BlackRock — the large New York-based funding firm — these days came in with a few quite correct financial results for the first region of 2019. At least, the numbers are desirable when you consider what becomes happening as the 12 months commenced. With markets tanking at that point and an extended authorities shutdown, Wall Street forecasters have been awaiting a massive decline in revenues and profits compared to the equal sector ultimate year. Instead, BlackRock’s income fell just barely, as did its revenue. Meanwhile, its overall assets beneath control sincerely rose by way of three%, to $6.Five trillion. What can the company’s first-quarter tell us approximately the overall U.S. Economy?

Residents of Emporia, Kansas, weren’t laughing whilst the satirical news web page The Onion named it “excellent small town to escape from” in 2017. In truth, “mind drain” from rural regions has been a hassle throughout the country for decades. But Emporia has a brand new plan that harks its enterprise beyond, a railroad hub that helped spur a local production base. Thanks to an existing neighborhood fiber network and help from the Rural Innovation Initiative, Emporia is hoping to emerge as a rural tech hub, with an incubator for marketers who will carry jobs to the region.

In a brand new ebook, Janet Napolitano, the previous head of the Department of Homeland Security, says it’s miles “not possible to overstate the urgency of enhancing our country’s cybersecurity.” She says we’re prone all over the location, from critical infrastructures like utilities and 911 dispatch structures to our elections and our non-public facts. But there are plenty of federal companies in its rate, and they must make paintings with masses of personal corporations to address it.

Host Molly Wood spoke with Napolitano about her new ebook “How Safe Are We? Homeland Security Since 9-11.” She asked her what she wishes her enterprise had finished differently. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Janet Napolitano: I suppose one key gap was our incapability to have formulated countrywide cybersecurity requirements that were mandatory, not voluntary.

Molly Wood: Do you imply mandatory standards for businesses?

Napolitano: For people who own and operate important infrastructure. And because of that [failure], we have truly outsourced to the personal zone a key place of what’s concerned in our countrywide protection. It’s the handiest vicinity of countrywide security where we’ve left it commonly in private arms. I’m involved that that does no longer go some distance enough.

Wood: You mention probably incentivizing the non-public area to make investments more in its very own safety infrastructure, perhaps via tax credit and a federal insurance application. But do you think it wishes to be combined with some higher requirements and guidelines?

Napolitano: I think preferably so, however in the absence of mandatory authorities regulation, which is continually complicated to accomplish, I assume we should do greater to incentivize the non-public sector via tax credits, thru the ability to shop for into basically a federal government insurance program that, if they met sure standards, could cowl extra losses that were due to a cyber attack. Those forms of approaches have worked in other areas, and I see no purpose why they wouldn’t work here.

Wood: Is each person doing this proper? Is there a rustic that you could factor in as definitely doing an excellent cybersecurity assault prevention process?

Napolitano: Not yet, and that’s why I assume there is a position right here to be played through the community of nations coming collectively. They can do so via their protection businesses. They can try to bring their major businesses, their foremost software operators and owners, and so forth. But to create some international information, a few forms of a global treaty on cyber could be an area to begin.