Every day, the FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) must deal with a plentitude of black hat hackers who break into computer networks with malicious intent, typically motivated by financial gain. They may also release malware that destroys files, holds computers hostage, or steals passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal information.

This widespread black hat hacking effort, led by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, has left a long trail of computational carnage, costing US companies, non-profits, and local, state and federal government branches billions of dollars every year. Major black hat data breaches have occurred at the US Departments of Education, Justice, Treasury, Commerce, Energy, State, Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the corporate world, companies that have been compromised include Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Microsoft, News Corp, the Red Cross, JBS, T-Mobile, Apple, Meta, Twitter, PayPal, Toyota, American Airlines, Marriott, Verizon, Uber, TikTok, Samsung, Facebook, Doordash, Chick-fil-A Pizza Hut/KFC, Reddit, and many more. In fact, the FBI now has a website devoted to “Cyber’s Most Wanted”: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber

But we have another group of talented hackers across the US, too: White hat hackers. Also known as ethical hackers, they learn how IT systems work, they discover their vulnerabilities, and they break into them, with no fear of being arrested. Ethical hackers help companies keep data safe, and executives - at such companies as Microsoft and Google - hire them to find vulnerabilities in their systems, and update flawed software, so no one else can use the same technique to break in in the future.

What is interesting to me is the number of talented young white hat hackers we have in the US today. Thousands of them. And they adapt to diverse black and white hat environments like veritable chameleons, with amazing ease. We have to educate, cultivate and train more of these child prodigies beginning today, by creating a not-for-profit US Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence Education Program (CAIE). The Program (not to be confused with another Program) will allow thousands of our K12 students to collaborate with and learn from valuable mentors who will inspire them. These can include US cybersecurity and AI company executives, FBI and CISA agents, and computer science educators at such fine academic institutions as MIT and Caltech. If we do so, we will be able to protect our country more effectively from a 21st century Cyber and AI Arms Race, that President Xi is intent on winning.

First, we already have young tech wizards who represent a growing number of talented cyber prodigies, and who are already helping the US to deal more effectively with our growing cybersecurity and AI threats:

In 2014, then 5-year-old California-native Kristoffer von Hassel wanted to play video games on his father's Xbox Live system, but parental blocks prevented him from doing so. He quickly discovered a way to exploit the system's security vulnerability, and he began to play previously restricted video games, until his parents apprehended him. Hassel's parents reported this security concern to Microsoft, and for his efforts, the young Hassel received a $50 check, a one-year subscription to Microsoft Gold, and four free video games. Today, Hassel is not only the world's youngest known hacker at 15. He is also currently employed by Microsoft as a Security Researcher.

In 2020, then 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark was arrested in his Tampa apartment for hacking into the Twitter accounts of then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Former-President Barak Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and other celebrities. Embarrassed Twitter executives were initially powerless to stop Clark's hacking, and this successful breach called into question the ability of tech companies to provide dependable security services to their customers.

And today, Texas-resident Reuben Paul, a 17-year-old Indian American whiz kid, speaks at international cybersecurity conferences about how hackers like himself can steal critical data from Android phones, easily accessing call records, contacts and messages. When asked recently about his ultimate dream job, Rueben, the Founder and CEO of Prudent Games, declared: “The NSA, CIA or FBI.” 

https://www.cybershaolin.org/our_team/reuben-paul/

Hassel, Clark and Paul are all examples of young US tech wizards who have grown up with Smartphones in their hands, posting countless messages, photos and videos on Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Twitter and TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company Bytedance. They are at ease playing such video games as Call of Duty, Fortnite and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, too. They have learned about the difference between black hat and white hat hacking. And some of these child prodigies, like Hassel, are already employed as consultants by top tech companies, including Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

We need to identify more of these brilliant students, well before they go to college. We need to offer them advanced cybersecurity and AI education, which includes summer and academic year work-study internships in a wide range of academic, corporate, academic and government-related cybersecurity and AI jobs. Our new, not-for-profit US K12 Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence Education Program (CAIE) will commence with nationwide after-school and summer vacation programs, learning from the Middlebury College intensive foreign language programs already in existence. This will then grow to become a high-quality academic year and school vacation program. How do accomplish this? By studying other successful programs.

Pre-college cybersecurity education programs have already gained traction in the US. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Community Coordinating Council, sponsored by the US Department of Commerce, created a National K12 Cybersecurity Education Roadmap, that “provides strategies for increasing the quantity, quality, and diversity of students pursuing cybersecurity careers.” The Roadmap outlines five major priorities:

1. increasing cybersecurity career awareness;
2. engaging students where disciplines converge;
3. stimulating innovative educational approaches;
4. promoting cybersecurity career pathways; and
5. prioritizing cybersecurity research:

https://www.k12cybersecurityconference.org/

The US Air Force has created CyberPatriot, a National Youth Cyber Education Program, that helps to inspire pre-college students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) disciplines that the USAF deems critical to our nation's security. And example of the Program: the Fairfax County (VA) public school system has teamed up with CyberPatriot and Northern Virginia Community College's Cybersecurity program to develop a curriculum for its K-12 schools. Only to have hackers attack the Fairfax County Public Schools computer system and place ransomware on some of its systems. On 9/11/2020. Working with CISA and the FBI, Fairfax County students could help to create better protection for the system. And they could advise the federal government about creative ways to retaliate for the 2020 black hat hacking, also.

The National Security Agency (NSA) created several different cybersecurity education programs, also. Its K12 Outreach Program offers an array of films and interactive presentations for elementary, middle, and high school students, and hosts an annual conference and exciting cybersecurity competitions each year.

https://www.nsa.gov/Academics/K12-Partnership/

The NSA’s Gifted and Talented (G & T) STEM Programs were established for graduating high school seniors who demonstrate talent in physics, calculus, computer science or engineering.

https://apply.intelligencecareers.gov/student-tiles

And the NSA’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers, (NICC) seeks to involve more students in cybersecurity, extending beyond the school year. As its on-line description states: "Summer camp programs, like Cyber Discovery and GenCyber, provide hands-on cybersecurity learning activities to middle school and high school students.”

https://niccs.cisa.gov/formal-education/summer-camps

The NSA has also created the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) program. Directed by NSA's National Cryptologic School, NCAE-C partners include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)/National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education (NICE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense Office of the Chief Information Officer (DoD-CIO), and U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). According to its website, the NCAE-C program “aims to create and manage a collaborative cybersecurity educational program with community colleges, colleges, and universities that:

·      Establishes standards for cybersecurity curriculum and academic excellence;

·      Includes competency development among students and faculty;

·      Values community outreach and leadership in professional development; 

·      Integrates cybersecurity practice within the institution across academic disciplines; and

·      Actively engages in solutions to challenges facing cybersecurity education.

https://www.nsa.gov/Academics/Centers-of-Academic-Excellence/

The National Cybersecurity Center's (NCC) Cyber Education Program "provides cybersecurity leadership, with two main pillars: K12 education with the NCC Student Alliance, and the Cyber Force Initiative (Adult Education). As our nation addresses the critical gap in skilled cybersecurity talent, NCC addresses the importance of cyber education through programs and partnerships that invite students to participate in an ecosystem which encourages them to learn, explore, and build their skills."

https://cyber-center.org/cyber-education/

Bossier City, Louisiana-based CYBER.ORG "offers a biannual technology grant program to assist teachers in bringing technology into their classrooms. To be eligible, you must be a K12 educator based in the US or a US territory and you must submit a complete application." The organization develops and distributes free cybersecurity, STEM, and computer science curricula to K12 educators across the country. And the curriculum comprises the Cyber Interstate, a robust library of cyber-based curricula that provides opportunities for K12 students to become aware of cyber issues, engage in cybersecurity education, and enter cybersecurity career fields. These programs focus on growing and educating the next generation cyber-literate workforce.

There exist a variety of on-site and on-line middle school and high school cybersecurity programs, including Spotsylvania High School in Spotsylvania, VA, and R.M. Miano Elementary School in Los Banos, CA. There are also several good summer boot camps for adolescents, many implemented and directed by US colleges and universities including Stanford, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, NYU and MIT.  

We can learn a great deal from Israel, too. There, a similar cybersecurity education program for its nation’s youth has been for years a top priority of the Ministries of Education and Defense. "You students need to strengthen us with your curiosity", stated former-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a 2017 cyber technologies expo where, seated next to him, was a small group of high school students taking part in an Israeli defense department cybersecurity training program. Netanyahu went on to say that Israel's goal, branding itself as the "Cyber Nation", was "to become a global leader in cybersecurity, by investing in the next generation's cybersecurity education program."

Netanyahu went on to announce the creation of Israel's Cyber Education Center (CEC). https://cyber.org.il/about-us-eng/ Its aim is to “increase the number and raise the level of young Israelis for their future integration into the Israeli security services, industry and the academic world.” CEC was created with the finanical support of the Rashi Foundation, one of Israel's largest and most influential philanthropies, in conjunction with the country's Ministry of Defense. The organization's vision has been and still is "to drive social change in Israel through technology education." As Sagy Bar of the Rashi Foundation stated: “In the first grade, students learn the letters, then how to read and how to write. Now, we are building the next level of knowledge, how to code.”

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cyber-education-center/?originalSubdomain=il

As of today, hundreds of Israeli students have successfully completed CEC's program, which has served as a valuable feeder for Israel's National Cyber Directorate, Unit 8200, and other important military and intelligence organizations. CEC is currently in the process of trying to scale up the size of its classes, and Israel’s nation-wide cultivation of cyber talent has led to the international successes of a host of successful Israeli start-up cybersecurity companies, including Aqua Security, Guardicore, Cybereason and CyberArk.

My Immediate Call to Action

China's President Xi Jinping met with President Biden recently at the Filoli Historic House in the San Francisco Bay-area. There, among other requests, Xi had a desire to "collaborate" with the US on a joint-AI development program. But Xi's Chinese Communist Party has "collaborated" with the US on other programs, only to steal us blind...of all the intellectual property (IP) related to these projects. In order to create products, like N95 masks, that we then rely on the Chinese for.

The FBI, CISA, and the US Department of Education under Dr. Miguel Cordona must collaborate with Israel's Cyber Education Center (CDC), the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the US Air Force, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The goal: to create a new, publicly and privately-funded 501c3, known as the US U12 Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence Education Program (CAIE), that will help us to educate, inspire and cultivate talented future cybersecurity, AI and Q-Star (Q*) rock stars like Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, while they are still young.

The CAIE must also become an integral part of our Common Core State Standards (CCSS) – based US K12 education and workforce development program. And cybersecurity and AI undergraduate and graduate students can be tapped to help us establish our nationwide program. They will receive academic credit and financial incentives to help us teach and mentor K12 students, in collaboration with IT directors and cybersecurity / AI professors and teachers around the US.

This will become a constantly-evolving and improving program, available to all public and private K12 schools in our country. To finance this endeavor, we need to offer tax write-off donation opportunities to eager donors, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Additional benefactors could include Warren Buffett; Rob, Jim, and Alice Walton; Melinda Gates; Mackenzie Scott; Larry Ellison; and Michael Bloomberg. And the pitch to each and every one of them is simple: You are making an investment in your companies' futures. And you are also helping the US to prepare for and protect itself more effectively, if and when a cyber / AI 9/11 takes place.

Today, the U.S. is as unprepared for cybersecurity and AI threats as it was for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “The cyber landscape to me looks a lot like the counterterrorism landscape did before 9/11,” historian and journalist Garrett Graff said during a Homeland Security Committee roundtable. Do we allow thousands of our already-tech savvy US K12 students to slip through our fingers, and possibly become black hat hackers, who might get recruited to work for China, Russia, North Korea or Iran? Or do we encourage them to be white hat hackers, who will help the US to fight fire with fire against our adversaries?

Finally, a closing thought: Our US cybersecurity and AI education fight or flight challenge reminds me of Alfred Nobel's "pride vs. guilt inner-conflict" stemming from his invention of dynamite: Will our growing need for better cybersecurity and AI be developed, and used, in constructive ways, as Nobel envisioned when he invented dynamite? Or will they be developed and used in destructive ways, like dynamite?

Bottom line: to better protect the US from cyberattacks and the destructive use of AI by China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, we must mine more effectively, and immediately, a precious national resource that we have from sea to shining sea: the minds of our tech savvy youth. And we must do this now, and for decades to come. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Carl Hobert, Author, Raising Global IQ: Preparing our Students for a Shrinking Planet (Beacon Press)