Trump administration Radical changes to the fiscal policy of the United States, foreign relations and global strategy – combined with mass layoffs through the federal government – have created uncertainty concerning the American cybersecurity priorities which were exposed this week in two of the most important digital security conferences in Las Vegas. “We are not retiring, we are advancing in a new direction,” said the information agency for cybersecurity and infrastructure, Robert Costello, said on Thursday during a defense of critical infrastructure at Black Hat.
As in other parts of the federal government, the Trump administration has combed intelligence and cybersecurity agencies to withdraw civil servants considered to be unfair in its program. In addition to these quarters of work, the White House was also hostile to the former American leaders in cybersecurity. In April, for example, Trump specifically ordered all departments and agencies to revoke the security authorization of the former director of the CISA, Chris Krebs. And last week, following the criticisms of the far -right activist, Laura Loomer, the army secretary canceled an academic appointment that the former director of the CISA, Jen Easterly, was to fill in West Point. In the midst of all this, the former American national security agency and head of the Cyber Command Paul Nakasone spoke with the founder of Defcon Jeff Moss in a discussion on stage on Friday, focusing on AI, cybercrime and the importance of partnerships in digital defense.
“I think we have now entered a space in the world where technology has become political and that, essentially, each of us is in conflict,” said Moss at the start of the discussion. Nakasone, who sits on the board of directors of OpenAi, agreed, citing the launch of Trump in January of the infrastructure initiative of the “Stargate” Flanked by Larry Ellison d’Oracle, the son Masayoshi of Softbank and Sam Altman of Openai. “And then two days later, just by chance, [the Chinese generative AI platform] Deepseek came out, “said Nakasone.
Nakasone has also thought about demographic differences between the American federal government and the technological sector.
“When I was director of the NSA and the American cyber command commander, each quarter I went to the bay or I went to Texas or Boston or in other places to see the technology,” he said. “And each place where I went, I had twice the age of the people who told me about it. And then when I returned to DC and I sat at the table, I was one of the youngest there. Okay, that’s a problem. This is a problem for our nation.”
Throughout the discussion, Nakasone largely kept its comments on efforts to counter the Rivals and traditional opponents of the United States, notably China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as specific digital threats.
“Why don’t we think of ransomware differently, which, I think, is among the big plagues we have in our country,” he said. “We are not progressing against ransomware.”
Sometimes, however, Moss tried to direct the conversation to geopolitical changes and conflicts in the world that feed uncertainty and fear.
“How are you neutral in this environment? Can you be neutral? Or is it the global environment since last year, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Iran, just make it your choice, America-how is someone neutral?” Moss asked at the start of the conversation. Later, he added: “I think that because I am so stressed by the chaos of the situation, I try to feel how I can get control?”
By referring to these remarks and comments that Moss had made on the transformation of open source software platforms as an alternative to strengthen the community to multinational technology companies, Nakasone alluded to the concept of MOSS that the world enters a state of precarious flow.
“It will be an interesting scenario that we play through the ’25 and ’26. When we come back [to Defcon] Next year to have this discussion, can we always have this sense, oh, are we really neutral? I don’t feel. I think it’s going to be very, very difficult.
