I literally spent the whole day on the couch with David Simon watching TV and eating crab cakes in Baltimore.Chance Kelly is an American film and television actor who portrayed NFL Coach Mike Martz in the film American Underdog (2021). Then, we came back and watched another four. Then we went and got crab cakes for lunch. But when the eight episodes were complete, I went to row house in Baltimore, and we sat on the couch from 8 a.m. I wasn’t involved in the production of “Generation Kill” at all. So, he also did “Generation Kill” and “The Wire” is my favorite show, too. But I did spend a spectacular day with David Simon, the producer of it, in Baltimore. And part of that is I was 25 years old, and all of a sudden you have like this huge spotlight shining on your life, like the most searing and traumatizing parts of your life. I like “Generation Kill” a lot more in hindsight than I did at the time. I heard a rumor that you didn’t love “Generation Kill,” the HBO miniseries based on your Marine company’s experience in Iraq. If I can help build some bridges, I would really like to do so. Historically, collaboration between the federal government and technology has been bumpy at best. Most of the attack surface we care about protecting sits in the private sector. Most of the talent - not in quality, but in quantity - sits in the private sector. I bring a point of view to this job that most of the innovative ability to develop capabilities sits in the private sector. What do you think industry should be doing to make the web safer and how do you plan on working with tech companies? And so, the right answer is somewhere in the middle. At the same time, there are situations where it is also valid to say that the mission is urgent, the need is now, and we can do an enormous amount of good if we act quickly. State has a very valid point of view that diplomacy is the tool of first resort, that our relationships with allies and partners are iterative, that they are broader than a particular operation and that operations need to be contextualized that way. How do you see your role in terms of State’s recent enhanced role in the cyber operations’ authorization process? What should the proper balance be between State and DoD? What that means is that we need to acknowledge their existence and the influence they have and account for them. People with relatively little formal training and relatively little access to capital can wield tremendous capability. What are your goals when it comes to national security issues, given the digital threat from Russia and China? That’s why I think State has a rightful place to assert leadership in this space. Because it’s cross cutting, we need allies and partners around the world on all these issues. That’s my argument for why State has to be involved as the nation’s lead foreign affairs agency. And we do tech diplomacy here.’ Technology represents a lateral cross-cutting substrate that informs every other aspect of American foreign policy. It’s not like, ‘Okay, we do East Asia diplomacy here. It is infused in everything, which is really proposition number three - it’s not a vertical. Proposition two is that technology is reshaping every aspect of the world. My formative experiences and my early career were in the Marines, living the consequences of failures of diplomacy - not at the working level, but at the senior policy maker level. The first is a personal, visceral conviction that diplomacy is and must be our tool of first resort. There are a few fundamental propositions that undergird my thinking. How does State become a leader in something as unwieldy and amorphous as cyberspace? You’ve said your key priorities include asserting State’s role in cyberspace and digital policy. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity. His experience in the Iraq war was characterized in the HBO series “Generation Kill.” He sat down this week with CyberScoop for his first extended interview since taking the office. Prior to taking the role, Fick was a cybersecurity executive, venture capitalist and Marine. He’ll have a broad portfolio and will work across the government, including with the National Security Agency and the White House, on driving Washington’s foreign digital agenda. In September, Nate Fick became the State Department’s first ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital diplomacy.
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