NEWSWEEK.COM 15
“I think they’ll rue
the day that theydidn’t work with us
on an earlier basis.”BIG TECHBRAGGING RIGHTS Roger Stone (left) and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones,
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part of that revenue stream to some-
body to protect your data better, is
that you paying? Or is that simply a
smarter monetization or something
that’s already taking place?Recently, the NSA released
another warning about how we are
not prepared for warfare on the
“internet of things”...
I have had legislation, bipartisan leg-
islation, for three years that has said
at least when the U.S. government is
spending taxpayer dollars to buy in-
ternet of things–connective devices,
there ought to be minimum security
standards. For example, there ought
to not be embedded passcodes. You
ought to make sure that the device is
patchable. I mean, basic items. It is cra-
zy that we’re going from about roughly
5 to 8 billion devices now to 30 billion
connected devices over the next four
or five years. Your refrigerator sends
the message to Alexa when your diet
Coke runs out. At a recent electronics
show, they had hair dryers that were
internet of things–connected devices.
Why do you need a hair dryer connect-
ed to the internet? I don’t know. But
the challenge is, every time you con-
nect another device to the network,
you create another vulnerability point.
We spent all this money trying to pro-
tect the nuclear plant from cyberat-
tacks. What happens when the bad
guys [don’t] attack through the front
door, but go through the microwave in
the staff kitchen because it’s connected
to the internet?So what can the government do?
With our government dollars, we
ought to be buying only devices that
have [at least] minimum security
standards. We finally passed legis-
lation out of the committees at the
House and the Senate. It needs to get
across the finish line on the floor.
There is nothing partisan about
this, even the folks in the Trump ad-
ministration, the DOD fully under-
stand. We’ve been fighting some of
the low-end vendors who don’t want
to spend the extra money, and we’re
talking about pennies on the dollar,
to put in some basic security. So we
could wake up a year or two from
now and have some important gov-
ernment function interrupted be-
cause we didn’t put a basic security
in our internet of things–connected
devices. We will look crazy for not
doing it.Last question, are we at a tipping
point now with Silicon Valley and
U.S. regulations? In recent weeks,
there have been huge lawsuits and
announcements of investigations
left and right. You wrote the white
paper last year. What’s going on
now that caused this to move?
I think it’s an accumulation of trans-
gressions, a failure of the companies. I
think the companies will regret the day
that they didn’t engage earlier. There’s
interest from everyday Americans on
this topic, I’ve seen it increase expo-
nentially over the last nine months.
Some of it around democracy protec-
tion, some of it around kids concerned
about polling, some of it around the
fact that they, the people, realize the
level of hate and vile that spread on
these platforms. The public is ahead
of the policymakers on this. They get
that the status quo can’t last.