1549. #TFCP - Defending Critical Infrastructure from Nation-State Cyber Threats | NMFTA Cybersecurity Conference 2026

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2:12Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. We are at the NMFTA Cybersecurity Conference live here in Long Beach, California. I just got done listening to one of the best key notes I have ever heard out there. You cannot lie about real life experiences. That human emotion, as a father myself, and hearing those stories, it was like, it is pulling in, man, it is pulling to hear that. And you know, especially what you have done serving in the Marine Corps and serving our country. Thank you for that service, by the way. It is greatly appreciated by you. Thank my wife, right? I was just saying, thank your wife first and foremost. I was cracking only imagined canceling the wedding children being born when you are in a way like that. It is not an easy life to live. When you transitioned out of the military, what was the main reason behind the founding of Spaces? I think Spaces 2 was developed specifically from my experience wanting to serve. So number one, what you realize in the cyber industry or in the national security industry in general

3:17is there is a lot of money, there is a lot of business, there is a lot of gray area. So when you want to work with the government, when you need information, there is a partner. There is a vendor, there is something in between. I would say it is similar to the trucking industry where there is a product maybe and it needs to get somewhere. But everything in between is this million different pieces, whether it is on the manifest, who is driving the truck, where are you going, who is coordinating all of it. Same thing in cyber and national security. So when it comes to national security, how do you bring the top national security decision makers on the planet together with probably the top technical decision makers that are actually moving the needle. Let's put them in a room where we are actually getting things done instead of just talking about why and how to get things done. I think the only ethical way to do that was to form a non-profit. I was a 510c3 charity for the benefit of national security that where nobody takes a piece of income,

4:22it is all charitable, but it is all for the betterment of this country. To make this country amazing, to make this country great, to make it secure, and to empower not just the war fighter, but the people that actually really instill democracy and make sure that we all have what we need here. And that is what space industry was formed for and out of was to put the right people in the right room to actually move the needle in terms of national security. For me, national security in this conference and a lot of the premise behind it is all completely intertwined. My family has been in trucking for almost 100 years at this point. With a lot of the advancements in technology that have happened, some extremely digital world that is out there, there are no more paper, there are paper billiards and stuff like that. I look at with where fraud and cargo theft is, and this is the fifth cyber security conference I've been to in regards to the transportation industry, because this is the only one in the industry that

5:24is dedicated to cyber, and a lot of the parallels of the work that the NMFTA is doing now. Like I cannot unsee the fact that if I look out, you know, I'm not considering to say like I'm a history buff, but back in the day, they cut off the supply lines to civilisations that that's how they topple greater societies, and you know, every adversary of the United States throughout history is essentially said no American, no America will never be toppled from the outside, it will be toppled from the inside. And I look at supply chain as the most critical of infrastructures in our country. It is. If you stop, if you can disrupt the movement of goods across our country, that is where that's the beginning stage of anarchy. Look at what happened in COVID. People, I mean toilet paper wasn't available, people were fighting in the store over toilet paper, right? Now just imagine if there's no food moving, there's no water, there's no power at that point, because they're able to go in there and take control of that. So it's like I'm looking at a lot of these things in regards to fraud, freight theft, cyber security, and all of that now

6:26is, is like, is that state sponsor terrorism to the best of my, like me? Yes. I truly feel our adversaries are putting this on because they found a way to get in. I think one of the things we should probably take a step back on is most individuals and most organizations and people within, I feel this industry, especially the truck industry, they're not cyber professionals. They're, they're people people, right? They care and manage and handle probably the most valuable assets that any human can have, whether it's, whether it's, I would say, for the war fighter, whether it's weapon systems and, and things that the defense industry needs or the war industry needs, or whether it's toilet paper, water, food, gas, I would say elements of critical infrastructure in this country. So they understand what people need and what, but what that means to actually survive and, and move. So what I want to, what I want to point out

7:33here is I didn't put this connection together until this morning when we were doing our talk, but in cyber, we talk about supply chain all the time. In trucking, you talk about supply chain in the most physical sense. You talk about what you're moving, why you're moving, and validating that load, validating who's carrying it. It's very physical. It's very tangible. In the last four or five years in cyber security, we started talking about supply chain in the context of software, because what are we doing in software that we are also doing probably in trucking, is we're building this connected tissue from where something is made to where it's going, and we're shipping software now, which is probably a foreign concept to most folks in the, in this industry, where when you're shipping something, you're taking it for one thing to the other, in the context of short software, we're shipping it in the matter of seconds, in the matter of minutes, and there's a supply chain in that from where software is being built

8:38for what it's touching before we release the software. And that same software is being utilized in your industry, whether it's to, to do any of the productivity, to work on the logistics, to modernize trucking, to look at the analytics of where you guys are, where you need to go, fuel efficiency, there's so much software out there. Now here's an interesting thought. When you talk about software supply chain, or when you talk about supply chain, and I talk about software supply chain, where does fraud live? Well, it's really easy to look at fraud in two different spots in your industry. Number one, it's where everyone probably sees it. The UNI were mentoring Dual Broker, Double Brokering. Double Brokering out of trucking. That could be a very fraudulent business, yet very economically beneficial for the bad actor, or the individuals that are doing it, right? The labor is probably a lot cheaper. You can offset, you can, you can, you can subcontract, there's, it could be cash heavy, no, no traceable method to find out where that Double Brokering is

9:44happening. And I think that, that is something this industry and the land industry that human fraud is prevalent, and it's very relevant, right? Now, on the software side, when you talk about the analytics and all the different pieces of software this industry is using, you can actually embed fraud very easily in that software. Who's looking at your data? Why are they looking at your data? What information do they have? And now fraudulent isn't just fraudulent actions in this industry, aren't just from Double Brokering, right? It's where else can I see fraud? Where else can I find the money? Where else can I steal 10 cents from every single person that's funneling data here? Right? How do I, how do I fraud gently make this a business for myself as a bad actor? And I think fraud is prevalent across the supply chain, both physical and digital now in this industry, and it's really hard,

10:49it's really difficult to combat fraud, but I think there has to be stronger governance and policy, and I would say consequences, repercussion, right? And enforceable repercussion on the physical side, on the software side, we have to work together as an industry, as a private industry, to shut down fraudulent activity within our own software. I was at Microsoft prior, they did a great job of shutting down cloud environments that they knew were known fraud fraudulent environments by bad actors. I would say in the trucking industry, that's the same concept. If we know fraudulent action is happening through Double Brokering, we have to be able to shut it down and put consequences against it. Yeah, I'm right there with you, and I think like that is one of the big things that isn't happening is it's like there is no fear of repercussions out there. I think like, and then depending on, you know, by the time people catch up to where the freight theft has happened,

11:54they're like they're, they've already since ceased that operation, they're on the next one, they're reincarnating in an arabid pace because it's like if you look at the physical asset, the truck who's going and they're picking up the freight, there's, you know, it's called the communeian carrier, so it's like a lot of these individuals, they own hundreds of MCs, motor carrier numbers that are out there, which is sent by the FMCSA, which is under the wing of the Department of Transportation. Right. And it's like they're out there, so it's like as soon as one of them gets popped, they reincarnate overnight. They're a whole new entity, same truck, same driver, new entity, and they just keep reincarnating, reincarnating, reincarnating, reincarnating, and then it's just, it's made it easy, it's made it lucrative because, you know, I look at it as transportation industry as a whole is like 97% small business. There is not an IT team at most organizations. There's no cyber, their cyber is still a foreign word in this industry. Well, that's where this, that's where artificial intelligence or what the administration is now called super intelligence, I think, as of yesterday comes in.

12:57Artificial intelligence and super intelligence used to be for the IT worker. It used to be for productivity. It brought us out of COVID. It allowed us to communicate with each other. But now when you look at where innovation is going, we have to be able to utilize in the form of AI, we have to be able to utilize and consume it at all levels. And that includes the drivers, that includes the organizations, that includes the CEOs of these small organizations, the individuals that are seeing these, and be able to utilize that to go after these bad actors, to go offensive, to go see this, to go put the repercussion in place. And I think as a community, if we come together, and we start crafting, I would say, organizations that are doing fraud prevention, I know there's a couple of organizations that I'm always happy to share that are trying to combat the space. They're looking at the Reddit forms. They're looking at all these, the dark web. They're looking at all these underground places where fraud is happening. And they're infusing that into these models, these

14:01local models. And for those that are very technical, right, we're looking at open-weight models, versus the frontier models. For those that aren't as technical, think about cloth, think about open AI, think about chat GPT, think about co-pilot. But you have to be able to utilize what these machines and these models are doing, and put that technology on this problem to do it at scale. And I think as we adopt innovation, as we adopt AI, that's going to help us be more secure. But we have to have the right people on there. I think this really goes into, how do we get more people in the trucking industry, passionate about fraud and about AI and technology to put their minds on the problem. I don't come from this industry. I come from the Marine Corps, right? I was in an F18 cockpit. I was living on the ground with the infantry guys. But for me to think about AI and for me to think about cyber, I think about it in that context. I got some great advice from a mentor a long time ago, not too long ago, about about 10 years ago. And she said, for the people building

15:08technology, if you put the engineers that built the software into the motions to actually talk to industry, to solve industry's problems, they're going to talk to industry to solve their problems as if they're the engineers. But if you take someone from trucking and you give them that piece of software and you let them poke holes out as basic it is, they're going to translate into their language. They're going to say, how is this going to solve our problem? How is this not going to solve our problem? We need more people from industry focused on this to actually solve this fraudulent problem. No, I'm right there with you. And I think like, you know, it is going to come from transportation to stop. And I'm using an enterprise, right? Because I'm not naive to think that bad actors aren't going to continuously try and break the law because that's just they don't care about anything like that. So it's like from my perspective, the solution is already inside of the industry. It comes from actual collaboration because I look at it as, which all this is the blueprint. They've been running the same blueprint and the same plan on transportation for like 15

16:10years. I joke, I'm like, they used to just take a load, you know, double broke or a load and take 200 months off the top and it still pick it up and deliver. Now it's made it, you know, through third party marketplaces, it's easy to steal a truck load of bottled water or Q-tips and haven't liquidated Amazon or Facebook marketplace before. Right. The steps even gone, right? So, but it's like, we've identified a lot of these things. And it's like, this is where, you know, like as an entrepreneur myself, this is where the opportunity lies. This is within the private sector. Oh, you take a step back. Yeah, take a seat. A lot of you will, you look at it two ways. How do I take this problem, make money from it? I think if you do that, you're going to find a couple of dollars here and there. But if you say, listen, let me take my tech hat off. How would I physically stop this? Do I just unplug the server in the truck industry? Do I literally put a vetted guardian from the Department of War in every truck? So now everyone has to sit with someone all the way over there or put a camera in every truck to say, hey, I'm going to do facial recognition on every single person that's

17:11driving this payload from here to here. And you know, what's the simplest way to solve the problem? Problem that's already organic with how people are doing business. And I think, I think we need people from industry solving these problems. And I think they're starting to do that. And I think, if you look at the, if you look at some big examples that are really cool, I look at the Ukrainian war that's been happening for years now. Some of the most innovative technology has been coming out of Ukraine. Why? Not because the tech people are building is because the farmers, the bankers, the small business owners, the families are saying, this is how it's affecting my life. This is how I'm going to fix it. I have a budget of $1 out of the hundred that I would usually have. So maybe a couple thousand dollars. This is how I'm going to fix this problem. And you look at drones and you look at unmanned vehicles. That industry exploded in Ukraine because people are solving the problems. People are building things to solve the problems and not just make money. And I think in this industry,

18:11in the trucking is the same way. People can look at what problems actually exist for them in a human capacity. And we infuse them and we teach them a little bit about AI. We teach them about the relevance of cyber. They don't even have to know about cyber because they know how it's affecting them. And they say, this is how I would solve it. And I think that's how we move forward. Is data the most valuable currency? Do you think? Because like, you know, hearing your speech and, knowing, like, learning how hackers and stuff have worked over the years have come into this conference about how it's like a multi-pronged approach. There's like the data collectors who you like study the movements and then they're like, oh, this is what I'm going to sell it. I think data, I think if you were to ask me probably three months ago, I would have said data is the most valuable currency. I would say now in the age of AI and all these models, you can have, let's put it this way in the context of the trucking industry. Data would equate to whatever is in that truck. It doesn't matter if it's beans, bullets, it doesn't matter if it's toilet paper or

19:16water. Let's just call it data. It's it's it's being carrying. I think if we look at it, what is the most valuable currency now? It's data with context. I think every tool now, every truck is carrying something. Software is a truck. It's carrying something. AI is a truck. It's carrying something. But data is only as good as it's context and how pure that data is. I can you could take a bunch of data from me, but if I give if I give you all the same data points a million times, that data is garbage. It's crap. Right? But if you say this data has never been talked, it's from human insight. This is actually what's happening. We're not manipulating it. That's that's context. It's not data. And if you take that context, what you could do with that context is unimaginable. And that's what I talk about with AI. So I think context is probably the most valuable asset now.

20:22And that context could be a certain form of data. It could be something in the back of that truck. It could be whatever it is, but it's context because for the Department of War or for critical infrastructure, gas being transported across the United States, could be very dangerous. It could be it could occur a thousand people. But if we know it's going into an area that's supporting something larger, it's in a critical area, it can affect a lot more. So the context there is really what we're looking for. And I think that is probably the most important asset now. When you talk about the connected issue between trucking industry and software and tech, I think you don't just think about data, think about context. Yeah, because I look at it now where trucks trailers, all the physical assets that are moving the goods out there are not the old-school combustion engines. Yes, that's still power in the truck

21:23itself. But the amount of technology, hackable technology that is inside of a semi into day's day and age, I don't know if enough people can even comprehend. I think anything connected to the internet, I would say anything that has access to an agent, and we're talking about a digital agent. Anything that has access to an agent, you have to just assume it can be compromised or it can be overturned. And that is for me, that mindset is current as of this week. So we need that productivity, we need that technology, we need all these agents to work on our behalf, we need all the AI to work on our behalf, we need the software to work on our behalf, but you have to assume that if you have data, you have context that is accessible to an agent, it's hackable. So what you really have to do is what's not hackable, what's true, the way around the tires,

22:26probably pretty true. Now can you put an agent probably on there to see what your way around is? That's probably a thing right now. But what's not hackable, stopping and physically doing a check? No, you can actually see if that way around is good or not, that physical check is still going to have to happen. I think it goes back to trusting but verifying. So I think you're absolutely right. Everything is hackable. I would not say hackable. Everything is, hack can be a good thing, it could be a bad thing. Everything can be compromised. But we have to dig down and say what what cannot be compromised? And the human can be compromised. But with good intent, a human perspective, a person cannot be compromised. And that's where you see things going. No, I'm not there with you. I think that we need more of the people with good intentions,

23:26standing up and fighting a lot of these fronts for, you know, like, you know, hearing your story out there earlier in your speech, and you know, it is, it's one of those things where I'm like, every industry that is out there, not just supply chain, you put any industry out there, people with the right intentions are going to be the only ones who are ever going to offset any of the adversaries who are trying to come and cripple any component of set industry. It is because like, again, I'm just of the mindset that collectively through collaboration, us speaking, we can stop that and at least make it deter them to the point where hopefully they just give up. I think we're doing more, yeah, we're doing more like, like, than just speaking. I mean, putting these out into the world and people listening, it is really, it is really not something you just talk about, but people have to know that just by acting, just by stopping something, just by asking the right question, you could stop fraud. You could stop being compromised. You can prevent something bad from happening. You might take a step back, but in essence, if you figure out,

24:32all right, well, if we put this break check in place, and we have to do it a million times a day, now you think about how do we optimize the break check? Now you're like, well, we're moving faster than ever in a lot more secure way. So I think talking and listening, but then acting on this is key. And we have to empower people to say, I don't want the cyber person and the data person with the ideas. I want the driver with the idea. I want the person doing at the way station with the idea. I want the person at the checkpoints with the idea. I want the person signing for the load with the idea. Those are the people that are going to change the way this industry operates to protect their own well-being, their own welfare, their own jobs, right? And be able to evolve their jobs so that they're even more valuable. And we need them more, not less because of tech. Yeah, no, I love it. Michelle, thank you so much for your time this morning.

25:33Yeah, that's what happens there. That's going to be it for this. You guys, we shall all Founders Spades Institute, Phenomenal Keynote this morning. This is another one of those reasons why you have to come out to this conference. You guys have to be in the room. True collaboration. This is where it's all going to be fought is on from the frontline workers on up coming with these innovative ideas to help curb and minimize a lot of the top button or hop button issues we're faced with here in the industry. Thank you.