- We're happy to welcome all our guests. We have seven guests today. We would love it if you would stand
- so we could greet you with some applause. Please patience with my pronunciations. So please welcome
- a guest from the OCE Lab of Civic Engagement, Shilpa Nandiala. Shilpa?
- Oh, are you observing? All right, follow up to last week's speaker already. Guest of Mike Baker, David
- McFadden. Kyla Cox-Deckard is welcoming three guests with her from the Center for Rural Engagement,
- and Elise Jenke.
- Gina Vertrees and Milan Gaston. Another guest, Becky Wan, is a guest of Mark Peterson. Becky. And a
- guest of Michael Wade, Megan Wade.
- Welcome. If you have any questions about Rotary, feel free to ask the folks at your table. And do we
- have any guests online? Hey, Hank. Oops. OK. Hello. Yes, Megan Wade is joining us online, so as a guest
- online. And other than that, just Rotarians.
- saying any of you who'd like to learn more about Rotary, just turn to someone at your table and ask
- away. Birthdays, we have several birthdays to celebrate. On the 11th, past club president and past district
- governor Lance Eberly. On the 12th, Forrest Gilmore. On the 14th, past club president and district governor
- Judy Witt. And on the 15th, Erica Kovacs. One anniversary to observe, Judge Jeff Bradley
- Five years with our club, 12 years total as a Rotarian. We have a number of announcements. Please join
- the members of the Rotary Book Club following the regular celebration of service at 1 p.m. next Tuesday,
- right after the meeting. They will have a brief meetup to field questions that Rotarians might have
- about the group, and they'll also decide what the next book will be and the meeting date.
- The Rotary District Conference registration is now open, scheduled for May 8th and 9th at the Gold House
- in Louisville. And you can learn more and register at rotaryallstars.com and there should be a link
- in the roundabout. Save the date for the Wonder Lab Summer Blast Off on May 21st, an afternoon and evening
- street party celebrating the last day of school.
- Loomington Rotary Foundation is the primary event sponsor, and we'll need some club members to volunteer
- that day. It should be a fun time, and if you want to learn more about it, the link will be in roundabout.
- Don't forget that during meeting times, club members can also park for free at the Henderson or Atwater
- garages. I parked at Atwater today. Campus sidewalks are clear. It was a nice walk.
- If you want to avoid some of the parking problems at the Union parking lot, or you don't want to navigate
- all the students in front of the Union, both Henderson and Atwater are good choices. So I think I crossed
- the line last week because I hugged Brad Fulton, our guest speaker, at the end of his talk. So the net
- result is it has been determined that we need to be observed. Maybe I need to be observed.
- So anyway, Shilpa there in the back monitoring my behavior. But don't be concerned about this. Seriously,
- as we heard last week, they have observed countless organizations, including the Bloomington Rotary
- Foundation. And at a board level of the club, we talked about it a couple of months ago and said, yes,
- we're willing to do this. So anyway, Shilpa or one of our colleagues will be here at Tuesday meetings.
- They'll probably sit down on some kid meeting meetings. They'll probably be at board meetings. So now
- that we've welcomed her, forget that she's here, and business as usual. Tyler, if I can get you to stand.
- So Tyler Martin Nichols is our Zoom and audio producer. And Tyler is still looking for the right full-time
- employment. Main areas of interest are arts administration, student affairs, program project management,
- Faculty support, university governance. Tyler has master's degrees from both O'Neill and Jacobs. If
- you have an interest in learning more, see Tyler or see me. I'll vouch for Tyler. He's personable, reliable,
- very quiet way, very competent. He'd do a good job for anyone.
- Last thing, it's been brought to my attention that several of us have received spam emails from people
- we know in Rotary, special party invitation. So if you get that, just be very cautious. Let's see. Has
- Jeff Richardson walked in yet? Yes. Jeff, are you ready for your reflection? All right. Jeff will give
- our reflection for today.
- Good afternoon. Reflecting on Lee Hamilton's life reminded me of the Jimmy Stewart character in Mr.
- Smith Goes to Washington, a man of intellect, integrity, eagerness, kindness, tenacity, and humility.
- And he never lost that competitive edge he had from being a top basketball player in Evansville and
- at DePaul. How fortunate we were to have Lee in Congress from 1965
- until 1999, then at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in DC, and the Center for Congress at
- IU, coupled with his teaching at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He never
- stopped serving the public's interest. In fact, his son reported he took his father to his IU office
- the day before he died. First, Leonard reminded me of beloved
- Charlotte, who was from her bed, still doing lobbying the day before she died. Before I share some personal
- reflections, let's visit how just a few national media and local media characterize Lee's passing. A
- life of service and global leadership, the Midwestern congressman from Washington who should be remembered,
- a compromiser who operates above the fray,
- powering figure in national politics with ties to IU, Lee Hamilton, a legacy of honor. Beyond these
- and many other headlines, I also connected with some old friends and reminisced about Lee. Speaking
- with Wayne and Emily Vance is always entertaining and informative. Wayne worked for Lee both in Congress
- and the Center for Congress for over 40 years. Wayne stated that Lee's passion for public service never wavered.
- As much as Lee enjoyed his work, he loved coming back to southern Indiana and meeting with his constituents.
- He would return to Indiana 41 weekends every year. Wayne explained that Lee felt it kept him grounded,
- and his outreach was not limited to folks back home. For example, he went to see the troops in Vietnam
- in the mid-1960s and to Iraq during the war there to hear directly from them.
- And of course, he traveled the world, meeting world leaders, always listening and learning. Wayne added
- that Lee believed that his greatest legislative achievement was a passage of Medicare. As a 75-year-old
- recipient, thank you, Lee. Lee also counted his tenure on the 9-11 Commission as a ringing success and
- top-life achievement post-Congress. One pundit characterized Lee as a quiet man who made himself heard.
- So true. I had several specific memories about Lee during my life, but due to time, we'll share just
- a few. When campaigning as an IU student volunteer for various Democrats in 1970, that's when I first
- heard Lee speak, very impressed. After Frank McCloskey got elected in 1971, Lee would drop by City Hall
- to see the mayor, but also make a point of walking the halls to visit others.
- 1970s, when I was on the city council, he would stop by, always asking how things were going, how are
- we doing in Washington, and what should we be doing? Of course, he was a regular at all the Democratic
- events in southern Indiana, and along with Birch Bayh, who incidentally, helped get elected in 1962
- as a chair of the Bartholomew Democrats, he was a crowd favorite. Bayh once... This is Birch Bayh, once
- famous, he said,
- If I could ask God, one favorite would be to have a whole bunch of more Lee Hamiltons, the
- perfect congressman. When Frank McCloskey was elected to Congress in 1982, I was honored, no, actually
- thrilled to be part of Frank's team to get his new office off the ground. During my three months there,
- the most regular visitor was Lee, sometimes a few times a day. Always upbeat, joyful, connected,
- and eager. He would ask staff how they were doing and if we needed anything.
- He knew no strangers. Fast forward to the early 1990s in Indianapolis. I was working for then-Governor
- Evan By and the State House. One afternoon, there was a lunch panel with Lee Hamilton and Dick Lugar
- about world affairs. It was breathtaking. Each spoke about meetings they had had with world leaders
- and named them in the topic and did so with ease and not a hint of self-promotion.
- So Lugar would say when I was meeting, and some of it was reflecting back, some of it was current, when
- I was meeting with Gorbachev last week, I don't know, whatever, and then not to tip for a tap, but Hamilton
- would say, yes, and I remember that when I was talking with Prime Minister Thatcher. And I just sat
- there and I said, these two people, and they're so
- not pretentious, not self-promoters, and talking about world affairs, and here they are, both from Indiana.
- I mean, I was actually moved. I still am, that these two giants were from Indiana and were so compatible.
- They sometimes would finish each other's sentences, and they were all civil, gracious, and kind, real-life
- role models and real giants on the global stage.
- It wasn't until very recently that I learned that Lee and Dick had been friends since 1967 when Dick
- was running for mayor. As one pundit would wisely say, trust, respect, and integrity make change possible.
- This honesty and wisdom was also the basis for Lee and Dick earlier receiving the Medal of Freedom from
- President Obama. Lee's final column, just published a week ago, entitled Congress Needs More Friendships
- Why, Lee asked, to reestablish Congress's ability to assert itself as a robust and effective branch
- of government. He continued, you need to develop relationships on trust to do more than just put your
- name on a bill. He concluded, members will have to join together in friendships and transcend the usual
- workday. It's all about friendships, about service above self. And I thank you, Lee.
- for a lifetime of public service, you will be deeply missed. Thank you, Jeff. Well done. So celebration
- of service. You may remember that just a few weeks ago, we finished our district grant project for this year.
- meals on wheels. We had two phases. And then the cycle begins again. And I want to thank for next year's
- district grant in order to qualify, each club has to have two Rotarians participate in a one hour phone
- call in the month of January. And Michelle Cohen and Sarah Laughlin did that for our club. I think Sarah
- has been on as many calls as anyone. She can probably recite it from memory.
- but it's one of the requirements. And in order to do it, you become eligible for a $6,000 grant.
- So thank you, Michelle and Sarah. And now I'd like to ask Jeremy Graham to come up and join me,
- if you would. Stand on either side.
- So a native of Gary, Indiana, Jeremy Graham has been a Bloomington resident for almost 14 years. Jeremy
- and his wife, Anisha, were high school sweethearts and have been together as a couple for 16 years.
- They have a six-year-old son, and they're expecting a newborn son any day now, which is why I suggested
- to Jeremy that you can go ahead and leave your phone on. And if all of a sudden I see you dart out the
- door, all's good.
- Jeremy is a full-time realtor here in Bloomington. He's the team lead for the Century 21 Sheets Graham
- team. Anisha works with Jeremy. The two of them love to collaboratively guide, navigate, and assist
- buyers, sellers, and investors through real estate transactions. In the community, Jeremy serves as
- the membership vice chair of the NAACP Monroe County branch, serves on the welcoming committee for the
- Bloomington Chamber of Commerce,
- And he's also a shuttle bus driver for City Church, where he transports IU students to and from church
- services. For fun, Jeremy enjoys spending quality time with his family, golfing with friends, building
- relationships with people. Jeremy joins our Rotary Club as an NAACP organizational member, joining Jim
- Sims, Jimmy Torrey, and Patrick Smith. Welcome, Jeremy.
- Okay, we have time for an abbreviated membership section today. So today's quiz, we have lots of Rotarians
- that exercise in different ways. Many of them work out at the Southeast YMCA.
- But here's a list of four Rotarians. And one of these Rotarians does not exercise at the Bloomington
- Southeast YMCA. And your choices are Rex Hillary, David Wright, Tracy Yovanovich, Steve Engel. So if
- you think Rex Hillary is a Rotarian who does not work out at the Bloomington Southeast Y, put up your
- hand and do the same online. Boy, no takers.
- All right, how about David Wright? If you think David Wright is the one. All right, we have a few. Tracy
- Ivanovich, and I will qualify, Tracy's on a cruise now, so we're talking about when she's home. If you
- think Tracy is the one who does not work out at the Southeast Y, put up your hand. We have a few. Finally,
- if you think Steve Engel,
- is the one who does not work out. And I see one. All right. Well, if you guessed Rex Hillary,
- you are wrong. Rex participates regularly in YMCA classes. Here's a picture of Rex from a few years
- ago. Rex is front left. And on the background, you can also see Mike Wade and Gus Juskalis. All right.
- If you guessed David right, you would be right. David enjoys hiking and biking, but he lives
- near Martinsville. So it'd be a long way for him to work out at Southeast Y. David has done some reflections.
- He also, we had a club session with David as a speaker. He is our club puppeteer. Tracy Ivanovich. If
- you guessed Tracy, you would be wrong.
- Tracy has been a runner for many years. Now, she is very much a walker. If any of you have ever tried
- to keep up with Tracy as she goes around the wide track, good luck with that. Here's a picture, a couple
- of us here on July 1st. Tracy is the more attractive individual on the left. And finally, if you guessed
- Steve Engel, you would be wrong.
- Steve is a regular weightlifter at the Y. So he's there exercising on a regular basis. So we did pretty
- well. I would say for those who voted correctly picked David Wright. Rotary International, seven areas
- of focus. And February is Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention Month. We're going to skip Happy Dollars
- today, but we have a short rodeo
- rotary video to show. It's very difficult to even define peace. It goes beyond, of course, the absence
- of war. It's about
- social equity. It's about living and feeling respected where you live. And it's about showing this respect
- to every person. Respect to every person. As a humanitarian organization, peace is a cornerstone of
- Rotary's mission.
- We believe when people work to create peace in their communities, that change can have a global effect.
- Our Peace Center alumni, our dedicated peace builders, are leading the charge for that change. In Peace
- Fellowship, you feel support of a very powerful organization, which is Rotary. The organization of the
- program is unique because it is not purely academic. You meet
- a lot of people coming from different parts of the world. So every new person brings you new perspectives,
- new ideas. They come from those conflict areas or they are interested in working in those conflict areas
- to minimize the effect of conflict. Their long-term role can be also in building mutual understanding
- between the conflicting communities to make sure that future conflicts will not arise.
- Peace building is really a kind of work. Mediate, transform conflict, stop conflict, create an environment
- of peace, to connect people who made a choice to create these environments of peace. Try to bring people
- from across the divide together in a way that they can see that the other doesn't have an enemy face.
- bringing people together across everything and to do whatever it is that they're interested in. People
- can come together to play board games and people can come together to learn how to tango. This means
- that peace of course, ideally speaking, is a sort of desire.
- but it's also a strong need we have in this world in order to offer people opportunity to thrive and
- have an environment where human potential could flourish. There will always be times of conflict and
- that's where the peace builders' role exists. They will try always to increase the mutual understanding
- to make sure that those conflicts will not escalate.
- So there is a strength that is coming from their commitment and dedication, their competencies and skills.
- And this perhaps is going to fight against violence and fight against situations where peace is truly
- missing. If people stop believing that it's possible, then it cannot happen. One of my worst quotes
- is, if you want to have peace, you should prepare for war. I hate that quote. If you want to have peace,
- you should prepare for peace. Alan Barker will introduce our speaker. Thank you very much, Steve. Hi,
- everybody. It's great to see you. And that was an amazing video. It really was incredible.
- And within the theme of peace, our talk today will illuminate a completely different area. And so I'm
- delighted to introduce our very own Rotary member as guest speaker, Professor Scott J. Shackelford.
- And I'm going to say a few things about him. This amazing individual who you probably all know about
- is a Provost Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the IU Kelly School of Business.
- He's also the director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research and helps lead the Ostrom workshops,
- work on cybersecurity and internet governance. So he has a number of different roles at Indiana University
- and makes a huge impact. In short, he spends his time thinking about and helping us shape how societies
- can navigate the risks and opportunities of our increasingly digital world. Scott is one of the authors
- of Securing Democracies in an Age of
- Instability, a timely and important book that examines how democratic institutions are being challenged
- by cyber security, threats, disinformation, and rapid technological change. So the title of Scott's
- talk today, Securing Democracies in the Digital Age, could not be more relevant and present in our world
- these days.
- At a moment marked by political polarization, geopolitical tensions, rapid advances in artificial
- intelligence, and boy, do I know about that this morning, I had a bunch of conversations that have sort
- of rocked me back on my heels, and widespread concerns about misinformation and cybersecurity interference,
- questions about how democracies can remain resilient and trustworthy feel especially urgent. So, we're
- very fortunate to have one of our own, Scott,
- To help us make sense of these challenges, please join me in offering a warm rotary welcome to one of
- our own, Professor Scott Shackelford. Well, thank you so much. Good afternoon, everybody. How are you?
- I have to say we timed this spectacularly, okay? So today, if you didn't, if you weren't aware, now
- you will be, it is Safer Internet Day.
- I know, I know. Every day, ideally, should be Safe for Internet Day, but it's actually today. So a lot
- of reasons to, I think, have this timely discussion right now. And actually, as part of Safe for Internet
- Day, I was giving a keynote for a conference in New Delhi earlier today. And you know the title of the
- conference? The Cyber Peace Summit, the Global Cyber Peace Summit. They had more than 70 countries there.
- So a little bit about what I'll be talking to you about today is very much a global movement. So it's
- not all going to be doom and gloom, I promise.
- It's a beautiful day outside. We'll try to let some of that light shine on this topic as well. Thanks
- so much again for the opportunity and for that very warm welcome. It's great to be back. I wanted to
- just do a few things upfront per usual. There's too much content to get through, so I'd rather have
- time to get through discussions about especially a topic on all of our minds is this, but a few things upfront.
- One, if you haven't been over to the Ostrom workshop in a little while, come check us out. There's a
- lot of exciting stuff going on, including with regards, Alan, as you were saying, to AI governance.
- tech governance, as well as, of course, environmental challenges, you name it. We just did a joint session
- with the Environmental Resilience Institute this last Friday on the environmental impacts of data centers,
- for example, here in Indiana and around the world. Really awesome talks every Monday and Wednesday,
- a lot of ways to get engaged, and we still have copies of that children's book, which I should have
- brought with me today.
- But if anybody wants to follow me over, we still have Lynn's on Common Life, which actually they're
- doing a teacher training workshop on that in a couple weeks here for civics classes and things like
- that. So her work is getting out there, which is great.
- The Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research still does a lot of work on election security, but also
- more broadly looking at local critical infrastructure protection. Real hot topic these days, which could
- be a separate talk, is water. Water utilities in particular are a very unfortunate soft target. So we're
- working with a lot of those around the state and beyond to see how we can come together and build some
- resilience in those systems.
- Okay, and here's some of the work on Cyber Peace. Bit of a trilogy, I'm still waiting on the movie deal.
- Matt Damon, I mean, come on, you're done with the Odyssey, this is the natural next step. So I'll be
- peppering in a few insights from that work on Cyber Peace, but again, the focus is gonna be on this
- brand new book, and it just came out last month on securing democracies in the digital age.
- And that book, I'm happy to say, it's published with Cambridge Press, but it's open access. So anybody
- around the world can freely download
- access the contents, no paywalls, nothing like that. I wouldn't be really preaching the gospel of the
- commons if it was any other way, but I still wanted to flag that, right? And kudos upfront to my co-editors,
- Frédéric Doucet from Paris 8 and Chris Ankersen from NYU. There was a slate of amazing scholars and
- practitioners all around the world that were involved with this project. The focus of the book, if you're
- interested, was basically three geopolitical hotspots. So we looked at Eastern Europe,
- We looked at Middle East, North Africa, and we looked at East Asia and South Asia to see how these advancing
- and emerging democracies are dealing with a whole array of challenges, as you just heard in the intro,
- right? So threats to election infrastructure, how we manage misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes.
- And a lot of the US focus was on how we, as in the US, are managing those threats from abroad. We didn't
- focus on homegrown threats.
- We can take this in lots of directions. I grant you there's rabbit holes upon rabbit holes that we can
- go down, but for purposes of the book and my presentation, just know that it's more of that
- global perspective. Okay, so very briefly, when we approach this topic of protecting our elections,
- it's good to think about it first at the 30,000 foot level, then we'll drill down, okay?
- Critical infrastructure, what the heck is that? Here in the US, we have 16 critical infrastructure sectors,
- and you see them all labeled up there. They run the gambit. Think about everything that's really vital
- that if it goes down, you're having a really bad day, right? So healthcare, telecom, right? Agriculture,
- okay? Elections is one of those systems. And the US, there's only a few countries around the world that
- specify that, but we're one of them actually, and that's been the case since 2017.
- So that means that organizations historically, like DHS, have a bigger role in safeguarding election
- infrastructure and systems. I just wanted to mention that up front. This has been a long-running problem.
- We see that in the elections context and more broadly. There have been groups that have tried to undermine
- election outcomes and frankly just confidence in elections dating way back, believe it or not, if you
- guys remember, the South African elections that actually elected Nelson Mandela in the early 90s. That
- was one of the first documented attempts of using some early internet worms to interfere with voting
- machines, right? So that was a little while ago now, more than 30 years. Of course, as was mentioned
- these days, the technologies, the techniques have really
- advanced quite a bit in some scary ways, and we're all racing to catch up. So again, I'll be focusing
- mostly on some of that stuff. There's been a variety of attacks on these different types of critical
- infrastructure over the years. We can talk more about it, but suffice it to say, everybody's been breached,
- right? And there's this old joke that if you weren't, if you think you haven't been breached, well,
- you just haven't found out yet, right? I mean, why do we have to tell us here in Monroe County even,
- right? Like it happens. It happens with some regularity. And of course, IU is no stranger to that either,
- Globally, there are some big trends that are feeding this, right? So there's a lot of geopolitics lurking
- in the background, as always. Unfortunately, Ukraine has been a testbed for both information warfare
- and cyber warfare since their elections in 2013, right? So we've seen that, of course, most recently
- in the international armed conflict, but
- They've also pioneered, as I'll talk about in just a minute, some responses for how you get ahead of
- disinformation and deep fakes. They basically have a version of the PBS NewsHour, where every night
- they're debunking the kind of fake news or the deep fake story of the day in real time, right? And it's
- different when you think about Beijing.
- Okay, so in the book, we try to do this with some granularity, figuring out how different adversaries
- around the world who are commonly trying to undermine trust collectively in the democratic process are
- approaching these, right? You see there that Russia versus China's approach
- could not be more different. They're both at opposite ends of this spectrum, right? One is trying to
- sow chaos, confusion, right? The other is really trying to plant some seeds to undermine long-term trust
- in the stability of these systems, such as by sowing divisions, but also more broadly. And I'll say
- we're not unique in the U.S. in that regard. These campaigns have been playing out all around the world.
- I promise it's not all doom and gloom. We're gonna get there. There are a lot of good stuff, good work
- that's being done here in Indiana.
- and more broadly to get a better handle on some of these challenges. Some of them are just frankly voting
- machines, right? Like here in Monroe County, how do we vote? You better remember that usually it's a
- touch screen and there's like a little, or you have a little optical scan paper ballot that you scan
- in, that you scan in, right? Depending on the place. Those are gonna be phased out, but anybody know
- when they're gonna be phased out by? The Indiana legislature passed this law a couple of years ago.
- 2027 is our deadline.
- All right. So not super forward leaning. You'll see a map in a second that's going to give you some
- more details on that. Other states, you know, a bit further along and a part that's driven by the fact
- that there is problems as you see here in the software ecosystem supporting those different machines
- and just more broadly to the supply chain. We've been doing a lot of work on how you rethink accountability
- for software. So if you're Microsoft, there's something called Patch Tuesday, right? You put out a new
- product today,
- If it causes a problem, you patch it tomorrow. And who's responsible for all the damage that happens
- in the meantime? Maybe you remember the CrowdStrike incident a couple years ago, where there was a patch
- that went out, caused a world of hurt if you were flying that day, but also more broadly, the NHS, for
- example, systems went down. But the question has always been lurking is, well, why aren't we treating
- tech companies liable for all that? We're treating them with kid gloves. Just as of last month, Europe
- has extended their product's liability directive to software. That's a fancy legal way for saying, if
- there's a bug in code that leads to real world harm, now in Europe, you get to hold the tech company
- liable, strict liability. I was involved with a software liability summit at the White House. This was
- a while ago now, mid-24, where we were talking about the same thing, should the US follow suit or not.
- That's a game change. We're starting to see that with things like social media for kids. We're not seeing
- it more broadly yet.
- But still, it's worth kind of keeping that broader scope in mind. And lastly, these are some of the
- big trends feeding into all this. I'll say a bit more about AI, but honestly, you name it, each of these
- is important for thinking about ways that we can secure democracies. Even internet access from space
- is really taking off. Forgive the pun. We're actually launching a space cybersecurity digital badge
- program later today here at IU, which is pretty cool. So there's a lot of neat work there.
- And again, more broadly, there's ways to think about this from more of a peace perspective as a shared
- responsibility. And there's different ways to approach that. Okay, given time, let's focus on democracy
- here. So in the book, we're trying to look at this from a variety of different perspectives. There's
- this grid that gives you a bit of a flavor for how we think about democratic resilience. Yes, it's about
- protecting election infrastructure. So the voting machines, the tabulation systems that count up the
- votes, but it's also a much broader problem.
- If it was that easy, we would have gotten ahead of it a while ago. So this just kind of gives you a
- flavor of that. You'll see a specific when we dig into the case study about what went down in 2016 and
- thereafter. This was a fun one. I did a separate book, a history book, called Forks in the Digital Road
- that looked back at the history of the internet and cybersecurity. There's been hacking going on a long,
- long time, including, as you all know, hacking of elections, depending on how you like to define the term.
- Some cities, some states are notorious for this kind of thing. Of course, what's different is the scale
- that's possible by undermining the shared systems that all of this infrastructure relies upon. And that's
- one of the things we're focusing on here. Like we said, here in Monroe County, mostly we're using these
- optical scan paper ballots. Now, help me. We'll make it a bit more interactive because I know it's middle
- of the afternoon. I need some coffee as well.
- From a security perspective, what do we think? Which of these is going to be best? Should we go back
- to those hanging chads? Oh man, those are the good old days. Great Halloween costumes, though. What
- do you think? From a security perspective, you want to have as many layers of authentication as possible,
- right? So you can double check the results in close selections. What do you think?
- Okay, okay, okay. So in other words, if you have some kind of system where there can be a paper audit
- after the fact, that can build confidence and ultimately trust in the democratic process, right? What's
- the problem if you don't have the paper trail? Like a lot of jurisdictions still don't around Indiana.
- Well, in a close election, or if there's intelligence after the fact that in some way, shape or form,
- it was undermined, it's tough to go back forensically and double check those results. So the gold standard,
- long story short these days,
- is what's called a risk limiting audit. So you have a jurisdiction, I'll give you a flavor for what
- this looks like nationwide. So you pick a state where they're all green. You institute a risk limiting
- audit and you take a statistical sample of the votes cast and then you compare it against the reported
- results just to make sure they're consistent. Colorado was the pioneer in doing that.
- Then Rhode Island, we have a half a dozen states that have these laws on the books. Indiana's going
- in that direction. There's some legislation around a risk-limiting audit, but again, we don't have the
- underlying tech yet to really make it possible statewide. When you look at this map, it looks pretty
- different from 2016. So some states have really gotten on the ball. So Georgia, back in 2016, was bright
- red. All right. Pennsylvania.
- bright red. In other words, some core swing states had some technology that was problematic. There have
- been groups that were able to hack into some of these voting machines that were still running Windows
- XP just to show what was possible. It's not great. That's not great. As a reminder, Windows XP hasn't
- been updated since 2014. So nobody's really double checking that. So that's a problem. And we haven't
- really invested in this stuff at a federal level since that 2002 Help America Vote Act.
- That was, of course, in response to all the hanging chads. It was about a $4 billion investment that
- went to the states, because, again, we don't have one national election, right? We have more than 3,000
- local elections that get aggregated up. So it helped to purchase a lot of equipment. But back in 2002,
- what was the main headache we were trying to solve? Those long lines of polling places and the confusion
- around hanging chads, right? Cyber security wasn't exactly front of mind. So what did a lot of these
- jurisdictions go out and do?
- including in Georgia and Pennsylvania, well, they bought a lot of these handy systems where they're
- just touchscreens, but without a paper trail, right? So it's that kind of technical debt that now we're
- having to go back to and refresh, right? Here in the US, but also around the world. Okay, so looking
- to the midterms this fall, but in 2024, you know, equally valid, this just kind of gives you a flavor
- of all the different layers that the bad guys could focus on and try to sow
- distrust, right, or try to manipulate some processes. So that goes all the way from voter information.
- So their information we rely on platforms, right? So as you know, social media is flooded these days
- with AI generated content. I mean, I think that's 80% at this point of X. I don't even know. It's ridiculous.
- So what we can trust.
- Who really said what? What video is legitimate? That's already become a real issue. Some states, including
- Wisconsin, even Indiana, have some new laws on the books that actually attach civil penalties if you
- spread disinformation or deep fakes involving candidates within a certain number of days of an election
- cycle. So that's fine. That's one little aspect of this issue. Finding the perpetrators, et cetera,
- is easier said than done. But that's only, obviously, one piece of this.
- Again, other jurisdictions like the EU, they've gotten a lot further in this regard. There's some pretty
- stiff penalties. Election rules. So these are basically where you're registered to vote. So those can
- be manipulated as well. So picture like an elaborate Excel spreadsheet. If you can get access to that,
- and unfortunately, there's no even state law still requiring us to encrypt all that data,
- So there's still some precincts that have it unencrypted. You can imagine any kind of other
- Excel spreadsheet, right? You can manipulate the cells. You can make it look like somebody's registered
- to vote there when they're actually registered to vote there. That can lead to long lines, sow distrust,
- and again, ultimately undermine confidence. No evidence that happened in 24, to be clear, but that is
- the issue. And we know back in 2016, election rolls in Illinois
- were compromised. Again, no evidence that anything was changed, but because so much of it is
- still unencrypted, that's still an issue. Voting machines, we talked about. Tabulation systems are just
- fancy software for adding up votes, all right? Like any software, that can be manipulated. No evidence
- that happened in 24, but other democracies, like the Netherlands, have been so concerned that in one
- of their last elections, they went back and hand counted every paper ballot.
- They didn't have any trust in their tabulation systems because they had some intelligence that they
- had been compromised. Dissemination of news is also a problem, right? So imagine what you could do if
- you hacked into the AP Newswire on election day to make it look like a candidate or a party was ahead
- or behind in the polls in a country like ours with multiple time zones. That could also impact turnout,
- right? And also sow distrust. No evidence that's happened to the AP or otherwise
- But that's still a potential headache. And we have seen that, unfortunately, in other countries like
- Ukraine, in terms of news sites being targeted in that way, which gets us thinking about, well, heck,
- is news critical infrastructure? That has other big First Amendment problems, right? If we do have more
- of a government role there. Talked about critical infrastructure, too. So if you can snarl traffic,
- if you can cause blackouts, you name it, not across the nation, but just in certain core swing cities,
- certain core swing states, that can also be problematic.
- right? So these broader issues can come back and lurk in this context as well. Okay, what are we doing?
- We're doing a lot.
- There have been some positive steps forward. One of them was in the information sharing network called
- the LISAC. So basically it's an information sharing and analysis center. It allows election officials
- to share information and learn from intelligence about threats in real time. We didn't have that in
- 2016. Now the issue is right now DHS is in the process of unwinding.
- So looking ahead to 2026 election a lot of local election officials won't have potentially as updated
- information as they've grown accustomed to for the last seven years. There are some other shifts that
- have played out again if we had more time we could talk about how some of the parties are responding
- and how we're looking more globally.
- Again, the good news is that we are working together more than has been the case in the past and that
- the word is getting out, especially with a pretty wide array of democracies about some of these best
- practices. So in the book, we dig into these in a little bit more detail. By and large, all these democracies
- and plenty others around the world
- are embracing a lot of these best practices. So a lot that had electronic voting machines are going
- back to paper or involving paper at some point in the process. They're doing risk limiting audits. The
- only real country that's going the opposite direction is Estonia. They still allow online voting, and
- they have since the early 2000s, right? But keep in mind, this is a country pretty homogenous with a
- population the size of San Diego.
- So a bit of a different vibe than the United States in that regard. And they're different in other ways,
- too. It's an incredible country, though, if you haven't been. All the others, right? Embracing paper.
- Which just gets thinking about these other layers of the problem though, okay? So you might remember
- this seems so antiquated at this point, but there was this whole like puffy jacket thing. This was an
- early deep fake of the Pope that really went viral, right? And this was one of the first times like,
- wow, I had no idea it's such fashion sense, right? People weren't aware of what all the...
- technologies can do. If you're a kind of a relative newcomer to kind of AI and deepfakes, I think we
- can send out the slides. I included some links to some really great podcasts like any Radiolab fans
- out there. They went and they interviewed the original researchers from the University of Washington
- who put out some of these tools. These days, it's incredibly easy to do. If none of you, let me just
- ask, how many of you have tried to create an AI generated picture or video at some point? Okay.
- I'd say at least a third, right? Bordering on half. What was that experience like? Was it pretty easy
- to do? Yeah? Yeah, Alan, as well? Okay, okay. If you don't mind me asking, what tool did you use? Yeah.
- Okay. Most all of the big AI platforms can do this now, right? So Jim and I, for example, Google's version.
- Sora, which is like this basically slop on steroids from open AI.
- I mean, you name it, it's incredibly easy. And it's frankly, it's just so easy and it requires basically
- no technological sophistication at this point that the cat's completely out of the bag, right? So the
- only real options are legislation to really hold tech platforms fully accountable, buck stops there,
- you can't put it on the users, right? Or we have to think about, you know,
- everything else that would be nice, but isn't going to change things, you know, full stop. It's going
- to be a long-term evolution, basically digital citizenship training, right? That's important. We do
- it in schools. We could do a better job. But frankly, there's not a lot of other fantasias out there.
- Okay. Here in the US, we're also, you know, we have, I don't want to say handcuffs exactly, but we definitely
- have our freedom of movement at the federal level limited because of this.
- Right? So if you're not familiar, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, this is what gives
- those shields to those tech platforms. OK? So if it wasn't for this law, and it was passed with really
- good intentions, and frankly, it made a lot of sense in the 90s, because at that time, you could sue
- the equivalent of Google or Meta or Facebook, you name it, because of the content they host on their
- site. So if there was hate speech that you came across on Facebook, you could sue Facebook. Right? This
- was the law saying you can't do that.
- All right, simply put. And because of that, that's really changed the incentives for these companies
- to not really moderate as much as they could. The issue is everybody agrees they don't like section
- 230 anymore, but nobody can come together and come up with a consensus about what do we do about it?
- All right. Like Biden, for example, and Trump agree on almost nothing. They both hated this. Okay. But
- what comes next? If you take this down, you know, the incentives can go one extreme or the other. Either
- it's super moderated,
- sanitized, or digital hellscape, right? There's not a lot of movement in between the two. So that's
- why we still have it, but it does limit a little bit what we can do at the federal level and as a result
- at the state level. What are other countries doing? Well, a lot of experimentation. I mentioned Ukraine
- before. In the UK, actually, they treat coding as a second language. All their kids are getting some
- coding as they go through school.
- And they're also doing digital citizen training, including spotting AI and deep fake content as part
- of that. They can do that, of course, because it's the UK. There's a national curriculum. They don't
- have the same setup that we have here in the States. But that doesn't mean we school districts, including
- MCCSC and otherwise, couldn't learn from some of those experiences and help kind of raise the overall
- level of cyber hygiene and awareness. There's also some major international initiatives. The Munich
- AI Election Accords are one of them.
- So all the major democracies, this was about a year and a half ago now, and all the tech platforms got
- on board with that to limit the spread of disinformation, deep fakes, and violent extremism online.
- But again, they're norms, right? So what happens when they're violated? This gives you a sense on the
- AI side, what's happening at the regional level and the national level. I kept the US executive order,
- even though it's been repealed, just to give you a flavor for what it would have done. So in the EU,
- they have this kind of
- three-tier structure for what's the most problematic uses of AI, all right? Elections is one of them,
- all right? But there's some other things too, like spotting somebody's emotional state in public. That
- was also banned, okay? Social credit scores of the kind they do in China, that was also banned in the
- EU. Certain healthcare applications, certain autonomous driving applications are much more heavily regulated.
- So they have this three-tier structure that we don't have, okay? In the US, what do we have?
- Well, one, a lot of action at the state level. So California has really filled the gap here along with
- a variety of other states, including with regards to some new prohibitions on what you can and can't
- spread online and penalties for tech companies that violate some of those. And I can go into more details
- if folks are curious. This is what the executive order would have done if it would have stayed in place
- basically for these big large language models that have a national security implications for what they roll out.
- They would have had to get basically a red team pre-approval first. But again, that's now gone by the
- wayside. Okay. Important role for international law in all of this. If we had more time, you know, we
- could talk about it.
- But you can also just read the book, which is great. It's a good beach read for spring break. I promise
- it's going to help you feel good. This gives you a sense for all the contributors where they're coming
- from. As you can tell, lots of universities, lots of institutions all around the world. Andy Grotto,
- who was in the White House, the Office of the National Cyber Advisor during the Obama administration,
- he's now at Stanford, did a great piece looking at the history of US election security. I'd really hardly
- recommend that one.
- And ultimately, I'll just leave us with thinking about this. It's a whole of society approach, right?
- As Len Ostrom famously said, there are no panaceas, and trust is the most important resource. There's
- not a lot of trust to go around these days. I know, I know. But this is an area where I think we can
- come together. I think the peace-building literature is so important in that regard. And think about
- all the different layers here locally.
- In working with a state, because even frankly, some things like protecting kids from social media, they're
- pretty bipartisan these days, right? And when push comes to shove, a lot of the stuff that we're talking
- about here is still pretty bipartisan too. So there's a lot more that we can do. And ideally, do together
- so that we have democracies helping each other around the world.
- And we've seen some green shoots in that regard. I saw some wonderful things happening in India earlier
- today and across the global South. And I hope there's a time here in the US where we can more actively
- contribute to that conversation at the federal level too. So again, I will pause there to make sure
- that we have time for at least a couple questions or thoughts, but just thanks again for the opportunity.
- And don't let any of this convince you not to vote.
- All right, that's how foreign adversaries that are trying to undermine confidence, and even domestically,
- that's how they win, right? So cast a vote, participate. That's the main takeaway. So yeah, happy to
- take any questions.
- So thank you, Scott. That was amazing. That was incredible. And just thinking about you and the depth
- of knowledge that you have and the security that we have that you're delivering information that we
- can believe seems to be- Or am I a deep fake? You don't know. Exactly. Or you're a plant of some kind.
- That's right. But anyway, my question really is,
- more sort of a very general question of your sense of whether or not disinformation and fake information
- is propelling itself into our universe to the point where all of the information that you've provided
- to us, all of the serious research, all of the dedicated commitment that you've had is being sort of
- washed away by this alternative reality that seems to be sort of
- like the slop that's coming towards us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would still like to think, you know, Alan,
- that this stuff resonates and is broadly useful, but you're right. It is an echo chamber. And in a lot
- of these, especially on social media, those algorithms and how they're feeding all of us matter a lot, right?
- So I think it's up to us in higher education to inform and push back and burst those bubbles and to
- shine a light that they exist because oftentimes it is just too easy to fall into a groove and just,
- you know, be very, very happy with your own little echo chamber, right? So that's why I think, you know,
- work like this, again, that's open access and freely available is, you know, super important.
- So I would appreciate that chance to, you know, talk about it and would love to share, you know, preach
- the gospel as it were to any other folks in groups who, you know, might come to mind too. So in the
- Netherlands, what happened with that election? Was it accurate? Do you know?
- It was okay, but they were able to do it in part again because they had the system set up to do that
- hand counting. It's a different scale than we're used to, but it was not a problem because they got
- the intelligence in advance and they had the backup processes available. So that was a good news tale
- about what was caught.
- That was OK. There have been a lot of other attempts, as you would guess, across Europe, especially
- given the ongoing war there, to undermine confidence and manipulate the results of a lot of different
- elections. But they have something called a cooperation group in the EU, where basically all the election
- officials across the entirety of the EU get together regularly, share best practices, and they invest
- a ton in kind of raising all boats.
- And that's mirrored as well. They have something called the Digital Services Act. And that's the thing
- that has really rigid requirements for the tech platforms. And if they breach them, up to 4% of global
- total revenue is on the line. So they stand up and they take it seriously. So even in the war in Gaza,
- that was mostly regulated by the EU through the Digital Services Act in terms of what was being fed
- and disinformation and deepfakes online. Last question.
- long refrain that the US innovates while the EU regulates. And this is another example of that. So you
- talked a bit about just the, and I'm seeing this intensely in social media that the amount of fake news
- has kicked up tremendously even in the last few months. Like just, I'm seeing stories that are completely
- fabricated and written in a way that looks authentic and it's tricking a lot of people.
- on all political sides. And what I'm wondering about from the corporate side of things is does I am
- under this suspicion that that financially benefits these social media companies and so they don't have
- an interest to change it and fix it. But what I'm curious is if is the technology available to actually
- limit, strictly limit that or even eliminate it? Like, does that exist at this point? And could they
- implement it if they were had the will or were forced to? Yeah, so unfortunately, we are headed in the
- wrong direction and a lot of these platforms. So a lot of the trust and safety teams have been gutted,
- especially at formerly Twitter, now X, but even at, you know, Google, even at Microsoft, right? So
- That's a problematic starting point, because the teams that were there that had the institutional knowledge
- and had the memory of how this was done, a lot of them are gone now. So that's the starting point, which
- is a tough one. Can you do it is another really good question. So the utility and the technology of
- how we spot AI deepfakes, it kind of varies per application. In short, we're good at pictures. We can
- spot that pretty well. Not so good at sound, and we're really bad at video.
- believe it or not, in terms of automatically. We can see it oftentimes with our naked eyes, better than
- the actual computer vision, the systems that are monitoring for this stuff. So that means we can get
- ahead of some of these challenges more easily than others. And there's some legislation around the world,
- but there's also, on the norm building side, some efforts to require basically labels
- kind of like we have for other things. You picture like Energy Star or something that tells you something
- meaningful about the energy use or the privacy and security of a product. Do that for AI generated content,
- right? And there's no reason the state couldn't do that, right? And potentially, you know, the federal
- government could at some point come into that too. As you could guess, it's tricky for sure. And if
- it happens, it's gonna happen in the EU first. That was too much doom and gloom.
- Sorry. Thank you all. Scott, thank you for a very interesting presentation. Your credit to our club.
- In honor of your talk, a donation will be made this quarter to Amethyst House. I'd like to thank today's
- volunteers, Diana Hoffman, Hank Walter, Alann Barker wearing three hats, Joy Harder, Jeff Richardson,
- Michael Shermas. Next regular meeting will be here in the Georgian Room next week.
- Audrey McCluskey will speak to us about capturing joy, a childhood in Jim Crow America. Tyler, if you
- would put up the graphic for the four-way test and please stand if you're able and join me. Of the things
- we think, say or do, first, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concern? Third, will it build
- goodwill and better friendships?
- Fourth will be beneficial to all concerned. And fifth, is it fun?