On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Christopher Painter, commissioner of The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. When I recorded my first ever program here in 2014, the subject with digital scholar and educator John Palfrey was the very real possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor or 9/11 in our lifetimes. It's clear from our evaluations on The Open Mind that such a crisis played out during the 2016 campaign, but not as we expected. We lacked the imagination foresight and most of all political will to respond as governments, citizens, and corporations, which often were hosts of malignant disinformation and enablers of massive security breaches.
For over two decades, painter has been at the helm of American Internet policy as a prosecutor of high-profile cyber crimes. And then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, FBI, National Security Council, and finally the State Department. In his most recent role as the nation's top cyber diplomat, Painter coordinated and led the diplomatic efforts to advance an open internet and information infrastructure, establishing the office of the coordinator for cyber issues dedicated to advancing the diplomatic aspects of cyber issues ranging from national security to human rights.
