Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. In this episode, recorded as part of our tech policy summit in

Washington, D.C., guests Martin Casado, A16Z general partner, Nathaniel Gleacher, head of cybersecurity

strategy at Alumio, Matthew Olson, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center

and former General Counsel for the NSA, talk with A16Z's

Matt Spence about changing the way we talk about cybersecurity. So why don't we, Matt, start with

you. So you saw some of the most dangerous cyber threats to our country from your perch, from

inside the situation room. What should we be more afraid of and

what should we be less afraid of in the cyberspace? We need to be really rigorous and precise when we

talk about the threats we face. You know, you were there, Matt, with us in the Situation Room.

We were briefing the president. I was the person who started off the briefings with the president to talk

about the threats we faced from terrorism. And there's always this impulse to inflate the threat

because you don't want to be wrong, right? And so there's this sense like you should kind of go to the

scariest, darkest corner of the room. But I think it's critical that individuals in that position and

companies in that position actually don't fall prey to that impulse. And to really understand,

okay, what is the nature of the threat? How do we put it into perspective so that policymakers,

companies can make sound resource decisions, sound business decisions, sound policy decisions about how

we're going to counteract the threat. So I think that's a fundamental point. And I do think we face a bit

of inflation about the nature of the threat, or at least a little bit of lack of care and

talking about the threat. I do think, and where I make to sort of take a different, maybe glass

half empty versus glass half full perspective, you know, as much as we celebrate all of the ways in which

the advances in computing and in big data and analytics give us greater ability to counteract the

threat, those same capabilities are also going into the hands of our adversaries.

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