AI Competition and Security: A discussion with Kemba Walden and Devin Lynch

H. Andrew Schwartz (0:06)

I'm Andrew Schwartz, and you're listening to The Truth of the Matter, a podcast by CSIS, where we break down the top policy issues of the day and talk with the people that can help us best understand what's really going on.

There's a new report out that really caught my eye. It's called The AI Tech Stack, a Primer for Tech and Cyber Policy. And you might ask why this caught my eye. Well, if you listen to this podcast, you know that I'm pretty obsessed, like many, many people are, with AI, and certainly with cybersecurity, which we've been involved with here at CSIS for a long time. We're also getting into AI. As many of you know, we have an AI Policy Podcast that I do with my colleague, Greg Allen. But I wanted these two guests in this report all to myself. So I'm a little selfish here, but I want to introduce them. To discuss this new report put out by the Paladin Global Institute, we have with us Kemba Walden, who's the president of the Paladin Global Institute. And of course, she served in government as the acting United States National Cyber Director in 2023 and in many previous other roles in government. We also have with us Devin Lynch, who's senior director, Paladin Global Institute. And Devin also served in the Office of the National Cyber Director, Executive Office of the President, where he was a director for implementation and assessment. Devin's also worked in a variety of other government roles, including for my former United States Senator, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. Welcome to both of you all. It's great to have you here. And I can't wait to chop it up on AI and security, because we're talking all the time about AI and how great it is. But you guys are laying out some of the real security risks. So I wanted to ask you, in your report, it actually reminded me of something. Henry Kissinger was a longtime CSIS trustee at CSIS. And around his 100th birthday, I did an interview with him, and I asked him, what keeps you up at night, Dr. Kissinger? And he instantly responded that it was AI. And he told me that in the future, countries won't fight over territory. They're going to fight over data. So I want to start out with that, with you. And I won't go to you first, Kemba. It seems to me that your report speaks to some of the issues that Dr. Kissinger alluded to. Why was now the right time for a report like this?

Kemba Walden (2:14)

Thank you for inviting us to come speak with you, hang out with you for a little while. You're passionate about this report and about securing the AI Tech Stack specifically. The reason why we thought this was the right time is because of the fever pitch around AI right now.

I'm young enough, I think. I'm young enough to remember. I'm old enough to remember. I prefer young enough.

H. Andrew Schwartz (2:39)

We'll go with young enough for sure.

Kemba Walden (2:41)

We'll go with young enough. When the Internet became mainstream, I was a young adult at the time. Email was something brand new when I was in grad school, when I traveled overseas.

H. Andrew Schwartz (2:51)

Don't you remember when you were in grad school? The same thing happened to me. They asked me if I wanted an email account in grad school, and I said, well, what would I need that for?

Kemba Walden (2:59)

Exactly. It's exactly right. There was an option not to do it. I remember when phones were attached to the wall too, and didn't have them in our rooms. But that was a little while ago, not too long ago. But the whole purpose of it was to communicate. We didn't necessarily think about securing it. Now we're in a whole tangle of mess. I've seen over my career just the tangle of mess that we've gotten ourselves into around not just securing our infrastructure, but also the competition for the pieces of our infrastructure, right? So I came up in national security at around a time when we were worried about, and we still are worried about, certain technologies and certain parts of the world being used in our infrastructure. Fast forward, I became a policy maker, and early on at DHS, where I served most of my career in government, I was running what was known then as Team Telecom. It's irrelevant what Team Telecom is, but I was running it, and it was about securing our telecommunications infrastructure alongside the Federal Communications Commission. My very first thing I learned was the OSI Tech Stack, in order to be able to think logically through how to think about securing that space. As I became a cyber lawyer, first of all, the tech policy folks, the AI folks, refused to take for an answer from me, that I am not an AI person, I am a cyber person. So that, I gave up on that. So I decided, okay, I'm an AI person, with security at my core, I need something as a policy maker, like the OSI model, for AI in order to think through what the reasonable security measures could be. But I want to caveat that by saying, I am super excited about AI and this new technology revolution.