A Night of Talks: A Nobel Laureate and ex-CIA Director speak at USC.
This past March 9th, 2017 I had the pleasure of attending two speaker events. The beauty of USC is that you can have your major and still be in touch with your interests. My way of doing that is attending more speaker events that I should be on campus. It is rare that on the same day there are two high profile speaker events but the Thursday of March 9th was one of those days.
First up at 4.30 pm was the 39th Earl V. Pullias Lecture. The talk was titled Professors and Their Masters: Challenges to Academic Freedom in the Contemporary World. The speaker was Amartya Sen. Amartya Sen was the first Asian to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and the first non-American to be awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2012. Many people in the US are not very familiar with Amartya Sen. However, for someone like me who grew up in a developing country like Bangladesh – he is a stalwart for his contribution to development economics. Amartya Sen’s contribution to development economics include the idea that rising incomes are useless if people do not have access to better healthcare or education. His research into the field led to the creation of the Human Development Index, an indicator of how well the citizens of a nation are taking into consideration income, lifespan and education.
Picture Source: USC News
Amartya Sen was introduced by the President of USC, C.L Max Nikias who showered praises on Sen including:
“Amartya Sen instilled humanity and consensus in a field where politics and policy bring conflict.”
Nikias also went on to say that
“economics is crucial to justice and liberty”
in his introductory speech.
Amartya Sen started off his lecture by bringing up the notion that academia often faces conflicts of interest due to research and endowed chairs often resulting from donations. He also pointed out that professors often must refrain from political or radical articulation due to the academic nature of their job and this often stifles discussion in classrooms. This claim was distinguished further when he went on to say that this is more prominent in public universities as there is a possibility of mismatch between state and school priorities.
Sen also emphasized that there are many things that professors cannot teach their students. He recalled an anecdote whereby students became expert climbers; climbing the fences of their dormitories due to a 11pm curfew that was present at a prestigious British institution back in the day.
The lecture then took a turn as Sen used a case study of Indian universities. He lambasted the absence of autonomy in Indian higher education as many research and appointee positions were taken by the government due to institutions receiving government funding from the University Grants Commission. Sen stated that the level of government interference in Indian higher education is incomparably large. The leaders of academic institutes are restricted and government research funds were channeled to topics such as “The Uniqueness of Hindu Spirituality” and “Advantages of Cow Urine”. This effectively leads to a case where universities in India are denied autonomy.
The second speaker event at 7 pm was a USC Visions & Voices event titled: Cyber Wars and Global Politics: Fred Kaplan and General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus in Conversation.
General Petraeus is the ex-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served for 37 years in the US Army including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fred Kaplan is a former journalist with the Boston Globe and has published numerous books on international affairs, U.S foreign policy and frequently writes about technology as well.
Picture Source: USC Visions & Voices
The talk focused on cyber security as it applied to everyday life and the cyber wars. The discussion started off the revelations that certain televisions had fake off-circuits that even though showed the user that the television was off allowed the microphone to stay on. This was used by a certain US agency to spy on specific targets. Kaplan eased the audiences concern when he mentioned that
“this is not a mass spying system; this type of surveillance is very specifically targeted at certain individuals. If you are worried about your television spying on you – check the back-LED light always to see if it is actually off and always update your television software.”
Petraeus was then asked about whether manufacturers should be alerted when these types of exploits are found – he went on to say it depends on the situation.
The conversation then moved onto the talented folks up in Silicon Valley who can crack anything out there. The speakers agreed that this was a big advantage for America in Cyber Wars but also cautioned that private working citizens did not have the scope to work on many top-secret zero-day exploits as government agencies who were aware of them choose not to disclose them to the public. Petraeus however die mention that the CIA had set up a venture capital firm In-Q-Tel which invests in startups that have the potential to produce technology to keep US intelligence and national security at the forefront of innovation.
Kaplan went onto mention that the biggest threat to personal security was the millions of Internet of Things device that presented a cornucopia of opportunity for hackers to steal personal data or spy on individuals. Kaplan also mentioned that when companies have cyber breaches – it takes an average of seven months before it is detected. A resolution to the delay would be to monitor data on networks because,
“once you have information on a network and are creating inherent research.”
Such research would help detection and resilience in industry. Kaplan suggested that most organizations will be breached at least once and that is why the Navy now teaches officers to use a sextant and navigate by the stars.
As the conversation progressed, Petraeus gave insights into the capability of the National Security Agency. He used the example of how the military needed an industrial strength fusion network to better process intelligence and which led to the creation of the Real Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG). This system was deployed during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to mine and process data and intelligence. Petraeus joked about how fast the RT-RG was developed since the programmers did not have to go back to family at night as it was built on site in the war zone.
The talk ended with the assertion that twenty nations now have cyber defense units and the world of cyber warfare is still murky and dark territory with respect to law and operational procedures. While there is the obvious meaning to dark territory, it is a term used in the railroad industry to describe portions of the railway network not controlled by signals. Petraeus also said he believed that the US will remain at the forefront of cyber innovation due to the large and advanced nature of the economy.
Want more from Trojans 360?
Visit Trojans 360 on Facebook & Twitter to stay up to date with more student content!
You can also Ask A Trojan an anonymous question, and we’ll try to answer it in a future post!
And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!
Trojans 360 is USC’s official student-run blog. Content created by students, for students.
