http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MX488s19yE
Ambassador Joseph R. DeTrani spoke to Defcon 21 about nuclear proliferation and cyber warfare.
Being this guy worked for the CIA and a bunch of other places I was a bit disappointed in his presentation format. A lot of quotes. It seemed like he was just presenting information that was out there and I missed some of his opinions.
He did state that cyber warefare should be under a similar treaty that nuclear arms already are (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons).
I am almost glad I was not at Defcon this year so far as right after his speech, instead of speaking about what he was talking about, everyone was asking him about the Snowden disclosures.
The only reason they had a point in asking him about this was possibly to loop it in to some type of cyber warfare treaty. They did not ask him for that reason though. They asked him to harass him.
I get that people are angry but I thought the people at Defcon where smarter then this. How far is harassment going to get with this guy? Did you need to take your anger out on someone?
When the question was asked, instead of saying no comment, he did want to say something. Was he prepped? Did he prep himself?
After that initial harassment a legit question was asked but the question was directed at his mention of a firewall. I think it was assumed that he was talking about something like China has. He stated creation of an organization is what he meant. An organization to oversee. Oversee what?
They finally got a microphone for the questions. Someone asks a real question about how exploit finders are not rewarded but instead punished and he responds stating this is what he is talking about. How this should be changed on a global level and they should be rewarded.
Then another person gets on and trys to offend the guy. “I am not sure why you are here.”
It is shit. It is not shit because they are arguing with him. It is shit because what they are arguing with him about and also what points they bring up.
It is true that WMD’s were used to start the war but the goal for anyone going up on stage should have been to get as much information out of this guy as possible. You can argue later. That is how this works, not that this guy is my enemy, but you have to know your enemy. If the gentlemen that stated “I am not sure why you are here.” was smart he should have thought about questions that would have gotten real answers out of the guy. What a waste of fucking time.
Who participated in creating your speech? was the next question. Only he did.
He was then asked about how can we trust what the government is saying about other countries nuclear weapon capabilities and was told that the government had been lying to them about it. DeTrani responds by telling people to forget about what the US government is saying and check out this: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Reports/ and make your own conclusions.
I don’t know if this guy is really this ignorant of technology or if he is dodging questions but when asked about hacktivism (I mean the first thing I would ask is for a more strict definition of what we are talking about here). It does seem like after being harassed for a while he becomes more dismissive.
I wish someone asked: How do we become involved? Because that is his answer to a lot. Involve yourself. I think he wants to call attention to how an international treaty with cyber warfare is being thought up and it needs to be shaped.
He did use a lot of sensational terms, but think about it. What does this guy do. It is his job to use these sensational terms everyday while he is working. They are no different to him then any other word to him and that is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because to him this is normal conversation and he is not brought out of his zone by them. It is a weakness because some of the words he uses when talking about cyber warfare you can tell he does not understand completely. It is either that or he is copying how they are thrown to him or around him in his daily job. Like CSI giving a brief about the Linux kernel or something. “We need a firewall” really means that we need to work towards securing everything.
The problem is that either way, this sucks. You have the people making the decisions going: Make a Firewall. The engineers make the firewall and the decision makers decide to use it because they think everyone else wants it and they are confused.
Can you imagine how much power you could have in the group that he operates in if you actually knew what you where talking about?
What a way to treat this guy. He took it like a champ.