Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Counselor for International Affairs Bruce Swartz Delivers Remarks at Disruptive Technology Protection Network Trilateral Summit

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Let me begin by saying good morning to all of you colleagues. In my closing remarks for the U.S. team, there are three brief points I would like to make.

First, we start from an exceptionally strong foundation.

As you know, as Jeff Olson and Mindy Gee from our Office of International Affairs regularly report, and as I know from my own personal experience, we have very strong, very warm relations with the Republic of Korea and with Japan-you are our key partners on mutual legal assistance and on extraditions. So everything that we are doing through this network builds on that starting point.

My second point is we will be stronger as a result of this network.

It gives us the opportunity to increase our information sharing, to eliminate barriers for exchanges, including of best practices as Matt has mentioned, and to coordinate as well, where appropriate, on investigations. And I urge us to take that opportunity-as we all know formal assistance is critical, particularly when we are building cases, but it is the informal exchanges that are really the heart and soul of this. And the memoranda of understanding that we will be entering into makes clear that we have the authority to do that, and we should seize upon it.

My third point is this network is a critical and important signal to our adversaries.

General Stanley McCrystal famously said, "It takes a network to defeat a network." And that is exactly what we're doing here. We're building a network of allies who can go after the networks of our adversaries, the malign networks that seek to steal and misuse our critical technology.

You really are at the beginning point of a critical network that will not only be important in of itself, but will be an important signal to the world, of our commitment on this point.

So thank you again for being here. We look forward to our discussions today and even more importantly, as Matt and the Deputy Attorney General said, the work that will continue hereafter. Thank you.