Ira Magaziner, thank you for joining us. Ira was from 1993 to 1998, a senior advisor for policy development for President Clinton. Vince Surf is always referred to as the father of the Internet. Someone once said, well, if Vince Surf is the father of the Internet, Ira Magaziner is the father of ICANN. Well, I suppose that's true in a way. It was an idea that I conceived of and then helped put into effect. How did it come about? You say that so simply, I conceived of it. Well, if I could provide some context. In 1995, President Clinton approached me and said, would you coordinate a team that could help set a plan for what I would do if I to be re-elected to help keep the good economy going that we felt start? And I formed a high-level team at the White House and among certain cabinet agencies. And what I understood was that long-term growth really depended upon technology waves. In other words, major technology advances that then play out into economic progress. And we did an analysis that said, look, there are three major technological advances that have taken place, one being the Internet, the second being the sequencing of the human genome, and the third being renewable energy that could lead to long-term growth. And we decided the Internet was the ripest one to really accelerate economic growth, that the U.S. had been a leader in developing Internet and related technologies, and that what was lacking was a policy framework, a global policy framework that could be implemented that could allow the Internet to take off. So we spent 1995-96 developing a paper on what would be required to make the Internet successful. And it included what we saw, I mean, it included efforts to deal with copyright issues, deal with digital signatures, deal with privacy issues, issues of censorship, issues of coordination, technical coordination, and so on. And what we found was that in a way, there were a lot of people who wanted to invest in the Internet. There was a lot of potential to technology, but it seemed very uncertain to them as to whether it was robust enough to handle all that investment that they wanted to put in. So for example, as you know, the Internet is coordinated by a series of servers. One of my first days of looking at this, I went to a couple of the universities where the servers were in the basements, and I could walk in, I could just pull the plug. I mean, there was no security, there was nothing. I also found out, as I was trying to put together the policy paper of what needed to be done, that there were 53 lawsuits at that time challenging the validity of the Internet routing system in courts all around the world. And at that time, the IANA, the numbering system, was coordinated by John Postell at the University of Southern California out of an office that was treacherous to walk in. I mean, it was a small office you walk in and there were piles of paper everywhere and so on. And I gather that at an early Internet society meeting when there were only a thousand people on the Internet, somebody said, hey, we need somebody to keep track of the addresses and he raised his hand and there it was. And then on the other hand, you had Network Solutions, a company, and he did what he did under a DARPA contract, Defense Department contract, that worked solutions which coordinated the main name system of a company in Virginia under the U.S. Commerce Department contract. And the two of them didn't really get along very well. And there were all these lawsuits challenging his authority, University of Southern California was being sued, Commerce Department was being sued, and so on. So there was a very uncertain legal environment. I also was visited by people from the European Union and elsewhere who said we are concerned that this is really a U.S. government-controlled entity and we think your Defense Department and CIA and so on are controlling it and we're nervous about signing up to that. Members of Congress visiting saying this is ours, we invented it, we should keep it fueled by lobbyists who wanted to make sure that we kept it in a certain way. So there were a lot of these issues and then there was, I forget the exact name, the Moral League of something or other talking about all the Internet pornography and we had to censor the Internet. And then there were moves in Europe and in Canada and elsewhere to put a bit tax on every bit of transmission in the Internet. There was moves in the intellectual, among the international trade community to put up tariffs, there was debates going on about intellectual property protection and so on. So there were all these uncertainties that existed that were holding back what we thought could be a potentially huge economic vehicle for growth globally. So what we set about to do in an initial paper we wrote was to decide how to address each of these issues and we came up with policy prescriptions which then would require global negotiations to get signed up globally for this. And the ICANN piece was one piece of that. I had to handle the technical coordination and a lot of the lawsuits were about that. There were people with so-called alternate solutions and so on. And the USC people wanted to get out from underneath the lawsuits they had and they wanted the government to protect them and the government didn't want to do it and so on. So basically what we did is we issued a paper in 1996 after Clinton got elected which talked about how to deal with each of these issues. And we went and negotiated a treaty at the international trade body to keep the Internet free of tariffs. We set up legislation to get the Internet of Tax Freedom Act which would allow for no taxation on Internet sales. We got an international convention on digital signatures so that they would be recognized and negotiated that. We negotiated the copyright agreements, the global copyright agreements that could protect Internet investments and a variety of other measures that were all done in 1997 and 1998. With ICANN, that represented in some ways the thorniest problem because the Internet society felt that they should have control of that. There were other bodies, the International Telecommunications Union, where after 10 years of rejecting the Internet protocols all of a sudden decided they should take control of the Internet once it started to take off. And they had the weight of the UN behind them. And you had various other groups that all had conflicting ideas. And of course the people bringing the lawsuits. So what I thought about was that we need to do something new here, that if the UN takes this over, it will take way too long. I mean the UN and also even the European Union wanted to have government set standards for the Internet. But yet the UN would seem like a natural place to go, right? And I respect the UN, but it's way too slow moving for something like the Internet, way too bureaucratic. It takes 10 years to get something past the ITU. The Internet was very fast-moving technology. And what we had to do was, the very essence of the Internet was a decentralized medium where the creativity of everybody could create new standards, create new technologies, create new everything. And the last thing you wanted to do was make that all have to go through some bureaucracy to get approved, right? And that's the only way that the UN agencies can work. And they also have 100-some people at the table, right? So it would have been crippling for the Internet to have that happen. On the other hand, if you had the sort of anarchy that was going on where the Internet Society claimed this, USC had this, John Postel, this, that, and all these lawsuits. And that gave no protection, it was kind of like a wild west environment that people didn't want to invest into. And then you had various corporate interest groups who wanted to control things and so on. So it seemed to me that the best way to do this was that you needed something that could move faster than a UN bureaucracy. With all the different stakeholders in the Internet, you needed something that would be stakeholder base and more democratic in its approach so that people had the buy-in to it. You needed something that would be recognized by governments. And this was very important because that would protect against the lawsuits. So you had to get the US, the EU, the Japanese, the Australians, others to recognize it. Yeah, you had to get a lot of buy-in. But you had to begin with that framework. And so we conceived of something that was the first of its kind. And when I first proposed it to people, they said, well, that's dangerous to do something that's never been done before because you don't have the precedence. But we felt it was the only way that we could really create something that could stand the test of time. So you were then thrust into a position of getting acceptance. Exactly. So we basically went through a green paper and a white paper process, as you know. But in a way equally as important was I set out around the world talking to different governments and different associations and stakeholders, corporate groups, trade associations that had an interest in internet commerce and so on. And basically tried to persuade them of this kind of structure, an organization that would be apolitical, made up of technical people. But stakeholder-based, everybody would have a say. Governments wouldn't run it, but they would have an advisory role, and importantly, they would recognize it. And that you could put that together in a way that could move faster than a global UN body, but still have structure to it. And importantly, enough resources we had to make sure of getting money to it so it could defend lawsuits and so on. And enough research and infrastructure to build the stake or the model, defend lawsuits and so on, and be recognized by governments. So that was the task. Let me ask you this though. It's very unusual, the whole concept of ICANN, the bottom up philosophy of policy being formed from the bottom and working its way up to the very unique. How'd you come up with that? Why that system? Well, it seemed to fit the internet. It seemed to fit what the internet was. I mean, to some extent, I grew up in the United States in the late 60s, early 70s, when in college, in that period, when there was a lot of emphasis on student movements that were democratic and so on, and I was involved in some of them. And it struck me that with something like the internet where you want to preserve the kind of creative chaos of the internet, that that kind of model could work. And in fact, it was the only thing that could probably work. And so even though, when I first proposed it to people in the cabinet in the US and elsewhere, they thought it was crazy that you could never get somewhere like that to work. You need something that's more top down, button down, organized, they would say. And I would say the last thing the internet needs is bureaucracy. And it's going to be much better if it's stakeholder-based and bottoms up rather than top down. Even though there'll be lots of meetings and lots of debates and everything else, people will be brought into it, and you'll actually wind up succeeding faster than if you try to do these big multi-government bureaucratic processes. And that, I think, turned out to be true. Was your model on Bill Clinton's mind, or was he into other areas? No, he was into other areas.  And frankly, when he asked me to put together something to say, well, what can I work on in my second term? There was a list of things that the cabinet came up with, all of which we put aside. They were more conventional. And when I came back to the meeting and said, what I want to do is put a framework in place to let the internet take off, I think a lot of the cabinet people who sometimes can be turf-oriented, and we're looking at this guy sitting in the White House, what's he going to do? When I said that, they said, I think, breathe this. I release the internet. OK, what the hell's that? I don't care. I'll let him go do that. And I think President Clinton saw the potential of it, but he wasn't really where he was focused. How about the Hill, Weimer? What was the reaction on the Hill? If any. So in the beginning, we weren't up on the Hill, although we got delegations coming to us. Once we started to develop policy, we managed, actually, to develop bipartisan coalitions. For example, in the four major bills that we did on digital signatures, internet tax, freedom, copyright protection, and so on. I have Republican and Democratic sponsors in both. And in a period in 97, 98, when we were in the middle of the whole impeachment and Winsky thing, and very little was moving in the Congress, all of our bills passed with bipartisan majorities up around 70 votes. And I learned my lesson doing health care reform before, that you needed to build bipartisan coalitions early. And we did that. And so our bills passed. And I remember President Clinton asked me, at one point, do you want me to put the stuff you're doing in the State of the Union speech? And I said, no, because if you put it in the State of the Union speech, the Republicans are going to oppose it. I said, let's just care into the radar, do this quietly, and work on these coalitions. So you were more than content that it wasn't out there. We didn't want it. And I mean, we weren't hiding anything, but we weren't looking for the public. You didn't want to draw fire. Yeah, exactly. So there were people, Republicans like Spencer Abraham, who co-sponsored the digital signature on Hatch, who was involved with the copyright Chris Cox on the tax piece, and so on. So we had bipartisan support along with, obviously, the Democrats. So we managed to get those legislation through, and then also on the treaty negotiations. I mean, I spent a lot of time in Brussels and among the individual countries. And we were worried a bit about the Brussels bureaucracy linking up with the Geneva bureaucracy. And one of the things we did, the president of the EU in any given year, can't overrule the bureaucracy on something. And the presidency was with Luxembourg. We were trying to get the key agreement with the EU. And so I went to Luxembourg, which people in the state department said, what are you doing that for? And I said, well, look, they actually could overrule the bureaucracy. And so I spent a couple of days there. And for them, the internet was a great thing for their own economy. So they basically bought in. And it actually turned out that when we had the final meeting on the negotiation, the president of Luxembourg, who was the president of the EU, overruled the bureaucracy and agreed to the treaty. So we had a lot of effort to kind of go out to countries. I went to France, where they had the Minitel. And there was a lot of resistance in France to the Minitel. And I purposely, the first day I was there, I did an interview with Le Monde at the airport. And before I went to see the French government, I said, look, in five or 10 years, there's going to be over a billion people on the internet. If 40 million Frenchmen are missing, nobody's going to notice. And you're going to wind up behind. So that got quoted, and obviously they weren't very happy when they met with me. But it had its impact. And I think they realized that they couldn't go with their own if the internet was going to take off globally. And so they basically eventually gave up the Minitel for the internet. Let me ask you this, Ira. Back then, back in 1998, was there any idea, did you conceive that the internet would end up being whether it is today? It's interesting, because we put out a paper called The Emerging Digital Economy. And it projected that what we call the internet economy could grow at 10 times the rate of the regular economy. And the day after we put it out as a publication of the US government, the internet bubble began. I mean, anybody who was under 30 that nobody used a computer could raise $1 million to start a company. And the internet grew at 300% or 400% a year, then it collapsed. But if you look at the trend line over 20 years, it grew at about 10 times the rate of the regular economy, about 35% a year. And so we did see that could happen. But I remember, I used to say, for example, that there could be a billion people on the internet in 10 years.  Actually, I was conservative. It was actually more than that by the time of time. And we used to talk about how much commerce there could be on the internet if we set it up right. And we underestimated, if anything. Even though people at the time thought we were being grandiose and we were overestimating. So yeah, I think we saw the potential. We saw the potential for, certainly economically, if we get electronic commerce moving. But also, we saw the political and democratizing influence that the internet can have, and also that it could be a force for international cooperation. Did you get pushback in those early days over this idea of having a non-governmental entity take over the DNS or manage the DNS? Sure. I mean, there were people within the administration opposing it. The Japanese government initially didn't like it. The EU didn't like it. And certainly, members of Congress didn't like it. But what about within the administration itself? Yeah, there were people in the administration who thought that, I think some of you had said, this is a hippie-like thing you're trying to do here. And it's not proper governance and so on and so forth. And I just kept coming back at them and saying, look, you don't understand the internet. And the internet, by its nature, is a rebellious entity. It finds its route around an attempt to control it. And its real power is that it mobilizes a vast number of people to do things, which then can be adopted in a horizontal way. It's not something that has to get approvals all up the chain.  What you need is an orderly process. You need an orderly framework, a legal framework. But the worst thing you could do is take away its democratizing strength. So I prevailed in the arguments. And I think there were others with me out. It wasn't just me. But we prevailed in the administration and then eventually convinced other governments that this was the way to go. Let me follow up on that. So in 1998, I believe it was 1998, prior to ICANN, the meeting that you had in Reston, where the white paper was under discussion, I've heard it characterized. Ira Magaziner basically, the white paper was there and he walked away basically saying, you guys work it out. Is that an oversimplification of what occurred in that meeting? A little bit. I went away, but I kept a close watch and made sure that it would get worked out. And I think, again, if I had tried to impose from my office in the White House exactly what was going to happen, that would have been antithetical to exactly what I was saying should happen. So I'm curious, did that ever happen? So ICANN's formed, right? So ICANN's there and functional. Did you ever have to hold back and say, was there ever an attempt by anybody, any of the executive cabinet departments or the Hill or anyone else to try and get involved? Yeah, but what I had done is we had two events at the White House where we announced the internet policy. And we had bipartisan representation there, even during the impeachment. And enough stakeholders there so that they were part of it, including I had the Secretary of the Treasury come. I had Secretary of Commerce come. I had the others come that were relevant. And so that everybody was brought into it. So the exclusivity was the buffer. Yeah, and the president was there and so on and so forth. And then we had the leaders in Congress who had participated on both sides of the aisle. So they were all there kind of blessing the approach twice. And so the opposition didn't really have anywhere to go politically. So it sounds like you were pretty confident that people were going to buy into the model. It doesn't sound like you had much in doubt that the model would take off. I wasn't sure in the beginning. I think by then I felt like we could sell it. But in the beginning, no, I wasn't confident. But I think I believed it was the right approach. And there were a lot of battles that took place in my office with different interest groups. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of interest groups, as you can imagine. And they all had their own thing. And they all had some. Do you think history validated your faith? Well, it's always hard to tell what the counterfactual is. I think so, and I'll tell you why. But if you look at all the growth of the internet that's taken place, not just the number of users, but the number of languages, Wi-Fi, mobile, everything, you never read a story about the internet breaking down technically and not being able to handle it. And unlike the 53 lawsuits paralyzing things, you don't see that happening now. You don't see people holding back on their investments because they don't have faith in the security of the internet or the legal sound basis of the internet. So I think you've had something which has grown at amazing speed. Any democratic process in ICANN as one of them is messy. I mean, that's what they are, is messy. So ICANN has had its bumps along the way, and it's had its frictions, and it's had its fights, and it's everything else. But that's democracy. But on balance, it's like the dog that didn't bark in the old Sherlock Holmes. I mean, the internet has worked. It's scaled up. It's done everything you would want it to do technically. It's not broken down in lawsuits or political disputes that have paralyzed it. And it's handled tremendous technological innovation all along the way at a rapid speed. Now, would that have happened if we never did what we did? You never know. The important thing is it did happen. And so the internet is what it is today. So at the very least, we didn't screw it up. Let me ask you this. What do you think, either during your time when you were involved with ICANN, or after that period, what do you think was the greatest risk to ICANN? I think the greatest risk all along has probably been the risk that governments would come in and try to take control in a way that was beyond what was appropriate. And I think the other great risk is that, and I've said this to ICANN over the years, is that ICANN itself would become too much of a powerful bureaucracy itself. In other words, that it would accumulate too much money and too much power and so on, so that it kind of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. This is interesting. So expand on that a bit. So your concern was that it would become its own bureaucracy. Yeah, its own bureaucracy and its own power center. In other words, it was set up to be democratic and, to some extent, a bit messy in its processes. And if somebody came in, especially as one of the benefits as you know is that the price of domain names came down significantly with competition, which was part of what we wanted to achieve. But we financed ICANN independently, because we didn't want it to depend on governments and so on by taking a little cut out of the domain names. Now as the internet exploded, ICANN got a lot of money as a result. And one of the things I've said to them over the years is you've got to be careful here. You don't want to start staying in first-class hotels and flying your own planes around the world and doing all this kind of stuff, because people will start to resent it.  You got to keep the sort of creative flow here and not make it bureaucratic. And as you become bigger, there'll be a risk of that. So I think that was a risk. And I think ICANN has sometimes gotten closer to that than I'd like, but it's usually pulled back, mainly because the community has forced it to pull back. During this most recent debate around the decoupling from the US government, there were some serious tensions among different parts of the community, and the ICANN board and so on, and I tried to help out where I could. They asked me to help out. But with all that, and there have been governments who've tried to come in, including the US government, and do more than they should, but with all that, it's basically worked, I think. I mean, it's, as I said, been messy, but it's worked. And the proof is in the result. I mean, the internet functions tremendously. Is it problematic for you that it seems like almost every year, ICANN was called up to the Hill on either the House side or the Senate side to go to hearings? No, I think it's American democracy. I think it's appropriate for, you know, we have a congressional branch, it's appropriate for them to make inquiries and so on, and I think ICANN should hold itself back. But does it make ICANN look subservient to the US government when viewed from the outside? It did before, but remember, in the original white paper, we proposed that the US government give up the contract back in, I forget it was, 2000 or something. We proposed it within a couple of years and had the US election gone, I was gonna say a different way. Which election? 2000. I'm hesitating because it's still unclear how that election actually went. But any event, in 2000, when the administration shifted, if it had not shifted, if Al Gore had been elected president, I think what happened recently would have happened in 2000 and or thereabouts during those years. And that's what we'd originally planned. So this is interesting.  What you seem to be saying is it was mature enough back then that could have occurred and the reason it didn't happen earlier was political. I think so. I think it could have been, I don't know what the right year is, but I think after three, four years, it probably could have matured enough. I think, but in any event, it's fine. I mean, it happened. And I think it's important that it happened. And that's why, when I left the White House, people reached out to me to say, well, would you get involved if I can? And I thought it was inappropriate actually, because I had helped set up a lot of these things related to the internet. And I also had offers to get involved with internet companies and so on, because I knew the industry quite well, obviously. And even though I could have made a lot of money doing that, I thought it was inappropriate, because when you've helped set something up and you've been in charge of helping regulate it and so on, while in Washington, I don't think you should profit on that by going into it after you leave. So I stayed away from ICANN, other than coming to an occasional celebration or if somebody wanted my advice. You know what you sound like?  Well, I thought it was appropriate to step back after the reasons I said. And I think when I was asked by the community or by the ICANN board to be of help on something, I did, but only if I was asked. Two and a half year period between when Strickling announced the desire to make the transition happen and when it actually happened. In that period, did you ever think it's not gonna fly? Oh, yes, I actually thought it might not fly. And I think the administration was serious about it and would make it happen on their side, but I thought there was a definite possibility that the Congress would stall it and as a result of interest group pressure and money. And in Washington, the best way to kill something is to delay it. You know what you say is not I'm against it, but you say I gotta study it more, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. And if it had been delayed too long into the election process or into now the new administration, I'm not sure that it would have happened. That's right, because the Trump campaign actually issued a press release saying they opposed the transition. That's right. And so when they asked me to get involved and I agreed to be on a technical advisory committee and help do some, I don't wanna call them, negotiations among different parts of the community and the board and so on, I was happy to do it. And in a way, I was sort of a non-threatening voice from the past, kind of neutral party who could come in and be there for a while to kind of help with discussions, but nobody saw me as any kind of threat of anything. And so hopefully I was helpful to them in doing it. But the main thing I kept emphasizing to them is you gotta get this done quickly.  And I think they came very close to losing it. What were your interactions like with Postel? Well, I can give you one story. I mean, initially he was very suspicious of me because I was the government. And I don't know if you knew John, but he was a guy with a big scruffy beard and sandals and the government came to town. But we got friendly and I invited him to the White House and because of the way he looked at me, about four hours to get him past security. But I took him to lunch in the senior White House lunch room and you had all these kind of very self-important cabinet office, the secretaries and others having lunch. And I was sitting there with Postel and they were all kind of looking over at this guy with sandals and a robe. And I thought to myself, you know, 100 years from now, nobody's gonna remember any of these cabinet secretaries. But they are gonna remember John Postel as one of the founders of the internet. And- Did Postel himself think that? If he did, he never said it to me. I mean, I thought he was a very kind of humble guy. He was, and I was very honored when they invited me to come speak at his funeral and I got a proclamation from the president to give to his family. But, and I think I remember saying that, although it's tragic that he's passed, it's actually fitting that he's one of the first in the internet founder generation to go to heaven. So now he can help keep the addresses for everybody when they come, you know what I'm saying? Let me ask you this. I heard one story and I want you to elaborate on it. Tell me how much of it is fiction, how much of it is truth. That at one point John had reassigned one of the roots and that you had threatened to send marshals in to deal with this. Actually, you're conflating two different stories. Okay. And I'll tell you each one. I did get a call. I was actually in Davos at one of those Davos conferences. And I got a call from, let's just say, national security, by the way, saying that they had observed that the internet was being rerouted and they were concerned about it and they weren't sure who was doing it or what. And I thought to myself, there's actually only one person who can probably do that successfully. So I made a call to John and then he was sort of evasive. It was about midnight in Switzerland so it was early afternoon in California. But it became clear to me that he had actually done this on purpose because I think he was protesting some things that we might be thinking of doing. And so I called the president of USC and said, look, we're gonna come down and you like a ton of breaks if you don't get this in order. He called John and so on and we got it sorted out. I had alerted the White House. The president was in a White House dinner or something and said, look, I don't think we're gonna have to do anything here, but just in case. So this went up to the level of the president? Yeah, well, the president's chief of staff, yeah. And but then John said, okay, I'll put it back to normal. And he did. The other case that I thought you were getting at is that we did have an issue with network solutions at one point where they were walking at actually turning over some of the control that was needed to ICANN. And in that case, I did make a threat that we were gonna send federal marshals to seize the A-Route server. And that worked pretty well to get them to agree. It did the trick. It did the trick, yeah. So you raised an interesting thing when you were talking about Postel. Because of the timeframe that this occurred, there was a lot of distrust in government. Absolutely. I mean, we were talking the post-watergate. Especially in the internet community. It's a very kind of laissez-faire community, a very kind of. And that was at the route based on what you've previously told us. Those feelings sound like they were very much at the route, forgive the pun, or at the, in the foundation of ICANN. I think ICANN was one of the reasons why it was a model that could work is that a lot of the parts of the community at the internet society and elsewhere that were, let's say, more anarchistic in their tendencies saw this as preferable to having the government take over something. Although at one point, some people from ISOC had gone to the ITU to try to forge an alliance with them of some sort where ISOC, and that wasn't gonna go anywhere. It had to kind of beat that back. But yeah, I think ICANN did, it was a tent in which we could gather all the forces in the sense that a lot of the more anti-government people in the internet community could say, okay, well, there's not the government taking over. A lot of the governments could say, well, okay, we get this, but we'll have a seat at the table, we'll be there with the advisory board, and we'll see what's going on, and if we don't like it, we can always do something different. And so it was a tent in which we could gather together what were a very disparate group of forces, because then you have the corporate communities and the corporate communities were very divided too. I mean, the internet gaming people were an entirely different affair than the high-tech community. It was developing technology at the time, the Netscapes and the Microsofts and so on, and they were very different than the big commercial enterprises that were concerned about trademark protection on the internet and so on. So you had, even within the business community, you had dozens of interest group factions that you had to kind of weave together. And there was a set of organizations in Washington, lobbying trade groups, dozens of them, that we had to kind of keep on board with everything we were doing. And remember, it wasn't just ICANN, we were doing the Tech Freedom Act, we were doing the digital things, we were doing the privacy, we were doing encryption, which was a whole separate thing, because that brought in the whole NSA and the security community and had to handle encryption. And so we had to balance all these organizations' concerns on all these issues, and we managed in a two-year period to get it all done, get the framework put in place. So it was a kind of exciting time, you know, and after I had kind of dredged through failure in trying to put healthcare reform in place at the White House, it was kind of exhilarating to be able to take this and knowing that this was gonna be equally as important in many ways, equally as complex and global, but it worked. You know, when I asked Vince Cerf, I said, how would you characterize historically ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government? What he said to me was, I think it was difficult and problematic and not necessarily supportive. How would you react to that? I think if he's talking about the government writ large, I think that's correct. I think, I don't know if he was talking specifically about what we did, but Vince and I worked together pretty well, I think, and I was very supportive when he became head of ICANN. Well, so elaborate, how was it problematic? How was the relationship between the USG and ICANN problematic? I'm sorry, you're talking about afterwards. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I was thinking of the time I was there. No, after its formation, after 1998, ICANN is formed, his characterization was... Yes, I'm sorry. So afterwards formed, yeah. I was thinking of the period before we came into doing what we were doing. There were bills going through the Congress to censor the internet, to set standards for the internet. We beat all that back. But I see what you're saying. After ICANN was formed and I was out of it, I left the White House. And then you had the Bush White House. I think you had a number of people there that were more traditional in their view of government control of things. And so I think ICANN did have a lot of difficulty trying to keep itself alive and existing during that period when there was that more controlling and security-oriented group of people in the White House. Now, Vint would be more able to tell you about that because I was gone and that wasn't involved then. But I know that was true. Let me ask you this, Ira. You had mentioned your concerns about the affluence, if you will, of ICANN as its revenues increase and the potential dangers there. In the early stages, the White Paper didn't lay out a funding model. It left that to the community. Well, actually, we had in mind putting a small surcharge. Was that in the White Paper? Can't recall it was in the White Paper, but I know it was what we had planned. I mean, I have it in our planning documents. But was it for the community itself to figure out how that would work or? Well, the details of it, yes. But what we said is, look, you need your own revenue source. If you're dependent upon governments for revenue, you're not gonna get anywhere. And you can't be out with a tin cup collecting in Times Square. So you need a sustainable source of revenue. If, and I remember the memo I wrote saying, if the internet takes off the way we all think it can, and if, I think, I can't remember it was like $50 or $75 just to register the main name then. I said, if you bring that cost down, price down, which we expect you will. And then you take 50 cents off the top of each one and say, that could give you a sustainable revenue model. Another alternative is you could do something with commerce. There's a very, very small, almost minuscule charge. But I think we always envisioned that the domain names would be the best way to do it. And we discussed it at that time. We didn't impose it. It wasn't up to us to impose it. It was up to ICANN to develop it. But that was in the planning documents. Ira, in closing, is there anything that the US government, the executive branch, should have done differently in either the formation or nurturing of ICANN? Well, look, I think in the formation, I mean, obviously, I was involved. I think we did the best we could. Could we have done things better, maybe? But it worked. When you look at the four separate bills through Congress, three separate treaties, the formation of ICANN all done in two years, that's pretty good by government speed. So I think, and the framework that we put in place in all those areas has stood the test of time. So I think I feel pretty good about what we have a little accomplished. I think Scott Cook once said, in a speech he made, I made the world safe for the internet, essentially. But I think, so I feel pretty good about that. I also think that the Obama administration, Larry Strickland, and so on, did an excellent job in bringing the final step here of internationalizing ICANN. I think he had just the right touch of putting it out there, getting support within the administration for it, relating to the community, letting them develop it, and working with them, but sort of nudging a little bit here and there. I think he was masterful in doing it, and I credit him as I do Steve Crocker and others that were involved with having it happen. Let me ask you a question that I posed to Steve Crocker. Was the stewardship transition a result of a bunch of things coming together at the right time? You had Strickland, head of NTIA, Fadi Shahadi, ICANN CEO, and them interacting against the backdrop of the Snowden revelations. How important was this nexus of those three things, or was it not? You know, I can't say, I wasn't close enough to it. I think, certainly I think Fadi and Strickland and Steve and the others did a very good job with this, and I think there are a lot of, you know, the committees that I interacted with, the people that worked on those committees, I think did a very good job, and so I think there was a confluence of events. I think having the Obama administration there with a sophisticated understanding of the internet and of the need for it to be global in order for it to flourish, I think was very important. So I credit the White House for what it did in supporting Strickland and the Commerce Secretary and so on.  I think the internet is poised now to continue to transform the world in very positive ways and I'm happy that I had some small role to play in it back in the late 90s. With that, I'll say thank you very much, Iver Magazine, I appreciate you talking to us. My pleasure.


Aloha, and welcome to today's show, The State of the State of Hawaii, on ThinkTech Hawaii's live streaming network series, ThinkTech Hawaii broadcast from our studio at 1164 Bishop Street at the core of downtown Honolulu, as well as through remote connections. And that's what we're doing today as the remote connection for me and for our guest who on my will introduce. I'm Stephanie Stoll Dalton, and I'm your host for today's show. Now, as you know, in this election year, we have a strong cadre of office seekers racing to replace the current Honolulu City and County Mayor Codwell. His term ends this year, obviously. This show, The State of the State of Hawaii, has interviewed several of the mayoral candidates over the last two months. We will continue to invite all of them to ThinkTech Hawaii's remote access discussion forum to learn as much as we can and to offer you that opportunity to know these candidates and how they're running and what they're running for. And it's a marvelous group of our Hawaiian friends. Today, my guest is Associate Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he is the Director of the Public Policy Center. Dr. Moore has scholarly expertise in public policy and numerous publications on politics, governing, and health policy, including peer-reviewed articles on Hawaii's situation. Welcome Professor Colin Moore. Happy to be here. Thank you for joining us today for this interview conversation. In your articles focusing on Hawaii, you describe the state as prosperous. Now that we're in the age of COVID-19, do you believe it will remain prosperous, at least in the short term, or do you see changes coming? And then we can discuss what impact that might have on the mayor's role. How are you looking at it now? Well, I have certainly changed my tune. I mean, Hawaii is in the unique position of moving from the state with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country to the highest in a matter of weeks. And that's not going to change anytime soon. I mean, tourism, fortunately, we've been so far remained relatively unscathed by COVID-19 here in Hawaii. We have one of the lowest rates of infection in any state. The damage to our economy will be devastating. Tourism will be one of the last industries to come back anywhere. But because of our dependence on tourism, it's going to hit us particularly hard. I think realistic estimates are that the state budget will need to be cut by significant amounts. Probably we're going to have a 20% drop in revenue from tax collections. So not to mention the fact that we have nearing 40% of people unemployed right now. That won't last forever. It'll probably balanced out around 20%, but that's still incredibly high. I mean, our challenge in the past has always been that although there were a lot of jobs here, the cost of living was prohibitively expensive for most people. So I think we're likely to enter one of the most challenging periods in the state's history. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that. And this is going to involve a lot of hard choices for state leaders who in the past have been pretty good about kicking the can down the road. I mean, that is the traditional mode of operation in state and city and county government. I think it's to avoid making a lot of hard decisions. And so I think this is going to present real existential challenges to the state. We are already under a certain amount of financial pressure from the rail at the city and county level, from the state for unfunded pension liabilities. And this is going to take all of those existing problems and just magnify them. Well, I know very little about the technical aspects of the budget. But I thought it might be interesting to see if you knew a little bit about it that would help us understand how it all goes. I mean, yes, the tourism is going away. And maybe the high rates of construction spending, those might go on. Do you think those might go? I mean, these are the income into Hawaii. So what do you think about the construction spending? Is it likely we'll continue with that since they're on contract, right? Some of it will certainly continue. And I don't imagine that the projects that are currently under construction are going to stop. And the state has a lot of what they call shovel-ready projects, assuming they can get the bonding authority to fund them, infrastructure projects, things like that. Those are the sorts of things the state should be spending money on in a recession. Those are high-paying jobs, they're union positions. They inject a lot of money into the economy. But the trouble is, is that Hawaii, like nearly every state, with the exception of Vermont, has a balanced budget requirement. And so it's limited in its ability, both to float bonds and to spend beyond certain revenue projections. It's complicated how that's all figured out here. But basically, it makes it very difficult for states to do what the federal government does, which is to borrow a lot of money and continue spending in a recession. We really are dependent on some of the bills that are going through Congress right now, which basically allow states to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, which sort of in some cases give them direct grants from the federal government or forgivable loans. And those are the sorts of things that could keep construction projects going, that could keep public employees employed. I think one of the big errors in the last recession was a big drop in the hiring and support for public employees. That really just exacerbated what was already going on. Well, is there any hope in the military spending levels continuing and maybe being a source of dependable income? Oh, yes. I mean, if it weren't for the military, we would be in tremendous trouble right now. I mean, the military is a huge percentage of the local economy. That will absolutely continue. And so that's why things won't completely fall off the cliff. But tourism still generates a tremendous amount of our revenue. I noted that in that 17 article, 2017, you had 12.4% of the state's gross domestic product is coming out of the military spending. And then I wondered if there was another backfill, which is can the state give the city county money? Yeah. And as you say, it's going to be. I mean, is that an option? Well, yes. To the extent that the state has any money to give. I mean, I think that there is the city and county source of revenue, which they are very unlikely to pursue, is probably something like raising property taxes. But that will not be greeted politically very, very well by most people who live here. But that's one of their sources of revenue. It's their primary source of revenue. For the state, it's the general excise tax. And I don't think the state's going to be in a position to bail out anybody. And so really, I mean, if we're talking about this, we're talking about federal money coming into the states. That's really the only thing that can help now without just dramatic retrenchment on all levels. We might not be the right color. But anyway, back to our topic, what do you think? Well, you raise an interesting point, which is actually why I'm optimistic. Because Mitch McConnell has tried the majority leader of the Senate to portray this as a blue state bailout. But actually, the red states are going to need this money just as badly. And so I do believe that there's going to be some form of fairly generous federal bailout that will come to all the states. Because the conservative states are, in some cases, in just as bad of shape. Well, fingers crossed on that. And what do you see then as the changes for City County Honolulu, which is, of course, within the context of Hawaii and context of the nation and the global COVID-19. But what do you see as happening in the mayoral role that is different, not different, same, same, or people can kick it still down the road? What do you think might happen? What kind of dynamics will go on there? That's a great question. I mean, before COVID-19, before the pandemic, I think there really was certainly a lot of frustration with Hawaii's existing political class. I mean, that's true throughout the state. The polling numbers demonstrate that and the Democratic Party. But people are really uncertain where to turn, because the Republican Party here really is unviable. So how the shapes of the mayor's race, which I should add, is a nonpartisan race, is I think it actually will benefit the more well-known trusted candidates. So by saying that, I mean that probably Kuling Honabusa is going to benefit the most from this situation. I think people are going to be looking for experience for someone they know and trust. Whereas before this happened, I would say that voters were probably more willing to take a chance on someone. I think there was room for more of a populist outsider to run. Now, I wouldn't characterize really anyone with the exception of maybe June James as a real outsider in this race. But I think taking a chance on someone who wasn't largely thought of as part of Hawaii's political class was more likely. Now, I'm not so sure. But we have, I mean, if you look at the four major candidates, and we can break those down if you like, I think that they all kind of bring something to the table. But I mean, there's a few that stand out to me as probably likely to be the most competitive. And then do you see those as the ones who have a track record here in the city and have strengths already demonstrated? Well, for some, yes. And for others, they've never held political office. And but they were likely to be competitive candidates. So I mean, so really we're looking at two politicians and two businessmen. Those are the four major candidates we have. And so you have Colleen Honabusa. We'll start with her, who for us has tremendous experience from her time in the state legislature to the US Congress. And she's really running on that track record of experience. She's drawing a lot of attention to her time as the chair of the heart board because rail is likely to be the biggest issue still that emerges from this campaign. In terms of other issues, it's hard to tell the difference in many ways between all of these candidates. They haven't really staked out really clear positions on the issues. But Honabusa is really running on experience. Now she had some trouble in her last campaign when she ran against David Ige, which a lot of people thought she was going to win. And then she lost and Ige won fairly handily given how much trouble he was in before. But I expect that Honabusa is going to run on her experience. She has, although she's extremely well known, so that's the other thing that will help her during this COVID crisis. Because the other unusual thing about this race is that there's not a lot of time to campaign. And so the lesser known candidates don't have many opportunities to get their name out there. Yes, that's why we're offering them this forum. Which they should take advantage of, for sure. Well, then tell me what you see as the tasks that will emerge that are normal as a result of the condition of COVID. What are these whoever's in the office, what will they face? What is it that these people should be thinking about as their challenge? To me, it seems like it should be quite a scary prospect. It will be quite a scary prospect. I mean, I think if I were running for mayor, I would re-evaluate whether or not I really wanted the job. Because it is going to be, I mean, the economy really will be a burning ruin. And being mayor at a time like that is a very unpleasant situation. Because nobody is going to like what you're doing.  Projects that you would like to work on as mayor are going to be probably impossible. And so really, your primary goal is just to sort of steady the ship and hope that you can manage the fiscal fallout from the pandemic crisis. That's really going to be the primary responsibility. There won't be money to fund the sorts of projects that mayors would often want to highlight. It's really going to be sort of, I mean, your role will be like an ER doctor playing triage and trying to balance all of these interests. Because there's not going to be much expansion. I mean, it sort of pains me to say that. Because the city has a tremendous number of problems that we could try to work on managing better, homeless among them. And I don't think much of any of that's going to be possible. It's really going to be trying to reduce spending so you can provide necessary city services like police, fire, and homeless services. And we're keeping the roads paved as well as you can. That is really frightening. Well, I think that some of the things that you've talked about have come from the perspective of what the mayor has to do. And we'd like to hear anything more about that that you want to share. But what should the citizens be thinking about in choosing to vote for mayor? I mean, what should they be looking for? Yeah. I think citizens should be thinking about who they trust and who they think is competent. And by competent, I mean people who have the sort of long-term experience in government to manage a crisis like that. And to understand the competing interests from union interests to city services, to manage that, probably someone who has a good working relationship with the state legislature, because they will need to ask the state for money. And the state, if it gets money from the federal government, will be in a position to grant some. And running a government agency is very different from running a business. I do think that there certainly are people from the business community who have done a good job. And that could be the case here, too. So I think it really partly comes down to whose background do you trust the most to run the city at this time? Is it the two candidates with a lot of experience in government? Or do you think a fresh approach would be better? And then you really have two fairly well-known figures in the business community. Maybe that's what the city needs. I mean, that would really allow it to take a fresh look at what's being done. Maybe there are ways to make city operations more efficient, to leverage their contacts with the business community, to work on public-private partnerships, which is often the way city infrastructures built these days. So I think it comes down to whose experience do you trust? And of those four candidates, who do you think has the leadership qualities to do what is one of the most difficult things to do in government, which is to run a huge agency when your budget is cut by 20%? Yeah, this is even blacker than I had previously thought about it. But I see that you mentioned leadership. And we have had a deficit in the leadership department at a number of levels. I guess people have just been taken by surprise with the severity of what we face at every level. But you also point out the business issues, those who've had that kind of experience, and we have those among the candidates. And that might instill a confidence in the voter as to somebody being able to come up with remedies. Because it's certainly going to take a business person who's used to working budgets and doing that kind of swap around that's going to have to be done. And like you say, have that relationship with the state, because it might be that's where the money may come. I guess there's a possibility that an administration could think about funding cities that are hurting too. But probably that would be way down the list after the states. But that might be one something to keep in mind that maybe there's a plea that could be made for out of the city county situation for support. But that's probably not as likely as the state getting the money. So then when it gets to actually doing the work during the business of cutting and shifting funds and playing Peter and Paul and all of that kind of thing, they're going to have to come up with remedies. And not just political remedies. I mean, they're going to need those too. They're going to need some imagination. So there's going to have to be that kind of thinking going on too. Do you agree with something like that? I mean, I'm just perusing here on what it is that these people, whoever it is, has to face the challenge of. And I mean, I see somebody like Colleen Honabusa with so much experience. And of course, with one, GRD is so experienced. And so in different ways, they bring different skills and capacities to it. That's right. I mean, you have this interest. I mean, I think voters have a good choice of candidates this year. I mean, you have two very experienced people, one on the government side, Colleen Honabusa, one on the business side, Rick Blanchiarty. And you have two also experienced but younger candidates in Keith Amemia on the business side and Kim Pine on the government side. And so I think that they're, I mean, and that's good for this sort of election because this election is not going to be about some sort of particular policy issue. This election is really going to be about who voters trust, like I've said before. And so I think I expect the campaigns mainly to be about their backgrounds. There'll be some ideas about what they're going to do. But the truth of the matter is they don't really know what they're going to do. Nobody does. No one knows the full extent of this crisis. So really, if I were, I mean, and I will vote, but I mean, I think voters should think about who has the, who do they trust with this? I mean, listening to them talk about how they'd handle the problems or think through the problems, I think will be an important part of the campaign. But also who has the experience to do this? And in that way, I think it benefits Blanchiarty and Hanabusa because they're older, because they're going to be perceived as people with a little more gravity toss. Now, at the same time, Alamea has a lot of backing from a lot of influential business interests. He's raised a lot of money for his campaign. So that does go to show his strong relationship with the business community. So this is one of these interesting elections where I have a very hard time predicting because Kim Pine also brings not only her legislative experience, but she has been much more focused on family issues, which is going to be a big part of what a lot of local working families face. If I had to guess, well, no one is going to get the 50% plus one majority that you need to win outright in August. I'm almost certain that's not going to happen. So I expect that Colleen Hanabusa will make it through to the next round. And the other candidate, I'm not sure. I think all the other three candidates have a shot. But given the level of support and the amount of campaign that's going on already, I think the favorite is Keith Alamea. Oh, interesting. I heard an interview with him. And he was very, very strong on leadership and support coming out of his major athletic association role. And that was very well received in the discussion. I thought, though, that he was young and less experienced in the ways you've mentioned we have two senior people running. So yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say that it's true. I think that this athletic association experience might not be enough for voters. I mean, that is very different than running huge media interests for decades or for serving in the US Congress. I think he's going to face a lot of pushback from the other candidates by claiming that as the kind of experience you need to be the mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, which people forget is actually one of the larger cities in the United States. Because it's the entire island of Oahu. Well, I'm just thinking that what we're not getting a whole lot of is the empathetics, empathetic, moral support, values laden, goal directed, those kinds of things that the coach does. So it may be that he does bring a special toolkit for people to get through it. And I think that would be important to the citizens here is somebody that can make you feel a little bit better about the situation or that you've got the strength to step up to it. I think that's exactly right. That's what voters are going to be looking for, which actually may be fine for some candidates like Hanabusa and Blangiarity who sometimes come across as a little abrasive. This may be a time where voters are just fine with that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point. Well, that's what's going to be very, very interesting to see. And if anybody else, I guess it's still not too light for somebody to pop onto the scene. I mean, maybe there's a masochist out there that's looking for something to get his or her teeth. I doubt we're going to see anyone appear at this point. I mean, everyone knows that this is going to be a rough job. And whoever takes it, unless they get lucky and handle it particularly well, the danger is you just become a punching bag for a lot of things that you really can't control. Yeah, that really, it just hurts to think about it. You know, we're running out of time here. So what I'd like to do is see if there's anything you'd like to say to the audience, which as you know is specific and mainland and international. So I mean, do you have anything to say about what you know about Hawaii and where we're going? You know, there's always an opportunity in a crisis. You know, that's always something that is open when you have a moment like this. You really can change a lot of things because people are willing to make change because you have no choice. And so I hope the state doesn't waste this. I think that Hawaii hasn't done anything very brave in a long time. If you look at the legislative accomplishments of the 70s and that period, we haven't been forced into that position in quite some time. And this might be the moment. This might be the moment to restructure a lot of aspects of state government and make some of the changes that have been required for so long because I don't think kicking the can is an option anymore. Well, we'll have to wrap it up. I'm Stephanie Stone-Dalton and this is the state of Hawaii on the Think Tech Live Streaming Network series. We've been talking remotely with Dr. Colin Moore about campaigning for the office of mayor of Honolulu City and County in the age of COVID-19. Thank you so much. I'll see you again in two weeks and mahalo for your attention, everyone. Aloha.


In business news, the Central Bank of Nigeria has approved the appointment of Tunde Hassan Odukale as Chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria Limited. CBN also approved the appointment of Rami Babilullah as Chairman of FBN Holdings PLC, a subsidiary of the bank. It had earlier announced the removal of Ibu Kun Awoshika as Chairman of the Board of the FBN and Oba Otudeko as the Chairman of the Board of FBN Holdings. The bank also announced the reinstatement of Shullah Adedutton as Managing Director, Manga Shobo as Deputy Managing Director and Remuni, and Abdullah Ibrahim as Executive Directors of the FBN Limited. Adedutton was earlier removed by the Awoshika Lead Board and replaced with Shobo as Managing Director. A move of the Apex Bank condemned us not following the process. Notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


what is up you guys welcome back I um I literally just I didn't even plan on shooting this video at all for you guys but I thought it'd be it'd be probably cool if I did random thought that it'd be cool because I'm literally on fiber right now about to place an order action well I'm gonna place an order but I'm looking for someone I need to find someone here's what I use fiber for you guys I use fiber I've been using fiber for for a couple years now actually ever since I started my agency ever since I started my agency which was really really 20 2017 and then I and then I started finding different freelancers and different websites where I can hire people to do certain little random things that I was not good at at all and I'm still not good at like graphic design or or or or formatting like documents or editing videos like stuff like that I don't I don't really focus on but when I realized and I found sites like Fiverr where I can hire these hardcore professionals people that are super super good at what they do and because they live in a different country the currency is obviously different as you know for years that the US dollar has been the power right has been the dominant has been the the the the highest valued piece of commodity right or is that even the right freaking word shit I don't even know man currency whatever the hell you want to call it the US dollar has been the dominator right so when you compare it our dollar goes much further in these other countries I can hire people at a fraction in these other countries compared to me hiring people in this country nothing nothing against my own country God bless America but shit if I were to hire a designer or if I were to hire a ghostwriter or if I were to hire anyone to design my business cards or graphic designs for social media any of this type of stuff man would have cost me a grip hiring someone over here in the States right you all know that right everyone knows that but when you go and look for a professional designer that happens to be in Nigeria or in Pakistan or in freaking what's another country that we that we work with the even the Philippines like when you come to this site you can search for all kinds of different things graphic designs digital marketing writing and translation video and animation like there's so much different categories in here when it pertains to business when it pertains to building a personal brand or building your business right because marketing design a lot of that plays a huge role especially if you're trying to put your message out on social media you need to be looking legit right and so and it doesn't have to be crazy perfect I mean crazy crazy you know freaking Hollywood production or you know crazy amazing design it doesn't have to be like super overwhelming you know over the edge just respectable you know put out a good piece of something right and in a lot of times I'll come over here to Fiverr to hire someone for literally a few bucks literally a few bucks to do a badass job on a social media graphic or a social media cover like on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook you know you have your cover photo you can come over here hire someone for five bucks and they can design you a amazing one to put on all your social media or in my case I have this document right here I have a client of mine where we want to start running paid traffic we want to start running we are going to start running Facebook ads Instagram ads and our whole pitch is given out a free document a free a free gift right our bait is this document right here so I have the word document I'm going to send it over I'm going to look for someone on Fiverr right now I'm going to send it over to them and and and really start seeing what it's going to cost me which will literally be a few bucks and it'll be all worth it because all I need someone to do is is elaborate on my three tips here's what you want to do if you're building a business and you're in the business of capturing leads which everyone should be if you're building any kind of business your number one goal should be capturing leads landing page to an offer they download the offer whatever that offer may be free coupon free buyer guide free seller guide free PDF free three ways to save on homeowners insurance what can we give our audience that has value and and and and and can be a digital product is it a video that I can share with them where I don't have it on YouTube I don't put it on social media it's a special video that I give some golden nuggets to my clients and I want to share that with them and and can that be enough to entice people to click on your ad and go to your landing page and actually give up a name and email is it is it enough is there is there enticement there to to to get people to do that or is it a free you know coupon or is it a free tip sheet or is it three ways to save on homeowners insurance and now and we're targeting homeowners like what can we give them of value that's where it starts you guys you need to be thinking of something that you can give out and I call it bait in my in my business I've been building an agency right since 2017 2016 2017 and it wasn't until 2018 when I knew I'm like dude I need to be running ads and I need to be capturing leads of people that are in my niche where I can eventually do business with what can I give out what can I what can I put out there as bait to catch my ideal client and in my case it was a book so what I did is I literally wrote out a bunch of pages and then I found a person on fiber who was a ghost writer and I said hey I have the template here's what I need edited here's what I needed need for you to elaborate on can you write me a few things about what I just wrote and that's all it was you guys and they turned my they turned my my I'm gonna keep it real with you guys I'm gonna keep it really real with you guys they turned my and with images and everything I'm talking about my document is a 55 page PDF which is a book I call it a book that's what I use as bait to my audience right in order to capture leads and eventually get them you know to do business with me it's a 55 p 55 page e-book a digital download right but in there consist of images right consist of a table of content consist of a bio page right a contact page a list of resources page so there's a little bit of fluff in there to make it 55 pages right and that's what you can do and so that's what I want to do with this one I I have the template here's a template and so all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send over to fiber find someone on there where they can maybe add a little bit to it maybe maybe maybe dress up the page a little bit because right now it's just a simple plain you know document how about add a few images how about add you know some design to the borders how about elaborate on my three ways right can you elaborate and can you go straight and can you talk a little bit more about what I got going on I'm telling you man I'm gonna turn this little document for a few bucks I'm gonna turn it into a masterpiece and this is our bait so we're gonna use this in our Facebook advertising to give out to his audience to their audience in their local area to capture leads and this strategy applies for all of you guys man whatever business you're building this strategy applies for all of you you can give out something for free to capture lead to build an email list to nurture that list to eventually do business with you that's the name of the game and that's that's that's online marketing so I got this document here right and so what I want to do is I want to find someone where I'm gonna and I if I just type in ghostwriter let's type in ghostwriter and all I got to do is I'm gonna set the budget I'm gonna set the budget that way doesn't pull all kinds of expensive people that I don't that I don't need let's go anywhere from anywhere from five to 20 to 20 bucks because this is this is simple one page it's not like it it's not like it's 50 pages like mine right oh yeah that's what I was gonna say I wrote about I wrote about mmm well I'm gonna keep it real I'll keep it really real with you I wrote I wrote all I wrote the majority of all of it but when I got that rough draft back or when I got the draft when I got when I got it back from my ghostwriter on fiber she put together I think maybe maybe about mmm she probably put together maybe maybe 15 pages maybe 15 pages I paid her I think I paid her like 25 bucks this is a while this is this is like 2018 I paid her like 20 I think I paid her like 20 25 bucks and that was my template and I said perfect that's all I need and then with all of my knowledge and what I wanted to spill on paper I simply typed off the rest and I turned it into like 15 pages to 55 because I added a bunch of stuff and because I added a bunch of images and yeah added a bunch of stuff so that's what I am I'm encouraging you to do you can put together your spreadsheet like get a get right right out whatever the heck you think would be appealing to your audience do a rough draft put it into a word document and then come over here search ghostwriter and then and then look for a ghostwriter where you can hire for literally 10 bucks and and have them elaborate say hey man here's what I'm talking about I need you to add to it like can you do some research can you do some keyword research can you just add to this and turn it into a few more pages that right there you guys is it that could be your bait that could be your book that could be your download that could be your free you know offer that you're given out to get people's name and email and you can apply that to anything seller guide buyer guide first-time home buyers here's here's the top five things you need to know when becoming a first-time home buyer right that could be a simple document that you put together to give to give away to run ads to and give people to download aka for you to capture the lead okay so let's see what the heck is in here man I will ghost write your fiction I will be your best seller ghost okay so I will be pinned to your thoughts ebook writing service I will write business ebook best-selling book okay perfect so I might and what I also look at is the star rating five star 154 10 bucks let's see what this with this person's talking about and here's what I'm gonna do here's what I'm gonna do well researched plagiarism free and perfectly formatted a thousand words with clickable wow a thousand words okay 10 bucks I like it well research topics 100% unique content perfect layout and format fast delivery and much more perfect here's what I'm gonna get 20% off your ebook writing orders now awesome awesome awesome are you looking for highly qualified and creative ebook writer and go shredder to handle your ebook writing projects look no further I will be highly qualified and creative ebook right while you know what here's what I'm gonna do man okay so please contact me before placing order to ensure okay so let's let's contact them let's contact them before we place the order okay I'm very interested in ordering your $10 gig for a thousand words I have attached my document that I need you to elaborate on and add what you can let me know so I can place order now okay so let's attach what I have I'm gonna attach what I have so before I spend the 10 bucks right I want them to know exactly what we're working with and then and then I'll send that message and then he'll reply back he'll send me the order I click on it I order it and that's it you guys that's it so this right here man I'm gonna turn my mind and again you guys you got if I were you I'd spend a little bit more maybe maybe maybe find someone on here badass for like 25 bucks or maybe even 40 bucks what the heck is 40 bucks dude come on really find someone on here for 50 bucks okay let's make it 50 let's make it call it 50 because this is your business this is your body of work this could be something powerful for you okay this is how you're gonna capture leads online this is how you're gonna run ads to capture leads online this is this is your bait okay for your entire business this evolves around your entire business so take it seriously this can be a big big deal spend 50 bucks get someone to really really write you out a really good ebook a download a free PDF a free offer about their business about your business right whoever your ideal client is whatever their pain point is whatever they're they're itching to to know more about educate them and educate them and give them some type of free value start putting your marketing around this start doing video ads and at the end of your video ads there's a call to action to say hey and don't forget to click learn more to download your free seven tips on increasing the value of your property before you decide to sell it click learn more you'll be able to download your free copy now I'll talk to you guys soon in your video marketing in your content producing in these ads there's a call to action give away something for free man and I'm telling you your conversions will go up so I'm gonna get in touch with this with this person right here there's a there's a link below you guys so there if I'm telling you if you plan on ordering anything there's a discount code below so look for the fiber disk and I think it's I think it's 20% off I think you get a 20% off your first order by clicking the damn link in the description so link below take a look at fiber graphic designs ebook ghost writing video editing everything man at a fraction of what you would pay anyone else to do you know anywhere else so place your order you guys and capture your leads I'll see you soon


New snow laying softly on the highest forest. Deep breaths to the moving tide. I embrace a depth of being impossible in the rushing city. There are paths here for me to tread. Paths that spiral, lined and deepened. Here the goddess treads openly. She moves through the grand trees rushing waters. Her passion spills forth in the heated springs. It is painted between the rocks and bees. She dances with me and I with her. There are lessons in the roots, shallow, lean and wide. Cedar and hemlocks tied together. Understanding comes from the return of life after fire. Waking visions waver in remaining smoke. The wild and its purest glory. Here for me to embrace, to savor, to wonder. Here for me to protect.


Hello everybody, welcome to this presentation making Kubernetes safer with user namespaces. And Mauricio, I work as a software engineer at KingFolk. In this presentation, I will explain to you what are user namespaces and what are capabilities in Linux, what is the problem that is about running containers as a root, how user namespaces mitigate the problem, and what is the current status of supporting user namespaces in Kubernetes. And finally, I will give you a demo about using user namespaces in Kubernetes. Before going on the details about the problems and the solution we are looking for, let me introduce you, the user and website is on capabilities concepts. In Units, the users on the group of these are identified by an integer, those are usually called UID and GID, and each running process has a set of associated UIDs and GIDs. In the Units context, there are two categories of processes. There is what is called the privileged processes, and those are the ones that run with the UID0, and they are also called the root processes. These processes bypass the kernel permission checks. Those are the privileged processes that are able to do almost anything on the system. The other kind of processes are the unprivileged processes. Those are the ones that run with UID different to zero. In this case, the kernel performs the permission checks based on the credentials. If the given user ID or group ID is able to execute an operation or not. Another concept important here are capabilities. Capabilities are the privileged actions that a process can execute. Those are divided into different units, and those are called capabilities. For instance, if a process needs to change the clock of the system, it will have to have the capsized time capability, and so on and so on for other operations. Basically, there are a set of operations that a process can execute. A process has a set of these capabilities, and based on that, the kernel decides if a process can execute or not a given operation. What is the problem that we are trying to solve? Basically, the problem is that there are many people running the containers as root. Running a container as root means that the process inside the container is run as a root. It's run with UID zero or a privileged process. It means that it can perform privileged operations on the container. In this case, the host is only protected by the isolation that is provided by namespaces. We have the process running inside the container, and hopefully this process is not able to perform any operations on the host because this is isolated by namespaces. The problem is that namespaces are not perfect, and in some cases, there are some vulnerabilities, and a process running in a container is able to escape those namespaces and affect the host. In this case, if the process is running as root in the container and it is able to escape the container, it could affect the host in a very bad way because that process will be running as root in the host too. These are some examples of vulnerabilities that are exploited because processes are running as root inside the container. I will show you in the demonstration part the last one with some more detail. How to mitigate this problem? The first question that you have to ask yourself is if you really need to run the containers as root. Probably the question is no. Probably you don't need to be running the containers as root. What happens is that this is the default option in most of the tools, so each time you build a Docker container image, the default user is root and the people just don't care about that and they keep using the default option. If you don't need to run the container as root in the core nettest, you could use this option to run as a user and run as a group in the ported specification to change the user. If you are a cluster administrator, you could use the port security policies or the open policy agent to deny running containers as root or better, to control who is able to run containers as root. If you really need to run the container as root, then you could limit the set of capabilities that you give to the process so you can set only the capabilities that this process needs to work and you could also use another orthogonal security feature by set-con and uparmor and so on. These are just mitigations. Let's look into how to solve the problem and how to add an additional security layer that protects us against that problem. This is user namespaces. User namespaces are just another kind of namespaces. These kinds of namespaces isolate the user and groups IDs and also the capabilities. Especially a process can have different IDs, different groups and user IDs based if the process is inside a container and outside the container. What is most important for us is that if a process is running as root inside a user namespaces, it will be running actually as non-root and the host user namespace. These ID mappings are controlled by these two files, by the UID map and the GID map files. So what happens is that we have the initial host user namespaces that has 4 billion UIDs and then we give a range of those UIDs to the user namespace, to the container. For instance, here we have the container one and we say in this configuration that the root UID on the container one is going to be mapped to 1,000 in the host and this is the number of UIDs or in general IDs that are going to be mapped. So a process running as root in container one will be seen as running as 1,000 on the host. If we have another container, we could have a similar configuration but in this case we are giving to the container the 200,000 ID on the host. So in this case both containers are running as root inside the container but the ID used on the host is different for them. Another important point about user namespaces is that they isolate capabilities. So the kernel in order to check the permissions of a process it uses the user namespace the process is running in. There is a relationship between other kind of user namespaces like network, PID and so on that they are owned by user namespaces. And a process that has a capability on a user namespace can only use that capability on resource that are owned by that user namespace. More details in the nest is like that is your standard son. So in this case we have a standard sector, we have the initial username space on the host and we have the network namespace on the host that is owned by the initial user namespace. In this case we have a container that is running in a different user namespace and the network namespace of that container is owned by the user namespace of the container. Let's suppose that we have a process running in that container and means that the process runs is inside this user namespace. If this process wants to open for instance to open for a in the container network namespace the kernel will check for this capability the cap net buying service capability in the parent of the network namespace that is the user namespace of the container. In this case the process is running in this namespace so the process has the capability and can perform that operation. On the other hand, if the process tries to open a priority in the host network namespace this is not going to work because the parent of the host network namespace is the initial username space. The process is not running in that username space and hence doesn't have the capability there and the process is not able to perform that operation. What is important to notice here is that with username spaces we are able to give some capabilities to a process but those capabilities can be used only in the container context and those capabilities are not valid for the host. Okay, so I already explained to you what are user namespaces, what are they used for? We are trying to reduce the risk of running real containers in Kubernetes by using username spaces. This is an all pending issue, something that hasn't been done yet. The current status of this support is that we are iterating in the Kubernetes engagement proposal. We are communicating with the community and trying to find a solution that works well for most of the cases and we implemented a proof of concept in Kubernetes and container DE. This is the demonstration I will do. So maybe you are asking if username spaces are so nice if there is a problem with growth container why there is not support for username spaces in Kubernetes yet? Well, there are some challenges that are difficult to solve and that's the reason why we don't support username spaces in Kubernetes yet. The first challenge is about volumes. So if we have two containers that are running with different ID mappings that are not able to share files using a volume because the UID on the host is different. So when a container tries to access a file that was writing by the other container, the UIDs don't match and there could be some permission problems there. The solution for this problem will be to have a chief FS or similar solution in the kernel. This is a mechanism that performs an ID translation when a process inside a username space is trying to access a file. But unfortunately, it is not supported in Linux maybe yet, we don't know. There is some work on going on that. There is this ID map among that is a similar idea and that Kubernetes will benefit for that. But the point here is that we don't have the support for that in the kernel. So we have to look for a different solution right now. The solution for that is to use the same ID mapping for containers that are sharing volumes. So in this case, the UID on the host is the same and the containers can share files to all the volumes. This of course reduces a bit the pod to pod isolation because the UID on the host is the same but still the host is rotated because the root in the container is non-root on the host. Another challenge we have is the high UIDs. So a process running in a container cannot use all the UIDs. All the UIDs are not available because we displayed the host range of UIDs for each container. So to each container, we gave a small set of UIDs. The solution we have for that right now is to give to each container as big as possible range, something like 64 key. And in some cases to avoid using username and space for those containers that require even higher UIDs. In the future, we could have solutions like as more analysis of the IDs that are required by a container, this is to inspect the image of a container to see what are the IDs required there. Maybe to extend the OCI image specification in order to add information about what are the UIDs and UIDs that are container needs. Or yeah, to have a different kind of support in the kernel for username and space. So in a way that is username and space could use the full range of UIDs, but yeah, this is just an idea and probably this is something that is not going to happen in the near future. In this demonstration, I will show you how to deploy a pod using username and space in coordinate. In this case, we are using the proof of concept we implemented in Kubernetes and container. The proof of concept implements some of the ideas we have discussed in this Kubernetes proposal. I have a cluster running on my machine, so let's get started. The first thing I want to show you is how to deploy a standard pod. This is the standard way to deploy a pod without using name and space. So please notice that we don't have any username and space related configuration here. In order to deploy a pod with username and space, we have this new username and space mode field and the pod specification. In this case, we are setting this to cluster. Cluster means that all the pods running in this mode are going to share the same ID mapping. This is to allow them to share files using volumes, but I don't want to get into the details of this username and space mode and what are the different modes that are supported because this is still something that we are discussing with the community, so we don't know if this is going to be merged in this way or if there are going to be changes and that. So I only want to show you the general concepts here. I want you to know that the common in both pods is different, which I'll show you just in a second why. So let me deploy those pods. Okay, and let me show you the mapping, the UID mapping in those pods. So for this case of the pod running in the host username and space, there is no mapping. He means in this case, we can see that the root user, the root UID on the container is mapped to the root UID on the host on the full length of the range is mapped. So actually means that there is no mapping going on. On the other hand for my full username and space, the pod running the username and space, we have that the root UID on the container is mapped to these 500,000 ID on the host and that we have a 64 key long range. Let's look at the processes that are running and how the process is running on my host. So we have this process that is the one running in the container without username and space. We can see here that it is running as root on the host, but this process running on the container on the pod with username and space is running as we, as it should be as 500,000 on the host. Okay, so it only shows that the root, a root process running in the container is running as no root on the host when we enable user name spaces. I want to show you a vulnerability that could be mitigated by using username and space. So some time ago there was found a vulnerability on grant see that allows a special container to override the grant see binary on the host. I'm running a null version of grant see that is affected by that vulnerability just to show you how this vulnerability could be mitigated with user name spaces. What the exploit does in this case is to append a string to the grant see, to the grant see binary on the host. So we can check here that the grant see binary doesn't have this string inside. Let me show you the spec of the exploit. So in this case, this is a standard pod, not a note that we are now using username spaces, but that we are running this special image that contains the exploit there. Let me deploy that image and let's wait a little bit until that container is done. This is done, let's look at the logs of that. So we can see here that it says, okay, the grant see binary was updated. Let's check that. Effectively we have this new string on the grant see binary on the host. Of course, this just is an example. This is not too bad to a string to a binary, but in a real attack this will be very bad because in this case the attacker is able to introduce whatever code they want into the grant see binary that will be executed as root on the host when a container will be created. Let me reinstall the grant see binary. We can see here that the string is not present anymore. And let me show you how username spaces call mitigate that vulnerability. So in this case, we have the same image. The only difference in this case is that we are running the pod in a user name space. Okay, so the pod is completed. Let's look at the logs for that one. In this case, we can see that there was an error opening a file descriptor because there was a permission deny error. This is because the exploit that is running as root on the pod is not running as root on the host. Hence, it doesn't have the permission to override the grant see binary on the host. If we look at the grant see binary, we can see that the grant see binary doesn't include this string. So what it means is that the grant see binary wasn't modified by the exploit. This is an example of one of the vulnerabilities that could be mitigated by using user name space. Okay, this is all. I think there are a couple of minutes for any questions. Thank you very much.


What's going on guys, it's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and to a day of the new Top 5 Hunter Super Plays of the week, don't worry you warlock and titan fans, their Top 5 Super Plays will be underway pretty soon so stay tuned, if you guys do enjoy the video hit that like button and I do appreciate the support, as always thanks for stopping by and I'll catch you on that next one. I destroyed the whole team dude!