And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm joined today by Jack Goldsmith,

Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. But despite that, an extremely intelligent and sensible fellow,

served in the Bush administration

and a senior position at the Justice Department,

OLC, right?

Office of Legal Counsel.

The very prestigious in-house lawyer for the administration, so to speak.

And you've written widely on many topics, but today we're going to discuss

Cybersecurity, something you've written on and have alarmed by I think is that right I would say that I'm pretty alarmed by it yes so let's talk about that I mean from the outside you know their occasional hacks you read the stories obviously famous

famously baby Russia in 2016 but I don't know can't we deal with these is

this really a huge national security problem is this going to be a major

part of our national security challenges

over the next decade or two?

I do think that it is a major national security problem. The government certainly sees it that way.

It's always at the top of the list of threats and the threat reports that the

government issues. I've been struck by that talking to people not from that

area you know who don't have an interest in promoting it in a sense right just

four-star generals who you have senior positions and get briefed up on what

could happen and they think hard about it they really are alarmed and there there

several things to be alarmed about.

One thing that a lot of people are alarmed about are the so-called Cyberpull Harbor,

where the computer networks attach, say, to the electrical grid or the like would be attacked and that an adversary could bring the electrical system down or part of it or make the numbers on Wall Street lacked integrity or the like so there's that

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