Hello, Stanford! (Applause.) Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Have
a seat. Have a seat.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, we can!
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we can! (Applause.)
First of all, let me thank President Hennessy for not just the introduction but for your
outstanding leadership at one of the great universities of the world. (Applause.) I’ve
got to admit, like, I kind of want to go here. (Laughter and applause.) I was trying to figure
out why it is that a really nice place like this is wasted on young people -- (laughter)
-- who don’t fully appreciate what you got. It’s really nice. And everybody here is
so friendly and smart, and it’s beautiful. And what’s there not to like?
I want to thank you and everyone at Stanford for hosting this summit, especially Amy Zegart,
George Triantis, and someone who served as a great advisor to me at the White House and
as an outstanding ambassador to Russia before coming back to The Farm -- Mike McFaul. (Applause.)
It is great to be here at Leland Stanford Junior University. And I’m pleased to be
joined by members of my team who bleed Cardinal red. We’re infiltrated with Stanford people.
We’ve got Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Secretary
of Commerce Penny Pritzker. (Applause.) And, let’s face it, I like Stanford grads. I
noticed Steve Chu was around here, who helped lead our Energy Department for a while. (Applause.)
And he’s now hanging out. I’m also pleased to be joined by other members of my Cabinet
-- our Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson is here, and our Small Business Administrator,
Maria Contreras-Sweet. And I want to acknowledge my tireless Homeland Security Advisor who
helped, and continues to shape, our cybersecurity efforts -- Lisa Monaco. (Applause.) Thank
you, Lisa.
So I’d always heard about this campus, and everybody is riding bikes, and people hopping
into fountains -- (laughter) -- and the current holder of The Axe. (Applause.) This is the
place that made “nerd” cool. (Laughter.) I was thinking about wearing some black-rimmed
glasses, some tape in the middle, but I guess that’s not what you do anymore. Ambassador
McFaul told me if I came to Stanford, you’d “talk nerdy to me.” (Laughter.)
But I’m not just here to enjoy myself. As we gather here today, America is seeing incredible
progress that we can all be proud of. We just had the best year of job growth since the
1990s. (Applause.) Over the past 59 months, our businesses have created nearly 12 million
new jobs, which is the longest streak of private sector job growth on record. And in a hopeful
sign for middle-class families, wages are beginning to rise again.
And, meanwhile, we’re doing more to prepare our young people for a competitive world.
Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. More Americans are finishing
college than ever before. Here at Stanford and across the country, we’ve got the best
universities, we’ve got the best scientists, the best researchers in the world. We’ve
got the most dynamic economy in the world. And no place represents that better than this
region. So make no mistake, more than any other nation on Earth, the United States is
positioned to lead in the 21st century.
And so much of our economic competitiveness is tied to what brings me here today, and
that is America’s leadership in the digital economy. It’s our ability -- almost unique
across the planet -- our ability to innovate and to learn, and to discover, and to create,
and build, and do business online, and stretch the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s
what drives us. And so when we had to decide where to have this summit, the decision was
easy, because so much of our Information Age began right here, at Stanford.
It was here where two students, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, met and then, in a garage
not far from here, started a company that eventually built one of the first personal
computers, weighing in at 40 pounds. (Laughter.) It was from here, in 1968, where a researcher,
Douglas Englebart, astonished an audience with two computers, connected “online,”
and hypertext you could click on with something called a “mouse.”
A year later, a computer here received the first message from another computer 350 miles
away -- the beginnings of what would become the Internet. And, by the way, it’s no secret
that many of these innovations built on government-funded research is one of the reasons that if we
want to maintain our economic leadership in the world, America has to keep investing in
basic research in science and technology. It's absolutely critical. (Applause.)
So here at Stanford, pioneers developed the protocols and architecture of the Internet,
DSL, the first webpage in America, innovations for cloud computing. Student projects here
became Yahoo and Google. Those were pretty good student projects. (Laughter.) Your graduates
have gone on to help create and build thousands of companies that have shaped our digital
society -- from Cisco to Sun Microsystems, YouTube to Instagram, StubHub, Bonobos. According
to one study, if all the companies traced back to Stanford graduates formed their own
nation, you’d be one the largest economies in the world and have a pretty good football
team as well. (Laughter and applause.)
And today, with your cutting-edge research programs and your new cyber initiatives, you’re
helping us navigate some of the most complicated cyber challenges that we face as a nation.
And that’s why we’re here. I want to thank all of you who have joined us today -- members
of Congress, representatives from the private sector, government, academia, privacy and
consumer groups, and especially the students who are here. Just as we’re all connected
like never before, we have to work together like never before, both to seize opportunities
but also meet the challenges of this Information Age.
And it’s one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower
us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm. The same information
technologies that help make our military the most advanced in the world are targeted by
hackers from China and Russia who go after our defense contractors and systems that are
built for our troops. The same social media we use in government to advocate for democracy
and human rights around the world can also be used by terrorists to spread hateful ideologies.
So these cyber threats are a challenge to our national security.
Much of our critical infrastructure -- our financial systems, our power grid, health
systems -- run on networks connected to the Internet, which is hugely empowering but also
dangerous, and creates new points of vulnerability that we didn’t have before. Foreign governments
and criminals are probing these systems every single day. We only have to think of real-life
examples -- an air traffic control system going down and disrupting flights, or blackouts
that plunge cities into darkness -- to imagine what a set of systematic cyber attacks might
do. So this is also a matter of public safety.
As a nation, we do more business online than ever before -- trillions of dollars a year.
And high-tech industries, like those across the Valley, support millions of American jobs.
All this gives us an enormous competitive advantage in the global economy. And for that
very reason, American companies are being targeted, their trade secrets stolen, intellectual
property ripped off. The North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures destroyed data and
disabled thousands of computers, and exposed the personal information of Sony employees.
And these attacks are hurting American companies and costing American jobs. So this is also
a threat to America’s economic security.
As consumers, we do more online than ever before. We manage our bank accounts. We shop.
We pay our bills. We handle our medical records. And as a country, one of our greatest resources
are the young people who are here today --digitally fearless and unencumbered by convention, and
uninterested in old debates. And they’re remaking the world every day. But it also
means that this problem of how we secure this digital world is only going to increase.
I want more Americans succeeding in our digital world. I want young people like you to unleash
the next waves of innovation, and launch the next startups, and give Americans the tools
to create new jobs and new businesses, and to expand connectivity in places that we currently
can't imagine, to help open up new world and new experiences and empower individuals in
ways that would seem unimaginable 10, 15, 20 years ago.
And that’s why we’re working to connect 99 percent of America’s students to high-speed
Internet -- because when it comes to educating our children, we can’t afford any digital
divides. It’s why we’re helping more communities get across to the next generation of broadband
faster, with cheaper Internet, so that students and entrepreneurs and small businesses across
America, not just in pockets of America, have the same opportunities to learn and compete
as you do here in the Valley. It’s why I’ve come out so strongly and publicly for net
neutrality, for an open and free Internet -- (applause) -- because we have to preserve
one of the greatest engines for creativity and innovation in human history.
So our connectivity brings extraordinary benefits to our daily lives, but it also brings risks.
And when companies get hacked, Americans’ personal information, including their financial
information, gets stolen. Identity theft can ruin your credit rating and turn your life
upside down. In recent breaches, more than 100 million Americans had their personal data
compromised, including, in some cases, credit card information. We want our children to
go online and explore the world, but we also want them to be safe and not have their privacy
violated. So this is a direct threat to the economic security of American families, not
just the economy overall, and to the wellbeing of our children, which means we’ve got to
put in place mechanisms to protect them.
So shortly after I took office, before I had gray hair -- (laughter) -- I said that these
cyber threats were one of the most serious economic national security challenges that
we face as a nation, and I made confronting them a priority. And given the complexity
of these threats, I believe we have to be guided by some basic principles. So let me
share those with you today.
First, this has to be a shared mission. So much of our computer networks and critical
infrastructure are in the private sector, which means government cannot do this alone.
But the fact is that the private sector can’t do it alone either, because it’s government
that often has the latest information on new threats. There’s only one way to defend
America from these cyber threats, and that is through government and industry working
together, sharing appropriate information as true partners.
Second, we have to focus on our unique strengths. Government has many capabilities, but it’s
not appropriate or even possible for government to secure the computer networks of private
businesses. Many of the companies who are here today are cutting-edge, but the private
sector doesn’t always have the capabilities needed during a cyber attack, the situational
awareness, or the ability to warn other companies in real time, or the capacity to coordinate
a response across companies and sectors. So we’re going to have to be smart and efficient
and focus on what each sector does best, and then do it together.
Third, we’re going to have to constantly evolve. The first computer viruses hit personal
computers in the early 1980s, and essentially, we’ve been in a cyber arms race ever since.
We design new defenses, and then hackers and criminals design new ways to penetrate them.
Whether it’s phishing or botnets, spyware or malware, and now ransomware, these attacks
are getting more and more sophisticated every day. So we’ve got to be just as fast and
flexible and nimble in constantly evolving our defenses.
And fourth, and most importantly, in all our work we have to make sure we are protecting
the privacy and civil liberty of the American people. And we grapple with these issues in
government. We’ve pursued important reforms to make sure we are respecting peoples’
privacy as well as ensuring our national security. And the private sector wrestles with this
as well. When consumers share their personal information with companies, they deserve to
know that it’s going to be protected. When government and industry share information
about cyber threats, we’ve got to do so in a way that safeguards your personal information.
When people go online, we shouldn’t have to forfeit the basic privacy we’re entitled
to as Americans.
In recent years, we’ve worked to put these principles into practice. And as part of our
comprehensive strategy, we’ve boosted our defenses in government, we’re sharing more
information with the private sector to help those companies defend themselves, we’re
working with industry to use what we call a Cybersecurity Framework to prevent, respond
to, and recover from attacks when they happen.
And, by the way, I recently went to the National Cybersecurity Communications Integration Center,
which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, where representatives from government
and the private sector monitor cyber threats 24/7. And so defending against cyber threats,
This is not a Democratic issue, or a Republican issue. This is not a liberal or conservative