November 24, 2025 • 48 mins
Text the ATB Team! We'd love to hear from you!
In this episode of the At The Boundary podcast, senior director of the GNSI, Jim Cardoso, sat down for a roundtable discussion with Mark Luther, an Associate Professor at USF and the Director for the Center of Maritime and Port Studies, Mark DuPont, the Executive Director of the National Maritime Law Enforcement Academy, and Brian Langley, the Senior Executive Advisor for Cyber Florida. The four recapped the 2025 Florida Security Forum, focusing on Port and Maritime Security, and they discussed the impact of the event, the major takeaways, and planning for the future of both state and national port security.
The main
takeaways from the Forum were the necessity of following up on conversations
with plans of action, working across the state to reinforce port-to-port
relationships, and not losing sight of traditional threats, such as natural disasters, in the
face of emerging cybersecurity and drone threats. Action is needed to remind
both state and federal lawmakers of the importance of port and maritime
security.
Another main
theme explored how to train the next generation of maritime employees, and how
to educate the general public on port affairs.
The current lack of a Maritime Academy in Florida is concerning; it outsources
maritime education to other states, could undermine the Florida workforce, and could thus have a
negative economic impact in the future. Additionally, policymakers can become
out-of-touch when it comes to creating policies around threats to infrastructure. Educational efforts will
reinforce state and federal port security, as well as create stronger
public-private partnerships between policymakers and the maritime workforce
which will enable a more unified threat response.
Links from the episode:
At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim Cardoso (00:00):
Jim. Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, apodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorfor GNSI, and your host for at
the boundary. Today on thepodcast, we've gathered some of
the key people involved in thecreation of our first ever
(00:34):
Florida security forum. Floridais a hub for defense,
international commerce andtechnological innovation and
plays a supersized role inshaping national security policy
and decisions. For this firstconference, the theme was port
and maritime security risks andresilience. We hosted the
conference in partnership withport Tampa Bay earlier this
(00:56):
month, and have been digginginto the findings for a couple
weeks in order to submitrecommendations to our state and
national policymakers. Joiningme on the podcast today are Mark
Luther, Associate Professor atUSF and the director for the
Center of maritime and portstudies. Mark Dupont, Executive
Director of the NationalMaritime Law Enforcement
(01:18):
Academy, and Brian Langley,senior executive advisor to the
Florida Center for CyberSecurity, better known as cyber
Florida. All three of our guestsplayed vital roles in the
creation and development of thisforum, and I'm happy to welcome
them to the podcast today. MarkLuther, Mark Dupont, Brian
Langley, welcome to the podcast.
So this podcast is more like avirtual panel than an interview
(01:44):
with all three of you here. Andwhile I look forward to hearing
from each of you on somequestions, please don't hesitate
to respond to another, anotheranswer or augment, or, you know,
refute, if you feel the need todo so professionally, that's
okay too, but we'll go ahead,just kick this off. So I'll
start with, since I'm in studiowith Mark Luther, so I'll start
(02:05):
with Mark Luther to answer thisquestion first, what is a what's
a single major takeaway you hadfrom the Florida security forum
we did, I mean, I noted acontinuing return to the
vulnerabilities presented bydrones in the physical security
space, and also just the cybersecurity concerns as well. But
anything you noted,
Unknown (02:28):
I was a little surprised at almost tunnel
vision on drones and cybersecurity, while I understand
that they're a new and emergingthreat, I didn't hear very much
about the more traditionalthreats that we constantly talk
about at the area maritimesecurity committee and things
(02:50):
like that. And even in my subpanel on the working groups, we
were supposed to be talkingabout critical events. We didn't
talk very much about the sort oftraditional critical events that
that we are all concerned about,you know, attack on a passenger
vessel, or attack on a bridge orthings like that. So I thought
(03:15):
there was a lot of goodconversation about these new and
emerging threats, but I wasexpecting more conversation
about the more, shall we say,mundane,
Jim Cardoso (03:27):
perhaps mundane, but still threatening ones,
right?
Unknown (03:30):
Yeah, with great potential to shut the port down,
and it wasn't as much discussionas I'd hoped on natural disaster
threats and how much that candisrupt port operations and
destroy infrastructure?
Jim Cardoso (03:46):
Yeah, no, I Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense, and Inoted that too. Mark Dupont, how
about your take any, any singlemajor takeaways you had from the
conference? Well
Unknown (03:58):
before Mark started talking, I was stumbling to
think of one thing that was thesingular most important or
notable thing to come out of it.
But when Mark just gave hispoint about cyber and drones, I
have to echo it so much so thatour subgroup, when we were
looking at, you know, what werethose key takeaways, when asking
(04:18):
them that question. They broughtup cyber, but they brought up,
are we missing something elsebecause all of our attention is
focused on cyber and or drones?
So I thought that was prettyinsightful of the group. But
aside from that, if there wassomething else I could pick, I
(04:40):
would have to pick theLieutenant Governor's speech,
and one of the key things thathe echoed, and I'll just use the
word accelerate. We need tomove. We can't keep sitting
around talking about things. Wehave to take action. And that
kind of echoes what Jay talked.
Todd Inman spoke about from NTSBwhen he said, it's no longer
(05:02):
about See Something, SaySomething. It's about see
something, do something. Sothere was a there was a action
oriented theme, not only in ourdiscussions on day one, but when
it translates into the workshopsthat we had on day two.
Everybody was what do we have todo about it, not just pointing
to what the potential problemsare. So that was an important
(05:25):
takeaway for me, and it wasgreat to be a part
Jim Cardoso (05:31):
of, yeah, and I want to follow up in a little
bit on the day two as well,because, you know, a lot of
people that came to theconference that may be
listening, they were not at daytwo. So I would like to talk a
little bit about that, butbefore we but before we do that,
over to Brian Langley, any majortakeaway you had from the FSF
from what you saw? Yeah, no,
Unknown (05:48):
thank you. I think the major takeaway for me was just
getting all these thoughtleaders together, talking about
ports at large, and all thesidebar conversations that
related to like port security,economic security as port
security and vice versa. Ithought it was just great to see
so many different thoughtleaders come in and discuss, you
know, generally, what can we doas a state, reflecting our
(06:10):
communities on the supporting,you know, the Florida port
ecosystem. So to me, it kind ofcreated, if you will, a bridge
on just getting all thesedifferent groups together in a
consistent, policy drivenmanner. So I That, for me, it
was a great takeaway.
Jim Cardoso (06:25):
Yeah, it was good and what, that's where we're
going for we're trying to bring,you know, that's one thing we do
at genocide, try to bringtogether government, industry,
the academia, all together. Getsome breadth of that discussion.
I want to go back to one thing.
So that mark, both Mark sort ofalluded, to, was kind of, again,
the tunnel vision, as was, Ithink was a term used on
definite threats. I mean,cybersecurity is a threat.
(06:49):
Drones are a threat. There's noquestion about that. Do you
think that the focus on that?
And I'll ask Mark l first, doyou think the focus on that was
an upgrade? Upgrade is the wrongword, an update, maybe in the
thinking, was it just anoversight combination of the
(07:10):
two? Or what would you classifyit?
Unknown (07:12):
Well, I think there is so much focus on those two
things, and so few in themaritime transportation world
know how to respond to that, andagain, with drones, we have so
few tools that we're evenallowed to put to bring to bear
on the problem, because of theregulatory structures are
(07:34):
lagging far behind the actualtechnologies to cause harm with
those sorts of things, because,again, you can't shoot at a
drone. You can't, you can'tbother it at all under FAA
regulations. And there's a lot,there was a lot of discussion
about how that needs to change.
And then the maritime world hasbeen very slow to embrace the
(07:58):
cybersecurity aspects of whatcan go wrong, even though we've
had some fairly disruptiveattacks on Maersk and Porter
Rotterdam and others that havehad major implications. So
that's just coming to themindset, or the attention of a
(08:20):
lot of people who have been inthis maritime world a long time
and aren't used to thinkingabout such things.
Jim Cardoso (08:29):
Yeah, you know, I and it made me think of another
thing kind of a takeaway, as Igo back, and you sort of alluded
to it, is the authorization, theauthority to operate. Well, at O
is a specific term, but I'd saythe authority to to act. And
Mark Dupont, you talked aboutacting, which, you know,
completely agree with. But thenthere's some challenges in the
(08:51):
authority to act against in thecyber world as well, too, which
is kind of where there's, Ithink some people were, I think,
you know, kind of, as Brian, yousaid, the breadth of the
discussion was great, but italso illustrated that there's so
many people involved with itthey had that ability to have
the authority to act can be verychallenging, and some things are
probably going to need tochange. Have to change in the
(09:12):
future as we confront these newthreats that are different from
the kind of traditional butstill quite, quite capable
threats in doing us harm, markor Brian, anything to add to
that.
Unknown (09:27):
Well again, just echoing Mark L, the thing that
struck home for me is also acomment that general McKenzie
made in his keynote and hiswelcome to everybody, national
policy, so we can, we can sithere and talk about a lot of
(09:50):
what these threats are,especially as we're talking
about drones. But as Mark said,it came up in my group too. We
need some authorities to be ableto defend. Our ports, and there
was interesting discussion, justin the diversity amongst the
ports that were in my room, youhad some that were dealing with
this on a regular basis. Somewere like, Oh, we don't have
(10:12):
that problem. Now, whether theydon't have it or don't know
about is a different, you know,discussion altogether, but, but
a national policy to give thosetypes of authorities, and if it
doesn't come from a nationallevel, we're focused on the
ports here in Florida. That's,that's an action we can take.
That's an action at least we canrecommend to Florida's
leadership, that this is, thisis a vital lifeline to not only
(10:37):
the state of Florida, but to theentire country. Many of the
speakers said that over and overagain, in different ways about
how many containers come throughPort, ports in Florida that go
the rest of the country, theeconomic vitality of our ports,
all those things are important.
But we don't want to bereactive. We need to be a little
bit more proactive. And one ofthe way, one of the pathways to
(11:00):
that is establishing somepolicy. Doesn't mean it has to
be perfect from the beginning,but at least we have something
that we can start shaping andforming as we go forward.
Jim Cardoso (11:10):
Yes, doing something of some sort. It's
interesting. You know, wedesigned this thing as we called
it, a Florida security forum.
National security issues aspecific, specific relevance to
the state of Florida. But as theconference went on, we sort of
saw, and you talked about, youecho general McKenzie's comments
that, yes, I mean, Port Securityis a vital interest to the state
(11:31):
of Florida, but some of theactions we may take, some of the
authorities that we may seek,it's, it's difficult a state
needs to do things, but it'sdifficult for just a state to
take action, because, especiallyin the cyber world, there's so
many ways in and so there needsto be something beyond just
state action as well to youknow, along the lines of the
(11:54):
national policy, which may needto be considered more fully. So
I think I don't know, I see inthe future that we are going to
want to get this information upto the state leadership. We're
going to want to make sure thatthey are understand the
challenges and seeking thedifferent policy actions. But at
the same time, it may not stopthere. We may need to find a way
(12:15):
to continue that conversation upto the to the federal level as
well, because of the nature oftoday's threats.
Unknown (12:25):
Well, I think that's kind of our identity, Florida's
identity, and that is not thatwe intend to do it and actually
mark glass said this great inhis speech. He said He said a
couple of things that werereally good, but one thing he
said is, you know, when you whenyou look at disaster response,
(12:49):
whether it be man made, whetherit be natural, it doesn't
matter. We aren't necessarilythe best at it, but we get good
at it, because we do it over andover again. And there's just a
lot of things that happen herein Florida because of the number
of deep water ports that wehave, that if we can figure it
(13:10):
out here, it can be of great aidto ports throughout the country.
And we have the unity of thestate where we have all these
deep water ports in the state,not to say that they're not
competitive, and not to saythat, you know they're they're
competing sometimes for the samepiece of business, but, but
there is a unified thoughtprocess there, that when the
(13:33):
proverbial brown stuff hits thecirculating device, we have to
do this together. And that wasechoed Mark glass said, Hey,
listen, I don't need access toyour data and things like that.
I need access to you. I need usto do this collectively. I
cannot do this all by myself.
And he said that, you know, theports, in his opinion, as the
Commissioner for FloridaDepartment of Law Enforcement,
(13:53):
that was a key priority on hishis list of challenges was the
security of our ports, yeah?
Mark Lutherthing, yeah, the only thing I
was going to add is that we'requite often constrained by
national policy and regulatorystructures as well as to what we
can do as a state. So that'swhy, yeah, this discussion can't
(14:16):
stop at Tallahassee. It has togo all the way up to the federal
chain of command, and then evenInternational Maritime
Organization has their own setsof international regulatory
devices, structures that that weneed to be compliant with, or
perhaps constrained by,
Jim Cardoso (14:39):
at least cognizant of. Let's put it that way, so we
can operate within the operatewithin the operating area and
within the operationalflexibility that we are given
Brian Langley, anything, anyanything to add to what these
two gentlemen have been saying.
No,
Unknown (14:52):
you know, I'll just reiterate the fact that it was
just great to see all thesedifferent thought leaders, and
it was also a testament to tohear people from different
perspectives. Have to is talkabout risks that you normally
don't think about, and each porthad different ways of addressing
it. So to me, it was like agreat assessment on the
environmental, security, fiscal,business piece of ports in
(15:14):
Florida, and they have all thesedifferent perspectives come in
really gave you a lot of goodgroundwork to build from, you
know, just having, you know,just having you know, folks
there from the four department,law enforcement, multiple, you
know, sectors, they're talkingabout different ways to approach
this problem, especially when itcomes to funding, it was just
great to be able to get thesefolks together and actually come
up with some concrete maybeafter actions.
Jim Cardoso (15:36):
I agree, completely good to have cyber Florida there
too. There's a little shout outfor you. Well,
Unknown (15:40):
thank you. Don't, don't partner.
Jim Cardoso (15:45):
All the partners were there, and it was good to
have them all kind of movingforward. Let's you know. Mark
Dupont, you you alluded to this.
So we'll start with you on thisnext question. You were all
involved in the smaller workinggroup sessions the next day
after the public event and andlike I said, Mark, you've sort
of, Mark D, you've sort ofstarted alluding that, but I
like to continue thisconversation. What, what stood
(16:06):
out from those deeperdiscussions, uh, especially that
those attending the first dayweren't able to be a part of
that. But may be interested inhearing about,
Unknown (16:16):
well, it was a fantastic process, because we
first just started saying, hey,what? What are your takeaways?
And asked of the group to throwup what they thought were key
takeaway points. And then whatthat evolved into, very quickly,
without me facilitating, thesekey takeaways would come up, and
they'd already start talkingabout what's needed to kind of
(16:37):
solve that particular problem,cyber attacks we already talked
about, but what they starteddrilling down into is the reason
we have this issue with cyberand specifically in the maritime
domain, as Mark Luther alludedto, is it's a very fragmented
approach to owning risk withinthe maritime Port
(16:59):
infrastructure. They do it at ahigh level. They say, We ought
to pay more attention to it.
They give it to it. And, youknow, how does that translate
into everybody? How does that goall the way down to when
someone's getting on boarded?
What are they taught? Andactually, that bled into
workforce needs and workforcedevelopment. And that bled into
(17:23):
Hey, you know, we, if we reallywant to prepare the maritime
industry for the future, and ourports in Florida in particular,
we have to really own thisworkforce development issue, and
as ports become even moreimportant. Again, I go back to
what J Todd Inman said in histalk about, hey, this is ports
(17:49):
are becoming more and morecritical as we want more and
more stuff, as more and morethings happen and as resources
might be moved towards bordersecurity and slightly away from
the focus of the port. So, soit's a it's a vital thing. So
people are important part ofthat puzzle. What do we do to
ensure that they're we'repreparing the force of the
(18:12):
future? And it got intorecommendations about how this
should it be embedded at Kthrough 12, and then, how do you
go about doing that, there wasdiscussions that went into great
detail, and again, the diversityBrian. Brian touched on this,
but I just want to emphasize thediversity of the people in the
forum and in the workshop theday after was tremendous. We
(18:35):
that's what really lit theconversations, because you would
have people from academia. I'lltalk about my work group in
particular. You had someoneprofessor from the University of
Rhode Island, talking about whatthey were doing as it relates to
natural disasters and and thatimpacted some people that were
in a smaller port. I had abigger port. I had cyber people.
(18:56):
I had a lot of people thatlooked at each problem together.
They didn't just sit back andsay, well, that's not my
problem. I'm a cyber guy, or I'ma big port, or I'm a little
port. They talked about whatthose challenges and obstacles
were, and then came up withrecommended solutions at the end
of the day. And it was, it wasvery rewarding.
Jim Cardoso (19:15):
Yeah, that's, that's great. That's what I saw,
too. I wasn't there the wholeday, but just kind of wander
around. That's what I saw, too,some really just great
discussions in depth stuff. Andthe folks the working group,
people there, they're reallyinvested in discussing the
problem, which, which is whatwe're after, too. When we we
kind of came up with this ideaof how to, how to, how to run
this two day event. BrianLangley, from your perspective,
anything you saw from theworking group sessions that you
(19:38):
want to talk to?
Unknown (19:38):
Yeah, I tell you, you're in on those things. If
you're you know, had the chance,you really, really appreciated
what we can do together toidentify risk and vulnerability.
And then, as our counterparts atIdaho National Lab, who was in
attendance, we talked aboutconsequence management, you
reverse engineer that and youfigure out, okay, so what can we
do to mitigate theseconsequences? By. Identifying
(20:00):
risks. And so we really got downto some tactical discussions. To
me, that was great about justtalking about governance. You
know, what can we do to expandour buffer zone? What can we do
to harness our economic impactareas, and what that might mean
to both supporting the portthrough a public, public and
private sector enterpriseapproach, to really show the the
(20:21):
impact the ports have, and ifthere's cascading incidences,
how do you actually addressthem? Because it will have
impact on our K through 12programs or public or private
sectors. So these ports that welooked at are just critically
core, vital machines economicprosperity. So we really were
able to kind of talk about whatwe heard, and drill down a
(20:41):
little bit further about whatkind of tactics could we do to
present to the state and to ourpolicy makers on what we are
finding, what we're doing, andsome additional due diligence
that we can use in partneringwith our academic partners to
help and support maybeadditional research on what both
Marx had talked about or Jim foryou. So I just felt we got even
deeper into what some of thesepossibilities are.
Jim Cardoso (21:05):
That's great.
That's a great answer, andthat's a thank you for that.
That summary there. Mark Luther,from your perspective, what did
you see?
Unknown (21:13):
We had a really interesting group. We had a wide
perspective. Mark DuPont touchedon it that and we had the
jacksport people and the PortCanaveral, and then the port
Putnam person in there, whichthat's a wide variety. I mean,
it's great, yeah, Jack's port isone of the biggest ports.
(21:33):
Portnam is by far the smallestport, and Canaveral somewhere in
between, and very diverseoperations. Port. Putnam is
basically just barges that cameway up the St John's. Canaveral
is almost exclusively cruiseships, one of the biggest cruise
ship ports. And thenJacksonville is a very diverse
(21:54):
port that moves just abouteverything that goes by ship. So
it was interesting to listen tothe mix of ideas and opinions
and concerns that that came outof that, that wide variety of
Port types. And again, that's asas again Mark DuPont alluded to
that's one of the perhaps uniquethings about the state of
(22:16):
Florida, is we do have these 16ports that span that entire
spectrum. And while there aresome commonalities among them,
they're all vastly different insome way as well. The old saying
that I've heard throughout myinteractions, if you've seen one
port, you've seen one port sobut we all have to play by the
same set of rules, and
Jim Cardoso (22:39):
no matter the size of the port, too, in a very
small port like Putnam, a hugeport like either port, Tampa
Bay, Jacksonville, Canaveral,with just 1000s and 1000s of
people that they have to beconcerned about in their cruise
in their cruise industry, yeah,they all have to. There are some
similarities. One thing, MarkDupont, you touched on, which I,
you know, I remember beingdiscussed, and this is on first
(23:02):
day, and it sounds like it wassecond day as well. That
relationship between OperationalTechnology and Information
Technology, and kind of mark youalluded to, you know, kind of
well, sometimes cybersecurity,if it's in the information
technology realm, will sort ofgive that to the IT folks, and
(23:24):
that's that's becoming less andless the right way to do things,
because of that link between OTand it and on just the
incredible damage that asophisticated cyber security
attack can can cause, even Tothe smallest port and even in
coming into a small port, itcould affect a larger port.
(23:44):
That's part of the same systemas we talked about as well. So I
mean, I thought, you know, Ithought that was interesting.
And both of you also talkedabout that workforce development
people have to understand. MarkLuth, you talked previously
about sometimes think thingssometimes don't always move at
lightning speed, right in termsof lessons learned and moving
forward. What are the nextthreats? But, yeah, there's,
(24:06):
there's a significant, you know,we have to make sure that we're
developing the next, the nextlevel of education for our
workforce to work in the portsof tomorrow. Any any thought, I
mean, anybody from, I just threwa bunch of stuff out there. Any
thoughts on that? From anyone?
Mark Dupont, looks like you
Unknown (24:23):
got Yeah, yeah. I just think whether you pick the cyber
discussion, whether you pick thedrone discussion, whether you
pick workforce development, allof them have threads that
overlap and are similar and itgoes back, I'm sorry, sound
redundant, but I keep going backto the guest speakers, because I
(24:45):
think they were so spot on insome of the things that they
said, Mark glass, we have to dothis together. The Lieutenant
Governor, you know, we needwarriors. And what he was saying
is, you know, no, I'm not askingall of you to, you know, take up
arms. But, but we. Need to beworking towards this common
goal. And everybody, if you lookat cyber, everybody in the
organization, has to have apiece of that and has to
(25:07):
recognize their piece of itagain throughout the two days.
Example upon example, was givenhow little of a breach caused
such large catastrophicoutcomes, and that when I say
little someone clicking onsomething, they shouldn't click
on someone not validating, youknow, where this particular
(25:30):
thing came from, or some of thebarriers that were in place at
that time or were not in time inmy group, I'll just simplify it
this way. There were fourprimary groups at the end of the
day on on the second day, wherewe kind of put everything in and
said it falls into these areas.
It falls into cyber, it fallsinto national policy, it falls
(25:50):
into workforce development, orit falls into a public private
partnership. And all of them areintertwined in cyber. We talked
a lot about everything I justsaid about it trickling down to
the lowest level. We talkedabout it from a funding
perspective too. In people haveto look at this as a look at it
from a balance sheet assessmentperspective of risk management,
(26:15):
as opposed to just, oh, this isthis thing that I'm going to buy
or implement that's going totake care of it and, and it's
not about what I'm going to do,what it's going to prevent from
happening. It's almost adiscussion about, if I don't do
this, this is what theconsequences will be. And that's
kind of a shift, and it goesthat trickled into the national
(26:36):
policy discussion. Security atthe port should be a national
mission, and it may requirenational standards. That's one
of the things that came out inour group, that there really
weren't some standards. Yes,you're required to have a CISO,
or you're required to have afacility security officer, but
what are the standards for that?
How do we measure this FSOagainst that FSO, this
(27:00):
particular training versus thatparticular training. National
Policy, also, we talked about itin supporting a national
accreditation model where, okay,yeah, you're required to do all
these things because of theMaritime Transportation Security
Act, and you have these rulesand regulations that you have to
play by. But who's to say that,having met that you exceed it,
(27:25):
you you go above and beyond, anddoes that create a competitive
advantage, or does that createan opportunity for you to reduce
your insurance costs and thingslike that? So that became a big
discussion in our group. Andlast but not least, was the was
the workforce development andhow do we start working on
creating awareness from a Kthrough 12 Level. What are we
(27:48):
doing to expose people to whatgoes on in ports and jobs that
they can have, whether they betrades or whether they be
working as a port executive? Howdo we fuel that to ensure that
we have the workforce of thefuture. You know, here's an
interesting thing. We got our 16ports. We don't have a Maritime
Academy in Florida. And you justpause that for a minute and
(28:12):
think about that in so if wetruly want to prepare ourselves
for the future, because thetheme we ended up with as it
related to funding of thefuture. It's about funding the
future, not not what I need togo get right now to replace this
camera or replace thisparticular widget that I have.
What am I doing to fund thefuture? Sorry, I went off on a
(28:35):
tangent. No,
Jim Cardoso (28:36):
and educate the future. Just got, you know, I'm
thinking of we were, I rememberduring the first day of the
conference I was we were sort ofjoking about a lot of the
experts. We had the civilianexperts, and we were joking
about how a lot of them were inthe Coast Guard previously, and
which is a good thing. It's anatural follow on. And no issue
with that. But it kind of, itkind of goes along the lines of,
(28:57):
there's really no MaritimeAcademy, so a lot of, where's
the education? Where's that?
Where's that directed educationcoming from? I mean, less, yes,
we needed, we need to leverageour Coast Guard veterans to help
that issue. But shouldn't therebe something beyond that as
well? Shouldn't there be a wayto educate like Brian is doing
in cyber Florida? You know,that's one of their main goals,
is educating K through 12 sothey understand what the cyber
(29:19):
threats are going forward. Thereshould be something similar in
the maritime realm, becausemaritime is not going away. The
ports are not going away intheir importance. In fact, as
Jay Collins and Mark glass said,they're only going to increase
in imports. So how are we, howare we proscriptively educating
the next generation, besidesrelying on wonderful and and,
and highly value Coast Guardveterans,
Unknown (29:43):
yeah, and there's a limited resource, even if you're
relying on those Coast Guardveterans. And of course, being
one, I love that concept, and Isupport it wholly. But you know,
even then, Jim, I'll make acomment, and I'm sure a lot of
my vets, when they listen tothis, I'll get an email or. A
text message afterwards. Butthat knowledge is limited.
(30:05):
Meaning you're born and raisedand grow up in the Coast Guard.
You You see things through thatperspective. I had the benefit
of doing reserve time and activetime and and I got to work in
the private sector. I got towork in law enforcement, at the
local level, at the state level,I got, I got exposed to a lot of
things, so it totally widened myview of how things should or
(30:27):
shouldn't be. So allowing ourkids and our young workforce to
be exposed to many differentopportunities is what only is
going to support us. And youknow, something simple we talked
about in our group, one of theports has done it, where you
adopt a high school, where thePort says, Hey, we adopted High
(30:48):
School X and and by adopting it,we means where they have field
trips to the port. It means wecome in and speak about things
that are related, maybe to thesubject that they're on at that
particular semester in school. Iwent so far as to say, Yeah,
well, every port should adopt auniversity too. It should be
higher level too. It should bewhat's our alignment to bring?
(31:11):
And again, I had the professor,Austin Becker from University of
Rhode Island, and sharing whathe was doing with the port
providence in in Rhode Island,but that perspective that they
come to look at particularproblems and share with the
port, hey, this is something youought to be paying attention to,
(31:32):
because this is what from anatural disaster perspective,
this is what might impact you,and here's how it's going to
impact you. Things that we wemay not think about, but
including academia in all levelsis only a benefit. And this,
again, goes right back to whatour guest speakers were saying.
This is how we do it together.
Jim Cardoso (31:53):
Yeah, Mark Luther or Brian, any, any additional
thoughts on the working groupbefore we kind of move on? Or
anything you want
Unknown (32:00):
to add to that well as an academic professor, I guess I
have to second some of whatMartin DuPont just said, and
we've been talking about thatwithin the university for a
while. I've had difficultygetting traction within our own
university here, but we've beenforging ahead anyway, and with
(32:23):
relationships with port TampaBay, internships that they offer
to help bring people on fromthat sort of higher end
management end of things. Andthe propeller club has a high
school outreach program to tryto get more young kids into the
(32:43):
maritime transportation world.
In fact, we've had several highschool kids that did go on to
some of the other maritimeacademies around the US. But
establishing some sort of aMaritime Academy within the
state of Florida would be anideal thing to improve our
workforce development.
Jim Cardoso (33:04):
That's very I mean, look, as we go forward to and
take this for that, that shouldbe one of the recommendations.
No, I mean, that's one of thethings, I agree, the state can
look at. So we'll see where itgoes. It's probably going to
take a lot, a lot more work thanjust suggesting, and everybody's
Oh, yeah, let's do that. But,but it does. I mean, look, a lot
of states in the in our nation,our our maritime states, no
(33:27):
question about that. But I mean,Florida's in the class by
itself. Obviously, it'ssurrounded on three sides by
water, and you know that that's,that is the, I don't the main
industry, but it's a, it's asignificant industry state of
Florida. So it would make senseFlorida leads the country a lot
of other ways. It would makesense for them to lead the
country in this way as well. Atleast it makes sense to me. So
(33:50):
all right, we'll make sure weadd that to the list of things
for Mark glass and Jay Collinsto think about. So moving moving
forward. Brian, I'm going tostart with you this time.
Everybody gets there, everybodygets at least one one shot, one
chance. On the Hot Seat of goingfirst. Yeah, you're welcome, no
problem. I'm hooking you up,brother. So benefit of
hindsight, you and look, this isa softball actually, because you
(34:12):
guys already talked about thisfor a while, but I'm gonna go
and go forward. Benefit ofhindsight, what may what? What
did we miss? What maybe we havemissed? You know, high temping,
2020, what? Should we have madesure we included in this
conference if we do somethingexactly like this next year, you
know remains we've seen howthat's going to look. What, what
do we need to make sure we hit?
Or when do we need to at leastmake sure we address with
(34:34):
Florida decision makers as a, asa as a result of this
conference, even if it wassomething we look at and say,
Oh, we didn't hit this as deeplyas we we should have. Again with
the benefit of hindsight, Brian,what do you think?
Unknown (34:50):
Yeah, I'll be straight up a miss would be if we don't
provide an after action to ourstate policymakers. Of all the
great things wrong we discusshere on this podcast, but what
we've documented. It asopportunities to grow and make,
you know Florida, a gateway forthe nation, and if not, you know
the world, if you will, in termsof our ports and what we can do
with these ports. So I thinkthat the biggest thing for me
being an inaugural event is Iwas hoping to see a little bit
(35:13):
more people there that weengage. But the turnout was
remarkable. And in addition tothat, the feedback and the
byproducts from theseconversations have got us to
this point where we have a lotof good things to work with. And
again, going back topartnerships, is your academic
partners, like at USF and cyberFlorida, and what marks do and
everything else, that's a greatresource. So if there's any
(35:35):
future edicts coming from thefederal government, DHS, CISA,
the Coast Guard, think for asecond where your academic
partners can sit down, identifythe need, the gap or the
problem, and work, you know,collaboratively to identify a
solution set. So for instance,if ports need security training,
cyber for at USF, and if I youhas resources that can augment
(35:56):
and support their training needsat no cost. So again, a key
takeaway for me is just makingsure that we follow up on the
great work that was done at thisinaugural event.
Jim Cardoso (36:06):
You're exactly right, and that's one thing that
we try very hard to do at GNSI,is not just have a conference.
You know, we all talk to eachother, we pat each other on the
back, and then we say, Allright, well, we'll talk again
next year. No, we want to havesome type and look, we gotta, I
have, I have it on video. I havethe Lieutenant Governor of the
state of Florida basicallydropping a mandate saying, I
(36:28):
need, that's right, you to helpus solve the problem. It's I'm
not gonna be able to do it. Ineed you to solve the problem. I
need you to bring your goodideas, and that's what we're
gonna do. And you know, if needbe if his, if his staff is
recalcitrant, to give his timeon his calendar, I will send
Unknown (36:45):
them that 32nd clip.
Well, it goes where GNSI thoughtleadership has come into play
with both marks and everyonewho's been contributing to this
is that shows the Moxie ofFlorida is having a group. And
this is not apple polishing,it's just, you know, fat, you
know, good thought leaders likeyou come in and really identify
these opportunities, and thatcan help lead the nation. And I
think that we have the capacityto do so, especially with, you
(37:06):
know, both marks, beyond thecall, you know, they know their
stuff, and then we startbreaking into this ecosystem, as
we call it, with the other mark,consortium management. We've got
some dynamic opportunities here.
Just have to, you know, can youcontinue the pressure and the
application of engagement, and Ithink USF can do a lot of that,
perhaps.
Jim Cardoso (37:25):
Yeah, no, I agree with that's a great answer. And
you work the word Moxie into it,and which is, which was, anytime
you could say Moxie, that is agreat diatribe, and I appreciate
it. Mark Luther, what do youthink anything benefit? I'd say
we may have, may have missed, orcould have done better again?
Unknown (37:43):
I would have thought that we would talk more about
some of the things that areactually in our maritime
security plan for for Tampa Bay,for example. And I understand
that drones and cyber the hottopics of the moment, but let's
just don't lose sight of themore run of the mill type.
Jim Cardoso (38:11):
Just because we didn't have any hurricanes this
year, thank goodness. Doesn'tmean that's not still
significant issue, which cancause national security issues
even when a port goes down forextended amount of time,
Unknown (38:23):
or something simple as grounding a ship in the middle
of the channel under the SkywayBridge that could take weeks or
months to clear without actuallydamaging the bridge, but still
constricts or blocks thechannel. That's one of our and,
of course, all the hazardouscargo that comes in and out of
Tampa Bay and probablyJacksonville, and lesser extent,
(38:48):
Fort Lauderdale and or PortEverglades in Miami. So but
that's the one thing that Iwould like to see us do better
on next time, is spend a littlemore time at least acknowledging
that those are things we need topay attention to as well and not
get too distracted by the newstuff, the
Jim Cardoso (39:10):
new the new the new cool, the new cool threats, if
that's even a term, but wehaven't saw the old ones, right.
We're still working to mitigatebest we can, but there's still
challenges with that. Yeah,
Unknown (39:22):
and with all the new technology that's coming along
that could be applied to thosethreats, as well as to the cyber
and drone type of threats, yeah,
Jim Cardoso (39:31):
maybe we may not be doing as much of an application
as you say, because we'relooking more at these, the sexy
new threats of drones and cyberand things like that, and the
high tech threats. Mark Dupont,from your perspective, what do
you think anything? What did wemiss?
Unknown (39:46):
I think it's good that we're asking the question, what
did we miss? But I think resteasy, what we did and what we
were able to accomplish wastremendous. I have been to a lot
of conferences. I've attendedthem, I've spoken at them, I've
done a lot of these maritimetype events. I was very
(40:06):
impressed in two things, one,the just how it was all put
together, and theprofessionalism that it was put
together. And no, I'm notgetting paid for that pat on the
back to giving you that Pat ofthe on the back, but it was very
well organized, including howthe forum was put forward. It
(40:27):
wasn't just people getting upthere with PowerPoints and
talking about their widget. Itwas people sitting around and
saying, Okay, let's let's talkabout this particular aspect of
the maritime industry, themaritime environment, and the
panels were all again, verydiverse, so you weren't getting
one singular, very narrowperspective. So I think the
(40:50):
quality of the event was topshelf. The second part was the
attendance. And, you know, bearin mind, we were in the middle
of the shutdown and many peoplecouldn't come that wanted to
come, but we still filled thatroom and had a number of people
online. So that says somethingright then and there. I think
(41:11):
that we need to recognize thatthis was needed, that there was
application for it. And to quotethe lieutenant governor, let's
not take our foot off theaccelerator, meaning, let's keep
going forward. Let's we. Thedoor has been open. The
opportunity has been given tous. Let's walk through it and
present those things, but let'snot give up. Next year, we can
(41:34):
fine tune it a little bit, andto mark luther's point, make
sure that we're not we focused alot looking forward. So I can
understand why we're talkingabout cyber and drones. One
focus can be, let's just stopfor a minute and let's forego
the future for a moment. What'sgoing on right here, right now?
What can we impact right here,right now? And that might be
(41:56):
part of the focus of the nextone.
Jim Cardoso (41:58):
Okay, no good. Good stuff. So we're kind of coming
into the end of our, of our timethat we set aside for this. So I
want to go ahead and go aroundthe room, both in person,
virtual for any for any finalthoughts. And Mark Luther, I'll
start off with you any finalthoughts.
Unknown (42:14):
I think it was an excellent two days, well spent,
and I'd love to be a part ofdoing it again at some time in
the near future, maybe not nextyear, but certainly within the
next two to three years. I thinkit'd be a great opportunity to
revisit this and see whatprogress has been made and where
(42:34):
we need to focus our efforts forthe coming few years.
Jim Cardoso (42:38):
Yeah, I you know, look what you and I have talked
offline. I think that GNSI andMartin Luther are gonna have a
continued relationship, and Ilook forward to that, you know?
I think that maybe it is nextyear, maybe it's a couple years
from now. We've done that too.
We did a from a GNSIperspective. We've done a
conference when we first startedoff on Ukraine and Russia, and
then we waited, and then aboutthree years later, we did
(43:00):
another one because, well, atthe time, we didn't think we'd
have to do another one. Wethought this be over by now, but
it's not. But also it gives youkind of some additional
perspective to look back andkind of address, hey, where do
we need to go from here? So it'svery valuable. So I can, I could
see that happening with thisparticular, this particular
issue, as well, but now we'lldefinitely keep it on the docket
(43:22):
for sure. Mark Dupont, from yourperspective, any final thoughts?
Unknown (43:27):
Well, I kind of said it in my last little diatribe there
for a minute, but I think it'sabout thinking and moving
outside the box. I think whatmade this successful is, again,
the approach to it and having adiscussion from the beginning
all the way to the end. Andpeople really valued that
discussion. I hope that thediscussion continues at the
(43:50):
leadership level, and I hope itcontinues into the years ahead,
because we've got to do thistogether. Nobody is going to do
this on their own.
Jim Cardoso (43:58):
Yeah, and it's in you said at the beginning too.
It's about action. What yousaid, it's not see something,
say something, and seesomething, do something. And
that's what we got, the mandatewe got as well from state
leadership. So we'll, we'll pickup that, pick up that gauntlet
ahead with it. Brian Langley,over to you any final thoughts,
Unknown (44:16):
yeah. Well, one, thank you so much for hosting, and
congratulations on a greatevent, all of you, but two, I
think we've created a movement.
I mean, I think that we've gotthe synergy now. We've got the
team, we've got the people, wegot the know how. We've got the
Moxie, we've got the ports, wegot the diversity. We can make
the business case. I thinkthere's a lot of opportunities
here that we've alreadyidentified, but more that we
probably haven't talked about.
(44:38):
So I think we just got to keepthat movement going. And I think
that the state's given us assupport, thanks to support
thanks to the LieutenantGovernor's remarks, and we'll
make that front and center. Sovery thankful to be a part of
this. Quite frankly, agree.
Jim Cardoso (44:50):
Mark, yep. Mark Luther, Mark Dupont, Brian
Langley, thank you very much foryour time today. Really enjoyed
our conversation. Thank you forthe opportunity. You. Special
thanks to our guests today, MarkLuther, director of the USF
center of maritime and portstudies, Mark Dupont, Executive
Director of the NationalMaritime Law Enforcement
Academy, and Brian Langley,senior executive advisor to
(45:14):
cyber Florida, all videos fromour panels and fireside chats
from the Florida security forumwill soon be available on our
YouTube channel. We also had theopportunity to sit down with a
few of our speakers at theforum. We'll look for those
interviews as well in the comingweeks and months before we end
the podcast today, a couplethings I want to tell you about
(45:36):
GNSI Senior Research Fellow, DrRob Burrell, no stranger to our
audience here on at the boundarywas featured on Tampa Bay's CBS
affiliated news this past week.
Rob focuses on resilience andresistance under the broader
umbrella of irregular warfare,and one of his focus areas is
Venezuela. He talked with WTSPTV about the escalating crisis
(45:57):
in that country, particularlythe possibility of the existing
government being overthrown.
It's a quick watch, butinsightful and important. We'll
drop a link to the story in theshow notes. Additionally, even
as winter descends on much ofthe country, not as much in
Florida, though I did have towear long pants last weekend,
(46:18):
it's not too early for you tostart making spring plans. Be
sure to include some time fromone of the most consequential
national security events of 2026the sixth GNSI Tampa Summit is
set from March 24 to the 25thhere on the Tampa campus at USF.
The Summit's theme is nuclearweapons and modern warfare,
(46:39):
while the use of nuclear weaponsseems unthinkable in the minds
of many in the west and aroundthe globe. That viewpoint is not
necessarily shared by our peersand adversaries, that reality
drives the need for clear eyedpolicy discussions and candid
recommendations to our nationalleaders. Tampa summit six will
bring together industry experts,scholars, government
(47:01):
representatives and studentsrepresenting our future national
security leaders to provide thatinsight and explore the evolving
role of nuclear technology inModern Warfare and geopolitics.
You can find more information onour website. Thanks for joining
us today on at the boundary.
Next week on the podcast, we'llbe talking with GNSI Research
Fellow, Dr Linda noan about herupcoming research article
(47:24):
addressing critical minerals andresources, specifically cobalt.
She's in the middle ofresearching that article, but is
dropping by to give us apreview. You don't want to miss
that episode or any other Besure to rate subscribe and let
your friends and colleagues.
Know if you're watching onYouTube, hit that like button,
subscribe and turn on alerts.
Follow along with GNSI on ourLinkedIn. Next accounts at USF,
(47:47):
underscore GNSI And check outour website as well at
usf.edu/gnsi, while you'rethere, subscribe to our monthly
newsletter to keep up with allthe GNSI latest
that's going to wrap up thisepisode of at the boundary. Each
(48:10):
new episode will feature globaland national security issues we
found to be insightful,intriguing, maybe controversial,
but overall, just worth talkingabout. I'm Jim Cardoso, and
we'll see you at the boundary.
You.
Jim. Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's
(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, apodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorfor GNSI, and your host for at
the boundary. Today on thepodcast, we've gathered some of
the key people involved in thecreation of our first ever
(00:34):
Florida security forum. Floridais a hub for defense,
international commerce andtechnological innovation and
plays a supersized role inshaping national security policy
and decisions. For this firstconference, the theme was port
and maritime security risks andresilience. We hosted the
conference in partnership withport Tampa Bay earlier this
(00:56):
month, and have been digginginto the findings for a couple
weeks in order to submitrecommendations to our state and
national policymakers. Joiningme on the podcast today are Mark
Luther, Associate Professor atUSF and the director for the
Center of maritime and portstudies. Mark Dupont, Executive
Director of the NationalMaritime Law Enforcement
(01:18):
Academy, and Brian Langley,senior executive advisor to the
Florida Center for CyberSecurity, better known as cyber
Florida. All three of our guestsplayed vital roles in the
creation and development of thisforum, and I'm happy to welcome
them to the podcast today. MarkLuther, Mark Dupont, Brian
Langley, welcome to the podcast.
So this podcast is more like avirtual panel than an interview
(01:44):
with all three of you here. Andwhile I look forward to hearing
from each of you on somequestions, please don't hesitate
to respond to another, anotheranswer or augment, or, you know,
refute, if you feel the need todo so professionally, that's
okay too, but we'll go ahead,just kick this off. So I'll
start with, since I'm in studiowith Mark Luther, so I'll start
(02:05):
with Mark Luther to answer thisquestion first, what is a what's
a single major takeaway you hadfrom the Florida security forum
we did, I mean, I noted acontinuing return to the
vulnerabilities presented bydrones in the physical security
space, and also just the cybersecurity concerns as well. But
anything you noted,
Unknown (02:28):
I was a little surprised at almost tunnel
vision on drones and cybersecurity, while I understand
that they're a new and emergingthreat, I didn't hear very much
about the more traditionalthreats that we constantly talk
about at the area maritimesecurity committee and things
(02:50):
like that. And even in my subpanel on the working groups, we
were supposed to be talkingabout critical events. We didn't
talk very much about the sort oftraditional critical events that
that we are all concerned about,you know, attack on a passenger
vessel, or attack on a bridge orthings like that. So I thought
(03:15):
there was a lot of goodconversation about these new and
emerging threats, but I wasexpecting more conversation
about the more, shall we say,mundane,
Jim Cardoso (03:27):
perhaps mundane, but still threatening ones,
right?
Unknown (03:30):
Yeah, with great potential to shut the port down,
and it wasn't as much discussionas I'd hoped on natural disaster
threats and how much that candisrupt port operations and
destroy infrastructure?
Jim Cardoso (03:46):
Yeah, no, I Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense, and Inoted that too. Mark Dupont, how
about your take any, any singlemajor takeaways you had from the
conference? Well
Unknown (03:58):
before Mark started talking, I was stumbling to
think of one thing that was thesingular most important or
notable thing to come out of it.
But when Mark just gave hispoint about cyber and drones, I
have to echo it so much so thatour subgroup, when we were
looking at, you know, what werethose key takeaways, when asking
(04:18):
them that question. They broughtup cyber, but they brought up,
are we missing something elsebecause all of our attention is
focused on cyber and or drones?
So I thought that was prettyinsightful of the group. But
aside from that, if there wassomething else I could pick, I
(04:40):
would have to pick theLieutenant Governor's speech,
and one of the key things thathe echoed, and I'll just use the
word accelerate. We need tomove. We can't keep sitting
around talking about things. Wehave to take action. And that
kind of echoes what Jay talked.
Todd Inman spoke about from NTSBwhen he said, it's no longer
(05:02):
about See Something, SaySomething. It's about see
something, do something. Sothere was a there was a action
oriented theme, not only in ourdiscussions on day one, but when
it translates into the workshopsthat we had on day two.
Everybody was what do we have todo about it, not just pointing
to what the potential problemsare. So that was an important
(05:25):
takeaway for me, and it wasgreat to be a part
Jim Cardoso (05:31):
of, yeah, and I want to follow up in a little
bit on the day two as well,because, you know, a lot of
people that came to theconference that may be
listening, they were not at daytwo. So I would like to talk a
little bit about that, butbefore we but before we do that,
over to Brian Langley, any majortakeaway you had from the FSF
from what you saw? Yeah, no,
Unknown (05:48):
thank you. I think the major takeaway for me was just
getting all these thoughtleaders together, talking about
ports at large, and all thesidebar conversations that
related to like port security,economic security as port
security and vice versa. Ithought it was just great to see
so many different thoughtleaders come in and discuss, you
know, generally, what can we doas a state, reflecting our
(06:10):
communities on the supporting,you know, the Florida port
ecosystem. So to me, it kind ofcreated, if you will, a bridge
on just getting all thesedifferent groups together in a
consistent, policy drivenmanner. So I That, for me, it
was a great takeaway.
Jim Cardoso (06:25):
Yeah, it was good and what, that's where we're
going for we're trying to bring,you know, that's one thing we do
at genocide, try to bringtogether government, industry,
the academia, all together. Getsome breadth of that discussion.
I want to go back to one thing.
So that mark, both Mark sort ofalluded, to, was kind of, again,
the tunnel vision, as was, Ithink was a term used on
definite threats. I mean,cybersecurity is a threat.
(06:49):
Drones are a threat. There's noquestion about that. Do you
think that the focus on that?
And I'll ask Mark l first, doyou think the focus on that was
an upgrade? Upgrade is the wrongword, an update, maybe in the
thinking, was it just anoversight combination of the
(07:10):
two? Or what would you classifyit?
Unknown (07:12):
Well, I think there is so much focus on those two
things, and so few in themaritime transportation world
know how to respond to that, andagain, with drones, we have so
few tools that we're evenallowed to put to bring to bear
on the problem, because of theregulatory structures are
(07:34):
lagging far behind the actualtechnologies to cause harm with
those sorts of things, because,again, you can't shoot at a
drone. You can't, you can'tbother it at all under FAA
regulations. And there's a lot,there was a lot of discussion
about how that needs to change.
And then the maritime world hasbeen very slow to embrace the
(07:58):
cybersecurity aspects of whatcan go wrong, even though we've
had some fairly disruptiveattacks on Maersk and Porter
Rotterdam and others that havehad major implications. So
that's just coming to themindset, or the attention of a
(08:20):
lot of people who have been inthis maritime world a long time
and aren't used to thinkingabout such things.
Jim Cardoso (08:29):
Yeah, you know, I and it made me think of another
thing kind of a takeaway, as Igo back, and you sort of alluded
to it, is the authorization, theauthority to operate. Well, at O
is a specific term, but I'd saythe authority to to act. And
Mark Dupont, you talked aboutacting, which, you know,
completely agree with. But thenthere's some challenges in the
(08:51):
authority to act against in thecyber world as well, too, which
is kind of where there's, Ithink some people were, I think,
you know, kind of, as Brian, yousaid, the breadth of the
discussion was great, but italso illustrated that there's so
many people involved with itthey had that ability to have
the authority to act can be verychallenging, and some things are
probably going to need tochange. Have to change in the
(09:12):
future as we confront these newthreats that are different from
the kind of traditional butstill quite, quite capable
threats in doing us harm, markor Brian, anything to add to
that.
Unknown (09:27):
Well again, just echoing Mark L, the thing that
struck home for me is also acomment that general McKenzie
made in his keynote and hiswelcome to everybody, national
policy, so we can, we can sithere and talk about a lot of
(09:50):
what these threats are,especially as we're talking
about drones. But as Mark said,it came up in my group too. We
need some authorities to be ableto defend. Our ports, and there
was interesting discussion, justin the diversity amongst the
ports that were in my room, youhad some that were dealing with
this on a regular basis. Somewere like, Oh, we don't have
(10:12):
that problem. Now, whether theydon't have it or don't know
about is a different, you know,discussion altogether, but, but
a national policy to give thosetypes of authorities, and if it
doesn't come from a nationallevel, we're focused on the
ports here in Florida. That's,that's an action we can take.
That's an action at least we canrecommend to Florida's
leadership, that this is, thisis a vital lifeline to not only
(10:37):
the state of Florida, but to theentire country. Many of the
speakers said that over and overagain, in different ways about
how many containers come throughPort, ports in Florida that go
the rest of the country, theeconomic vitality of our ports,
all those things are important.
But we don't want to bereactive. We need to be a little
bit more proactive. And one ofthe way, one of the pathways to
(11:00):
that is establishing somepolicy. Doesn't mean it has to
be perfect from the beginning,but at least we have something
that we can start shaping andforming as we go forward.
Jim Cardoso (11:10):
Yes, doing something of some sort. It's
interesting. You know, wedesigned this thing as we called
it, a Florida security forum.
National security issues aspecific, specific relevance to
the state of Florida. But as theconference went on, we sort of
saw, and you talked about, youecho general McKenzie's comments
that, yes, I mean, Port Securityis a vital interest to the state
(11:31):
of Florida, but some of theactions we may take, some of the
authorities that we may seek,it's, it's difficult a state
needs to do things, but it'sdifficult for just a state to
take action, because, especiallyin the cyber world, there's so
many ways in and so there needsto be something beyond just
state action as well to youknow, along the lines of the
(11:54):
national policy, which may needto be considered more fully. So
I think I don't know, I see inthe future that we are going to
want to get this information upto the state leadership. We're
going to want to make sure thatthey are understand the
challenges and seeking thedifferent policy actions. But at
the same time, it may not stopthere. We may need to find a way
(12:15):
to continue that conversation upto the to the federal level as
well, because of the nature oftoday's threats.
Unknown (12:25):
Well, I think that's kind of our identity, Florida's
identity, and that is not thatwe intend to do it and actually
mark glass said this great inhis speech. He said He said a
couple of things that werereally good, but one thing he
said is, you know, when you whenyou look at disaster response,
(12:49):
whether it be man made, whetherit be natural, it doesn't
matter. We aren't necessarilythe best at it, but we get good
at it, because we do it over andover again. And there's just a
lot of things that happen herein Florida because of the number
of deep water ports that wehave, that if we can figure it
(13:10):
out here, it can be of great aidto ports throughout the country.
And we have the unity of thestate where we have all these
deep water ports in the state,not to say that they're not
competitive, and not to saythat, you know they're they're
competing sometimes for the samepiece of business, but, but
there is a unified thoughtprocess there, that when the
(13:33):
proverbial brown stuff hits thecirculating device, we have to
do this together. And that wasechoed Mark glass said, Hey,
listen, I don't need access toyour data and things like that.
I need access to you. I need usto do this collectively. I
cannot do this all by myself.
And he said that, you know, theports, in his opinion, as the
Commissioner for FloridaDepartment of Law Enforcement,
(13:53):
that was a key priority on hishis list of challenges was the
security of our ports, yeah?
Mark Lutherthing, yeah, the only thing I
was going to add is that we'requite often constrained by
national policy and regulatorystructures as well as to what we
can do as a state. So that'swhy, yeah, this discussion can't
(14:16):
stop at Tallahassee. It has togo all the way up to the federal
chain of command, and then evenInternational Maritime
Organization has their own setsof international regulatory
devices, structures that that weneed to be compliant with, or
perhaps constrained by,
Jim Cardoso (14:39):
at least cognizant of. Let's put it that way, so we
can operate within the operatewithin the operating area and
within the operationalflexibility that we are given
Brian Langley, anything, anyanything to add to what these
two gentlemen have been saying.
No,
Unknown (14:52):
you know, I'll just reiterate the fact that it was
just great to see all thesedifferent thought leaders, and
it was also a testament to tohear people from different
perspectives. Have to is talkabout risks that you normally
don't think about, and each porthad different ways of addressing
it. So to me, it was like agreat assessment on the
environmental, security, fiscal,business piece of ports in
(15:14):
Florida, and they have all thesedifferent perspectives come in
really gave you a lot of goodgroundwork to build from, you
know, just having, you know,just having you know, folks
there from the four department,law enforcement, multiple, you
know, sectors, they're talkingabout different ways to approach
this problem, especially when itcomes to funding, it was just
great to be able to get thesefolks together and actually come
up with some concrete maybeafter actions.
Jim Cardoso (15:36):
I agree, completely good to have cyber Florida there
too. There's a little shout outfor you. Well,
Unknown (15:40):
thank you. Don't, don't partner.
Jim Cardoso (15:45):
All the partners were there, and it was good to
have them all kind of movingforward. Let's you know. Mark
Dupont, you you alluded to this.
So we'll start with you on thisnext question. You were all
involved in the smaller workinggroup sessions the next day
after the public event and andlike I said, Mark, you've sort
of, Mark D, you've sort ofstarted alluding that, but I
like to continue thisconversation. What, what stood
(16:06):
out from those deeperdiscussions, uh, especially that
those attending the first dayweren't able to be a part of
that. But may be interested inhearing about,
Unknown (16:16):
well, it was a fantastic process, because we
first just started saying, hey,what? What are your takeaways?
And asked of the group to throwup what they thought were key
takeaway points. And then whatthat evolved into, very quickly,
without me facilitating, thesekey takeaways would come up, and
they'd already start talkingabout what's needed to kind of
(16:37):
solve that particular problem,cyber attacks we already talked
about, but what they starteddrilling down into is the reason
we have this issue with cyberand specifically in the maritime
domain, as Mark Luther alludedto, is it's a very fragmented
approach to owning risk withinthe maritime Port
(16:59):
infrastructure. They do it at ahigh level. They say, We ought
to pay more attention to it.
They give it to it. And, youknow, how does that translate
into everybody? How does that goall the way down to when
someone's getting on boarded?
What are they taught? Andactually, that bled into
workforce needs and workforcedevelopment. And that bled into
(17:23):
Hey, you know, we, if we reallywant to prepare the maritime
industry for the future, and ourports in Florida in particular,
we have to really own thisworkforce development issue, and
as ports become even moreimportant. Again, I go back to
what J Todd Inman said in histalk about, hey, this is ports
(17:49):
are becoming more and morecritical as we want more and
more stuff, as more and morethings happen and as resources
might be moved towards bordersecurity and slightly away from
the focus of the port. So, soit's a it's a vital thing. So
people are important part ofthat puzzle. What do we do to
ensure that they're we'repreparing the force of the
(18:12):
future? And it got intorecommendations about how this
should it be embedded at Kthrough 12, and then, how do you
go about doing that, there wasdiscussions that went into great
detail, and again, the diversityBrian. Brian touched on this,
but I just want to emphasize thediversity of the people in the
forum and in the workshop theday after was tremendous. We
(18:35):
that's what really lit theconversations, because you would
have people from academia. I'lltalk about my work group in
particular. You had someoneprofessor from the University of
Rhode Island, talking about whatthey were doing as it relates to
natural disasters and and thatimpacted some people that were
in a smaller port. I had abigger port. I had cyber people.
(18:56):
I had a lot of people thatlooked at each problem together.
They didn't just sit back andsay, well, that's not my
problem. I'm a cyber guy, or I'ma big port, or I'm a little
port. They talked about whatthose challenges and obstacles
were, and then came up withrecommended solutions at the end
of the day. And it was, it wasvery rewarding.
Jim Cardoso (19:15):
Yeah, that's, that's great. That's what I saw,
too. I wasn't there the wholeday, but just kind of wander
around. That's what I saw, too,some really just great
discussions in depth stuff. Andthe folks the working group,
people there, they're reallyinvested in discussing the
problem, which, which is whatwe're after, too. When we we
kind of came up with this ideaof how to, how to, how to run
this two day event. BrianLangley, from your perspective,
anything you saw from theworking group sessions that you
(19:38):
want to talk to?
Unknown (19:38):
Yeah, I tell you, you're in on those things. If
you're you know, had the chance,you really, really appreciated
what we can do together toidentify risk and vulnerability.
And then, as our counterparts atIdaho National Lab, who was in
attendance, we talked aboutconsequence management, you
reverse engineer that and youfigure out, okay, so what can we
do to mitigate theseconsequences? By. Identifying
(20:00):
risks. And so we really got downto some tactical discussions. To
me, that was great about justtalking about governance. You
know, what can we do to expandour buffer zone? What can we do
to harness our economic impactareas, and what that might mean
to both supporting the portthrough a public, public and
private sector enterpriseapproach, to really show the the
(20:21):
impact the ports have, and ifthere's cascading incidences,
how do you actually addressthem? Because it will have
impact on our K through 12programs or public or private
sectors. So these ports that welooked at are just critically
core, vital machines economicprosperity. So we really were
able to kind of talk about whatwe heard, and drill down a
(20:41):
little bit further about whatkind of tactics could we do to
present to the state and to ourpolicy makers on what we are
finding, what we're doing, andsome additional due diligence
that we can use in partneringwith our academic partners to
help and support maybeadditional research on what both
Marx had talked about or Jim foryou. So I just felt we got even
deeper into what some of thesepossibilities are.
Jim Cardoso (21:05):
That's great.
That's a great answer, andthat's a thank you for that.
That summary there. Mark Luther,from your perspective, what did
you see?
Unknown (21:13):
We had a really interesting group. We had a wide
perspective. Mark DuPont touchedon it that and we had the
jacksport people and the PortCanaveral, and then the port
Putnam person in there, whichthat's a wide variety. I mean,
it's great, yeah, Jack's port isone of the biggest ports.
(21:33):
Portnam is by far the smallestport, and Canaveral somewhere in
between, and very diverseoperations. Port. Putnam is
basically just barges that cameway up the St John's. Canaveral
is almost exclusively cruiseships, one of the biggest cruise
ship ports. And thenJacksonville is a very diverse
(21:54):
port that moves just abouteverything that goes by ship. So
it was interesting to listen tothe mix of ideas and opinions
and concerns that that came outof that, that wide variety of
Port types. And again, that's asas again Mark DuPont alluded to
that's one of the perhaps uniquethings about the state of
(22:16):
Florida, is we do have these 16ports that span that entire
spectrum. And while there aresome commonalities among them,
they're all vastly different insome way as well. The old saying
that I've heard throughout myinteractions, if you've seen one
port, you've seen one port sobut we all have to play by the
same set of rules, and
Jim Cardoso (22:39):
no matter the size of the port, too, in a very
small port like Putnam, a hugeport like either port, Tampa
Bay, Jacksonville, Canaveral,with just 1000s and 1000s of
people that they have to beconcerned about in their cruise
in their cruise industry, yeah,they all have to. There are some
similarities. One thing, MarkDupont, you touched on, which I,
you know, I remember beingdiscussed, and this is on first
(23:02):
day, and it sounds like it wassecond day as well. That
relationship between OperationalTechnology and Information
Technology, and kind of mark youalluded to, you know, kind of
well, sometimes cybersecurity,if it's in the information
technology realm, will sort ofgive that to the IT folks, and
(23:24):
that's that's becoming less andless the right way to do things,
because of that link between OTand it and on just the
incredible damage that asophisticated cyber security
attack can can cause, even Tothe smallest port and even in
coming into a small port, itcould affect a larger port.
(23:44):
That's part of the same systemas we talked about as well. So I
mean, I thought, you know, Ithought that was interesting.
And both of you also talkedabout that workforce development
people have to understand. MarkLuth, you talked previously
about sometimes think thingssometimes don't always move at
lightning speed, right in termsof lessons learned and moving
forward. What are the nextthreats? But, yeah, there's,
(24:06):
there's a significant, you know,we have to make sure that we're
developing the next, the nextlevel of education for our
workforce to work in the portsof tomorrow. Any any thought, I
mean, anybody from, I just threwa bunch of stuff out there. Any
thoughts on that? From anyone?
Mark Dupont, looks like you
Unknown (24:23):
got Yeah, yeah. I just think whether you pick the cyber
discussion, whether you pick thedrone discussion, whether you
pick workforce development, allof them have threads that
overlap and are similar and itgoes back, I'm sorry, sound
redundant, but I keep going backto the guest speakers, because I
(24:45):
think they were so spot on insome of the things that they
said, Mark glass, we have to dothis together. The Lieutenant
Governor, you know, we needwarriors. And what he was saying
is, you know, no, I'm not askingall of you to, you know, take up
arms. But, but we. Need to beworking towards this common
goal. And everybody, if you lookat cyber, everybody in the
organization, has to have apiece of that and has to
(25:07):
recognize their piece of itagain throughout the two days.
Example upon example, was givenhow little of a breach caused
such large catastrophicoutcomes, and that when I say
little someone clicking onsomething, they shouldn't click
on someone not validating, youknow, where this particular
(25:30):
thing came from, or some of thebarriers that were in place at
that time or were not in time inmy group, I'll just simplify it
this way. There were fourprimary groups at the end of the
day on on the second day, wherewe kind of put everything in and
said it falls into these areas.
It falls into cyber, it fallsinto national policy, it falls
(25:50):
into workforce development, orit falls into a public private
partnership. And all of them areintertwined in cyber. We talked
a lot about everything I justsaid about it trickling down to
the lowest level. We talkedabout it from a funding
perspective too. In people haveto look at this as a look at it
from a balance sheet assessmentperspective of risk management,
(26:15):
as opposed to just, oh, this isthis thing that I'm going to buy
or implement that's going totake care of it and, and it's
not about what I'm going to do,what it's going to prevent from
happening. It's almost adiscussion about, if I don't do
this, this is what theconsequences will be. And that's
kind of a shift, and it goesthat trickled into the national
(26:36):
policy discussion. Security atthe port should be a national
mission, and it may requirenational standards. That's one
of the things that came out inour group, that there really
weren't some standards. Yes,you're required to have a CISO,
or you're required to have afacility security officer, but
what are the standards for that?
How do we measure this FSOagainst that FSO, this
(27:00):
particular training versus thatparticular training. National
Policy, also, we talked about itin supporting a national
accreditation model where, okay,yeah, you're required to do all
these things because of theMaritime Transportation Security
Act, and you have these rulesand regulations that you have to
play by. But who's to say that,having met that you exceed it,
(27:25):
you you go above and beyond, anddoes that create a competitive
advantage, or does that createan opportunity for you to reduce
your insurance costs and thingslike that? So that became a big
discussion in our group. Andlast but not least, was the was
the workforce development andhow do we start working on
creating awareness from a Kthrough 12 Level. What are we
(27:48):
doing to expose people to whatgoes on in ports and jobs that
they can have, whether they betrades or whether they be
working as a port executive? Howdo we fuel that to ensure that
we have the workforce of thefuture. You know, here's an
interesting thing. We got our 16ports. We don't have a Maritime
Academy in Florida. And you justpause that for a minute and
(28:12):
think about that in so if wetruly want to prepare ourselves
for the future, because thetheme we ended up with as it
related to funding of thefuture. It's about funding the
future, not not what I need togo get right now to replace this
camera or replace thisparticular widget that I have.
What am I doing to fund thefuture? Sorry, I went off on a
(28:35):
tangent. No,
Jim Cardoso (28:36):
and educate the future. Just got, you know, I'm
thinking of we were, I rememberduring the first day of the
conference I was we were sort ofjoking about a lot of the
experts. We had the civilianexperts, and we were joking
about how a lot of them were inthe Coast Guard previously, and
which is a good thing. It's anatural follow on. And no issue
with that. But it kind of, itkind of goes along the lines of,
(28:57):
there's really no MaritimeAcademy, so a lot of, where's
the education? Where's that?
Where's that directed educationcoming from? I mean, less, yes,
we needed, we need to leverageour Coast Guard veterans to help
that issue. But shouldn't therebe something beyond that as
well? Shouldn't there be a wayto educate like Brian is doing
in cyber Florida? You know,that's one of their main goals,
is educating K through 12 sothey understand what the cyber
(29:19):
threats are going forward. Thereshould be something similar in
the maritime realm, becausemaritime is not going away. The
ports are not going away intheir importance. In fact, as
Jay Collins and Mark glass said,they're only going to increase
in imports. So how are we, howare we proscriptively educating
the next generation, besidesrelying on wonderful and and,
and highly value Coast Guardveterans,
Unknown (29:43):
yeah, and there's a limited resource, even if you're
relying on those Coast Guardveterans. And of course, being
one, I love that concept, and Isupport it wholly. But you know,
even then, Jim, I'll make acomment, and I'm sure a lot of
my vets, when they listen tothis, I'll get an email or. A
text message afterwards. Butthat knowledge is limited.
(30:05):
Meaning you're born and raisedand grow up in the Coast Guard.
You You see things through thatperspective. I had the benefit
of doing reserve time and activetime and and I got to work in
the private sector. I got towork in law enforcement, at the
local level, at the state level,I got, I got exposed to a lot of
things, so it totally widened myview of how things should or
(30:27):
shouldn't be. So allowing ourkids and our young workforce to
be exposed to many differentopportunities is what only is
going to support us. And youknow, something simple we talked
about in our group, one of theports has done it, where you
adopt a high school, where thePort says, Hey, we adopted High
(30:48):
School X and and by adopting it,we means where they have field
trips to the port. It means wecome in and speak about things
that are related, maybe to thesubject that they're on at that
particular semester in school. Iwent so far as to say, Yeah,
well, every port should adopt auniversity too. It should be
higher level too. It should bewhat's our alignment to bring?
(31:11):
And again, I had the professor,Austin Becker from University of
Rhode Island, and sharing whathe was doing with the port
providence in in Rhode Island,but that perspective that they
come to look at particularproblems and share with the
port, hey, this is something youought to be paying attention to,
(31:32):
because this is what from anatural disaster perspective,
this is what might impact you,and here's how it's going to
impact you. Things that we wemay not think about, but
including academia in all levelsis only a benefit. And this,
again, goes right back to whatour guest speakers were saying.
This is how we do it together.
Jim Cardoso (31:53):
Yeah, Mark Luther or Brian, any, any additional
thoughts on the working groupbefore we kind of move on? Or
anything you want
Unknown (32:00):
to add to that well as an academic professor, I guess I
have to second some of whatMartin DuPont just said, and
we've been talking about thatwithin the university for a
while. I've had difficultygetting traction within our own
university here, but we've beenforging ahead anyway, and with
(32:23):
relationships with port TampaBay, internships that they offer
to help bring people on fromthat sort of higher end
management end of things. Andthe propeller club has a high
school outreach program to tryto get more young kids into the
(32:43):
maritime transportation world.
In fact, we've had several highschool kids that did go on to
some of the other maritimeacademies around the US. But
establishing some sort of aMaritime Academy within the
state of Florida would be anideal thing to improve our
workforce development.
Jim Cardoso (33:04):
That's very I mean, look, as we go forward to and
take this for that, that shouldbe one of the recommendations.
No, I mean, that's one of thethings, I agree, the state can
look at. So we'll see where itgoes. It's probably going to
take a lot, a lot more work thanjust suggesting, and everybody's
Oh, yeah, let's do that. But,but it does. I mean, look, a lot
of states in the in our nation,our our maritime states, no
(33:27):
question about that. But I mean,Florida's in the class by
itself. Obviously, it'ssurrounded on three sides by
water, and you know that that's,that is the, I don't the main
industry, but it's a, it's asignificant industry state of
Florida. So it would make senseFlorida leads the country a lot
of other ways. It would makesense for them to lead the
country in this way as well. Atleast it makes sense to me. So
(33:50):
all right, we'll make sure weadd that to the list of things
for Mark glass and Jay Collinsto think about. So moving moving
forward. Brian, I'm going tostart with you this time.
Everybody gets there, everybodygets at least one one shot, one
chance. On the Hot Seat of goingfirst. Yeah, you're welcome, no
problem. I'm hooking you up,brother. So benefit of
hindsight, you and look, this isa softball actually, because you
(34:12):
guys already talked about thisfor a while, but I'm gonna go
and go forward. Benefit ofhindsight, what may what? What
did we miss? What maybe we havemissed? You know, high temping,
2020, what? Should we have madesure we included in this
conference if we do somethingexactly like this next year, you
know remains we've seen howthat's going to look. What, what
do we need to make sure we hit?
Or when do we need to at leastmake sure we address with
(34:34):
Florida decision makers as a, asa as a result of this
conference, even if it wassomething we look at and say,
Oh, we didn't hit this as deeplyas we we should have. Again with
the benefit of hindsight, Brian,what do you think?
Unknown (34:50):
Yeah, I'll be straight up a miss would be if we don't
provide an after action to ourstate policymakers. Of all the
great things wrong we discusshere on this podcast, but what
we've documented. It asopportunities to grow and make,
you know Florida, a gateway forthe nation, and if not, you know
the world, if you will, in termsof our ports and what we can do
with these ports. So I thinkthat the biggest thing for me
being an inaugural event is Iwas hoping to see a little bit
(35:13):
more people there that weengage. But the turnout was
remarkable. And in addition tothat, the feedback and the
byproducts from theseconversations have got us to
this point where we have a lotof good things to work with. And
again, going back topartnerships, is your academic
partners, like at USF and cyberFlorida, and what marks do and
everything else, that's a greatresource. So if there's any
(35:35):
future edicts coming from thefederal government, DHS, CISA,
the Coast Guard, think for asecond where your academic
partners can sit down, identifythe need, the gap or the
problem, and work, you know,collaboratively to identify a
solution set. So for instance,if ports need security training,
cyber for at USF, and if I youhas resources that can augment
(35:56):
and support their training needsat no cost. So again, a key
takeaway for me is just makingsure that we follow up on the
great work that was done at thisinaugural event.
Jim Cardoso (36:06):
You're exactly right, and that's one thing that
we try very hard to do at GNSI,is not just have a conference.
You know, we all talk to eachother, we pat each other on the
back, and then we say, Allright, well, we'll talk again
next year. No, we want to havesome type and look, we gotta, I
have, I have it on video. I havethe Lieutenant Governor of the
state of Florida basicallydropping a mandate saying, I
(36:28):
need, that's right, you to helpus solve the problem. It's I'm
not gonna be able to do it. Ineed you to solve the problem. I
need you to bring your goodideas, and that's what we're
gonna do. And you know, if needbe if his, if his staff is
recalcitrant, to give his timeon his calendar, I will send
Unknown (36:45):
them that 32nd clip.
Well, it goes where GNSI thoughtleadership has come into play
with both marks and everyonewho's been contributing to this
is that shows the Moxie ofFlorida is having a group. And
this is not apple polishing,it's just, you know, fat, you
know, good thought leaders likeyou come in and really identify
these opportunities, and thatcan help lead the nation. And I
think that we have the capacityto do so, especially with, you
(37:06):
know, both marks, beyond thecall, you know, they know their
stuff, and then we startbreaking into this ecosystem, as
we call it, with the other mark,consortium management. We've got
some dynamic opportunities here.
Just have to, you know, can youcontinue the pressure and the
application of engagement, and Ithink USF can do a lot of that,
perhaps.
Jim Cardoso (37:25):
Yeah, no, I agree with that's a great answer. And
you work the word Moxie into it,and which is, which was, anytime
you could say Moxie, that is agreat diatribe, and I appreciate
it. Mark Luther, what do youthink anything benefit? I'd say
we may have, may have missed, orcould have done better again?
Unknown (37:43):
I would have thought that we would talk more about
some of the things that areactually in our maritime
security plan for for Tampa Bay,for example. And I understand
that drones and cyber the hottopics of the moment, but let's
just don't lose sight of themore run of the mill type.
Jim Cardoso (38:11):
Just because we didn't have any hurricanes this
year, thank goodness. Doesn'tmean that's not still
significant issue, which cancause national security issues
even when a port goes down forextended amount of time,
Unknown (38:23):
or something simple as grounding a ship in the middle
of the channel under the SkywayBridge that could take weeks or
months to clear without actuallydamaging the bridge, but still
constricts or blocks thechannel. That's one of our and,
of course, all the hazardouscargo that comes in and out of
Tampa Bay and probablyJacksonville, and lesser extent,
(38:48):
Fort Lauderdale and or PortEverglades in Miami. So but
that's the one thing that Iwould like to see us do better
on next time, is spend a littlemore time at least acknowledging
that those are things we need topay attention to as well and not
get too distracted by the newstuff, the
Jim Cardoso (39:10):
new the new the new cool, the new cool threats, if
that's even a term, but wehaven't saw the old ones, right.
We're still working to mitigatebest we can, but there's still
challenges with that. Yeah,
Unknown (39:22):
and with all the new technology that's coming along
that could be applied to thosethreats, as well as to the cyber
and drone type of threats, yeah,
Jim Cardoso (39:31):
maybe we may not be doing as much of an application
as you say, because we'relooking more at these, the sexy
new threats of drones and cyberand things like that, and the
high tech threats. Mark Dupont,from your perspective, what do
you think anything? What did wemiss?
Unknown (39:46):
I think it's good that we're asking the question, what
did we miss? But I think resteasy, what we did and what we
were able to accomplish wastremendous. I have been to a lot
of conferences. I've attendedthem, I've spoken at them, I've
done a lot of these maritimetype events. I was very
(40:06):
impressed in two things, one,the just how it was all put
together, and theprofessionalism that it was put
together. And no, I'm notgetting paid for that pat on the
back to giving you that Pat ofthe on the back, but it was very
well organized, including howthe forum was put forward. It
(40:27):
wasn't just people getting upthere with PowerPoints and
talking about their widget. Itwas people sitting around and
saying, Okay, let's let's talkabout this particular aspect of
the maritime industry, themaritime environment, and the
panels were all again, verydiverse, so you weren't getting
one singular, very narrowperspective. So I think the
(40:50):
quality of the event was topshelf. The second part was the
attendance. And, you know, bearin mind, we were in the middle
of the shutdown and many peoplecouldn't come that wanted to
come, but we still filled thatroom and had a number of people
online. So that says somethingright then and there. I think
(41:11):
that we need to recognize thatthis was needed, that there was
application for it. And to quotethe lieutenant governor, let's
not take our foot off theaccelerator, meaning, let's keep
going forward. Let's we. Thedoor has been open. The
opportunity has been given tous. Let's walk through it and
present those things, but let'snot give up. Next year, we can
(41:34):
fine tune it a little bit, andto mark luther's point, make
sure that we're not we focused alot looking forward. So I can
understand why we're talkingabout cyber and drones. One
focus can be, let's just stopfor a minute and let's forego
the future for a moment. What'sgoing on right here, right now?
What can we impact right here,right now? And that might be
(41:56):
part of the focus of the nextone.
Jim Cardoso (41:58):
Okay, no good. Good stuff. So we're kind of coming
into the end of our, of our timethat we set aside for this. So I
want to go ahead and go aroundthe room, both in person,
virtual for any for any finalthoughts. And Mark Luther, I'll
start off with you any finalthoughts.
Unknown (42:14):
I think it was an excellent two days, well spent,
and I'd love to be a part ofdoing it again at some time in
the near future, maybe not nextyear, but certainly within the
next two to three years. I thinkit'd be a great opportunity to
revisit this and see whatprogress has been made and where
(42:34):
we need to focus our efforts forthe coming few years.
Jim Cardoso (42:38):
Yeah, I you know, look what you and I have talked
offline. I think that GNSI andMartin Luther are gonna have a
continued relationship, and Ilook forward to that, you know?
I think that maybe it is nextyear, maybe it's a couple years
from now. We've done that too.
We did a from a GNSIperspective. We've done a
conference when we first startedoff on Ukraine and Russia, and
then we waited, and then aboutthree years later, we did
(43:00):
another one because, well, atthe time, we didn't think we'd
have to do another one. Wethought this be over by now, but
it's not. But also it gives youkind of some additional
perspective to look back andkind of address, hey, where do
we need to go from here? So it'svery valuable. So I can, I could
see that happening with thisparticular, this particular
issue, as well, but now we'lldefinitely keep it on the docket
(43:22):
for sure. Mark Dupont, from yourperspective, any final thoughts?
Unknown (43:27):
Well, I kind of said it in my last little diatribe there
for a minute, but I think it'sabout thinking and moving
outside the box. I think whatmade this successful is, again,
the approach to it and having adiscussion from the beginning
all the way to the end. Andpeople really valued that
discussion. I hope that thediscussion continues at the
(43:50):
leadership level, and I hope itcontinues into the years ahead,
because we've got to do thistogether. Nobody is going to do
this on their own.
Jim Cardoso (43:58):
Yeah, and it's in you said at the beginning too.
It's about action. What yousaid, it's not see something,
say something, and seesomething, do something. And
that's what we got, the mandatewe got as well from state
leadership. So we'll, we'll pickup that, pick up that gauntlet
ahead with it. Brian Langley,over to you any final thoughts,
Unknown (44:16):
yeah. Well, one, thank you so much for hosting, and
congratulations on a greatevent, all of you, but two, I
think we've created a movement.
I mean, I think that we've gotthe synergy now. We've got the
team, we've got the people, wegot the know how. We've got the
Moxie, we've got the ports, wegot the diversity. We can make
the business case. I thinkthere's a lot of opportunities
here that we've alreadyidentified, but more that we
probably haven't talked about.
(44:38):
So I think we just got to keepthat movement going. And I think
that the state's given us assupport, thanks to support
thanks to the LieutenantGovernor's remarks, and we'll
make that front and center. Sovery thankful to be a part of
this. Quite frankly, agree.
Jim Cardoso (44:50):
Mark, yep. Mark Luther, Mark Dupont, Brian
Langley, thank you very much foryour time today. Really enjoyed
our conversation. Thank you forthe opportunity. You. Special
thanks to our guests today, MarkLuther, director of the USF
center of maritime and portstudies, Mark Dupont, Executive
Director of the NationalMaritime Law Enforcement
Academy, and Brian Langley,senior executive advisor to
(45:14):
cyber Florida, all videos fromour panels and fireside chats
from the Florida security forumwill soon be available on our
YouTube channel. We also had theopportunity to sit down with a
few of our speakers at theforum. We'll look for those
interviews as well in the comingweeks and months before we end
the podcast today, a couplethings I want to tell you about
(45:36):
GNSI Senior Research Fellow, DrRob Burrell, no stranger to our
audience here on at the boundarywas featured on Tampa Bay's CBS
affiliated news this past week.
Rob focuses on resilience andresistance under the broader
umbrella of irregular warfare,and one of his focus areas is
Venezuela. He talked with WTSPTV about the escalating crisis
(45:57):
in that country, particularlythe possibility of the existing
government being overthrown.
It's a quick watch, butinsightful and important. We'll
drop a link to the story in theshow notes. Additionally, even
as winter descends on much ofthe country, not as much in
Florida, though I did have towear long pants last weekend,
(46:18):
it's not too early for you tostart making spring plans. Be
sure to include some time fromone of the most consequential
national security events of 2026the sixth GNSI Tampa Summit is
set from March 24 to the 25thhere on the Tampa campus at USF.
The Summit's theme is nuclearweapons and modern warfare,
(46:39):
while the use of nuclear weaponsseems unthinkable in the minds
of many in the west and aroundthe globe. That viewpoint is not
necessarily shared by our peersand adversaries, that reality
drives the need for clear eyedpolicy discussions and candid
recommendations to our nationalleaders. Tampa summit six will
bring together industry experts,scholars, government
(47:01):
representatives and studentsrepresenting our future national
security leaders to provide thatinsight and explore the evolving
role of nuclear technology inModern Warfare and geopolitics.
You can find more information onour website. Thanks for joining
us today on at the boundary.
Next week on the podcast, we'llbe talking with GNSI Research
Fellow, Dr Linda noan about herupcoming research article
(47:24):
addressing critical minerals andresources, specifically cobalt.
She's in the middle ofresearching that article, but is
dropping by to give us apreview. You don't want to miss
that episode or any other Besure to rate subscribe and let
your friends and colleagues.
Know if you're watching onYouTube, hit that like button,
subscribe and turn on alerts.
Follow along with GNSI on ourLinkedIn. Next accounts at USF,
(47:47):
underscore GNSI And check outour website as well at
usf.edu/gnsi, while you'rethere, subscribe to our monthly
newsletter to keep up with allthe GNSI latest
that's going to wrap up thisepisode of at the boundary. Each
(48:10):
new episode will feature globaland national security issues we
found to be insightful,intriguing, maybe controversial,
but overall, just worth talkingabout. I'm Jim Cardoso, and
we'll see you at the boundary.
You.
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