Public/Private Partnership: S4:E44🎙️ LIVE with Chuck Brooks

3 Aug 2025 · 2 min

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1:50

In this live discussion, Speaker B emphasizes the critical role of public‑private partnerships (PPPs) in addressing the growing cyber threat landscape, especially for small and medium‑size businesses (SMBs) that lack the resources of large corporations or the federal government. Speaker B points out the massive U.S. defense budget—approaching a trillion dollars—and the substantial resources of tech giants like Microsoft and Google, but worries that SMBs, the backbone of the American economy, are left vulnerable. Speaker A responds by describing current PPP initiatives, such as grants to state and local law‑enforcement agencies, and highlights that the deepest cyber expertise resides in the private sector, often drawn from former DOD, NSA, and DHS personnel. Because many government programs are classified, broader sharing is limited. A key solution proposed is managed‑security services—delivered through nonprofit or for‑profit models—that can give SMBs access to advanced defenses they cannot afford on their own. The conversation underscores the need for government encouragement and structured PPP frameworks to bridge the capability gap between large entities and SMBs.

where— and, and other things where actually Russians hijacked a satellite. Um, yeah, so there's, there's— it's a different world in terms of warfare, and it's a different world in terms of business.
Exactly right. And, and, and I like you kind of mention, uh, the government getting involved, and you talk a lot about public-private partnership. I feel like that might really be our only hope, right? The US government, I think, would be fine. The military, we almost have unlimited budget. I think we are going to be going for what, $800, $900 billion to over a trillion-dollar budget, which is crazy. And then big companies like Microsoft, Google, they have enough money, resources, they can handle it. But I really worry about small businesses because the small and medium businesses really are the heart, I think, of America. That's what makes us us. That's where they give job opportunity. They really carry our economy. So having served in senior government role, how can public-private partnership be improved to respond to evolving threat, in your opinion?
Well, I think one of the areas which they started doing was grants to state and local law enforcement because a lot of these small businesses and stuff are in areas that don't impact necessarily with the federal government. But I think it's got to be encouraged. Really, the real expertise is really in the private sector for the most part for cyber. They pay well. They get the best and brightest. There's some great people in government too. But particularly some of those programs are classified, so we can't use them. But there's a lot of people that come out of— DOD and NSA and DHS and other places that have a great expertise to share. I think what is going to have to happen with small and medium business is managed security, whether it's done through a not-for-profit or a profit, because they can't keep up with the race right now with cyber and the threats. They're just too formidable for them. They don't have the budgets or the expertise, and it's going to have to be that kind of arrangement. I think the government should encourage that.