Clinton urges risk, investment at security confab

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton addresses RSA attendees.

(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Like any great endeavor, information technology does not come without its risks, former President Bill Clinton said this afternoon during a speech at the RSA security conference here.

Clinton stressed that this was especially true given recent events in Egypt, efforts to secure free Internet access around the world, investigations into WikiLeaks, and the fallout from the Stuxnet virus.

"There are not totally risk-free endeavors and advances,"Clinton said."At every step along the way we have to ask ourselves, 'what is it we're really trying to do here?'"

Clinton closed out the weeklong security conference with a talk entitled"Embracing Our Common Humanity,"in which he focused on the importance of making sure there is good political policy to back up new technologies, so as not to repeat mistakes made in the past. Part of such an effort also involves looking for evidence to make the right decisions, Clinton said.

"You can have all the technology you want, but if you don't have good information, you're going to make the wrong choices,"he said.

As was the case with a past RSA keynote speech by Al Gore, who served as vice president to Clinton, those with press badges werebarred from attending the talk by Clintonbecause of a"contract restriction."But RSA attendees with different sorts of credentials (including, in this case, CNET News staffers) were allowed to snap photos and blog during Clinton's presentation.

Clinton ran through a brief history of economics and policy changes, emphasizing how the focus of the U.S. economy following his administration had led to a set of industries that didn't encourage IT jobs.

"We went through a long eight-year period when there was no source of new jobs. All of America's new jobs were in housing, consumer spending, and finance,"Clinton said."And if you think about it, they're all inherantly self-limiting, and when you go beyond the limits they're all fraught with disaster."

Of course hindsight is 20-20, which is why Clinton talked up the importance of risk in regard to projects like the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The Hadron was not just about subatomic particles, Clinton said, it was also about the IT that made the setup possible.

Following his speech, Clinton talked about yesterday's Silicon Valley visit by President Obama. Clinton said he hoped Obama was going through a similar process to the one he himself went through in 1992, in which his administration tried to determine where most jobs were likely to come from, as well as what private policies and public incentives were likely to bring the biggest gains.

"I think you have to understand where we are, where we're going, and what we need to do,"Clinton said.

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