Orange County’s congressional districts will have some of the most hotly contested primaries in the nation—in cyberwarfare.
That was the sobering message former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden delivered to Neal Kelley, OC registrar of voters, the fifth-biggest voting jurisdiction in the country with its more than 1.6 million registered voters.
“We have a ways to go,” Kelley told an interested crowd at the University of California-Irvine’s student center during a recent conference on election hacking. “But I’m very proud of the efforts we’ve made.”
The county agency has established partnerships with federal, state and local agencies to improve security, and voters can expect to see a greater law enforcement presence near ballot sites in the June primary and November general elections, according to Kelley.
The Elections Government Sector Coordinating Council issued to election officials in some 9,000 offices across the country a national protocol to combat threats of attack against election infrastructure.
The sector plan for OC, which includes input from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, will be concluded in the next few weeks, Kelley said.
Homeland Security early last year designated election sites as critical infrastructure, listing them on par with the Hoover Dam. The designation came less than a year after federal law enforcement agencies warned election officials of several intrusions into U.S. voting systems leading up to the presidential election.
“No intrusions took place in Orange County,” Kelley said.
The March 13 conference, which featured panels on Russian interference, propaganda and misinformation, election system vulnerabilities, and voting technologies, was hosted by UCI’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, a leading constituent in OC’s developing cybersecurity hub.
Democratic political strategist James Carville delivered the keynote.
Two days after the conference, Homeland Security and the FBI released a lengthy report that charged Russian government cyberactors with targeting U.S. government agencies and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation and manufacturing, since at least March 2016.
VC Blues
TAE Technologies Inc. is among the heaviest funded companies in Orange County history but hasn’t raised a dollar in its own backyard, highlighting a long-held criticism about the dearth of local venture capital.
“It’s not for the lack of having tried,” TAE President and Chief Technology Officer Michl Binderbauer told the Business Journal. “Maybe it’s our inability to connect with the right folks.”
The company has raised more than $540 million in its 20-year quest to produce nuclear fusion clean energy, a journey that began in testing labs on the UCI campus. Its backers include some big names, including Paul Allen, Microsoft Corp. co-founder and Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Seahawks owner; actor Harry Hamlin of “L.A. Law;” Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon; Venrock; and New Enterprise Associates, the largest VC firm in the world.
The Business Journal reported last week that San Francisco-based ARTIS Ventures led a $40 million Series A round for TAE Life Sciences, a newly formed subsidiary developing a groundbreaking oncology treatment system utilizing energy beams.
TAE Technologies has raised most of its funding from the Bay Area but has attracted investors from Italy and the U.K., among other far-flung locations.
The lack of local backers isn’t lost on Binderbauer, a UCI alumnus who studied under noted professor Norman Rostoker, creator of the foundational theory behind plasma physics and TAE Technologies’ strategy of creating plasma as a fuel source.
“I always reflect on that, given the scale of this enterprise and our relationship with UCI and other local interests,” he said.
Losing Fuel
Newport Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp.’s financial woes are bleeding into this year.
The country’s largest builder and operator of natural gas stations projects a net loss of $20 million to $25 million this year, in line with Wall Street expectations.
The guidance followed a poor fourth-quarter earnings report of a 12.3% dip in revenue to $89.3 million and an operating loss of 18 cents a share, or $9.8 million, compared to operating income of 2 cents a share, or $17.9 million a year earlier—one of the few quarterly profits the company has posted.
Revenue fell last year to $341.6 million, down 15.2% from 2016. It recorded an overall operating loss of 47 cents a share, but only $100,000 for the year, when accounting for gains from an asset sale to BP Products North America Inc.
Its shares were trading around $1.67 as of press time, with a market value of about $252 million, down from a 52-week high of $3.05 in late July.
