Safeguarding Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. With us today is Jay Clayton, and he’s the Director of National Intelligence and also the AI czar for superintelligence. And, well, Jay Clayton, the president depends on you a lot, and you have a lot of responsibilities.

0:21 Give us an update of what the heck is going on.

0:25 Speaker 2 Well, John, it’s great to be back with you, and happy Sunday morning. You know what? I’m thinking, we just had Halloween, and it was about a year ago that we brought 18 people who were running an open-air drug ring in Washington Square Park to justice. And now, a year later, Washington Square Park is a place where families

0:54 can gather on Halloween. They can gather every day. It’s beautiful. None of that happens without the New York Police Department and the great federal prosecutors who brought those cases. And I think it’s emblematic of what I’m thinking about today, John, which is, you know, we can solve these kinds of problems.

1:16 People who thought, you know, we would never clean up that park, that you would always be at risk, particularly after dark.

1:23 Speaker 1 Well, it sounds to me, Jay Clayton, it sounds to me like you miss New York. I mean, you’re all over the world. You are in Washington most of the time now, and you’re in charge of superintelligence. And you love New York, and you miss New York. And, you know, we had a Back the Blue conference the other day,

1:44 and we had police departments all over the country. We had the assistant... uh, uh, uh, director in charge of assistant director in charge of the, uh, the FBI, uh, uh, in the studio. And, um, I mean, New York, New York is doing well. Yeah.

2:05 Speaker 2 Well, I miss, I miss Kim Barclay. He’s great. And you’re right. I, I, I do, uh, I do look, it’s a great privilege. I, I am so honored to be doing the job, but the, uh, the lessons that you learned, uh, working in law enforcement, working in counterterrorism in New York, uh, are really, really helping me here

2:25 in Washington. And, uh, you know, I want to, I always want to make sure that New Yorkers know that not only is the New York police department, the greatest police department in the world, it also has one of the greatest counterterrorism, uh, operations in the world. Uh, you know, commissioner Tish and her staff in that, uh, Counterterrorism Bureau,

2:48 second to none. And, you know, John, that’s a segue into what we’re doing with superintelligence. One of the first things is these advances are making it much more easy for our adversaries to hit our systems, to disrupt our way of life. And, you know, job one is to protect our critical infrastructure. to protect our people from those

3:17 types of things, just like you approach other areas of countering our enemies, countering terrorism.

3:28 Speaker 1 Now, we realize all that stuff is going on, and we’re worried about what’s going on in in Spain, in France, in the European community, which we’re worried what’s going on in our own country. And there were some incidences worldwide on counterterrorism. I understand I heard that It was possibly the North Koreans that took some money from some Bitcoin company. But,

4:04 you know, that AI or super intelligence is going to become more and more dangerous.

4:10 Speaker 2 Well, John, it’s here. It is here and it’s a risk and it’s an opportunity that we have to deal with. This is why President Trump’s clear-eyed approach to this, which is it’s a technological advance. The more we lead here in America, the better able we are to protect our people, the better we are able to counter our adversaries, and

4:36 the better we are able to continue our leadership in business and commercial areas. And it’s a multi-pronged approach that we’ve taken in the government. It’s been amplified by the superintelligence force. But I think the American people should recognize that this is a very, very important thing, but it’s one where we’ve been ahead and we’re leaning in even more.

5:08 Speaker 1 Now, I know you have limits to what you can talk about for national security reasons. Do you think our voting systems are secure at this point now? So on Tuesday, when people vote, the American people are going to feel that they’re getting a good count.

5:27 Speaker 2 I like that we’re focusing on making sure that every vote counts. And I think every American can get behind two things. access, everybody has the opportunity to vote, and integrity. Only the people who should vote do vote. And if you ask every American, if you ask anybody, that’s fundamental.

5:49 That’s what they believe.

5:51 Speaker 1 And I agree with the same thing. Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, that we want an honest vote for everybody. To me, it’s not political. It’s just we want an honest vote for everybody. What other area do you want to speak about this Sunday morning?

6:08 Speaker 2 John, just going back to superintelligence and our critical infrastructure, our electricity, our water, our communications, everyone should recognize we’re going to need to upgrade those systems. Those systems have been built out, become digital systems over the last 20, 30, 40 years. It’s time for an upgrade. We’re going to need to do it. It’s just one of those things

6:40 you should face, and we should face it head on. And once again, America should lead in that area.

6:46 Speaker 1 Understood. Jay Clayton, I mean, you know, we have challenging times ahead of us. I worry about the world. I worry about our country. I worry about our state and city that me and you live in for a long time.

7:03 And thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning.

7:07 Speaker 2 And, John, there’s no better country at getting through challenging times than the United States.

7:14 Speaker 1 I agree that too. And we have 185 different languages spoken in our country. And we welcome everybody. And all we ask for them is to love America. And I think that’s the greatest country in the world. Thank you so much.

7:34 Speaker 2 Thank you, John.