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- [00:03]
Dina Temple-Raston
From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. Once upon a time, intelligence involved trench coats and dead drops and Cold War whispers. But today's spymasters operate differently. Through fiber optic cables, algorithmic signals, and digital fingerprints that are scattered across the globe. Few have navigated that transformation more completely than General Paul Nakasone. For nearly six years, he led two of the most powerful and secretive arms of American national security, the NSA and US Cyber Command. One listens and the other kind of talks. Back under the first Trump administration, Cyber Command got something it never had before, the green light not just to defend, but to be really aggressive on offense. It was a turning point, a move from playing goalie to taking the shot, from building walls to stepping into the fray.
- [01:16]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Reports say the U.S. launched a cyber attack on Iran designed to cripple its computer systems.
- [01:21]
Dina Temple-Raston
US Cyber Command is now launching attacks against is. These cyber operations were signals in their own right, and loud ones. The man behind these kinds of missions has been pretty quiet about it all until now, more than a year after stepping down from the nsa in cybercom, he can speak a little more freely. And he sat down with us. I'm Dina Templewaston and this is Click Here, a podcast about all things cyber and intelligence. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And today we sit down with General Nakasone, one of the architects of America's cyber offense. I've interviewed him maybe half a dozen times and he's usually cautious and on message, but this time he told us, ask me anything. So we did. About China, about AI, and about what a second Trump term might mean for America's digital defenses. And by the way, this interview took place before the Atlantic published its article about being included in a signal chat with national security officials who were discussing military operations in Yemen. Stay with us.
- [02:55]
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- [03:29]
Dina Temple-Raston
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- [04:59]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Hi, Dean. I'm General Paul M. Nakasone, United States army, retired.
- [05:04]
Dina Temple-Raston
And what do you do now?
- [05:05]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, I have a portfolio approach to life. Right now I'm spending about half my time with the Vanderbilt Institute of National Security. I'm also on the board of directors for OpenAI, do public speaking, and I also do some consulting work for various businesses.
- [05:20]
Dina Temple-Raston
And do you still have a relationship with the government?
- [05:23]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I do. I don't. I'm on a cooling off period right now and I think after 37 years, it's good.
- [05:28]
Dina Temple-Raston
Okay. You've said you worry that we're falling behind in cyberspace. What makes you say that? Is it the sheer prevalence of attacks? Is it adversaries that are stepping up, like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon? Tell me what you're seeing.
- [05:44]
General Paul M. Nakasone
In the years since I've left government, I would tell you that my focus is truly on the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Republic of China. They have separated themselves from other countries in terms of their capabilities. Two years ago we talked about Volt Typhoon, this idea of Chinese implanting in our critical infrastructure in key resources. This past year, we discovered them in our telecommunications companies. This week I talked to the general manager of the Littleton Electric Water and Power District right outside of Boston. He's a general manager there of a town of 10,000. They just discovered the Chinese in their critical infrastructure. What are they doing in Littleton, Massachusetts? Well, I think that it's not just Littleton. There are many more that we haven't found yet. And this gives you the sense of scale of what my concern is. When we take a look at Patch Tuesday, this idea of Microsoft being able to patch their vulnerabilities periodically, we now see that adversaries are into and being able to exploit those vulnerabilities within five days. And the last thing is that businesses are reporting. On average, it takes them almost six months to find an intrusion into their networks. In another two months to be able to rid that malware or those attackers from their networks. That gives me a sense that we're behind. We're not keeping up. We have a very, very sophisticated nation state that is continuing to use scope and scale. We have a level of cybersecurity across our networks. And the last part, I think, coming onto us is artificial intelligence. And as we think about that, I think we're not really sure is artificial intelligence going to be really powerful for the offense or perhaps for the defense? But those are the three concerns with cybersecurity.
- [07:30]
Dina Temple-Raston
So what would you prioritize doing?
- [07:31]
General Paul M. Nakasone
First, I think the priority should be let's understand the scope and scale of what the Chinese are undertaking here. This is like nothing we have seen before. And I'm not sure that we have done a good job of talking about the challenge that this presents us with regards to our. Our intellectual property, our personal data, our economic wellbeing, our national security. The second thing is I think we have to have a much broader approach to how we defend ourselves in cyberspace. Everything from our offensive capabilities to our defensive capabilities to our general understanding of the software has to get better. You know, after decades of talking about hygiene and patching, the software's not getting that much better and the attack service is growing.
- [08:16]
Dina Temple-Raston
So let's talk a little bit, if we can, about Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon and what it's telling us about China in cyberspace. Do you think they've already replaced Russia as our major foe? And how are they different?
- [08:29]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, I think they have. And again, this is the major change that I saw over the six years running NSA and Cyber Command is that China has eclipsed all of our adversaries in terms of the scope and scale and now the sophistication also of what they're doing. You know, Volt Typhoon, there is absolutely no intelligence to be gathered by where they're putting the implants within these networks. There's no intelligence to gather from the water in the United States or the water in different countries within the Indo Pacific.
- [08:59]
Dina Temple-Raston
But it's Meaning they're not espionage.
- [09:00]
General Paul M. Nakasone
It's not espionage. This is not intended for espionage. This is intended to have a capability at some point in time where the Chinese can say, well, let's cause havoc or crisis as we enter a period of tension with the United States, and let's make sure that they have to focus someplace else. It's very, very hard to detect someone who has stolen passwords or someone that has stolen credentials to get into a network or a data or a weapon system. And so as we look at that, we say, wow, that's a sophistication that shows that the Chinese are continuing to get better.
- [09:35]
Dina Temple-Raston
In fact, to put this into a starker context, over the past decade, China's hacking program has grow that former FBI Director Christopher Wray said it was now larger than that of every other major nation combined. Bolt Typhoon is one of these Chinese hacking groups. Another is known as Salt Typhoon. And they're the ones who broke into all the major U.S. telecom companies. Here's General Nakasone.
- [10:04]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Again, this is all about intelligence, and this is all about being able to have placement and then being able to use incredible tools like large language models to be able to identify and then be able to target and then be able to assess what's going on. It was interesting that they also were very purposeful in who they went after. Not only political figures, but the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Why is that?
- [10:28]
Dina Temple-Raston
Wow.
- [10:29]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Wouldn't it be nice to know who might be under surveillance with regards to whom we might believe are Chinese espionage candidates within the United States or those that, you know, we have concerns about? That's a level of insight that they were trying to gather. And so I think, again, that shows a pretty broad scale. It shows the scope of being able to do this for intelligence, but also sophistication of being able to not only use the incredible collection that you're getting, but also pair it with the analysis capabilities like large language models?
- [11:00]
Dina Temple-Raston
China has been stealing information for years. They hacked into the Office of personnel management in 2015 and swiped the background investigation records of current, former and prospective federal employees in Congress contractors. Three years later, there was a data breach at Marriott, which owns Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. In that case, Chinese hackers stole the personal information of some 500 million guests. They got names, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth, and all kinds of arrival and departure information.
- [11:33]
General Paul M. Nakasone
They were stealing our identities, right?
- [11:35]
Dina Temple-Raston
Yeah. So if you talk about China, you need to also talk about Taiwan, I think. What's the scenario you worry about when it comes to Taiwan miscalculation.
- [11:47]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I return to 2001 with regards to an American intelligence plane that was clipped by a Chinese fighter in April 2001, an American spy plane and Chinese fighter jet collided probably 20ft from our wing tip. Felt that one. The American plane lands at Hainan Island. There's a series of days where there's negotiation. We finally get our crew back. The plane stays there. But that was done over a period of, you know, relative, you know, media free influence upon what was going on. Think if that happened today, if we had an American intelligence plane that went down. Think about the social media that is going to generate just the following, the interest, the impact in terms of driving us to perhaps a heightened state of concern with regards to our country. But also think about what it means in China as well and how that's messaged. That becomes very difficult to work your way through that type of environment with clear thinking when this is occurring. The other piece that I'm worried about is a little bit of the. The frog and the increasingly warm pot. And as we think about it now, we've heard about, you know, the Chinese dredging the bottom for Taiwan's cables. If we think about the fact they're conducting exercises relatively frequently off the island of Taiwan, if we think about the fact that the Coast Guard of the People's Liberation Navy is being much more aggressive in terms of what's going on at some point in time, do we become just, you know, a nerd to it? Right. And it's like suddenly it's, you know, a crisis or a conflict that might be so quick that it might even catch us by surprise.
- [13:27]
Dina Temple-Raston
If we go back to when you had your confirmation hearings in 2018, one of the things that you said was that our adversaries don't fear us in. Do you think that's still true? Is that why we're seeing this kind of proliferation that you're talking about?
- [13:41]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think one of the challenges that we've had is that we have fallen behind with a deterrent approach to cyberspace. One of the things that the Trump administration did during their first administration was provide the policies and authorities that allowed us to be much more proactive. I called it persistent engagement, this idea that every single day we're going to be active outside the United States, ensuring that our adversaries knew what was going on. What I also learned, though, Dina, in that approach is that it's more than just what we're going to do offensively. It's also what our legal system is going to do. It's also what the private sector does. It's also what our international partners are going to do. This becomes much more sophisticated as we think about really the rheostat of what has to be done.
- [14:20]
Dina Temple-Raston
And are you surprised we're finding ourselves here after all this time that we're still this vulnerable?
- [14:26]
General Paul M. Nakasone
This is a very dynamic environment, technology wise, talent wise, tradecraft wise. We have to be dynamic. And I think we've lost a bit of that dynamism over the past several years and we have to regain that.
- [14:37]
Dina Temple-Raston
So as you said earlier, we have this enormous attack surface in the United States because we're so connected. And for years we've been talking about how we'd make sure that no new equipment has the same vulnerabilities that the old equipment had. Do you think this has been addressed in any serious way?
- [14:54]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think that we have to address it in a different way. And let me give you an example. One of the things I've talked about is really the idea of radical partnerships. The government has intelligence and information that should be shared. The private sector, individuals and organizations have an ability to address the vast majority of the networks, the data, the cloud systems that they control. Guess what? Academia has tremendous expertise that isn't necessarily being tapped in right now or is under a lot of stress to be able to get a solution tomorrow. So you can have a bit of long run approach to how we get after these problems. And when you bring those three together, you could have some pretty significant advantages in terms of being able to get after the problems that we have today.
- [15:40]
Dina Temple-Raston
Let's talk a little bit about the future. One of the things that we're seeing is cyber sort of bleeding from non kinetic, in other words, maybe taking down a system to zeros and ones actually destroying physical things. And we've seen a little bit of that. I'm thinking of Ukraine and wiper malware, for example. Can you talk a little bit about that? Do you see the trend continuing that there's this bleed?
- [16:03]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think you've identified one of the key trends that we're going to learn from Russia, Ukraine and Israel, Hamas. Were any of us surprised in the fall of 2024 when a series of pagers and walkie talkies were exploding and suddenly took off the operational level of Hezbollah? At least 12 people are dead, thousands.
- [16:23]
Brooke Gladstone
Hurt after pagers and Lebanon started exploding?
- [16:26]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Another wave of explosions emanating from wireless devices, predominantly walkie talkies. It seems this is, you know, the example of where cyber becomes not just a means upon which we learn intelligence or able to use disinformation. But it really becomes a kinetic capability that armies and future individuals will learn how to use. And so think about where we're at today with the Internet of things and how many things of our households and ourselves are connected to the Internet.
- [16:58]
Dina Temple-Raston
Let me talk to you a little bit on a geopolitical level, since you brought up Israel and Hamas and Russia and Ukraine. So one of the things that we're hearing is one of Vladimir Putin's conditions for peace is that the US Stop providing weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. If that happened, how devastating would it be?
- [17:18]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Devastating, but perhaps not as devastating as the United States not providing intelligence to Ukraine.
- [17:25]
Dina Temple-Raston
Could Europe and the five eyes replicate that intelligence? Should it be pulled back?
- [17:30]
General Paul M. Nakasone
They can provide some capability, but the capacity is nowhere near of what the United States can provide. Think about what the US Intelligence community can provide to partner with regards to land, sea, air and space. No one does it better than the United States.
- [17:45]
Dina Temple-Raston
So speaking of pauses, there was news a few weeks ago that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered a pause in cybercom's offensive operations against Russia. Should people's hair be on fire about that?
- [17:58]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, I want to provide context to how this happens. No matter if it's the Trump administration, the Biden administration. My experience has been is that administrations provide guidance to combatant commanders with regards to the operations of their conduct. This is what the policymakers do. This is civilian controlled military. Whether or not it was Trump won or President Biden, I received that guidance as well. And so when there's a sensitive visit, when there are negotiations ongoing, they'll say, we would like to pause these Type of Title 10. These are operations that the Department of Defense is responsible to do. Two parts that I think are important for us to think about. First of all, none of us saw the order. So there was a tremendous amount of churn with regards to what did it say, what can they do, what can't they do? But the big piece is I read in there that this did not impact the National Security Agency. This is our intelligence arm upon which we rely on for early warning. No one's better than nsa. And so that was an important piece. And I think the other piece that we have to keep in mind is if this is temporal, if this is days, even a couple weeks, that is not uncommon. If this is months, then it isn't common. It's a dynamic environment. As you operate within cyberspace, your vulnerabilities change, your capabilities can change. Your adversaries change, change. And so you'll have to, a lot of times start again and say, okay, this is the vulnerability that we were trying to exploit. This was the capability we would develop. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work anymore. These are things that over time they change. It's not like flying the same route into a target location in the Pacific or Europe. This is a space that's man made and it changes pretty frequently. Something is taken offline, capability doesn't work anymore. A number of things can really change the dynamics of what you can do.
- [19:43]
Dina Temple-Raston
Over the past three months, there's been a lot of firings all over. The changes in the military reorganization of the Office of Net Assessments, removing generals, removing JAGs, judge advocate generals, lawyers. This goes beyond just picking your own team, which you've said rightfully, that a president has a right to pick his own team. What's your reaction to all of this? Because this seems broader than that.
- [20:07]
General Paul M. Nakasone
My concern always is losing really good talent. As a former commander, as a former director, I want the best talent. And that talent means that some of it you have to recruit from industry, some of it comes out of the college system, some of it requires you to retain the best folks that don't want to leave private industry. I don't want something that's going to disrupt that. I don't want something that calls into question whether or not this is a good place to work. These are all elements of being able to keep really good talent. And so that's my concern. And I think that. But as many of us have looked at it, there's a better way probably to do this than perhaps a blanket statement of it's just going to be probationary period. Folks that are coming in, over your.
- [20:49]
Dina Temple-Raston
Tenure at NSA in CyberCom, I think you did a lot of educating of politicians, maybe even presidents of why cyber is important. When it comes to cyber, where do you think the Trump administration is going?
- [21:02]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think the National Security Advisor, Mike Walls has laid out some of that in terms of it's going to be a much more aggressive approach to re establish deterren. There are two unspoken elements that I'm still waiting to see come out. So how do we deal with Salt typhoon and Volt Typhoon? How do we deal with the challenge of China today? And the other pieces? How do we take the advantages that we have in artificial intelligence and make this a continued advantage for us? How do we have a national strategy to build what I think is the most important disruptive technology of this century? How do we do that? And how are we going to do it effectively? How we do it safely? How do we do it securely? Those are questions still to be answered.
- [21:47]
Dina Temple-Raston
When we come back, General Nakasone on vulnerabilities, Doge's incursions into government networks and the role of artificial intelligence in national security. And also a lightning round. Stay with us.
- [22:16]
Brooke Gladstone
There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's on the Media. Media want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass that's on the media specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts, ChatGPT, AI Machine, Satellite Engine ignition.
- [22:51]
Dina Temple-Raston
Click here and lift up. So you're on the OpenAI board. How do you perceive your role there?
- [23:00]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I joined the board in June of 2024. It was the only board I really wanted to get on when I left government. I had seen OpenAI and it was something that I wanted to be a part of just because I think it's that important to the future of our nation and the future of democracies. It's one of the things that I went after. My role on the board is to be part not only of the board of directors, but also on the committee that looks at safety and security. So I'm bringing the perspective of having the largest element of the US Intelligence community, having been in the meetings with our national security leaders in Washington, D.C. and also I think the perspective of running large organizations, to how I might be able to help. And it is a very dynamic process.
- [23:41]
Dina Temple-Raston
Where do you feel AI is going to be best placed? A lot of people think it's defense, Others say it might be offense. What's your best guess?
- [23:48]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think the jury's out. When I left nsa, I was convinced that this was going to be an offensive tool that was going to be very, very impactful, that we would be very challenged to deal. But yet what we saw in the elections was the defensive capabilities are much better than what the offensive capabilities were. I think it comes back to this. You have ideas, you have innovation, then implementation comes after that. Who implements the best? Defensive offensive capabilities are still to be seen. I don't think anyone knows yet. Here's what I would tell you, though. What has surprised me the most about AI is the speed upon which it's moving. I remember November of 22, when ChatGPT came on. We were so excited to be able to throw a question into the prompt, and suddenly this very mediocre high school student would give you an answer that may or may not be true and sometimes hallucinate it. What have we seen since then? We have seen reasoning. We have seen deep research. We've seen multimodality in terms of being able to look at a number of different capabilities that come in and feed this information. We're looking at ability to create pictures. This is really moving quite fast. And I think, for me, as I think about the future, perhaps faster than I anticipated when I left service.
- [25:02]
Dina Temple-Raston
Rob Joyce used to say that AI was very good at spotting AI. Is that why it's good at defense?
- [25:09]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I think that's one of the things that we've been very effective at. I think the other piece is offense is hard, it's not easy, and there's a number of different variables that play into it. And perhaps the agents that are now being developed will be able to conquer some of that. I'm not sure. But it does give me pause in the sense of, wow, it is incredible in terms of what it's being able to move on even from November of 22. That's not even three years ago.
- [25:33]
Dina Temple-Raston
Dino, are you seeing AI help adversaries?
- [25:37]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I would anticipate that what I read in terms of the Wall Street Journal and other mediums, that, yes, it is certainly being used. Here's the piece that I think is interesting to me is I think about the future. There's a couple things that I think about for our own intelligence community. I think this is going to have an incredible impact in terms of something I know very well, language analysis. We're not going to need the same number of linguists that we hired previously. The translation capabilities have gotten much better. Secondly, as we think about something that was so important to us, like war gaming, you know, this idea of doing a tabletop exercise. Who sat at the tabletop? Well, it's a bunch of these generals and admirals. Did they know anything? Well, maybe they knew a few things. But think about this. If you have someone that has read every single speech and every single writing of President Xi and then is able to provide an analysis of what he might do under a certain situation, think about how it changes our strategies, our templates of what we're going to do, Think about it. Challenges and makes us think about risk in a different way. And the final piece is the amount of data that's resident today. I think really calls into question how impactful human operations, human intelligence operations, are going to be in the future. There's just too many cameras, there's too much spotting, there's too much ability for artificial intelligence algorithms to be able to identify someone now. And I think it really then becomes this idea of who has the signals intelligence capabilities. Oh yeah. And who's got the space capabilities.
- [27:07]
Dina Temple-Raston
So we've been writing a lot about Elon Musk's Doge group.
- [27:10]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Right.
- [27:11]
Dina Temple-Raston
This 50 or so employees who are in government systems using AI tools, some cases adding code. Are you worried about that? Does that introduce a whole nother vulnerability attack surface for adversaries?
- [27:24]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Certainly, certainly. I mean, I think that this is the challenge. Anytime that you have networks that are being provided a certain amount of privilege by different users, you're going to have our adversaries look for ways upon which they can draft in behind them. I think this is a great concern and I've heard a lot about it. And I'm not up to the details in terms of how it was done, but just the description certainly gives me pause.
- [27:50]
Dina Temple-Raston
And so if you're doing something like, like installing AI software throughout federal agencies to automate tasks with proprietary AI tools, that's worrisome, correct?
- [28:01]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, there's a very detailed process upon which we go through and being able to add software to our networks. And I know at times it's very frustrating, but there's a reason, because we have such a broad surface upon which our adversaries can impact it. Yeah, there's always a challenge when those steps are skipped.
- [28:18]
Dina Temple-Raston
So you're talking about a change control process.
- [28:21]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Change control process. You know, authority to operate. Those are processes that are in place right now that govern the way that we run our networks.
- [28:28]
Dina Temple-Raston
Right. So if you were weighing what you need to be concerned about a short pause in offensive operations from cybercom or a bunch of people being in networks who work for Doge, which one is a bigger problem to you?
- [28:44]
General Paul M. Nakasone
You know, I think that all of those provide problems in some degree. You asked me the question with regards to outsiders being able to access a network, that concerns me. It's a near term concern that I think that I would be very, very focused on with regards to what our adversaries are doing to try to leverage that.
- [29:00]
Dina Temple-Raston
How should we be thinking about China's answer to AI? In other words, deep seek.
- [29:06]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Here's what I would say is that let's rewind the clock to January after the inauguration. On the 20th of January, day one, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison and Masa from SoftBank are in the Oval Office talking about a $100 billion deal called Stargate. Two days later, Deepseek releases R1. I'm sure that was just by chance. I talked about the changes since even ChatGPT came out in November 22nd. Think about the changes that we're seeing in 2025. This is how we have to think about it. And I come back to the idea of, so what are we going to do about it? I think we need a strategy for AI, something that gets along the ideas of data, that gets along the ideas of energy, that gets along the ideas of semiconductors, and importantly, talent. That's really the equation we've got to solve for the future.
- [29:58]
Dina Temple-Raston
And what are you wrestling with when it comes to ethics and AI?
- [30:01]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, I think the early piece that we have done a very good job about is how do we ensure that the models that are being released by this company truly are safe and secure? The testing that has been done has been done well. But I think we're just at the early piece of being able to think about what is this type of technology going to have an impact on in terms of our medical capabilities, our educational capabilities, how is it going to impact our economy, particularly job displacement? How is it going to be utilized for? Really, I think good, as opposed to being utilized by others for something that is less than good.
- [30:37]
Dina Temple-Raston
You've said in the past that the US Needs to be first when it comes to AI, and you're talking about models being safe and secure. Is one of the issues with Deep SEQ is that it doesn't have any of those guardrails. So that if you were to say, type in teach me how to make a bomb. It could.
- [30:52]
General Paul M. Nakasone
It concerns me. It does. I mean, I think that's one of the first things that I think about, and people say, are you using Deep Seq? No. Where is the data being stored? Do I want to be able to, you know, have a conscious feeling that my data is being protected? Is it going to be used for something that I don't want it to be used for? That concerns me. And so I think that's one of the things that we have to have this continued discussion with the broader public about. Here are the challenges. It's much in the same way we had talked about TikTok previously and the concerns that many of us have with regards to a platform that services over 150 million Americans today with their news outlet. But I think that this, again, is one of those areas that we've got to step back and say, hey, that's not something we want to be able to support.
- [31:37]
Dina Temple-Raston
Can you talk a little bit about generative targeting when we talk about AI, what is it? How would it work?
- [31:44]
General Paul M. Nakasone
One of the things that we've learned in Russia, Ukraine is the idea that electronic warfare still has an impact on drones and other type of capabilities in terms of their navigation systems, their targeting systems. And one of the things that has been proposed is wouldn't it be interesting if we had this type of capability that that would be able to make decisions on its own? When it was being jammed, it could turn left or could turn right. It could discern a target. It wouldn't need necessarily a communications capability or a tethering back to a human. This is the challenge that we're operating in right now. As we look at our adversaries, they have no problems with that absence of a human in the loop. That is something that goes against all of our policies in the Department of Defense. There is always a human in the loop for critical and lethal targeting. I think that as we move on in the future, we're going to have to figure out what is the level of comfort we're going to have with the ability of these generative capabilities to make decisions. Is it okay to make a decision on a lethal run? Perhaps not. Is it okay for it to make a decision within a network as we're trying to look for a vulnerability or patch of vulnerability? Do we always have to go back to have a human in the loop there? Again, I think that our adversaries are going to push us to areas that we're going to have to make very key decisions on.
- [32:57]
Dina Temple-Raston
Okay, ready for your lightning?
- [32:58]
General Paul M. Nakasone
I'm ready.
- [32:59]
Dina Temple-Raston
Okay, if your WI fi goes down, do you fix it yourself or do.
- [33:05]
General Paul M. Nakasone
You call it both? I'll do the initial fixing and then I'll call my IT component if I needed. Okay.
- [33:12]
Dina Temple-Raston
Is that your wife?
- [33:13]
General Paul M. Nakasone
No, it's one of my very good friends.
- [33:16]
Dina Temple-Raston
Okay. I'm in charge of IT in our household.
- [33:19]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Excellent. Maybe I'll call you.
- [33:20]
Dina Temple-Raston
Yeah, maybe you can call me. If you could recruit any fictional character into cybersecurity, who would it?
- [33:27]
General Paul M. Nakasone
It's gotta be Captain America. Of course.
- [33:30]
Dina Temple-Raston
I had a feeling you'd go with Captain America. What's the most unhackable thing you own?
- [33:37]
General Paul M. Nakasone
The pencil and paper that I write on every single day.
- [33:39]
Dina Temple-Raston
Is that why you use a pencil instead of a pen?
- [33:41]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Yeah, because I erase it.
- [33:42]
Dina Temple-Raston
Okay, if you could only pick one. Would you rather never receive spam emails again or have a perfect poker face?
- [33:50]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Never receive spam emails.
- [33:53]
Dina Temple-Raston
What is the best book on cyber.
- [33:55]
General Paul M. Nakasone
The one that influenced me the most was Dark Territory that really kind of excited me in terms of what was going on. That's changed much in terms of what's going on, but that's one that reminds me of kind of my past.
- [34:04]
Dina Temple-Raston
Thanks so much for being with us.
- [34:06]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Thank you, Dean. It's always good to see you. And thanks a lot for your time.
- [34:12]
Dina Temple-Raston
On Friday, we'll have a little more from our interview with General Nakasone, along with a preview of a summit he's convening at Vanderbilt University in April about the future of war.
- [34:23]
General Paul M. Nakasone
In the future, we need policymakers who code and coders who understand policy.
- [34:29]
Dina Temple-Raston
And you don't think we have that now?
- [34:31]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Well, my experience over the past six years leading both NSA and Cyber Command is that we are perhaps a little short of that.
- [34:39]
Dina Temple-Raston
That's Friday on Click here's Mic Drop. See you.
- [34:51]
Recorded Future News Team
If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up today's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.
- [35:20]
Dina Temple-Raston
Today is Tuesday, April 1st, and here's a selection of cyber and intelligence stories of the past week, including private chats and public fallout, a deal in the Black Sea with a catch, and Elon Musk's plan to rewire Social Security.
- [35:39]
Congresswoman Chrissy Houlihan
I would like it, if you would please commit to this organization that you will follow the law. Would like it if you would also investigate what is likely to be more than just this chat. Because if there's one, there's more than one. Would you please obligate yourself and your organization to that investigation?
- [35:54]
General Paul M. Nakasone
Yeah, Congresswoman, Yes, I will follow the law.
- [35:57]
Dina Temple-Raston
That was Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlihan questioning Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, before the House Intelligence Committee last week. And what they were talking about was a group chat, a signal chat, to be exact, published by the Atlantic magazine. The chat itself was already controversial, but it's what was said in it and who is in it that's raising so many alarms. Among the participants, Trump's national security team, National Security Advisor Michael waltz, Vice President J.D. vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, among others. And they were discussing potential launch times on US Military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen over an unclassified channel. And somehow Jeffrey Goldberg, a longtime national security reporter and the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine, was added to the group. Now Democrats are calling for Defense Secretary Hegseth to resign, accusing him of putting American service members at risk. In another corner of the world, the White House says Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine have agreed to ensure safe passage for commercial shipping and to stop military strikes in the Black Sea. Last week, the White House announced a fragile ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to allow shipping lanes to reopen in the Black Sea. The goal is to protect commercial shipping, but there's a catch. Russia says the deal only holds if some Western sanctions are lifted. Further complicating matters, in late March, the Ukraine Ukrainian army pushed into southern Russia's Belgorod region. It's unclear what they're planning, but the timing was messy.
- [37:40]
General Paul M. Nakasone
We have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people won't receive their Social Security.
- [37:49]
Dina Temple-Raston
That was Elon Musk talking to Fox NEWS about something you might not expect him to focus on Social Security under the auspices of the Department of Government Officials Efficiency or Doge. Musk says he's planning to overhaul the entire Social Security system. The problem, he says outdated tech, specifically cobol, an old computer programming language still used by the government to manage benefits for more than 65 million Americans. Elon's plan? Phase it out fast. But experts are sounding the alarm. They say that the Social Security database is one of the most sensitive and fragile systems the government operates, and moving in too quickly could delay payments or worse, break the entire pipeline. Still, Elon Musk says the overhaul is necessary to prevent fraud and to bring the system into the 21st century. Let's click here for Tuesday, April 1st. We'll see you Friday.
- [38:58]
Production Team
Today's episode was produced by Zach Hirsch, Megan Dietrich, Erica Gaeda, Sean Powers and Dina Temple Raston. It was edited by Karen Duffin, Fact Checked by Darren Ankrum and contains original music by Ben Levingston with some other music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Martin Peralta is our sound designer and engineer. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Tune in on Friday for Mic Drop, which features our favorite interview of the week. We'll have a new episode of Click Here on Tuesday. We'll see you then.
- [39:51]
Recorded Future News Team
Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click here, then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.