The remarks were made at the second White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education meeting and were accompanied by pledges from government agencies and the private sector to advance AI education, as mandated by the order. "We are here today to talk about our future in the most real sense imaginable: how America's children can be prepared to build our country tomorrow with the cutting edge tools of today," White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said during the meeting.
Twenty years ago this August, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. More than 1,300 lives were lost. It destroyed homes, displaced families, and overwhelmed many of the institutions that undergird civil society. It was also a wake-up call that reshaped how the country responds to natural disasters. Over the past two decades, we've made real progress. Government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and community organizations have built stronger systems to prepare before disaster strikes.
At the time, the FBI recognized there was a significant need to shift their hiring practices to really focus on people with cyber skill sets, because it wasn't just about cybercrime, but also terrorism, counter intelligence and criminal investigations. We needed agents who had more of a technical discipline to help with that.