Former U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency Chief Paul Nakasone said on June 6 that the “secret sauce” to detecting artificial intelligence (AI) being used by foreign adversaries lies in public-private partnerships.
“One of the ways that we can detect AI is through the fact that we’re doing foreign surveillance operations outside the United States against a series of actors and seeing what they’re planning on doing. So that’s bringing intelligence to cybersecurity,” Nakasone said during a Washington Post Live event.
“It’s also being able to take a look at what’s the commercial sector being able to do there and are they seeing things that are anomalous that we don’t see at all – that’s the power of the private sector,” he continued, “Being able to put those two together I mean, that’s the secret sauce.”
Nakasone announced last month that he is heading to Vanderbilt University to lead its new Institute for National Defense and Global Security. He retired from Federal service in February of this year.
The Vanderbilt institute is expected to formally launch in the fall, and it will draw on the school’s expertise in fields such as engineering, AI, cybersecurity, law, and policy, among others.
“Let me tell you my experiences over the past six years. When I go to Silicon Valley, or I go to any of the tech centers in the United States for the primary purpose, the majority of people I deal with are half my age,” Nakasone said during the Washington Post Live event. “When I come back into government, Washington, D.C., other places, they’re roughly my age.”
“The statistics show 15 times the number of people over the age of 50 than under the age of 30 are working national security in our government – 15 times,” he continued. “One of the things that was so attractive about going to Vanderbilt to stand up this new institute was let’s bring the next generation of folks that are going to be able to solve the tough problems.”
Nakasone emphasized that these are the people that are “policymakers that can code and the coders that understand policy.”
“It has to be really an interdisciplinary approach. It has to be at a speed of technology, and it has to be with radical partners,” he said. “That’s what Vanderbilt brings to this equation.”
Later in his conversation with Washington Post national security reporter Ellen Nakashima, the retired Pentagon official said that creating a new military branch focused on cyber is not the right option for the nation’s cyber workforce problem.
Last month, the House Armed Services Committee advanced its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 that included a provision to create a Cyber Force military branch.
“I think it’s one of many options but not the right option,” Nakasone said. “I think the threats are too great; I think the costs are too high; and I think the time is too long to get on what we need to do, which is conduct operations every day. That’s where we have the most impact.”
“Creating a service is not the same as taking the authorities and the policies that are there today at Cyber Command to be able to do what’s necessary,” he said.
