SIOUX CITY — When the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce is looking for a keynote speaker for its annual dinner, there are three criteria that are of paramount importance. The speaker should be timely, topical and compelling.
With national headlines about the sale of TikTok, speculation about how artificial intelligence will shape our future and ever-present fears of cyber attacks, former National Security Agency Director and U.S. Cyber Commander Paul Nakasone was about as fitting of a guest as the tri-state organization could land.
More than 1,000 Chamber members and their guests turned out at the Sioux City Convention Center to hear Nakasone give the keynote address for the 39th Commerce Dinner. The annual meeting returned to the Convention Center after a year at the Orpheum Theatre.
“What I want to talk about is digital transformation,” Nakasone said during remarks before his speech. “What does it mean in terms of our nation as we take a look at the technologies, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and what’s the impact they’re going to have on our nation going forward?”
Nakasone, a retired four-star general, had dual roles as the third commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and the 18th director of the NSA from 2018 to 2024. During his time leading those agencies, Nakasone said there were two challenges that were especially difficult to reckon with: the COVID-19 pandemic and recruiting.
“I had the opportunity today to stop at (Sterling Computers in North Sioux City and “my message to them was, at the end of the day, you have fantastic technology and fantastic tradecraft but what makes you different is your talent,” Nakasone said. “And that’s really what I focused on is being able to continue to bring young people and those that were interested in serving our nation to places like U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.”
In 2024, Nakasone was named to the board of directors for OpenAI which is best known for its artificial general intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. The software application has faced criticism for taking the humanity out of artistic expression, potentially allowing for “plagiarism” on college campuses and reportedly triggering mental health crises in high-volume users.
He acknowledged both the benefits offered by large language models such as ChatGPT as well as the drawbacks.
“I think of the great opportunities within education and within health care but I also know that these are platforms that we need to have the safety and the security built into them and that’s one of the things that I have done over the past year being on the board,” Nakasone said.
The news magazine and website Wired reported in August that Nakasone warned about the stark age differences between those in federal government regulating big tech and those in the tech sector.
“We need a world in which folks are pretty tech savvy, right? I mean we no longer can just operate in this world not wondering about how we might utilize large language models or how we use our smartphones. This is a necessity,” Nakasone told a Journal reporter Thursday. “And so one of the things I think I was trying to point out very directly in my talks earlier this summer was this idea that: Hey, we need to be able to take a look at how we’re going to broadly educate a larger portion of our society and how we utilize these platforms.”
With respect to TikTok, which President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday saying that a sale of the platform’s U.S. operations is now ready, Nakasone said it is important for users of the social media app to think very seriously about having their information stored in a foreign country.
A native of White Bear Lake, Nakasone is a Minnesota husband, father of four, and a graduate of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. Nakasone had Army assignments in Afghanistan, Iraq and South Korea and commanded “a company, battalion, and brigade, and served as the senior intelligence officer at the battalion, division and corps levels,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
During his career, Nakasone received a number of awards including: Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Joint Meritorious Unit Award, Iraq Campaign Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Combat Action Badge and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge.
Nakasone’s keynote address was preceded by the dinner and chamber programming, as well as a social hour and Color Guard presentation.
Past keynote speakers have included Five for Fighting performer John Ondrasik, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man who reached the summit of Mount Everest.
Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter @TwoHeadedBoy98.
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