JACKSONVILLE, Fla - On Tuesday evening, David Sanger delivered a speech at Herbert University Center located at the University of North Florida on "The Threat to National Security in a 5G Era."

Sanger is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a National Security Correspondent for the New York Times. He is also a National Security and Political Contributor for CNN and has had frequent appearances on Face the Nation, PBS and CBS This Morning. Sanger was a foreign correspondent for more than 35 years and continues to speak on a wide range of national and diplomatic security issues. His most recent book: The Perfect Weapon, goes into detail about how the rise of cyber weapons has transformed geopolitics more than anything since the invention of the atomic bomb.

Marie Dillon, a UNF student who had to attend the lecture for a class, was excited to see just what the lecture was going to be about.

“I had to cover the lecture for a class but I was actually looking forward to it because of his background and all that he has done. I didn’t know anything on the topic but the speech itself was very informative,” said Dillon.

Sanger started off his speech by providing context of what the current overall state of cybersecurity in the United States looks like. He even included analogies that reached as far back as 1909. He stressed the idea that cyber attacks have become pervasive. He believes this is the primary way states exercise their power without triggering war.

“We have searched for years to find a technological solution. Instead of finding a solution, we found that it is a problem much like climate change and terrorism, where it will have to be managed for decades to come,” said Sanger.

Sanger then briefly went over the four ways nations use cyber:

• For Espionage

• For Manipulation Data

• For Destructive Purposes: to do via cyber what previously could be accomplished by sabotage or bombing

• For Achieving Political Goals

An example he provided involved Obama secretly ordering sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s nuclear facilities. This significantly expanded America’s use of cyber weapons back in 2012.

Cyber tools are cheap and can easily be scalable for any level of operation but are difficult to attribute. Although cyber is often compared to nuclear strategic theory, he suggested cyber tools were more like air power. In the cyber world, we still have yet to see what states and other factors are capable of when they are their most inventive.

Sanger mentioned a few other state-sponsored cyber attacks such as the OPM data breach in 2015, Stuxnet, and the Sony hack of 2014. These breaches demonstrated the national security issues presented by cyber tools. The United States continues to face challenges in generating norms and rules that could hamper their own intelligence.

Martha Jones, a Jacksonville resident, found the examples he provided to help her better understand the material.

“The examples he used, especially the ones presented on the slides, showed me just how serious the matter is. I was aware that it was an issue but didn’t know all the different scenarios,” Jones stated.

In providing a possible solution, Sanger suggested to no longer keep government cyber efforts in secrecy. Although not all forms of their secrets can be revealed for security reasons, revealing their work can help limit public debate on the topic of American cyber programs.

Until the U.S. decides to be more transparent in their cyber security work, it will remain a topic of discussion among many parties on just what goes on behind the scenes in the cyber security world.