Remarks by Secretary Ridge at the Northern Virginia Technology Council

Release Date: 04/29/03 00:00:00

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

April 29, 2003

McLean Hilton Hotel

Mclean, VA

SECRETARY RIDGE:  Thank you for that wonderful introduction, and thank you for the very warm reception.  It is a very great pleasure to join you this evening.  I, in a few moments, have a couple remarks that I would like to share with you.  But I have the opportunity tonight to recognize a couple of good friends in the audience, and I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty doing just that.

I happen to think that the best political job in America is being governor.  I said that before, and I'll say it again.  And a couple of my good friends are here, Governor Gilmore and Governor Engler.  Are they around?  I've got to say hi to my buddies.  They're around here somewhere.  A couple of great governors, great leaders, innovators.  (Applause.)  Great to see them.

And I know B or M -- Bobbie Kilberg.  Bobbi and I have worked together a long time ago -- actually, it wasn't that long ago -- and it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to spend a part of the evening with her and to enjoy the success that she and her leadership and that all of you business leaders have brought to the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

A couple members of my team are here.  You don't build a new organization by yourself.  I've got my chief of staff here, General Bruce Lawlor.  Please stand and be recognized, Bruce.  He's done a heck of a job for me, with that war going on.  (Applause.)

And Parney Albright, who -- a critical component of the new Department is the science and technology piece, and Dr. Parney Albright plays a critical role in that initiative.  I've got to say hi.  (Applause.)

A couple other quick folks.  I had a great lady, a great lawyer, who ran my Pennsylvania office for six years, nine months and five days.  That's how long I was governor.  And then she moved on and spent about a year with me, helping me build the Homeland Security Office in the White House.  Becky Halkias is around here somewhere.  I've got to recognize Becky.  (Applause.)

And you've got a subcommittee chairman that I've got to recognize tonight.  I've been waiting for several weeks to do this to Mark Franz.  He chairs your subcommittee for venture capital, as part of your committee on capital formation.  Mark and I met back in '94 during my first gubernatorial campaign and he had a sign over his desk in the campaign headquarters that I think probably speaks to the spirit of everybody that's a member of the Technology Council.  And the sign said, "Go hard or go home."  (Laughter.)  You've got to work hard at it, and if you can't work hard at it, get out of the way.  And he's brought that same attitude to his professional life and his volunteer work and he's here with his fiancé, Meagan.  So it's great to be with my friend Mark and his fiancé.  (Applause.)

I don't know if you noticed in a recent Washington Post article that one of the citizens of the newly liberated Iraq said during a recent interview, "We want a happy future," she said.  "We want technology, we want freedom, we want everything."  Think about that for a moment.  Wasn't that an interesting selection of words?  She equated technology plus freedom, thereby she gets everything.  That young lady wouldn't be the first to link those two terms to happiness and prosperity.

For years, technology has been a symbol of our freedom, economic, political and personal.  New technology -- and now technology has become a protector of those freedoms.  Technology helped us win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And it's helping us prevent and preempt terrorist attacks here at home.

As a nation, we are by most every measure far safer and better prepared than we were on September 11th, 2001.  Now, I'm not sure we will follow Moore's Law; I'm not sure we'll be able to quantify that we double our capacity, we become twice as secure every 18 months.  But we are certainly more secure in large measure because of technology.  And technology has been and will continue to be an integral part of Homeland Security.

Our efforts within the Department fall within three priorities as it relates to what you do on a day-to-day basis, the technology sector of this great country.  The three priorities include investing in technology to secure the homeland, encouraging new projects and innovations from entrepreneurs.  And, finally, securing technology itself from attack.

We're making great progress in all three but, candidly, we need the help, the sustained help with the private sector in all three to make sure we continue to strengthen our country.

Let me start with the first priority.  Investing in technology to secure the homeland.  Technology plays many, many disparate and many important roles.  Weapons detection, identity verification, data management, information sharing, making communications secure and interoperable.  Technology allows us to spot patterns of risk that tell us where and how to deploy intelligently our finite resources and manpower.  It's at the very heart of risk management and risk management is at the very heart of the mission of the Department of Homeland Security.  It's critical to our approach.

The President has made technology a major budget priority, and we've begun already to reap the benefits.  Ladies and gentlemen, it starts at the borders, where our border protection authorities are receiving tens of millions of dollars in nonintrusive inspection technology.  That includes VACIS, it's the short for Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System.  I've seen it deployed down in El Paso and San Isidro and along our northern border with Canada, as well as Mexico.

This machine uses gamma rays to scan rail or truck containers for weapons and other contraband.  It helped us seize more than 400,000 pounds of drugs since it was first deployed, proving again that Homeland Security not only makes us a stronger and more secure nation, but it can make us a safer one as well.

 We're also providing every primary border inspector with personal radiation detectors, more than 15,000 in all.  It's a new application of an old technology, and now it's a vital part of our national strategy.  Technology truly puts the smart in smart borders.  When I work with my counterparts in Canada and Mexico, and we're working on some fairly significant approaches to the new border, the smart border, the border that enhances security but facilitates commerce and trade and the people moving back across the border.  And at the heart of many of our initiatives is the application of technology.  It will make us possible to stop terrorists without slowing town commerce or legitimate businesses.  I think John Engler and I last year had a chance to observe it firsthand at one of the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossings in Michigan.

Last week, I visited the U.S.-Mexico border, where the world's first automated, dedicated commuter lane called Sentry preclears and verifies people and cargo that pose no risk, speeding them on their way.  In some cases, in some areas, the wait times are shorter now than they were before 9/11.  We've got more work to do.  We will make improvements.  And the technology will be at the heart of our success at the border.

Technology also made it possible to meet our deadlines for screening all passengers and baggage at the nation's airports.  Our next goal is to identify quickly and screen high-risk passengers based on reliable behavioral indicators.  That, too, will rely on technology.  This effort extends well, well beyond our borders.  Our Customs agents now use non-intrusive technology at the world's largest ports, 20 of the largest megaports that generate about 65 percent of our cargo traffic, container traffic in the United States will use the technology to clear ships and cargo even before they put the containers on the ships to send them to the United States, as we use people and technology to push our borders and our perimeters out.

For those already in this country, sometime later this year, we will make a significant investment to deploy our new U.S. Visit System that will help us enforce the law by tracking 35 annual visitors to this nation.  And we expect it to be in initial use at our airports and our seaports by year's end.

Technology will help our first responders prepare and respond and recover.  Our project SAFECOMM is working to ensure wireless interoperability so that firefighters, police officers and emergency workers can communicate in any crisis across agency lines.  I must say that, on a related note, all of us in the Department of Homeland Security were very pleased to see that last week, the FCC doubled the amount of airways available for Homeland Security and suitable for broadband applications.

Envision this for a moment.  In the future, the firefighter, the emergency -- the first responder sending video images from a helmet-mounted camera back to a commander outside, back to a command position, whether they're in a burning building or they're dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack.  Enormous applications available to us through the expansion of the broadband.

Now, all of these innovations were made possible by people like you, companies such as yours, businesses large and small.  Because you all -- we all know that innovation comes in many sizes.  In fact, I was told that the company that makes our handheld radiation detectors has fewer than 10 full-time employees.  Obviously, they've got a good supply chain and a pretty good manufacturing arrangement.  (Laughter.)  But if you can get it done that way, why not?  Seven out of 10 of your member companies also have fewer than 10 employees.  Admittedly, I start with a plus up.  I start with 170,000.  (Laughter.)  Eat your heart out.  (Laughter.)  I think.  (Laughter.)

Actually, I start with the glass half full.  The best thing we've got going for us in this Department is I work with 170,000 men and women who have been at their jobs for years, if not decades.  They've been at the borders, they've been in the airports, they've been at our national laboratories.  They've been working Customs, they've been working overseas.  And they are unified by a sense of mission that, finally, after 9/11, their country, their community, even their neighbors had finally figured out when they've been going to work every single day for years and years, they were an integral part of our ability and our capacity in this country to secure the homeland.  We didn't pay too much attention to borders until 9/11, we didn't pay too much attention, oh, a little bit to the airport screeners or Customs or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

So we've got a leg up.  They're great people, and they're united by the mission to secure the homeland.  They used to have a job, but after 9/11, they take it on as a mission.  And I must tell you that they're trained and they're confident.  And part of our task as we build the Department is to empower them with training, to enable them to do a better job with the latest technology.  And they're the greatest asset we have going for us.

As you know, technology we use is ultimately the enabler.  And if we train these men and women right, give them the discretion to make some decisions, get them out there well equipped, we will certainly, certainly make ourselves a more secure country in the process.

So all of you, I venture to guess, are on the lookout for that good idea or innovation that can turn your small business into a large on.  I don't know if you want to get to 170,000 people, but maybe you will.  But so are we, we're looking for an idea that can turn your business -- as long as it applies to Homeland Security.

So let me tell you what we're doing about it.  The Department of Homeland Security will be a clearinghouse for your best ideas and innovations.  Again, we've been up and running less than 60 days.  But we've created a vendor information site, and this is just the front edge of the kinds of things we want to do to reach out to the business community and the technology sector, particularly.

The vendor information site, vendors.dhs.gov, to let you share with us in simple, fundamental form your idea, your products and your services.  It's one of the things that Parney and Dr. Chuck McCreary and the S&T folks are going to do in the short term is take a look at all available applications that are out there now and see if there is some immediate use for what we might have on the shelf as it relates to detection, protection, communication.  Obviously, we have a longer term strategy where we want to make some investment in some of the best ideas that we see.  Again, we will use technology to connect with the technology community.  And we're going to work with the Small Business Administration and technology associations to get the word out to entrepreneurs everywhere.

We're also working with the Interagency Technical Support Working Group -- some of you probably have done some work with them already -- to develop a system to evaluate and rapidly prototype technologies for homeland security needs.  You'll be able to submit your proposal, track it as it is reviewed, and evaluate it and get an answer back quickly.

For now, you can click onto the "Working With DHS" prompt on our website DHS.gov.  it will take you into the system and I think the information you find there will help you navigate the federal procurement process.  We are obviously going to try to streamline it to the best we can.  You know that in many instances, it needs to be streamlined.

But we want the portal to be a two-way street, so we are planning frequent broad area announcements of our technology needs to give companies like yours an opportunity to meet them.  For example, think about this for a second.  Parney asked me to ask this for you.

Can you make a machine that checks for biological, chemical or radiological materials and explosives, as well as guns?  Make it portable.  I don't know if it's got to be pocket-sized, but it would be nice if it could fit comfortably on top of a desk.  And does it run on like a 110-volt adapter?  If you've got one of those, see Parney and I after dinner -- (laughter) -- Parney and me after dinner and we'd be happy to talk to you about it.

But, you know, when you think about it, we take a look at the missions that the different components of Homeland Security have every day and we can -- even a non-techie like myself can envision the use of some application of technology to make that man or woman -- empower them to do a better job.  And we know it's out there.  And if it isn't out there, we know that the creative genius of America, in more instances than not, can find the application for us or come up with the new idea that gets it done.  So we want to create a climate where our needs and your abilities meet.  We want to show you that homeland security is not incompatible with your bottom line.

As you may know, we're also transferring nearly half a billion dollars this year into our new Science and Technology Directorate, led by Dr. Charles McCreary and Parney Albright.  It will spur research and development on technological and medical advances to protect Americans from weapons of mass destruction.  Like the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology or -- thank you for the advertisement for Pennsylvania's digital greenhouses or life science greenhouses, this will unite resources and talent with both the public and the private sector.  One difference, it's our goal to create kind of a national greenhouse.  We hope to grow your good ideas, fit them within our national strategy and then transplant them around the country where their use is needed.

That brings me to the most important point:  Securing technology itself from attack.  A poll last week showed Americans are less worried about a terrorist attack now than at any time since September 11th, 2001.  Couldn't believe it, but that's what it said.  That's good news.  We want Americans to do a few things, however, to be ready to survive an attack, then go on living their lives and leave homeland security to the professionals.  It's not good news if we lapse into complacency.

A survey last fall found that 90 percent of corporate CEOs do not believe their companies will be a target of terrorists.  Well, if you don't think you're a target, it's very unlikely you're going to do anything about it.  That's very disquieting.  Sometimes, one of the things we work real hard to remind the private sector is that it's not just the physical destruction of your capacity, it's not just explosives you better be worried about.  But, given the interdependency of the cyber and the physical capacity that you have, you need to be just as worried or maybe even more worried about somebody hacking into your system and disrupting it as you do with somebody turning up with some explosives and tearing the buildings down.  So we've got some work to do with the private sector in this regard.

A more recent survey found that nearly half of all businesses in America are not conducting emergency drills.  Backing up files at distant locations, building in redundancies or tightening background checks on new employees.

The private sector is highly visible and many have highly symbolic targets to an enemy that seeks to destroy our economy.  And believe me, they're busy conducting their own vulnerability assessments.

Businesses own and operate 85 percent of the critical infrastructure in this country, including the electronic nervous system that controls it.  You are therefore in the best position -- you're in the best position to secure these systems from attack.  So when it comes to security, you must be more than just partners; you must be leaders.

So I ask you to examine your vulnerabilities, develop a security plan to address them, then build your technology around that plan.  Align that technology to the mission, not the other way around.  And deliver that message to your colleagues around the country.

We certainly want to help you in that effort.  Our Department has provided the framework with the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and our physical infrastructure.  We're building an enterprise architecture so our many complex components are in alignment with one another.  And we're certainly going to work with businesses to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop protective measures for every sector.

One of the challenges we have, I think, down the road is to take the President's strategy and the Department and build partnerships with the state and local government and with the private sector.  We've come a long way since September 11th, but we still have considerable work to do.  But it will not be done by the federal government alone.  We will need to engage you on a sustained basis on many, many levels.  And as businesses, per se, clearly.  But since you provide the technology leadership and the best ideas and innovations around this country, we'll need to sustain your interest in our mission as well.

By the way, I think at the end of the day, there will be a great marketplace for your ideas and your products.  Because if we're going to secure international shipping, there is an international piece to that.  If we want international commercial aviation, we have literally over -- every country should be concerned about that.  The biology of detection and protection is a market, I think, in the years ahead you'll find not just in this country but elsewhere.  Huge markets out there and, obviously, we believe that your genius and your creativity and your products can lead the way.

We think that the lessons learned from Y2K and 9/11 should be applied and not forgotten.  This will not be a cost-free arrangement.  But the cost of doing little or nothing is much -- will be much higher.  We think, when given a choice, most consumers will choose quality and I believe they will choose security as well.  And so will your most and best talented employees.  So we want good ideas and cost-effective solutions to be replicated around the country.  And so we hope you keep us aware and we hope you keep us informed of your efforts and your products through our portal.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is up to us to make America's technological interdependence and leadership a strength, not a vulnerability.  We cannot operate like a string of cheap Christmas lights, when one goes out the rest follow suit in a cascade of failures.  We must instead strive for a system in which one sector is always poised to help another get back on line after an attack by a terrorist or a hacker.  A system made up of safety nets, both human and electronic.  It's a very tall order.  But I think America is up to the task.

Apple Computer's Alan Kay once said, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.  You are the inventors.  And America's future is at least partly in your hands.  I think the talent and commitment represented here tonight is certainly an indication that we are in capable hands.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to preside at a rather remarkable event.  It was in Los Angeles County.  It was a naturalization ceremony involving over 4,200 men and women and children from 135 countries.  Forty-two hundred people from around the world, 135 countries, made a choice.  They made a choice to come to America.  So whether you come to America in 2002 or 2003, or you're part of the exhibit at Ellis Island of the suitcases, when they came to America 100-plus years ago,  you come to America, as the lady said in my opening remarks, because of the freedoms that are here.  She wants everything.

Well, we're a country that understands that freedom does provide the opportunities, and that technology plus that freedom is the way for us to secure our country, but also to be a stronger and safer and healthier country at the end of the day.  That's how America has always responded to challenges with which it's been confronted.  And so that dream is alive for those 4,200 people and it's up to us to keep it alive for future generations, and to make our country more secure for future generations.  And I feel good about that.  I feel good about our capacity as a nation to respond to the crisis, and your capacity to help us along the way with your creativity and with your innovation.

So it's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to share these thoughts with you this evening.  I hope you have a great and enjoyable evening.  I wish you continued success in your individual business ventures.  But I hope along the way some of the things you discover help this President and this Department and this country become more secure and safer in the process.

Have a great evening.  Thanks for the invitation.  (Applause.)

This page was last modified on 04/29/03 00:00:00