How'd you get involved there?

Sure.

So I'm Jake Braun, as you suggested.

Right now, I'm the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago and also CEO of a small consulting firm in Washington called Cambridge Global Advisors.

Previous to that, I was the acting principal deputy national cyber director in the White House, which is a very long way of saying that I was essentially the COO of the new cyber office they set up in the White House back in 2019.

And in that capacity, we did a lot of work on water security issues with cyber workforce and so on and so forth.

And so when I left, was talking to my good friend Jeff Moss about some work we had done years ago when he and I and a couple of friends of ours, Matt Blaze and Hari Hurstie and Maggie McAlpine, started the.

What, what happens? How do people get

How'd you get involved there?

Sure.

So I'm Jake Braun, as you suggested.

Right now, I'm the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago and also CEO of a small consulting firm in Washington called Cambridge Global Advisors.

Previous to that, I was the acting principal deputy national cyber director in the White House, which is a very long way of saying that I was essentially the COO of the new cyber office they set up in the White House back in 2019.

And in that capacity, we did a lot of work on water security issues with cyber workforce and so on and so forth.

And so when I left, was talking to my good friend Jeff Moss about some work we had done years ago when he and I and a couple of friends of ours, Matt Blaze and Hari Hurstie and Maggie McAlpine, started the.

What, what happens? How do people get

So if you would, explain why Iran is a suspect here a- and why it is so difficult to formally attribute this to Iran at this point.

Sure.

Well, th- thanks for having me.

Um, so I, I think that this is likely a shot across the bow from the Iranians, uh, letting the US know that as, uh, attacks escalate in Iran, uh, reminding us that they can shut off the water.

Uh, and I think that what's interesting here is that they attacked a PLC, which is a, a controller that's used to, to, uh, be command and control in pieces of water utilities, and, uh, that controller is, is ubiquitous across the United States.

And so it's, uh, they're, they're showing us that they can attack us wherever they want.

Um, the attribution is really hard because, uh, cyber is, it's kinda hard to follow the dots across all the different, uh, cyber connections around the planet.

But why does the statement from the president matter as his own intelligence experts investigate this?

Uh, and, and I read about The Franklin Project, uh, and I, I would love for you to give our listeners a little bit more about what that is and, and what it's aiming to do 'cause I, I think it's just wonderful.

Sure.

Thank you.

Um, so, so actually this comes back from, or this comes from, uh, you know, I, I myself, um, Hari Hurst, Matt Blaze, and Maggie McAlpine, um, co-founded the Voting Machine Hacking Village back in 2017.

And, uh, w- we, this is actually where we got the idea for the Hackers Almanac too.

We started producing a, a report the first few years when nobody knew about any of these vulnerabilities, um, and put that out.

It got a lot of attention and hopefully drove some, some positive outcomes.

Mm-hmm

And I guess the question is, could you talk more about what Iran's capabilities are in terms of cyber warfare? And why, I mean, in some ways, why don't we hear about that more? Because I was surprised to learn about what happened after Operation Midnight Hammer.

Sure, sure.

First off, thanks for Sue and Dave and the team for putting this together.

And thanks for the questions and everything.

Good to see all you guys.

I was not at this last event, I suppose.

I need to pay my dues better and I get invited.

is in fact in this position.

That i- it was so fascinating.

One of the things that, that we believe, uh, and I think a lot of people who've thought about this would agree, is likely to be one of the biggest developments in, in human history is that pretty soon, in our lifetime, every human on the planet is gonna be connected to the internet one way or the other.

We're, we're in the process of connecting basically the last two billion people on the planet to the internet, and, you know, those two billion are the last two billion for a reason, right? Either they're in a country that has purposely kept them from plugging into the modern world, both literally and figuratively.

So think like in North Korea.

Um, or they're the most underprivileged and, and oppressed people in, in modern societies who, for whatever reason, um, you know, don't, don't have, uh, you know, a- access to the internet and, and modern technology either.

And-What is clear is that the, the despots of the world, you know, whether it be folks dealing with U- the Ukraine war, whether it be potential invasion of Taiwan, whether it be migrant communities around, around the world that are being preyed upon, trying to figure out what are the things that we can do to help these people protect their culture in the case of, like, let's say the Uyghur population in China who, who is having cultural genifi- genocide, um, committed against them, or to potentially a, a group of, of folks in Taiwan or Ukraine who are, who are trying to fight for, um, their right to, um, self-determination and, and democracy and so on and so forth.

And so just two examples of that in, um, Ukraine, and we almost didn't include this one because it's so kind of simple technically, but this is my point about it.

Uh, I know you wanted to mention a bit about the work that you all do, so can you tell me a bit about that?

Both the project and maybe an overview of the program at the University.

Sure.

Yeah.

It all kind of started, well, really it all started back with the Voting Machine Hacking Village at DEF CON in 2017.

So myself and a few other folks, Hari Hursti, Matt Blaise, these are some pretty famous hackers in the hacker world, came together after the 2016 election to set out to research how insecurities in voting systems and then publish reports that vendors, the government and others could use to better secure our voting systems.

And what was fascinating to us was just the deep cord that it struck with the hacker community.

I remember.

So tell us a little bit about what that finding was and perhaps why that title was written that way.