, but I know you have the number... Not number, the scores and from the competition this year that happened earlier in the week. Could you share the results of that challenge? >> Yeah, absolutely. We had 83 teams participate this year in the California Cyber Innovation Challenge. And again, it was based around a spacecraft scenario where a spacecraft, a commercial spacecraft was hacked and returned to earth. And the students had to do the forensics on the payload. And then they had to do downstream network analysis, using things like Wireshark and autopsy and other systems. It was a really tough competition. The students had to work hard and we had middle school and high school students participate. We had an intermediate league, new schools who had never done it before or even some who didn't even have STEM programs but were just signing up to really get involved in the experience. And we had our ultimate division which was those who had competed in several times before. And the winner of that competition was North Hollywood. They've been the winning team for four years in a row. Now it's a phenomenal program, they have their hats off to them for competing and winning again. Now what's really cool is not only did they have to show their technical prowess in the game but they also have to then brief and out-brief what they've learned to a panel of judges. And these are not pushovers. These are experts in the field of cybersecurity in space. We even had a couple of goons participating from DefCon and the teams present their findings. So not only are we talking technical, we're talking about presentation skills. The ability to speak and understand. And let me tell you, after reading all of their texts to each other over the weekend adds a whole new language they're using to interact with each other. It's amazing. And they are so more advanced and ready to understand space problems and virtual problems than we are. We have to challenge them even more. >> Well, it sounds like North Hollywood got the franchise. It's likethe Patriots, the Lakers, they've got a dynasty developing down there in North Hollywood. >> Well, what happens when there's a dynasty you have to look for other talent. So next year we're going global and we're going to have multiple states involved in the challenge and we're going to go international. So if North Hollywood pulls it off again next year, it's going to be because they've met the best in the world than defeated >> Okay, the gauntlet has been thrown down, got to take down North Hollywood from winning again next year. We'll be following that. Bill, great to get those results on the cyber challenge we'll keep track and we'll put a plug for it on our site. So we got to get some press on that. My question to you is now as we're going digital, other theme was that they want to hire digital natives into the space force. Okay, the DOD is looking at new skills. This was a big theme throughout the conference not just the commercial partnerships with government which I believe they had kind of put more research and personally, that's my personal opinion. They should be putting in way more research into academic and these environments to get more creative. But the skill sets was a big theme. What's your thoughts on how you saw some of the highlight moments there around skill sets? >> John, it's really interesting 'cause what we've noticed is in the past, everybody thinks skill sets for the engineering students. And it's way beyond that. It's all the students, it's all of them understanding what we call cyber cognizance. Understanding how cybersecurity works whatever career field they choose to be in. Space, there is no facet of supporting space that doesn't need that cyber cognizance. If you're in the back room doing the operations, you're doing the billing, you're doing the contracting. Those are still avenues by which cybersecurity attacks can be successful and disrupt your space mission. The fact that it's international, the connectivities, all of those things means that everyone in that system digitally has to be aware of what's going on around them. That's a whole new thought process. It's a whole new way of addressing a problem and dealing with space. And again it's virtual to everyone. >> That's awesome. Bill, great to have you on. Thank you for including theCUBE virtual, our CUBE event software platform that we're rolling out. We've been using it for the event and thank you for your partnership in this co-creation opening up your community, your symposium to the world, and we're so glad to be part of it. I want to thank you and Dustin and the team and the President of Cal Poly for including us. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, John. It's been an amazing partnership. We look forward to it in the future. >> Okay, that's it. That concludes the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, your host with Cal Poly, who put on an amazing virtual presentation, brought all the guests together. And again, shout out to Bill Britton and Dustin DeBrum who did a great job as well as the President of Cal poly who endorsed and let them do it all. Great event. See you soon. (flash light sound)

>>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)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCube with digital coverage of MIT, Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is the seventh year of theCubes coverage of the MIT, Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium. We love getting to talk to these chief data officers and the people in this ecosystem, the importance of data, driving data-driven cultures, and really happy to welcome to the program, first time guests Eileen Vitrine, Eileen is the Chief Data Officer for the United States Air Force, Eileen, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you Stu really excited about being here today. >> All right, so the United States Air Force, I believe had it first CDO office in 2017, you were put in the CDO role in June of 2018. If you could, bring us back, give us how that was formed inside the Air force and how you came to be in that role. >> Well, Stu I like to say that we are a startup organization and a really mature organization, so it's really about culture change and it began by bringing a group of amazing citizen airman reservists back to the Air Force to bring their skills from industry and bring them into the Air Force. So, I like to say that we're a total force because we have active and reservists working with civilians on a daily basis and one of the first things we did in June was we stood up a data lab, that's based in the Jones building on Andrews Air Force Base. And there, we actually take small use cases that have enterprise focus, and we really try to dig deep to try to drive data insights, to inform senior leaders across the department on really important, what I would call enterprise focused challenges, it's pretty exciting. >> Yeah, it's been fascinating when we've dug into this ecosystem, of course while the data itself is very sensitive and I'm sure for the Air Force, there are some very highest level of security, the practices that are done as to how to leverage data, the line between public and private blurs, because you have people that have come from industry that go into government and people that are from government that have leveraged their experiences there. So, if you could give us a little bit of your background and what it is that your charter has been and what you're looking to build out, as you mentioned that culture of change. >> Well, I like to say I began my data leadership journey as an active duty soldier in the army, and I was originally a transportation officer, today we would use the title condition based maintenance, but back then, it was really about running the numbers so that I could optimize my truck fleet on the road each and every day, so that my soldiers were driving safely. Data has always been part of my leadership journey and so I like to say that one of our challenges is really to make sure that data is part of every airmans core DNA, so that they're using the right data at the right level to drive insights, whether it's tactical, operational or strategic. And so it's really about empowering each and every airman, which I think is pretty exciting. >> There's so many pieces of that data, you talk about data quality, there's obviously the data life cycle. I know your presentation that you're given here at the CDO, IQ talks about the data platform that your team has built, could you explain that? What are the key tenants and what maybe differentiates it from what other organizations might have done? >> So, when we first took the challenge to build our data lab, we really wanted to really come up. Our goal was to have a cross domain solution where we could solve data problems at the appropriate classification level. And so we built the VAULT data platform, VAULT stands for visible, accessible, understandable, linked, and trustworthy. And if you look at the DOD data strategy, they will also add the tenants of interoperability and secure. So, the first steps that we have really focused on is making data visible and accessible to airmen, to empower them, to drive insights from available data to solve their problems. So, it's really about that data empowerment, we like to use the hashtag built by airmen because it's really about each and every airman being part of the solution. And I think it's really an exciting time to be in the Air Force because any airman can solve a really hard challenge and it can very quickly wrap it up rapidly, escalate up with great velocity to senior leadership, to be an enterprise solution. >> Is there some basic training that goes on from a data standpoint? For any of those that have lived in data, oftentimes you can get lost in numbers, you have to have context, you need to understand how do I separate good from bad data, or when is data still valid? So, how does someone in the Air Force get some of that beta data competency? >> Well, we have taken a multitenant approach because each and every airman has different needs. So, we have quite a few pathfinders across the Air Force today, to help what I call, upscale our total force. And so I developed a partnership with the Air Force Institute of Technology and they now have a online graduate level data science certificate program. So, individuals studying at AFIT or remotely have the opportunity to really focus on building up their data touchpoints. Just recently, we have been working on a pathfinder to allow our data officers to get their ICCP Federal Data Sector Governance Certificate Program. So, we've been running what I would call short boot camps to prep data officers to be ready for that. And I think the one that I'm most excited about is that this year, this fall, new cadets at the U.S Air Force Academy will be able to have an undergraduate degree in data science and so it's not about a one prong approach, it's about having short courses as well as academe solutions to up skill our total force moving forward. >> Well, information absolutely is such an important differentiator(laughs) in general business and absolutely the military aspects are there. You mentioned the DOD talks about interoperability in their platform, can you speak a little bit to how you make sure that data is secure? Yet, I'm sure there's opportunities for other organizations, for there to be collaboration between them. >> Well, I like to say, that we don't fight alone. So, I work on a daily basis with my peers, Tom Cecila at the Department of Navy and Greg Garcia at the Department of Army, as well as Mr. David Berg in the DOD level. It's really important that we have an integrated approach moving forward and in the DOD we partner with our security experts, so it's not about us doing security individually, it's really about, in the Air Force we use a term called digital air force, and it's about optimizing and building a trusted partnership with our CIO colleagues, as well as our chief management colleagues because it's really about that trusted partnership to make sure that we're working collaboratively across the enterprise and whatever we do in the department, we also have to reach across our services so that we're all working together. >> Eileen, I'm curious if there's been much impact from the global pandemic. When I talk to enterprise companies, that they had to rapidly make sure that while they needed to protect data, when it was in their four walls and maybe for VPN, now everyone is accessing data, much more work from home and the like. I have to imagine some of those security measures you've already taken, but have there anything along those lines or anything else that this shift in where people are, and a little bit more dispersed has impacted your work? >> Well, the story that I like to say is, that this has given us velocity. So, prior to COVID, we built our VAULT data platform as a multitenancy platform that is also cross-domain solution, so it allows people to develop and do their problem solving in an appropriate classification level. And it allows us to connect or pushup if we need to into higher classification levels. The other thing that it has helped us really work smart because we do as much as we can in that unclassified environment and then using our cloud based solution in our gateways, it allows us to bring people in at a very scheduled component so that we maximize, or we optimize their time on site. And so I really think that it's really given us great velocity because it has really allowed people to work on the right problem set, on the right class of patient level at a specific time. And plus the other pieces, we look at what we're doing is that the problem set that we've had has really allowed people to become more data focused. I think that it's personal for folks moving forward, so it has increased understanding in terms of the need for data insights, as we move forward to drive decision making. It's not that data makes the decision, but it's using the insight to make the decision. >> And one of the interesting conversations we've been having about how to get to those data insights is the use of things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, anything you can share about, how you're looking at that journey, where you are along that discovery. >> Well, I love to say that in order to do AI and machine learning, you have to have great volumes of high quality data. And so really step one was visible, accessible data, but we in the Department of the Air Force stood up an accelerator at MIT. And so we have a group of amazing airmen that are actually working with MIT on a daily basis to solve some of those, what I would call opportunities for us to move forward. My office collaborates with them on a consistent basis, because they're doing additional use cases in that academic environment, which I'm pretty excited about because I think it gives us access to some of the smartest minds. >> All right, Eileen also I understand it's your first year doing the event. Unfortunately, we don't get, all come together in Cambridge, walking those hallways and being able to listen to some of those conversations and follow up is something we've very much enjoyed over the years. What excites you about being interact with your peers and participating in the event this year? >> Well, I really think it's about helping each other leverage the amazing lessons learned. I think that if we look collaboratively, both across industry and in the federal sector, there have been amazing lessons learned and it gives us a great forum for us to really share and leverage those lessons learned as we move forward so that we're not hitting the reboot button, but we actually are starting faster. So, it comes back to the velocity component, it all helps us go faster and at a higher quality level and I think that's really exciting. >> So, final question I have for you, we've talked for years about digital transformation, we've really said that having that data strategy and that culture of leveraging data is one of the most critical pieces of having gone through that transformation. For people that are maybe early on their journey, any advice that you'd give them, having worked through a couple of years of this and the experience you've had with your peers. >> I think that the first thing is that you have to really start with a blank slate and really look at the art of the possible. Don't think about what you've always done, think about where you want to go because there are many different paths to get there. And if you look at what the target goal is, it's really about making sure that you do that backward tracking to get to that goal. And the other piece that I tell my colleagues is celebrate the wins. My team of airmen, they are amazing, it's an honor to serve them and the reality is that they are doing great things and sometimes you want more. And it's really important to celebrate the victories because it's a very long journey and we keep moving the goalposts because we're always striving for excellence. >> Absolutely, it is always a journey that we're on, it's not about the destination. Eileen, thank you so much for sharing all that you've learned and glad you could participate. >> Thank you, STU, I appreciate being included today. Have a great day. >> Thanks and thank you for watching theCube. I'm Stu Miniman stay tuned for more from the MIT, CDO IQ event. (lively upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to the coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit virtual. I'm John for host of theCUBE. We're here in theCUBE studios, quarantine crew here talking to all the guests remotely as part of our virtual coverage of AWS Public Sector. So I've got a great guest here talking about data science, weather predictions, accurate climate modeling, really digging into how cloud is helping science. Dr. Chelle Gentemann, who is a senior scientist at Farallon Institute is my guest. Chelle, thank you for joining me. >> Thank you. >> So tell us a little about your research. It's fascinating how, I've always joked in a lot of my interviews, 10, 15, 20 years ago, you need super computers to do all these calculations. But now with cloud computing, it opens up so much more on the research side and the impact is significant. You're at an awesome Institute, the Farallon Institute, doing a lot of stuff in the sea and the ocean and a lot of your things. What's your focus? >> I study the ocean from space, and about 71% was covered by ocean. 40% of our population in the globe actually lives within 100 kilometers of the coast. The ocean influences our weather, it influences climate, but it also provides fisheries and recreational opportunities for people. So it's a really important part of the earth system. And I've been focused on using satellites. So from space, trying to understand how the ocean influences weather and climate >> And how new is this in terms of just state of the art? Fairly new, been around for a while? What's some of the progress for the state of the art we're involved in. >> I started working on satellite data in the 90s during school, and I liked the satellite data cause it's the interface of sort of applied math, computer science and physics. The state of the art is that we've really had remote sensing around for about 20, 30 years. But things are changing because right now we're having more sensors and different types of instruments up there and trying to combine that data is really challenging. To use it, our brain is really good in two and three dimensions, but once you get past that, it's really difficult for the human brain to try and interpret the data. And that's what scientists do. Is they try and take all these multidimensional data sets and try to build some understanding of the physics of what's going on. And what's really interesting is how cloud computing is impacting that. >> It sounds so exciting. The confluence of multiple disciplines kind of all right there, kind of geek out big time. So I've got to ask you, in the past you had the public data set program. Are you involved in that? Do you take advantage that research? How is some of the things that AWS is doing help you and is that public data set part of it? >> It's a big part of it now. I've helped to deploy some of the ocean temperature data sets on the cloud. And the way that AWS public data sets as sort of has potential to transform science is the way that we've been doing science, the way that I was trained in science was that you would go and download the data. And most of these big institutions that do research, you start to create these dark repositories where the institutions or someone in your group has downloaded data sets. And then you're trying to do science with these data, but you're not sure if it's the most recent version. It makes it really hard to do reproducible science, because if you want to share your code, somebody also has to access that data and download it. And these are really big data sets. So downloading it could take quite a long time. It's not very transparent, it's not very open. So when you move to a public data set program like AWS, you just take all of that download out of the equation. And instantly when I share my code now, people can run the code and just build on it and go right from there, or they can add to it or suggest changes. That's a really big advantage for trying to do open science. >> I had a dinner with Teresa Carlson who is awesome. She runs the Public Sector Summit for AWS. And I remember this was years ago and we were dreaming about a future where we would have national parks in the cloud or this concept of a Yosemite-like beautiful treasure. Physical place you could go there. And we were kind of dreaming that, wouldn't it be great to have like these data sets or supercomputer public commons. It sounds like that's kind of the vibe here where it's shareable and it's almost like a digital national park or something. Is that it's a shared resource. Is that kind of happening? First of all, what do you react to that? And what's your thoughts around that dream? And does this kind of tie to that? >> Yeah, I think it ties directly to that. When I think about how science is still being done and has been done for the past sort of 20 years, we had a real change about 20 years ago when a lot of the government agencies started requiring their data to be public. And that was a big change. So then we got, we actually had public data sets to work with. So more people started getting involved in science. Now I see it as sort of this fortress of data that in some ways have prevented scientists from really moving rapidly forward. But with moving onto the cloud and bringing your ideas and your compute to the data set, it opens up this entire Pandora's box, this beautiful world of how you can do science. You're no longer restricted to what you have downloaded or what you're able to do because you have this unlimited compute. You don't have to be at a big institution with massive supercomputers. I've been running hundreds of workers analyzing in my realm. Over two or 300 gigabytes of data on a $36 Raspberry Pi that I was playing around with my kids. That's transformative. That allows anyone to access data. >> And if you think about what it would have to do to do that in the old days, stack and spike servers. Call, first of all, you'll get the cash, buy servers, rack them and stack them, connect to a download of nightmare. So I got to ask you now with all this capability, first of all, you're talking to someone who loves the cloud. So I'm pretty biased. What are you doing now with the cloud that you couldn't do before? So certainly the old way from a provisioning standpoint, check, done. Innovation, bars raised. Now you're creative, you're looking at solutions, you're building enabling device like a Raspberry Pi, almost like a switch or an initiation point. How has the creativity changed? What can you do now? What are some of the things that are possible that you're doing? >> I think that you can point to within some of the data sets that have already gone on the cloud are being used in these really new, different ways. Again, it points to this, when you don't have access to the data, just simply because you have to download it. So that downloading the data and figuring out how to use it and figuring out how to store it is a big barrier for people. But when things like the HF Radar data set went online. Within a couple of months, there was a paper where people were using it to monitor bird migration in ways that they'd never been able to do before, because they simply hadn't been able to get the data. There's other research being done, where they've put whale recordings on the cloud and they're using AI to actually identify different whales. It's using one data set, but it's also the ability to combine all these different data sets and have access to them at the same time and not be limited by your computer anymore. Which for a lot of science, we've been limited by our access to compute. And that when you take away that, it opens all these new doors into doing different types of research with new types of data, >> You could probably correlate the whale sounds with the temperature and probably say, hey, it's cold. >> Chelle: Exactly. >> I'm making that up. But that's the kind of thing that wouldn't be possible before because you'd have to get the data set, do some math. I mean, this is cool stuff with the ocean. I mean, can you just take a minute to share some, give people an insight in some of the cool projects that are being either thought up or dreamed up or initiated or done or in process or in flight, because actually there's so much data in the ocean. So much things to do, it's very dynamic. There's a lot of data obviously. Share, for the folks that might not have a knowledge of what goes on. What are you guys thinking about? >> A lot of what we're thinking about is how to have societal impact. So as a scientist, you want your work to be relevant. And one of the things that we found is that the ocean really impacts weather at scales that we simply can't measure right now. So we're really trying to push forward with space instrumentation so that we can monitor the ocean in new ways at new resolutions. And the reason that we want to do that is because the ocean impacts longterm predictability in the weather forecast. So a lot of weather forecasts now, if you look out, you can go on to Weather Underground or whatever weather site you want. And you'll see the forecast goes out 10 days and that's because there's not a lot of accuracy after that. So a lot of research is going into how do we extend into seasonal forecast? I'm from Santa Rosa, California. We've been massively impacted by wildfires. And being able to understand how to prepare for the coming season is incredibly important. And surprisingly, I think to a lot of people, the ocean plays a big role in that. The ocean can impact how much storm systems, how they grow, how they evolve, how much water they actually got. Moisture they pick up from the ocean and then transport over land. So if you want to talk about, it's really interesting to talk about how the ocean impacts our weather and our seasonal weather. So that's an area where people are doing a lot of research. And again, you're talking about different data sets and being able to work together in a collaborative environment on the cloud is really what's starting to transform how people are working together, how they're communicating and how they're sharing their science. >> I just hope it opens up someone's possibilities. I want to get your vision of what you think the breakthroughs might be possible with cloud for research and computing. Because you have kind of old school and new school. Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy calls it old guard, new guard. The new guard is really more looking for self provisioning, auto-scaling, all that. Super computer on demand, all that stuff at your fingertips. Great, love that. But is there any opportunity for institutional change within the scientific community? What's your vision around the impact? It's not just scientific. It also can go to government for societal impact. So you start to see this modernization trend. What's your vision on the impact of the scientific community with cloud? >> I think that the way the scientific community has been organized for a long time is that scientists that are at an institute. And a lot of the research has been siloed. And it's siloed in part because of the way the funding mechanism works. But that inhibits creativity and inhibits collaboration. And it inhibits the advancement of science. Because if you hold onto data, you hold on to code. You're not allowing other people to work on it and to build on what you do. The traditional way that scientists have moved forward is you make a discovery, you write up a paper, you describe it in a journal article, and then you publish that. Then if someone wants to build on your research, they get your journal article, they read it. Then they try to understand what you did. They maybe recode all of your analysis. So they're redoing the work that you did, which is simply not efficient. Then they have to download the data sets that you access. This slows down all of science. And it also inhibits bringing in new data sets again because you don't have access to them. So one of the things I'm really excited about with cloud computing is that by bringing our scientific ideas and our compute to the data, it allows us to break out of these silos and collaborate with people outside of our institution, outside of our country, and bring new ideas and new voices and elevate everyone's ideas to another level. >> It brings the talent and the ideas together. And now you have digital and virtual worlds, cause we've been virtualized with COVID-19. You can create content as a community building capability or your work can create a network effect with other peers. And is a flash mobbing effect of potential collaboration. So work, work forces, workplaces, work loads, work flows, kind of are interesting or kind of being changed in real time. You were just talking about speed, agility. These are technical concepts being applied to kind of real world scenarios. I mean your thoughts on that. >> I now work with people like right now, I'm working with students in Denmark, Oman, India, France, and the US. That just wasn't possible 10 years ago. And we're able to bring all these different voices together, which it really frees up science and it frees up who can participate in science, which is really fun. I mean, I'm a scientist. I do it because it's really, really fun. And I love working with other people. So this new ability that I've gained in the last couple of years by moving onto the cloud has really accelerated all the different types of collaborations I'm involved with. And hopefully accelerating science as a whole. >> I love this topic. It's one of my passion areas where it's an issue I've been scratching for over a decade too. Is that content and your work is an enabler for community engagement because you don't need to publish it to a journal. It's like waterfall mentality. It's like you do it. But if you can publish something or create something and show it, demo it or illustrate it, that's better than a paper. If you're on video, you can talk about it. It's going to attract other people, like-minded peers can come together. That's going to create more collaboration data. That's going to create more solidarity around topics and accelerate the breakthroughs. >> For our last paper, we actually published all the software with it. We got a digital firewall for the software, published the software and then containerized it so that when you read our paper, at the bottom of the paper, you get a link. You go to that link, you click on a button and you're instantly in our compute environment, you can reproduce all of our results. Do the error propagation analysis that we did. And then if you don't like something, go ahead and change it or add onto it or ask us some questions. That's just magical. >> Yeah, it really is. And Amazon has been a real investor and I got to give props to Teresa Carlson and her team and Andy Jassy, the CEO, because they've been investing in credits and collaborating with groups like Jet Propulsion Lab, you guys, everyone else. Just space has been a big part of that. I see Bezos love space. So they've been investing in that and bringing that resource to the table. So you've got to give Amazon some props for that. But great work that you're doing. I'm fascinated. I think it's one of those examples where it's a moonshot, but it's doable. It's like you can get there. >> Yeah, and it's just so exciting. I'm the lead on a proposal for a new science mission to NASA. And we are going all in with the cloud computing. So we're going to do all the processing on the cloud. We want to do the entire science team on the cloud and create a science data platform where we're all working together. That's just never happened before. And I think that by doing this, we multiply the benefits of all of our analysis. We make it faster and we make it better and we make it more collaborative. So everyone wins. >> Sure, you're an inspiration to many. I'm so excited to do this interview with you. I love what you said earlier at the beginning about your focus of being in computer science, physics, space. That confluence is multiple disciplines. Not everyone can have that. Some people just get a computer science degree. Some people get, I'm premed, or I'm going to do biology. I'm going to do this. This notion of multiple disciplines coming together is really what society needs now. Is we're converging or virtualizing or becoming a global society. And that brings up my final question. Is something I know that you're passionate about creating a more inclusive scientific community because you don't have to be the, just the computer science major. Now, if you have all three, it's a multi-tool when you're a multiple skill player. But you don't have to be something to get into this new world. Because if you have certain disciplines, whether it's math, maybe you don't have computer science but it's quick to learn. There's frameworks out there, no code, low code. So cloud computing supports this. What's your vision and what's your opinion of how more inclusivity can come into the scientific community? >> I think that, when you're at an institution or at a commercial company or a nonprofit, if you're at some sort of organized institution, you have access to things that not everyone has access to. And in a lot of the world, there's trouble with internet connectivity. There is trouble downloading data. They simply don't have the ability to download large data sets. So I'm passionate about inclusivity because I think that, until we include global voices in science, we're not going to see these global results that we need to. We need to be more interdisciplinary. And that means working with different scientists in different fields. And if we can all work together on the same platform that really helps explode interdisciplinary science and what can be done. A lot of science has been quite siloed because you work at an institution. So you talked to the people one door down, or two doors down or on the same floor. But when you start working in this international community and people don't have to be online all the time, they can write code and then just jump on and upload it. You don't need to have these big, powerful resources or institutions behind you. And that gives a platform for all types of scientists, that all types of levels to start working with everyone. >> This is why I love the idea of the content and the community being horizontally scalable. Because if you're stuck around a physical institution or space, you kind of like have group think, or maybe you have the same kind of ideas being talked about. But here, when you pull back the remote work with COVID-19, as an example, it highlights it. The remote scientist could be anywhere. So that's going to increase access. What can we do to accept those voices? Is there a way or an idea or formula you see that people could, assuming there's access, which I would say, yes. What do we do? What do you do? >> I think you have to be open and you have to listen. Because, if I ask a question into the room where my colleagues work, we're going to come up with an answer. But we're going to come up with an answer that's informed by how we were trained in science and what fields we know. So when you open up this box and you allow other voices to participate in science, you're going to get new and different answers. And as a scientist, you need to be open to allowing those voices to be heard and to acting on them and including them in your research results and thinking about how they may change what you think and bring you to new conclusions. >> Machine learning has been a part. I know your work in the past, obviously cloud you're a big fan, obviously can tell. Proponent of it. Machine learning and AI can be a big part of this too, both on not only sourcing new voices and identifying what's contextually relevant at any given time, but also on the science-side machine learning. Because if we can take a minute to give your thoughts on the and relevance of machine learning and AI, because you still got the humans and you got machines augmenting each other, that relationship is going to be a constant conversation point going forward. Is there data about the data and what's the machines doing? What's your thoughts on all of these? Machine learning and AI as an impact. >> It's funny you say impact. So I work with this NASA IMPACT project, which is this interdisciplinary team that tries to advance science, and it's really into machine learning and AI. One of the difficulties when you start to do science is you have an idea like, okay, I want to study tropical storms. And then you have to go and wade through all these different types of data to identify when events happened and then gather all the data from those different events and start to try and do some analysis. They're working and they've been really successful in using AI to actually do this sort of event identification. So what's interesting and how can we use AI and machine learning to identify those interesting events and gathering everything together for scientists to then try and bring for analysis? So AI is being used in a lot of different ways in science. It's being used to look at these multi-dimensional problems that are just a little bit too big for our brains to try and understand. But if we can use AI and machine learning to gather insights into certain aspects of them, it starts to lead to new conclusions and it starts to allow us to see new connections. AI and machine learning has this potential to transform how we do science. Cloud computing is part of that because we have access to so much more data now. >> It's a real enabling technology. And when you have enabling technology, the power is in the hands of the creative minds. And it's really what you can think up and what you can dream up and that's going to come from people. Phenomenal. Final question for you, to kind of end on a light note. Dr. Chelle Gentemann here, senior scientist at the Farallon Institute. You're doing a lot of work on the ocean, space, ocean interaction. What's the coolest thing you're working on right now? Or you you've worked on that you think would be worth sharing. >> There's a couple of things. I have to think about what's the most fun. Right now, I'm working on doing some analysis with data. We had a big, huge international field campaign this winter off of Barbados, there were research festival, rustles and aircraft. There were sail drones involved, which are these autonomous robotic vehicles that go along the ocean surface and measure air-sea interactions. Right now we're working on analyzing that data. So we have all of this ground truth data. We're bringing in all the satellite observations to see how we can better understand the earth system in that region with a specific focus on air-sea interactions over the ocean where when it rains, you get the salinity stratification. When there's strong solar, you get diurnal stratification. So you have upper ocean stratification and heat and salinity. And how those impact the fluxes and how the ocean impacts the heat and moisture transport into the atmosphere, which then affects weather. So again, this is this multidimensional data set with all these different types of both ground truth data, satellite data that we're trying to bring together and it's really exciting. >> It could shape policy, it could shape society. Maybe have a real input into global warming. Our behaviors in the world, sounds awesome. Plus, I love the ground truth and the observational data. It sounds like our media business algorithm, we got to get the observation, get the truth, report it. Sounds like there's something in there that we could learn from. (both giggling) >> Yeah, it's very interesting cause you often find what you see from a distance is not quite true up close. >> I can tell you that we as in media as we do a lot of investigative journalism. So we appreciate that. Dr. Chelle Gentemann, senior scientist at the Farallon Institute, here as part of AWS Public Sector Summit. Thank you so much for time. What a great story. We'll keep in touch. Love the sails drone. Great innovation. And continue the good work, I'm looking forward to checking in later. Thanks for joining. >> Thanks so much. It was nice talking to you. >> I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here in our studios covering the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit virtual. This is theCUBE virtual bringing you all the coverage with Amazon and theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. >>Everyone welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public sector summit. Virtual, of course, is the Cube virtual. We're here sheltered in place in our quarantine studio. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Got a great guest here? Cube Alumni. Can Eisner, Who's the director of worldwide education programs for AWS Amazon Web services? Ken, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. This could be a great segment. Looking forward to chatting. >>Thanks so much, John. Great to talk to you again. >>You know, I'll say, Cube Virtual public sector summit Virtual. We've been virtualized as a society. I'll see the pandemic and all the things that is going on around has been pretty crazy. And one of the things that's most notable is the impact on Education. New York Times This morning and many published reports around the impact College education. Not only economics on the campus aside, the state of the people in the society and Covert 19 is pushed schooling online for the foreseeable future. What's your reaction is you're in charge you've done a lot of work on the foundational level to get Amazon educational programs out there. Take a minute to explain how how this has impacted you guys and your ability to bring that educational stuff to the to the foreseeable future. >>Yeah, the first thing I'd say is this This truly is an absolutely unprecedented time There. Move from virtual instruction. Excuse me from in person classroom instruction into the virtual world at such amazing scale, rapidity is something that educational institutions weren't ready for that couldn't be ready for at this time. We had to enter it with amazing lump levels of empathy for what was going on on the ground in K 12 schools and higher ed schools with our educational technology and publisher providers. So I think the first thing was we had or for the speed at which it happened, we did have to step back and look at what was going on. There are some changes that are happening in the immediacy, and there are some things that Corbett, 19 is has sped educational institutions around the world to look at. An AWS is working with those K 12 providers, higher educational providers teachers and so on on that switch, whether it's providing infrastructure that move into online learning, helping teachers as they prepare for this sort of new normal you some of examples of what has happen. We've been working with the University of Arizona. Help them stand up contact centers with the onset of of cove it and students and teachers. It's being pushed into their home environment or into virtual environments to give instruction to receive instruction. There have been a lot of calls that happen in virtual environments to staff to help them support this. And so we stood up with the University of Arizona and Amazon Amazon Connect help staff provide mobile solutions through the cell phone or computer for for students. >>I want to get your thoughts. Absolutely. I talked to Andy Jassy about this as well as well about agility. This is the Amazon wheelhouse, and you guys have gone into the I T world now developers. You went cloud native, you in that market. He won the enterprise I t market. But the reason why is that you took an old school outdated, antiquated system of I t and made it agile. That seems enough This is the country with Teresa and Andy about education in public sector. The modernization is happening, but there's also the triage and you guys have to do now in terms of getting people online. So what specifically are you doing to help education customers continue their instruction online? Because they still got to execute. They still need to provide this discussion around the fall window Coming up. You got to have the foundational things. I know you've done that, but it is hard. So what's the downstream triage when you come out of this mode of Okay, here you go. And how do you get people set up and then how they transform and re invent? >>Yeah, at this time, the disaster recovery from how do you get in that phase one with this immediate move was so prominent. And we're trying to work through that phase one and sort into sort of phase two delivery of education, which is you're moving with scale moving with agility into this world, speed and agility are really going to be the new normal for education. There were some advances that just weren't happening quick enough. Students should always have access to 24 7 learning, um, and access into that mobile arena. And they weren't having that several things that we did was we looked at our infrastructure were some of those key infrastructure elements that helped with both learning and work remotely. There were things such as Amazon, your work Doc's, which enables thieves virtual our workspaces, which enable virtual desktop environments, and appstream, which enables it APs to be streamed through virtual arena onto your removal or your desktop. Yeah, Amazon connect as I. As I mentioned before, there were services that were vital in helping speed into the cloud that was quick burst into the cloud. And so we enabled some of those services to have special promotional free rates or a given time period, and we have actually now extended that offer a into the fall into September 30th. So first we have to help people really quickly with educators. So I run this program AWS Educate, which is Amazon's global program. To provide students and educators around the world with resource is needed, help them get into cloud learning. But what we saw was that teachers around the world we're not prepared for this massive shift what we did to help that preparedness is we looked at our educators. We found that we did a survey over the weekend and found that 68% of them had significant experience or enough experience in teaching distance or online virtual education, too. Potentially leverage that for other educators around the world. So we and the other thing is teachers are really eager to help other teachers in this move, especially as they saw and they empathize with With her was the panic. Our confusion are best practices and moving into that online arena. So we saw both that they had that experience in a mass willingness to help other people, and we immediately spun up a Siri's of educator and educator help tools, whether it was a Morris Valadez are No a gift, and Doug Berman providing webinars and office hours for other educators around the world. We also did a separate tech talks offering for students. So there were there was the helping scale, whether it's getting blackboard as they ramped up to over 50 x of their normal load in 24 hours to help them deliver on that scale, whether it waas the Egyptian ministry that was trying to had to understand. How could they help students access the information that they need it in speed? And they worked with thinkI, which is a net educational technology provider, to provide access to 22 million students who needed to get access online or whether it was the educator mobilization initiative that we ran. Threat US of AWS Educate Helps Teachers have the resource is that they need it with the speed that they needed to get online. This is we are working. We're learning from our customers. As this happens, this is a moving target. But when I move from this immediacy of pushing people into the virtual space into what's gonna happen this summer, as students need toe recapture, learning that they might have lost in the spring are depending where you are worldwide. There's getting to your point all K 12 higher ed and educational technology providers into the position where they can act with that agility and speed. And it's also helping those educators as they go through this. We're learning from our customers every day. >>Yeah, I want to get into those some of those lessons, but one of things that will say, You know, I'm really bullish about what you do. Getting cloud education, I think, is going to change the literacy and also job opportunities out there. I'm a huge believer that public sector is the next growth wave, just like I t was. And it's almost the same movie, right? You have inadequate systems. It's all outdated. You need these workloads, need to run and then run effectively, which you guys have done. But the interesting thing with Cove it is it essentially exposes the scabs and the uh out there because, you know, online has been an augmentation to the physical space. So when you pull that back, people like me go, wait a minute. I have kids. I'm trying to understand their learning impact. Everyone sees it now. It's almost like it's exposed. Whether it's under provisioned VP ends or black boys networking and everyone's pointing their fingers. It's your fault and its the end. So you brought this up. There's now stakeholders whose jobs depend upon something that's now primary that wasn't primary before. Whether it's the presenter, the content presented the teacher certainly high availability. I t. Um >>all these things >>are just under huge pressure. So I gotta ask you, what are the key lessons and learnings that you have seen over the past few months that you could share because people are shell shocked and they're trying to move faster? >>Yeah. So first of all is speed and agility and education are the new normal. They should have been here for a while. They need to be here now when you've got a 30 year textbook, your ruling over education when students need to get the skills of tomorrow. Today we need to be adapting quickly in order to give those students the skills to give educational institution those opportunities. Every institution needs to be enable virtual education. Every institution needs to have disaster recovery solutions and they weren't in place. These solutions need to be comprehensive. Students need access to devices. Teachers need access to professional development. We need contact centers. We worked with Los Angeles Unified School District not just to stand up a contact center, which we did with yeah, Amazon connect. But we also connected their high school seniors too, with headphones. I think we provide 132,000 students with headphones. We are helping to source with through our Amazon business relationship devices for everybody. Every student needs access in their home. Every student needs access to great learning and they needed on demand. Teachers need that readiness. I think the other thing that's happening is the whole world is again speeding through changes that probably should have happened to the system already that virtual learning is vital. Another thing that's vital is lifelong learning. We're finding that and we probably should have already seen. This is everybody needs to be a student throughout their entire life, and they need to be streaming in and out of education. The only way that this could be properly done is through virtual environments through the cloud and through an access to on demand learning. We believe that this that the work that's being done I was actually talking to some people in Australia the other day and they're saying, You know, the government is moving away from degree centrist city and moving into a more modular stackable education. We've been building AWS educate to stack to the job to stack to careers, and that type of move into education, I think, is also being spent So were you were seeing the that move Apple absolutely accelerate. We're also seeing the need to accelerate the speed to research. Obviously with what's going on going on with Kobe 19 there is a need for tools to connect our researchers two cures to diagnostic, um, opportunities. We worked with the University of British Columbia, Vancouver General Hospital and the Vancouver I Get this thing, the Vancouver Coastal Health Research UNE Institute to develop to use Amazon sage maker to speed ai diagnostic tool so that pushed towards research is absolutely vital as well. We just announced a $20 million investment in helping you speak that that research to market so education needs to operate at scale education needs to operate at speed, and education needs to deliver to a changing customer. And we've got to be partners on that journey. >>And I think I would just add reinvent a word. You guys name your conference after every year. This is a re invention opportunity. Clearly, um, and you know, I was talking to some other parents is like, I'm not going to send my kids to school online learning for zoom interview, zoom, zoom, zoom classes. I'm like, Hey, you know, get a cloud data engineering degree from Amazon educate because they'll have a job like that. Once you put on linked in the job skills are out there. The jobs are needed. Skills aren't so. I got to ask you, you know, with this whole re Skilling, whether it's a Gap year student in between semesters, while this takes care of our up Skilling people on the job, this is huge world economic form said by 2020 half of the employees will need to be re skilled up skilled. This is a huge impact and even more focus with covert 19. >>That's absolutely correct. Yeah, I think one thing that's happening is we're cloud computing has been the number one Lincoln skill for the past four or five years. The the skill. Whether it's software development in the cloud cloud architecture, your data world, our cyber security and other operational rules, those are going to be in the most demand. Those are the skills that are growing. We need to be able prepare people for rules in technology. The lifelong worker, the re skill up skill opportunities, absolutely vital Gap year is going to be available for some students. But we also got a look at you know how the this that how covert 19 can accelerate gaps between students. Every student needs access to high quality education. Every teacher needs to be equipped with the latest professional development. We've got focused like a laser, not just on. The people could afford a gap. Here are the people who who are going to be some schools who actually had solutions that could immediately push there kids into their their youth, their students in college or even employees. You need those re skills. We're all home. But it also needs to extend into the middle of the middle of Los Angeles and and you're into low income students. And in Egypt, I was really excited. We we've been working with Northern Virginia community colleges as I think you know, they were one of the lead institutions. On launching an associate degree in the cloud, they took their courses and offer what they call a jump year to 70,000 high school senior. Our high school students in Northern Virginia in the northern Virginia area, including enabling some of our cloud computing horses, are the work courses that we worked on with them to the students. So yeah, those new partnerships, that extension of college into high school and college into re skill up skills, absolutely vital. But institutions need to be able to move fast with the tools that the cloud provides you into those arena. >>Well, you know, I think you've got a really hard job to do there. It's foundational in love, what you're doing and you know me. I've been harping people who watch the Cube know that I'm always chirping and talking about how the learning is non linear. It's horizontally scalable. There's different application. You can have an application for education. It's a Siri's of different things. The workload of learning is completely different. I think to me what you guys are doing right now setting that basics foundation infrastructure. It's like the E. C two s three model. Then you got more on top of it platform, and I think ultimately the creativity is going to come from the marketplace. Whoever can build those workloads in a very agile, scalable way to meet the needs, because, let's face it, it can't be boring. Education is gonna be robust, resilient and got to deliver the payload and that's gonna be customized applications that have yet to be invented. Reinvented >>absolutely. Hopefully were jump starting that next wave of innovation spreading the opportunities Teoh all students. Hopefully we are really looking at those endemic issues and education and following leaders like University of Arizona. What the Ministry of Education, um in in Egypt has done and Northern Virginia community. Hopefully we are really taking this the opportunity of this disaster to invent on behalf of our students. Bring in you forward to the 21st century as opposed to yeah, just looking at this naval gazing way we do wrong and the past. This is an exciting opportunity, albeit a obviously scary one is we're all dealing with this with this and >>there's no doubt once we've retrenching and get some solid ground postcode 19. It's a reinvention and a reimagine growth market opportunity because you got changing technology, changing economics and changing expectations and experiences that are needed. These are three major things going down right now. >>Absolutely, absolutely. And to your point, the retraining of workers, the up skill that the great thing is that governments realize this imperative as do educational institutions and obviously yet students. This is, and we seem like what educators can do when they want to help. Yeah, other educators, this is This is an opportunity in our society to really look at every everybody is a constant learner were a constant learning from our customers. But everybody, there is no end to education. It cannot be terminal. And this is an opportunity to really provide the students learners with skills that they need in an on demand fashion at all times and re think re innovate, reinvent the way we look at education in general. >>Well, a man, Jeff Bezos says Day one. It's a new day, one, right? So you know that there is going to reinvent Ken. You doing great work. Director of worldwide education programs Ken Eisner with Amazon Web services, Certifications and degrees and cloud computing will be the norm. It's gonna happen again. If you're a cloud data engineer. Data says you're going to get a job. I mean, no doubt about it. So thanks so much for sharing your insights. Really appreciate it. Thank you, >>John. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. >>Can guys They're here Inside the Cube. Virtual coverage of AWS Public sector Online Summit. We've been virtualized. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah, >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Presenter: Live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, it's the Cube. Covering vmworld 2019. Brought to you by vmware and its ecosystem partners. >> So good to have you here with us on the first day of three days of live coverage here in San Francisco as The Cube continues its 10th year of coverage at vmworld 2019. Along with John Troyer, I'm John Walls, glad to have you with us. We're joined now by Bina Hallman who is the vice president of storage at IBM. Bina good to have you with us with this afternoon. >> Thanks for having me. >> You bet. You know, your everyday assignment is keeping so many people up at night and that's how do we defend ourselves, cyber. How do we develop these resilient networks, resilient services. Let's take a step back for a second and try to paint the scope of the problem in terms of what you're seeing at IBM in terms of cyber intrusions, the nature of those attacks and the areas where those are happening. >> I'll tell you from a client industry perspective, right touch on that a little bit. But cyber resiliency, cyber security it's a huge topic. This is something that every business is thinking about, is talking about. It's not just a discussion in the different departments, it's at the C Suite level, the board level. Because if you think about it, cyber crimes as frequent as they are and as impactful as they are, they can really affect the overall company's revenue generation. The cost of recovering from them can be very expensive. >> We're talking about more than just breeches here. Every week we hear ransomware is very interesting, it's very prevalent, it's here. I honestly hear a lot of government small town governments, or state governments, municipal governments maybe because they have reporting requirements. I don't know what goes on underneath in the private sector, but does it seem like that is one things? >> That's right that's right. We hear it in the news a lot. We hear about ransomware quite a bit as data breeches, as other types of things. When you look at some of the analyst statistics and what they say about the frequency of these types of events, and the likelihood of a business getting affected, the likelihood of a business getting affected by a cyber event is 1 in 3. It used to be 1 in 4 a couple years ago, now 1 in 3 over the next two years. Ransomware itself is increasing frequency. I think it was like every 14 seconds there is a ransomware attack somewhere in the world. The cost of this is tremendous. It's in the trillions of dollars. Both from recovering from that attack, the loss in business and revenue generation and actually the impact to the company's reputation. Again, not just ransomware, it's happening in many industries. You talked about government, it's in manufacturing, it's in financial, it's in health, it's in transportation. When you step back and say, how is it so broad, when you think about every organization to some extent is going through some level of transformation. There's digital transformation. They're leveraging capabilities like hybrid multi cloud, having resources on prim, workloads on prim some services in the cloud. They've got team members that are using mobile devices. Some companies depending on their business might have IOT. So when you look at all of those entry points, these are new ways that the bad guys can get into an organization. That creates the scale and complexity, just gets very large. It used to be that you have a backup. The traditional way for business resiliency used to be you do a backup, you have the data on an external system, you restore it if something happened. And then there was the business continuity. You would have a secondary infrastructure that in the case of an accident or some kind of a natural disaster, which didn't happen very often, you would have somewhere, a secondary infrastructure. All of those were designed with the likelihood being very low of happening. Then the recovery times and the disruption to business was somewhat tolerable. These days, with all of the dynamics we're talking about, and the potential areas of entry you need more of an end to end solution. That's a cyber resiliency strategy that is really comprehensive and that's what a lot of the businesses are thinking about today. How do I make sure I have a complete solution and a strategy that allows me to survive through and come up very quickly after an attack happens. I think most people recognize that they're going to get impacted at some point. It's not if, but it's when and when it does how do I quickly recover. >> You said it with the statistic, that 1 in 3 every two years. So my math tells me in six years time, I'm going to get hit by that standard. But it tells me that it's not if, it is when. So in terms of the strategies that companies are adopting, what do you recommend? What do you suggest now? You paint a realistically grim picture that there's so many different avenues, different opportunities and it's hard to put your fingers in all those holes. >> There's a lot happening in this space and I think that, you know, there are different standards, a lot of regulations but one that has been accepted and being leveraged in the US is around a framework and some guidance the NIST organization, National Institute of Standards in Technology. It's a framework that they put in place, a guidance on how do you plan for, how do you detect and then recover from these types of situations. I'll talk about it a little bit, but it's a very good approach. It starts with an organization needs to start by identifying what are some of the critical business services that their business is dependent on. What are they, what are the systems, what are the workloads, what are the applications. They identify and then what's the tolerance level. How quickly do you need to come up. What's the RPO, RTF. Based on that, develop and prioritize a plan. That plan has to be holistic. It involves from the CIO to the CSA, security office to the operations to the business continuity, to the data owners, the line of business. And then in this environment, you've got partners, you've got services you're leveraging. All of that has to be encompassing for those key services that you identify and prioritize as a client that you need up and running. And up and running very quickly. One of the examples of a client, financial institution. They determined they had 300 services they needed up and running within 24 hours in case there was an attack or in case something happened to their data or their environment. That they defined as what their requirement was. Then you go about working with them to do a few things. You identify and then there are other phases around that I can talk about that as well. >> I was going to go over to IBM a little bit in that obviously, you're with IBM and we're talking about storage, people may not realize how integral storage is now in security, but IBM brings to the table a lot more than just storage. >> Absolutely. >> So can you talk a little bit about that portfolio and IBM's approach? >> Sure, so when I talk about the NIST framework and I talk about the identify stage, there's also things around protection, protecting the environment and those services and those systems. The infrastructure, we do a lot in that space. It's around detection. So now that you've got the protection, and protection might include things like having identity management, having access control, just making sure that the applications are at the latest code levels. Often times that's when the vulnerability comes in when you don't have those security patches installed. Data protection and when it comes to that segment, we've got a very rich portfolio of data protection capabilities with our Spectrum Protect offerings. From a protection perspective, going into an encryption, having capabilities where the infrastructure is designed to have multiple types. You can have physical separation, so you can have an air gap, things like tape are ideal for that because it's physically separated. Tiering to the cloud. You can have technologies like write once read many where they're immutable, you can't change those. You can read them but you can't change them. We've done a lot of work in innovation around what we call safeguarded copies. This is making snapshots, but those snapshots are not deletable, they're access controlled, they're read-only. That allows you to very quickly bring up an environment. >> I think people don't realize that, I see some patterns of, sometimes these things hide. They'll be in there and they will be innocuous so you can't just restore the last backup. >> That's right. >> They may try to rewrite the backup so you may have to go back and find a good one. >> Absolutely, and detection is very important. Detecting that as early as possible is the best way to reduce the cost of recovering from these kinds of events. But like you said, I think I want to say 160 days, your environment might be exposed for 160 days before you detect it. So having capabilities in a portfolio in our offerings, and we do a lot working with a research team our security team on things like our data protection where we have algorithms built in where we look for patterns and we look for anomalies. As soon as we see the patterns for malware, ransomware, we alert the operator so you don't allow it to be resident for that period of time. You quickly try to identify it. Another example is in our infrastructure management software. You can see your whole heterogeneous storage environment. You typically start out by base lining a normal environment, similar to the backup piece but then it looks for anomalies, and are there certain things happening in the network, the storage that warns the operator. >> I almost get the feeling that sometimes it's almost like termites. You don't realize you have a problem until it's too late because they haven't been visible. In a 160 day window, whatever it might be, you might be passed that but because whatever that attack was, it was malicious and as clandestine enough that you didn't find it and it does cause problems so as we're wrapping up here, what kind of confidence do you want to share with the end users with people to let them know that there are tools that they can deploy. That it's not all grim reaper. But it is difficult. >> It is difficult, it's very real. But it's absolutely something that every business can have under control, have a plan around. From an IBM perspective, we are number one leader in security, we're the leader in security. Our focus is not just at a software level, it's starting from the chips we design to the servers we deliver to the storage, the flash core modules, FIPS 140 compliance, the storage software, the data protection, the storage management software all the way through the stack. All the way through our cloud infrastructure. Having that comprehensive end to end security and we have those capabilities, we also have services. Our services and security organization work with clients to establish these, evaluate the environment, establish these strategies and interim plans. It's really about creating the plan, prioritizing it and implementing it, making sure the whole organization is aware and educated on it. >> You got to prepare no doubt about that. Thanks for the time Bina, we appreciate that. And it's not all doom and gloom but it is tough. Tough work and very necessary work. Back with more here on The Cube. You're watching our coverage from vmworld 2019, Here in San Francisco.