Obama: Tech companies, let's work together

PALO ALTO, Calif. — President Obama came to Silicon Valley Friday to press private companies to share cyber-threat info with the government and each other.

Cyber attackers are a major threat to the U.S. and world economy, he told a packed auditorium on the Stanford University campus. Only with the government and private sector working together can they be overcome, he said.

The White House summit on cyber security brought together CEOs or senior staff from Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and more. The overriding theme: Let government be part of the solution.

The Internet is a major engine of economic growth in the United States, one that supports millions of jobs, Obama said. But the growing tide of cyber crime, cyber terrorism and online theft threatens that engine.

"It's one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technology that can be used to do great good can also be used to imperil us and do great harm," Obama said.

Obama's visit follows several high-profile hacks against large companies, including Sony Pictures Entertainment and Anthem health insurance, as well as the federal government.

To the American companies hammered by this near tsunami of cyber attacks, the administration is saying it can help by acting as a broker of information. That's a role industry has been skeptical of, for fear of lawsuits and, more broadly, concerns of government overreach after the revelations of NSA surveillance made public by Edward Snowden.

As encouragement to industry, on Friday Obama finished his Stanford speech by signing an Executive Order that encourages and promotes the sharing of cyber-security threat information within the private sector and between the private sector and federal government.

The order only goes so far. For one, it doesn't protect companies who share information about attacks from lawsuits. That feature is in proposed legislation. Without it, the information sharing referenced by Obama "simply will not occur," said Robert Cattanach, a cybersecurity lawyer with the law firm Dorsey & Whitney.

A relaxed and joking Obama also played to the crowd, which included many students.

"I was thinking of wearing some black-rimmed glasses with some tape in the middle, but I guess that's not what you do any more," he said.

The summit's roster included Tim Cook, Apple CEO; Lisa Monaco, Homeland Security adviser; and Anthony Earley Jr., chairman and CEO of California's PG&E Corp. Earley called for a modern-day equivalent of the Manhattan Project, where the government and private sector work together.

"This work cannot be adversarial, we have enough adversaries out there," Earley said.