WCIT announced today that national and homeland security expert Richard A. Clarke will be a special keynote speaker and panelist at the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2019).

Mr. Clarke will be the special keynote speaker and a panelist at a session called “Defense, Information and Cyber Warfare in an Age of Disinformation” which will examine what intelligence, information technology and cyber warfare capabilities are needed in an age of sophisticated tactical and strategic disinformation that operates not just in the military space but increasingly in the political, economic and social spaces as well. The panel will be moderated by Vago Muradian, editor of Defense & Aerospace Report.

Mr. Clarke will also be a panelist at a session called “Black Swan” which will explore critical infrastructure risk in a world of sudden, unseeable and unforeseeable threats, and how to build fault-tolerant technological and human systems that can withstand or help recover from catastrophic failures caused by “black swan” events. Peter J. Beshar, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Marsh & McLennan Companies, will be the special keynote speaker and moderator of that session.

Richard Clarke is an internationally renowned national security expert and author who served in the White House for three US Presidents as America’s first cyber czar and its first counter-terrorism czar. The national crisis manager on September 11th, 2001, and he is now a consultant on corporate security risk and cyber security. His nine books include the national #1 bestseller, Against All Enemies, and his 2019 book The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Corporations and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats.

Mr. Clarke worked as advisor on intelligence and counter-terrorism during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Starting in 1998, he also served as the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the U.S. National Security Council.

Mr. Clarke currently chairs the Board of Governors of the Middle East Institute. He is also on-air consultant on political and security issues at ABC News, and lectures at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2019), one of the largest and most prestigious ICT events in the world, will be held in Yerevan this year from October 6-9. The three-day congress will gather over 2500 participants from around 70 countries. The agenda will include discussion of the hottest topics in the industry. Information and communication technology leaders, CEOs and investors, policy makers and government officials, academics, and technologists who will come to Armenia to discuss issues such as: The Power of Decentralization, Rise of the Machines, The Black Swan, Blockchain Innovation Meets Capital, Artificial Intelligence in Genomics, How Green is Silicon?, Smart Cities, Startups and Incubators, etc.

WCIT 2019’s program will also feature a panel of ICT ministers from nations across the globe, who will discuss the challenges in moving toward greater delivery of and distribution of enhanced public services and their nations’ best practices in dealing with those challenges. Another panel will feature the mayors of “smart” cities from around the world, who will discuss the use of ICT in the municipal context and explore both its positive and negative impact on people’s daily lives.

For more information about WCIT 2019 and the agenda, visit www.wcit2019.org.