Podcast: “Business and American National Security: A Conversation with SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw”

One of the highlights of the 29th Annual National Security Law Conference was the ‘fireside chat’ Duke Law’s own Professor Bobby Bishop had with Securities and Exchange Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw. Their discussion topic was “Business and American National Security“ and the video is now available here.

Commissioner Crenshaw

Though expressing her own views and not necessarily those of her fellow commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the staff of the agency, Ms. Crenshaw covered a very interesting lot of ground.  She began by outlining the SEC’s basic mission:

The Securities and Exchange Commission oversees a fairly large portion of the market. And our mission is to protect investors; ensure fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation, all of which are fundamentals to a basic functioning economy. You need to have investor confidence to get folks to invest.

One of the interesting things about her background is that she is also a captain in the Army Reserves. She observes there is overlap in her civilian and military duties:

At the end of the day, all of the goals are the same. It’s to protect our population, whether that’s from the traditional national-security perspective or ensuring that the economy is one where folks can put away their money and have it grow, where folks can be secure at the end of the day.

And so I see a lot of the overlap and stuff I’ve already talked about. But I also see overlap in things like investor protection and making sure that our service members are ready, mission ready, and they’re not struggling to find a way to pay off debt that’s debilitating to them, both the families and mentally. So, in addition to the national security policy things that I think about on a daily basis in things like crypto– and how are the rules that we’re doing on crypto impacting some of the areas of crypto and national security? Given it is an area I think that implicates national security pretty directly.

Things like how money– how foreign agents may be buying companies in the US, whether they’re near peer, peer, or just other hostile actors, buying up interests in US companies. There’s that. But I think there’s also the investor protection mission, all of which I think are incredibly important for both. At the end of the day, I think, again, all government agencies are working toward the same goals, which is, at the end of the day, is protecting our population.

She touched on a variety of other topic that can have a national security dimension including cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, Special-Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), Exchange Traded Products (ETPs), and much more.

Again, you can watch or listen to this really fascinating presentation here.

Don’t miss these other podcasts from LENS’ 29th Annual Conference :

My fireside chat with CIA General Counsel Kate Heinzelman can found here.

Brig. Gen. Linell Letendre’s presentation “Guardians of Code and Conscience: Exploring Legal and Ethical Frontiers of Generative AI” is found here.

Col (Ret.) Dawn Zoldi’s presentation “Domestic Drones and National Security,” is found here.

Dean Cheng’s presentation “Update on China: Lawfare, Technology and More” is found here.

Gary Corn on “Attacking Big Data: Strategic Competition, the Race for AI, and Cyber Sabotage” is found here.

BG David Mendelson on “LOAC in 21st Century Battlespaces” found here.

As more podcasts from the Conference become available, they’ll be posted on Lawfire^® so stay tuned! 

Unless otherwise indicated, Conference speakers are expressing their personal opinions, and not necessarily those of their employer (to include the U.S. government), the Center of Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke University, or any other person or entity (see also here)

Remember what we like to say on Lawfire^®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!