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The Trump administration's radical changes to United States fiscal policy, foreign relations, and global strategy—combined with mass firings across the federal government—have created uncertainty around US cybersecurity priorities that was on display this week at two of the country's most prominent digital security conferences in Las Vegas. “We are not retreating, we're advancing in a new direction,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency chief information officer Robert Costello said on Thursday during a critical infrastructure defense panel at Black Hat.

As in other parts of the federal government, the Trump administration has been combing intelligence and cybersecurity agencies to remove officials seen as disloyal to its agenda. Alongside these shifts, the White House has also been hostile to former US cybersecurity officials. In April, for example, Trump specifically directed all departments and agencies to revoke the security clearance of former CISA director Chris Krebs. And last week, following criticism from far-right activist Laura Loomer, the secretary of the Army rescinded an academic appointment that former CISA director Jen Easterly had been scheduled to fill at West Point. Amid all of this, former US National Security Agency and Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone spoke with Defcon founder Jeff Moss in an onstage discussion on Friday, focusing on AI, cybercrime, and the importance of partnerships in digital defense.

“I think we've entered a space now in the world where technology has become political and basically every one of us is conflicted,” Moss said at the beginning of the discussion. Nakasone, who is on the board of OpenAI, agreed, citing Trump's January launch of the “Stargate” AI infrastructure initiative flanked by Oracle's Larry Ellison, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI's Sam Altman. “And then two days later, just by chance, [the Chinese generative AI platform] DeepSeek came out,” Nakasone deadpanned. “Amazing.”

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Nakasone also reflected on demographic differences between the US federal government and the tech sector.

“When I was the director of NSA and commander of US Cyber Command, every single quarter I would go to the Bay or I'd go to Texas or Boston or other places to see technology,” he said. “And every place that I went to, I was twice the age of the people that talked to me. And then when I came back to DC and I sat at the table, I was one of the younger people there. OK, that's a problem. That's a problem for our nation.”

Throughout the discussion, Nakasone largely geared his remarks toward efforts to counter traditional US rivals and adversaries, including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, as well as specific digital threats.

“Why aren't we thinking differently about ransomware, which I think right now is among the great scourges that we have in our country,” he said. “We are not making progress against ransomware.”

At times, though, Moss attempted to steer the conversation toward geopolitical changes and conflicts around the world that are fueling uncertainty and fear.

“How do you be neutral in this environment? Can you be neutral? Or is the world's environment since last year, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Iran, just take your pick, America—how does anybody remain neutral?" Moss asked at the beginning of the conversation. Later he added, “I think because I'm so stressed out by the chaos of the situation, I'm trying to feel how do I get control?”

Referencing these remarks and comments Moss had made about turning to open source software platforms as a community-building alternative to multinational tech companies, Nakasone hinted at Moss’ notion that the world is entering a precarious state of flux.

“This is going to be an interesting storyline that we play out through ’25 and ’26. When we come back [to Defcon] next year to have this discussion, will we still be able to have this sense of, oh, we're truly neutral? I sense not. I think it's going to be very, very difficult.”

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Because the car areas are too dangerous for them and there are no bike areas.

For anyone else curious:

https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt3000/

Looks like it has built in wireguard vpn client support, so you can connect to an external vpn server and route all traffic to it automatically from all your devices.

I've worked in a heavy industry space where the "computers" were just slightly complicated circuit boards working together. No OS, no networking, nothing but circuit logic running hilariously important machines. The cabinets were locked in a small area deep in the facility that was manned 100% of the time, and were rarely accessed, so it would be a big event for anyone to interact with them. There were no windows for "someone with a clipboard" to just be waived in to mess with them.

There was no remote access, and no social engineering possible. Anyone who could work on them was well known by everyone who would be in the room. An insider threat was basically the only kind possible, but the only "hacked" output would just be a failed "off" state, which wouls be replaced.

There really are "unhackable" computerized machines out there, but only because calling them "computerized" is a stretch.

15k for several distinct hotspots in a city is pretty reasonable, depending on what equipment they are using.

Enterprise quality IT gear is expensive. Each access point can easily be 1k, and that excludes any routers/firewall/switching that you may need at each site. As an example, I've worked in places that had small retail locations that at a minimum had 8k of network equipment, with some locations pushing into the 100k+ range based on needs and size. That's per site. The above is all in USD, but just equipment. Labor can add 30% to the costs.

15k euro for a whole city that includes equipment and installation sounds very fiscally responsible.

I mean, just do it anyway, onion or not. Bring some joviality to politics.

One-stop-slop that is.

Nope, I was wrong entirely. I deleted my comment and added the below in. Youre dead on about vegas killing it for the loop:

Based on the most recent article I can find with the head of the monorail system, you're right:

How do the Monorail and the Vegas Loop complement each other? What’s the future of the monorail? Are there plans to get another leg of that going?

What we plan to do is run the Monorail the way it is, until we can’t anymore. What will almost certainly determine that is the trains wearing out. We’ve got nine trains, if we were going to replace them right now it would probably be a $300 million purchase, and we can’t afford to do that. Nobody else could either. Once that stops, our plan is to use the monorail structure, the stanchions, take the track off and put a two-lane road on top of the monorail and tie it into the (underground Vegas Loop) system.

Any guesses of the Monorail lifespan?

We keep saying eight or 10 years.

There were some light rail conversations on and off for maybe the past decade. Would light rail help?

Taking a lane off the Strip for light rail seems counterproductive. The properties have never supported it. And if you don’t take the traffic away, then I don’t know that light rail speeds anything up. I mean, if you’re able to run in the same lane as the train, then I don’t know (if) that does you a whole lot of good. But it’s a very expensive system to put in. One of the real benefits of (the underground system) is it’s free. The Boring Company is paying for all the tunnels, and the properties are paying for all the stations. There’s no public money going into the system.

Based on the most recent article I can find with the head of the monorail system, you're right:

How do the Monorail and the Vegas Loop complement each other? What’s the future of the monorail? Are there plans to get another leg of that going?

What we plan to do is run the Monorail the way it is, until we can’t anymore. What will almost certainly determine that is the trains wearing out. We’ve got nine trains, if we were going to replace them right now it would probably be a $300 million purchase, and we can’t afford to do that. Nobody else could either. Once that stops, our plan is to use the monorail structure, the stanchions, take the track off and put a two-lane road on top of the monorail and tie it into the (underground Vegas Loop) system.

Any guesses of the Monorail lifespan?

We keep saying eight or 10 years.

There were some light rail conversations on and off for maybe the past decade. Would light rail help?

Taking a lane off the Strip for light rail seems counterproductive. The properties have never supported it. And if you don’t take the traffic away, then I don’t know that light rail speeds anything up. I mean, if you’re able to run in the same lane as the train, then I don’t know (if) that does you a whole lot of good. But it’s a very expensive system to put in. One of the real benefits of (the underground system) is it’s free. The Boring Company is paying for all the tunnels, and the properties are paying for all the stations. There’s no public money going into the system.

He goes into it in the video, but the Las vegas monorail runs to many of the same locations, is cash positive, and is the 13th most used mass transit system in the US.

The issue in Vegas is that mass transit doesn't fit a "luxury" experience that every bit of vegas is trying to sell you to fleece your pockets. The loop, especially the "new" stops that are literally benches outside of hotels with no tunnels, don't either, but the "private chauffeur" pitch of the Tesla tunnels at least fit the grift.