Donald Trump Picks Rudy Giuliani To Lead A New Cyber Security Advisory Team

Former Secretary of State hopeful Rudy Giuliani re-entered the political spotlight on Thursday when he announced he would be coordinating a new cyber security group for Donald Trump’s administration. Giuliani broke the news during an early morning visit to Fox & Friends, which was followed by an official press release from the Trump transition team with additional details about what the working group will entail. Considering the ongoing role played by the alleged election hacking by Russia in the current news cycle, Giuliani and the transition team’s joint announcement seems timely enough. The details, however, are curious.

As Giuliani explained on Fox & Friends, Trump “wanted to bring in, on a regular basis, the people in the private sector — the corporate leaders, in particular, and thought leaders in the private sector — who were working on security for cyber because we’re so far behind.” Trump and his advisors apparently “believe a lot of the solutions are out there,” Giuliani added, but “we’re just not sharing them.”

The press release said much of the same, albeit in a more erudite manner:

The President-elect’s intent is to obtain experiential and anecdotal information from each executive on challenges faced by his/her company, how the company met the challenges, approaches which were productive or successful, and those which were not. The attendees may or may not change from session to session, but the specific agenda subjects will likely change because of the rapidly evolving field of cyber security, and frequent developments, both positive and negative. No consensus advice or recommendations resulting from group deliberations or interaction is expected or will be solicited.

Despite the insistence that Trump only wants “experiential and anecdotal information” from the individuals who agree to participate, however, the group’s sole purpose as a source of information runs into trouble in a very big way. Consider Giuliani’s suggestion that possible solutions for avoiding election hacking and other cyber security threats are “out there,” but those who have them just “[aren’t] sharing them”:

“It’s like cancer. You know there’s cancer research going on all over the place. You almost wish they’d all get together in one room and maybe we’d find a cure. And my belief is, as always, the answer to cyber security is going to be found in the private sector. That’s where we have the great creativity. That’s where we have a huge amount of money. And therefore we have these great companies, the greatest in the world.”

Yet as the Huffington Post pointed out (in an article about why cancer research isn’t shared all that much), it’s not that the leaders Trump and Giuliani look up to don’t want to share their research or experiences. Rather, they can’t share it because of federal and private mandates meant to protect consumers and corporations alike from financial loss. Not to mention that the occasional Martin Shkreli pops up to ruin everyone’s day.