When the transcript becomes available, we will include it here. -Thank you!

David Blackmon [00:00:09] Hello. Welcome to the interview question with David Blackman. I’m your host, David Blackman. My very, very special guest today is Congressman Zach Nunn from the great state of Iowa Republican, who is working on a cyber security bill right now or got actually got the language inserted into the indigo, which is wonderful news for the whole country. Congressman, how are you today?

Zach Nunn [00:00:30] Hey, David, I’m doing real well up here in Iowa, Iowa and Texas. Get to share our state founding about the same time. So we got good history with each other. And like you telling folks, we’re not the Lone Star State, but we are the corn state and we work well together. So this is actually.

David Blackmon [00:00:45] Yeah, yeah, we grow a lot of corn down here in Texas, too. I my family has a little farm in Galena. That’s always been the main crop down there for all.

Zach Nunn [00:00:54] I think I’ll take a Texas ribeye any day. So we’re we pair well together, my friend.

David Blackmon [00:00:59] Yeah. Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to join us. It’s always an honor and a privilege having a member of Congress on and with you in particular, you have former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Council. And, of course, you’re about to be promoted to a colonel in the Air Force Reserves, correct?

Zach Nunn [00:01:16] Yes, sir. A real privilege to get to serve you, no doubt. Just about two decades here in the US Air Force, I switched off active duty. We did some combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Overflight most recently commanded a unit off the coast of Russia flying recon operations, and then switched over from airborne Intel to cyber security. And, yeah, just promoted to colonel. I think there’s only 11 of us now serving in Congress who are still in either the guard or reserve capacity. You know, you’ll recall after World War Two, there was a whole lot of us. But good common cause. That’s right.

David Blackmon [00:01:48] Well, it is, you know, and that’s, to me, been a kind of a disturbing aspect of how Congress has evolved over the last 25 years. I used to lobby out there in DC back in the 90s in the arts. And, you know, there was a lot more of you then than there are now. And I don’t think that’s a positive development at all for the country. You’re actually part of a caucus there in the House, the four country caucus. Talk about that. Isn’t that basically made up mainly of former folks with former military service?

Zach Nunn [00:02:19] Yeah, it’s a it’s all veterans. It comes from both the House and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans. And, you know, I think this is one of the things I learned in the military mission. Focus. When you’re out there, whether you’re flying combat operations or whether you’re down in a foxhole, you want the guy and gal next year focused on the same mission set. And so we’ve gotten several of our pieces of legislation through the House and signed into law. But I’ve done it largely with bipartisan support. Don Davis, another Air Force guy out of North Carolina, he and I work on a lot. We were both named as two of the top ten most bipartisan members of Congress, and I take that as a badge of honor, because it means we’ve been able to actually get bills through for folks focused on mission accomplishment, things like, you know, taking care of kids. I’ve got some foster kids, adopted kids taking care of military veterans stuff and veteran suicide and also helping with rural housing. These aren’t Republican or Democrat issues, these just important issues for Americans. So we’ve been able to get those into law in a pretty divided Congress. I salute the four country caucus for helping it. They’ve also helped us with this Clarity Act that we’ve just been able to pass that to really help address some of the cybersecurity issues we’re facing.

David Blackmon [00:03:23] So so talk about that. I you know, I know there’s a big threat to cyber security, particularly where the great. Well, not particularly, but including where the power grid is concerned. And yeah, in Texas, you know, we’re always on pins and needles about anything related to the power grid. So so talk about that that element of things.

Zach Nunn [00:03:41] Yeah. And it’s frightening for I think all Americans right now, the just the level and capability of the cyber attack coming out of it. Now I will say the overwhelming majority is still nation state actors, and about 60% of these really focused in on the energy sector here. So Texas is right in the crosshairs of where our adversaries want to get to it. I started off working in the intelligence community for over a decade here as a counterintelligence officer, really understanding how our adversaries were using this, whether it was Russia, Iran, North Korea, and particularly China. And then I served as director of cybersecurity on the National Security Council, where we tried to address some of the policy solutions for this. But I will say this it is a healthy mix of public, private partnership that makes the thing work and what we’ve tried to do consistently. I mean, the first intro into this, I was briefing the president, and at the time, cyber was still one of these things where like, does it really matter? And then Iran attacked Saudi Aramco, the largest oil producer in the Middle East, and basically shut them down for over a month. And we saw fuel prices shoot up through the roof because of the potential cascading effect. And immediately I started doing the Presidential Daily Brief. We had the National Security Council get laser focused on what threat was coming from cyber on this. So everyone now recognizes the threat. We’ve got to do our due diligence, not only helping our public private partners be successful. Our. States be successful. They’re really honing in here on where are we most vulnerable in the United States and providing some safeguards for this. So I’m proud to lead as a guy with experience on this, but now I think I’m serving my first term in Congress. It’s really about getting good policy out there. It allows for some of the safeguards. Clarity act as a first step here, particularly when it comes to competing against China in something called blockchain technology.

David Blackmon [00:05:31] Right. So I don’t understand blockchain technology to tell you the truth.

Zach Nunn [00:05:35] So you’re not alone my friend.

David Blackmon [00:05:37] Yeah. I mean, I tell you, it’s the dang best thing. I’ve had ten different people try to explain it to me, but it’s apparently beyond my ability to comprehend. But I know it’s important. And I wonder, in Congress, you know, we talk about bipartisan solutions and you always, you know, pay attention to the major media. You always hear that Congress is hopefully divided and nothing ever gets done on a bipartisan basis. Y’all have proven that wrong, you know, in your caucus and with this this inclusion of this language in the in the defense bill. You know, I do think it’s overblown in terms of how it gets portrayed in the media. I know one of the big issues, you know, we we have 2 or 3 cliffs we’re about to fall off on, on keeping the next funding for six months for the government going and all that every year. The debt ceiling fights. But when it gets down to the nuts and bolts issues like this that involve national security, I mean, is there is there a good deal of. I mean, do you feel comfortable with the level of bipartisan cooperation that happens on issues like this? Yeah.

Zach Nunn [00:06:39] Great question. And it’s one of those areas where there’s certain things, you know, I’m a fiscal conservative from Des Moines, Iowa. I’m always going to fight for government spending to be less. I’m always going to fight for Americans to keep more of their tax dollars in their pocket. That’s how I think we grow the economy. And I’m always going to fight for things that I think are important, like scaling back the size of the federal government and getting it back local. But there are also other areas where I think my Democratic colleagues and I, particularly the military folks, we have a shared common cause here. It’s national defense, it’s protecting our families, and it’s making sure that our foreign adversaries don’t get to exploit us. So the things that we’ve done, again, on a bipartisan level that have been successful, sadly, it’s not always the things that get reported on 24 hour news networks or got bobbleheads talking on a Sunday morning talk show, but that’s things like making sure that veterans suicide, which takes, you know, 22 military members lives every day that we get legislation move forward. The bill that I co-sponsored, it’s called the Corporal Adam Lambert Bill, named after a marine corporal in my district who lost their life to suicide. We’ve been able to move that forward. I just got into the NDAA with Democratic support. This is something that’s going to help save lives. We’re doing the same on tackling fentanyl. You know, well, in Texas with the open border, it’s a national security crisis. We just rolled up a bunch of guys here in Iowa with 35,000 fentanyl pills. I mean, that’s a weapon of mass destruction that’ll wipe out the city of Des Moines, came right up through I-35, goes right through Texas. We know these are challenges, and there are people on both sides of the aisle who want to offer real solutions to this. These are the kind of things that, you know, drawing on my military background as a colonel now is to really push forward and say, let’s have mission accomplishment, not just talking points, so we can send out a press release.

David Blackmon [00:08:22] You know, you mentioned a minute ago you you would help prepare the daily briefing every morning while you were at the white House. Give people a flavor of how that works and the pressure that is involved in preparing that. You know, I’ve had people tell me about it before, but a lot of my viewers have never really, you know, heard kind of about the nuts and bolts of how that works. And it’s a it’s a really high pressure deal today.

Zach Nunn [00:08:44] And it is and I will say this, you get some of the best professionals in the government providing really tactical information that has to be distilled so that a principal, whether it’s the secretary of defense or the president of the United States, has immediate access to those must know things of everything that’s out there. So it is a top level briefing that draws on the best information we have. But again, it’s a snapshot in time. That’s why it’s called The Daily Brief, because every day you’re coming up with new insights and you got to be able to pile compile folks from across, you know, 17 different intelligence agencies, local law enforcement, but also things like the Department of Energy and what they’re seeing, the Department of AG, what our foreign allies are providing us with hot tips on things that are emerging. And then you got principal officers. We were at the National Security Council that these are the topics which are most relevant. And I will say this. You know, it used to be cyber security could barely make the annex of the president’s Daily Read book. Now it’s one of those issues that is an everyday issue being tackled being addressed. The good news is, if we do this right, most of these things you’re never going to hear about because we have successfully stopped the threat or at least been able to mitigate it. And it remains in this classified victory sector. Sometimes, though, it pours over into the public. And yeah, if you have a water pump in Texas that gets hit by a cyber attack and blows up, not only is that a public issue, now, it’s the national. Concern. We’ve got, you know, energy, finance, ag and manufacturing. These are our top sectors in the United States. It’s no surprise then they’re also the top threat for cybersecurity actors. And I’ll tell you this. And you know, of all the things that are out there that scare me, illegals coming into the country that could threaten a terrorist, strike, a foreign state, powers that could harm us from overseas, it still, cybersecurity is the one that could harm the most Americans in the most comprehensive way, right up there with the illegal immigration and drug crisis that we see in our southern border.

David Blackmon [00:10:41] So, you know, another aspect of the grid, and I wrote a piece this morning actually, about transmission and issues we’re having here in Texas related to high capacity transmission lines. And it reminded me of the, you know, there’s this enormous issue with supply chain for for high capacity, high voltage transformers. And, you know, we’re importing a lot of those transformers from China, from factories in China. We don’t don’t hardly make any of them here in the United States. Or are we equally concerned about importing critical pieces of infrastructure for the grid like that from China? Because there’s a lot of little parts components in those transformers, you know, and you just kind of wonder if they could be sabotaged.

Zach Nunn [00:11:21] Your concern is absolutely correct. You know, we have a dependency. And China President XI Jinping really highlighted. Let’s exploit rare earth minerals. And they have a long term game plan for this. They do a five year strategy session on where their country wants to go. They’ve tried to devour this. I serve on the China Commission. And what we do is we really evaluate where China’s become a bad actor on this. So, you know, I got nothing against electric vehicles, but let’s not forget that EV in the back of it probably came from China. And the cobalt allows that battery to work. Probably came from a Chinese owned and operated mine somewhere in Africa, likely exploited by a child, or some type of indentured servitude was put together by minority groups called Uyghurs or other exploited classes inside China and shipped to the United States after it was made in a coal fat, coal energy provided factory. So the idea here that we are getting, you know, a Green New Deal out of a Chinese made battery is just fall. But equally, China has the ability to provide not just batteries for cars. It’s providing a huge source. You know, the lithium exploitation that is used in batteries around the world. And down to the point that you’re talking about these rare earth minerals are also used in everything from every electronic we have. Yeah. So there’s the concern there from China owning not only our hardware infrastructure, but then this next component which lays on top of the hardware, the software infrastructure. This is where things like blockchain, artificial intelligence, supercomputing that China has sold a lot of the technology here in the United States, they’re manufacturing it on their own. And we saw this with a group called Huawei and ZTE telecommunications companies. They tried to set up shop right there in Texas. Luckily we were able to shut those guys down. That’s one of those victory marks. Yeah. They wanted to they want to own our they wanted to own our, you know, our our digital highways, as it were, right here in the United States, all of our information flowing right back to Beijing. And so I highlight this is to get people’s attention. This is a thousand times worse than anything that TikTok has done with information going back. The Chinese would literally own the hardware and the software infrastructure of our internet. And David, you and I both know anybody doing operations this interview right now, all would be contingent on what the Chinese allow us to do, and we cannot be in a situation where our Defense Department are entities that provide for our national security, are dependent on a foreign actor. And so that’s what I’ve really tried to tee this up as our first line of defense is making sure we’re hardening our defense sector. And we’re having a autonomy from not just China, but any other foreign actor. This has to be a made in America solution to protect our national security.

David Blackmon [00:13:57] Yeah, I mean, we’ve had you know, we’re we’re so concerned. We’ve had some good news here recently from a major, major resource discovery, I think in Wyoming, if I’m remembering. Right. And then also we we had this week news about progress on the North, the biggest known resource which is on the southern coast of Greenland. Yeah. You know, actually finally making progress after quite a few years of being held up by lack of financing, do you expect I mean, China has a history of what or some other country finds a major resource of rare earths to completely cratering the market to prevent them from, you know, coming on to the market? I worry about, you know, China using similar kinds of tactics, you know, to disadvantage these major finds is is a is Congress concerned about that?

Zach Nunn [00:14:43] We are very concerned about it mainly because we’ve seen it before here in the ag sector. I mean, when you talk to the you and I at the beginning on this, whether it’s dumping the ability and then they’re doing it through proxies as well. But you know really dumping things here on the ag sector that craters out our market so they can get market advantage. I mean helping out Brazil in this case to dump corn on U.S. markets by going after advanced. Manufacturing dumping into crushed Nathan businesses here in America that are trying to do it now. The good news is America is a very successful country. We’ve got great innovators right here, but we also have Bountiful resources. If we decide to move forward on this, and it’s one of the reasons I’m proud being in Congress here. You know, the very first bill I supported and moved across to successful finish with energy independence right here in the U.S., we have a tactical advantage over China, but we have a strategic advantage over the rest of the world is we can produce our own energy. If we take the handcuffs off and actually let it do it. Texas knows this better than anybody else. Stop paying for Russia and Iran to launch terrorist attacks and military operations by buying their oil on the cheap. Let’s produce it right here in the United States. The same is true for our manufacturing. And if China wants to move into this, you know, retaliatory trade where they’re going to dump and exploit, then we need to be strong enough to be able to stand on our own two feet and say, well, then we’re going to operate with actors who are loyal allies, who want to have a good trade relationship, not try and manipulate markets for their own domestic advantage. And China’s got to come on board with that. You know, we have some leverage over them before. I’m glad we stood up to them when it came to intellectual property theft back under the Trump administration. But now there’s a situation here where China is starting to define the rules of the road. And if the United States doesn’t stand up to it, we’re going to find ourselves really dependent on key elements of what China is pushing our way.

David Blackmon [00:16:38] Well, you mentioned Russia. And that brings me to another topic. The administration, I believe in bad faith, implemented a pause on permitting new LNG infrastructure here in the United States to export LNG back in January, the day after I wrote a piece and pointed out that Vladimir Putin and Russia were likely to be one of the main beneficiaries of that policy because it was going to harm confidence among our trading partners in the U.S., his ability to provide LNG. And sure enough, come Russia’s exports into Europe outpaced US LNG for the first time in two years. Is there anything Congress can do? You know, I mean, first of all, how concerned are you about this? And are there any efforts going on in Congress to try to pressure the administration to lift this crazy policy?

Zach Nunn [00:17:29] Look, this is my one of my biggest frustrations with this administration is just no forward thinking, what we are doing for domestic energy here or what we’re doing for national security. Vis-a-vis a bad strategic security decision. We have basically forced our European partners, who are probably most concerned about Russian aggression, to go and literally buy honey from the bear that’s about to potentially invade them and make them more and more dependent, both economically as well as energy independence on Russia. When the United States had a surplus, the opportunity to really grow our domestic market and support one of our best allies. Look, I don’t want to be sending taxpayer dollars overseas, but I’m happy to help sell energy to good partners who are ready and need to be able to purchase it. So it’s driving up Russia’s economy falsely because of something that this administration made a choice, not a need to go ahead and try and limit the export of LNG that’s harmful to American producers right here domestically. And it also makes our European allies really question, you know, where’s America going to be if they can’t get energy from us on other things when it comes to trade, and ultimately it harms our national security because we’re basically paying for Russia to reconstitute a military situation that was decimated when it tried to invade Ukraine, where it’s currently in Syria, where I’ve flown operations and I’ve seen how broken the Russian military is. Let’s not give them the opportunity to reconstitute and rebuild based on European dollars that flow to Moscow, versus European dollars that could be flowing right to the heart of the heartland here in Texas and the Midwest for energy we’re able to produce. The second piece, David, you’re right on this, is these are policy choices that are being made by the administration and folks within the administration. Candidly, I’m not sure Biden fully appreciate what this LNG policy does. But I do know this his transportation and energy secretaries do, and they’ve chosen to make bad choices on this front. So what we’ve done in Congress is to really highlight both the false narrative here coming out of the administration. We’ve pushed forward energy independence. I really want to see us be able to help Europe as an ally in this area, be able to continue a long standing energy partnership where they are able to buy our energy and be successful and not find themselves tethered to Russia on this, because the other beneficiaries of this are going to be folks like China and Iran. We’re going to fill this void with no U.S. LNG going out there. And that goes to other parts of the world where we need more friends than create more. We’re enemies out there.

David Blackmon [00:20:08] Well, we have an election coming up as it happens. I have gotten used to the first five presidential election cycles of this century to Iowa being kind of a swing state, almost in evenly divided state. This week we saw a poll, and I can’t remember if it was Siena Poll or who it was. With Trump having a 50 to 32 lead in Iowa. Is Iowa really look trending that one sided in this election?

Zach Nunn [00:20:33] Look, you know, four years ago Iowa was 75% Democrat in our congressional delegation. Yeah. And I took on an incumbent Democrat, and we went to town on them. And we were able to beat them in the midterm of Joe Biden. But we only won by a small fraction, about 2000 votes out of, you know, just a massive I got 750,000 bosses here in Iowa. That’s a good thing. I mean, this is a tiny, tiny election. So Iowa continues to be a swing state, but it also means it’s a great bellwether for the entire country. If in Iowa, we are seeing the enthusiasm gap, just continue to split where folks are excited to bring back Donald Trump, who when he left Office Gap here in Iowa was a buck 63. Now it’s over $3. I’ve got six kids, including our two adopted, you know, a pound of bacon. It’s it’s a lot more a gallon of gas by the end of it. Every year I’m spending $15,000 more than I was under the Trump years. And that’s impacting my family. National security is worse. We got 8 million illegal immigrants in the country. People, you know, who may have been tired of Trump are now looking at Biden, saying he’s made every problem much, much worse. And that goes for my independence. The biggest number of voters I have in my district aren’t Republicans or Democrats. They’re independence, and they’re making decisions based on how it impacts their pocketbook, their national security and the future of this country. And there’s a massive enthusiasm gap here. Now, I will say, David, we’re one of these key swing districts. You know, before me, this is just really gone back and forth. And for 40 years it been Democrat. But I went to a union hall. I went to a union labor shop floor. I talked with folks and they’re tired of it. They don’t feel like the Democratic Party has been speaking for them, and they’re ready for something new. We’re being a voice for them. We’re being pragmatic in the fact we’re delivering results, and this race is going to determine not just who’s going to be the next president of United States, but do we keep the House of Representatives because, well, I don’t want to do is win the white House, win the Senate, which we’re likely going to do, and then fumbled the ball and lose the House because, you know, key races we overlook. So from that aspect alone, we’re going to fight really hard here in Des Moines. I keep calling Des Moines the Austin of the Midwest. It’s a great place to live. I love to live here. But when folks from California in New York move to places like Austin, Des Moines, they kind of forget the reasons they left California, New York. So we want to hold these really good hometown seeds so that we can have pragmatic solutions in Washington, but also make sure that we’re not running away with some of this progressive stuff that is just really harmed our country, our energy policy and our national security.

David Blackmon [00:23:10] Yeah, in Texas we have I’m not sure who who’s paying for, but there’s billboards all over the state that warn California immigrants that they don’t. California are Texas.

Zach Nunn [00:23:21] That’s right, that’s right.

David Blackmon [00:23:22] You know.

Zach Nunn [00:23:24] But remember the reasons you left. That’s exactly.

David Blackmon [00:23:26] Exactly, exactly. And we’ve had so many, you know, Elon Musk and Tesla and down in Austin, the thousands and thousands of new jobs. And so a lot of it, so much of it is really good. But yeah, the voting patterns can be problematic. All right. So Congressman, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time today. I know you’re incredibly busy. You always are. And I just I wish you the best of luck. I hope you get elected to reelected for a second term. And you’re able to hold that seat for for as long as you want to.

Zach Nunn [00:23:53] Well, I’m humble. As long as the voters will have me. We’ll keep working hard. David, at this, I just want to say thank you very much to you, to your membership here. Reach out to us with good ideas. What I will say is every bill that we have been able to pass, and we’re over a dozen now as a freshman, it’s pretty rare is because good people have reached out to us and said, hey, there’s a challenge here and we need help. And my focus again, being a military guy is mission. Accomplishment means being able to deliver something back to people. At the end of the day, who elected us to be here. So I appreciate it, brother. Thank you.

David Blackmon [00:24:22] Thank you. And we’ll put up all of your contact information, your offices, contact information in the show notes to this and what what is the best way for someone to get in touch with your office? Is it via the phone? Do you prefer an email? What is the best way to do it?

Zach Nunn [00:24:37] Look, I’m a I’m a cyber guy, so I’ll take all of the above. You can reach out to us. You know, our number here is 515 481 80 or reach out to me ZachNunn.com is probably the best way. And you can just kind of see not only our profile, what we’re working on, but also how you can either get involved or let us know your thoughts. Feedback on this. The Z A C H N U N N.com check us out.

David Blackmon [00:24:59] Thank you sir. Appreciate it. Have a great day.

Zach Nunn [00:25:01] I appreciate it. Thanks, David,

David Blackmon [00:25:02]  And thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks to Stu Turley in the Sandstone Group for producing the. Podcast and to our spectacular producer, Eric Parel. I’m David Blackmon. That’s all for today.

Fellow Podcast Travlers:

Mark LaCour, Editor in Chief, OGGN

Mark LaCour, Editor in Chief, OGGN

Paige Wilson, Host of Oil and Gas Industry Leaders and Co-Host of Oil and Gas This Week Podcast.  

OGGN Network

Stu Turley, Host of the Energy News Beat Podcast.

Stu’s LinkedIn is HERE

Sandstone Group Production Sponsor.