EXCLUSIVE: Google's President of Global Affairs on AI, Cyber Attacks and Silicon Valley

The Rest Is Classified

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠ to listen to the full interview* This week Gordon and David are joined by Kent Walker, Google's President of Global Affairs, to discuss the Aurora cyber attacks, his thoughts on the future of Artificial Intelligence, and what it was like to grow up in Silicon Valley before it became the world's technology hub. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [email protected] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Video Editor: Nathan Copelin Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series,
0:09.0	first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books,
0:13.1	join the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.com.
0:17.3	Music Okay, welcome everybody.
0:26.6	Welcome, everybody, welcome club members to this bonus episode.
0:29.6	No David here this time.
0:30.6	It's far too busy promoting his new book in America, the Persian.
0:33.6	I'm not sure if he's mentioned, he's had a book coming out, but there we go.
0:36.6	Actually, that's not the real reason. He's not here. We're doing something a bit different anyway this
0:41.1	episode. Hopefully you've heard the two-part series we've just done this week on the events around
0:46.1	Aurora, the cyber hack of Google linked to China back in 2009, 2010. Well, I'm actually currently
0:51.8	in Google's London headquarters. I've walked past a Dalek on my way in from the Doctor Who series, which is very impressive, as well as some other kind of features which tell you you're in a tech company. I think I'm in a room called Beach Route as well, which is a kind of interesting name. But most importantly, with me is Kent Walker, who's president of global affairs at Alphabet, which is now,
1:12.4	of course, the parent company of Google. Welcome, Kent. Delay to be with you. And thanks for taking
1:16.2	the time to talk to us about the kind of not just what happened in the past, but the world we're in
1:20.4	today, some of the security issues, including around AI and things like that, and how they look
1:25.6	from a big tech company. Now, Kent, you started in
1:28.5	Google back in 2006? That's right. So you were there when Aurora happened. What did you remember
1:34.7	of it? Was it a big deal at the time? It was indeed. We went on 24-7 round-the-clock focus on this.
1:41.8	It was a building that was really just concentrated on identifying
1:45.0	exactly what was happening and getting on top of it, and then ultimately warning other companies
1:50.0	that had also been affected. Senior managers there, Sergey Brin, others were very focused on understanding
1:55.0	this in a deep way. And it also then set the framework for a lot of our cybersecurity work
	...

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