Democratic VP nominee Walz’s record on cyber; NOAA takes on wildfires with satellite data

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, to be her running mate for vice president. As Walz steps into the spotlight, he brings a deep record on cybersecurity issues, including spearheading a 2022 letter urging the Biden administration not to complicate state cybersecurity measures with federal ones and publishing his own executive order on cybersecurity, directing state agencies to upgrade their defenses and use the powers they had to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.

And, amid wildfire season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants to better use satellite data to help federal agencies improve how they detect and track wildfires. A new collaborative agreement between NOAA, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service was announced last month and serves as a step toward developing specific fire-tracking tools with the needs of those agencies in mind. The partnership will maximize the exploitation of NOAA satellites for detecting fires as early as possible and tracking them better over time to make better decisions, according to a NOAA official.

Also in this episode, Sue Kalweit, former director of analysis at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and now a managing director at Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, discusses how Deloitte and Google are providing analysts with a new view of the potential geopolitical and national security implications of the changing Arctic landscape due to climate change.

This episode is sponsored by Deloitte.

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