let's get started, everybody.

one of your final panelists of the day. we have a great panel here. i am impressed with the group.

that the chamber assembled for our conversation about some of the developments that have happened since the war started in ukraine and some things going forward as well. i saw president biden on his recent trip to warsaw, poland. it is remarkable to see the support ukraine has around the world, particularly when i was in warsaw. two weeks ago, he interviewed ukraine's to the u.s.. it was an interesting interview. it was at opening day of the washington nationals and i have to say that if you did not see, it was a perfect first page, pretty impressive. that me tell you who we have on our panel. from the far side here, ukraine's deputy minister of digital transformation. we have max peterson, vice president for the worldwide public sector of aws, rita, the president and a chair of the

board of directors of the export import bank. the head of international government affairs. and, matthew devlin, gruber's head of international affairs. let me start off with you. digital connectivity. access. that's critical to economic and social progress in ukraine. prior to the war ukraine was one of the main global exporters of i.t. services. why has technological innovation been so successful in ukraine, even during the war, that russia started more than one year ago? >> i think the major factor is that we have these people. [inaudible] companies actually need this very good to deliver

great amounts with fortune 500 companies. there are thousands of companies. 300,000 people were involved in the i.t. sector before the war. what they did in the war is run our couple and incredible. -- remarkable and incredible. recent studies show that the only industry that grew in times of war is i.t. and it is 7% gross year-over-year. they were resilient enough and it did everything to go on with the operation to remain active, to fulfill their obligation for the client. they made $7.5 billion in revenue for ukraine.

>> your microphone is cutting in and out. it is important in terms of investment, what businesses look for. regulations. give us a sense of the regulatory reforms ukraine is implementing to enhance investment, not only now, but after the work includes? >> i can do that too. anyway. when three years ago we started the ministry of digital transformation, regulatory reporting was one of the top items on our list. we introduced it two weeks before the war. it is a special economic zone specifically designed for business, startups, venture. the major benefit that the company was getting as i think that it was at the lowest taxes

in the whole of their european region. because, we understand that major expenditures with salaries. we cut labor taxes like five times. so far, we have about 500 companies that have joined. i would call it a virtual economic zone. we don't have a place. it is not some specific territory where you can go and open an office. you can be everywhere in ukraine. you just have to apply online. once you register, you are subject to receive tax benefits. not only tax benefits. we introduced a number of things that never existed in ukrainian legislation before. in order to speak the same language with the silicon valley investors and investors from around the world. in ukraine, there was never

before convertible notes. we introduced convertible notes. that is a common instrument, a common tool for investing in early-stage startups. if there were no liquidation preferences or many other things that american investors get used to. we wanted to make ukraine a destination where any u.s., canada, or any european investor could calm -- could come. basically, the playbook he used to invest is the same as in the united states as it is in ukraine. >> rita, let me talk to you. the export impact -- import banks laid an important role in facilitating the movement of capital into important places like ukraine. last august the bank signed a 3 billion-dollar memorandum of understanding with ukraine. how is this financing facilitating and accelerating capital needed to bring the

projects alive? >> thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here to talk with the private sector and so many different leaders from government as well as from nonprofit sectors. one thing that is very clear for us is that we are the only official export credit agency of the united states. for those of you that have been so razors they supporting xm, you know it is all about our mission of supporting u.s. jobs five -- by facilitating exports. one thing that became clear when i joined xm over a year ago is that we had already signed an mou prior to the start of the war because with ukraine, the value of that mou was $3 billion. the sectors we were looking at where in the traditional ones we had been working with ukraine for -- wait for 1990.

this year it is nine years old. so, we have a long-term relationship with the country. so, it became very clear to us when the war -- when this unjust war broke out, that xm bank wanted to use all of any financing tools we had, such as loans, guarantees, and insurance, to be in support when the time is right for the support of rebuilding and of the of ukraine. so, when we have also the mou and the continued support we have been providing every ukrainian leader that has traveled almost to the united states, and around the world, meeting with other partners. we have at u.s. xm, we believe that the mou sends the right signal and the signal is to the private sector to let them know that this is not going to be one agency or one government or one

private sector company that has the ability to help in these efforts. when you look at xm bank and you look at what we are able to provide, we know that it will be the combination of private capital. it will be the fact that xm, as all of you know, is there to help level the playing field for our american companies. we want to make sure that our american companies, but who are looking at providing goods and services, are able to compete globally, and also, to be able to win. so, does mou we believe is a strong manifestation of what the biden administration ended the whole of government i am sure you have heard many of my colleagues talk about earlier today, that, we know that it is the combination of all of us and we see advocacy and with the department of commerce entity fc and our development organization. so many others joining together with all you to do the work that will be needed so our companies

can compete and also when in the market. >> are there any particular sectors you focus on as it relates to investment? >> first, from an overall perspective, our congressional mandate does not allow us to discriminate against any size or sector. or any industry. one of the things we have been showing over the last term is how we are the bank for everyone. being the bank for everyone we understand we have to diversify our portfolio. xm traditionally has been an agency where people may think, one, either they do not know about this little-known agency with 400 employees and authorization through 2026 of over $135. we still have that. we want to be able to deploy. but, from a sector perspective, as it is particular to ukraine, we look at the topic we are talking about.

digital connectivity. that is why we well, i am sure, get into a question around transformational exports. that's an area. renewables is an area we will be looking at. but the most important need will really be around what president biden is doing with his g-7 colleagues around the partnership for global infrastructure and investment. that is why we know infrastructure needs will be great. xm has exceptional expertise and experience in large rail, roads, bridges, types of projects as well as digital connectivity efforts. we want to see some of those projects lately, those very good bankable projects creating jobs, not just in the u.s., but also, in ukraine, they will be areas i know we will be able to focus on. >> each of the companies on the panel has worked alongside the ukrainian government and other private and public organizations to support the people of ukraine

through technology and also providing various critical services. matt, let's talk about your company. aws. how has aws supported ukraine during the course of this work? >> thank you. it is good to be here with all these folks on the panel. i would like to double down on something that the minister just said a second ago. he said, one of our key resources is people. that is one of the places aws leaned in with our partners in ukraine as of the war broke out. we worked with one of their largest educational institutions, optimists schools and we took optimists schools online on the cloud initially with 9000 students, growing within one month to over 80,000 students. so, we clearly saw the opportunity in the moment of crisis. also, as you look at rebuilding, to figure out, how do you actually scale a pot -- skill a

population for the new digital world in a fast and efficient way? that was a great partnership. we continue to ask ourselves that question. in october we launched a program called i.t. skills for you. we collaborated again with companies and government institutions across the board. we have 30 different organizations signed up now offering jobs, apprenticeships, and further training to the population in ukraine. you have plus one on the people's side of things. we need to keep investing there. that is where we will grow. the other interesting comment had to do with what policy changes did you make? i believe in addition to the ones you talked about, when administered fedorov was with us at our conference in november, he talked about a critical government policy reform where

they changed a policy that required government data to be in ukraine. instead, they recognized, it needs to be secure. but it does not necessarily need to be located there. that was one of the major changes that opened up the ability to support ukraine's government, education,so literad a ws worked with 40 different government education institutions ringing over 10 petabytes of data to the cloud. as well as commercial organizations like -- in order to provide the resilience and continuity of service that was going to be necessary. over 40% of ukrainians use the bank and by making it available you continue to underpin the

personal finance component to >> you represent google. when i think of google i think of search. i think of war i think of weapons. don't necessarily put the two together but in modern-day warfare disinformation is one of those factors ukraine is also fighting against. give us a sense of how google is fighting against disinformation not only in ukraine but also in central and eastern europe. >> from the beginning of the war we understood we had a serious responsibility on the disinformation front. we saw the pressure rising. europe, united states and elsewhere so we took action before the sanctions came in to take down certain russian news outlets that were on some of our platforms. when it comes to the cyber situation, if you go back to february of last year, there

were many commentators in washington thought the russian cyber capabilities would be stronger than the ukrainian defensive ones. that actually has not borne out in the way in which people anticipated. google just released an interesting support on the sidelines of the munich security conference two months ago called the fog of war. it shows how a not only did offensive russian cyber capabilities attack ukraine. they were targeting nato countries and they were not as successful as some might have anticipated. what you have seen emerge is a digital nato. the ukrainian government has been so effective in partnering with the united states, european allies and u.s. technology companies that ukraine has been able to get the best tech cyber defense capabilities including migrating to the cloud both before the war and during the

war. one small anecdote is at the start of the war we saw ukrainian civil servants whose email accounts were under attack by the russians moving their work email, their government issued email accounts stopped working. we saw many of them migrating to their personal gmail account so we worked with the ukrainian government to provide 50,000 licenses to our global enterprise workspace account so all of them are working in fully secure google provided enterprise software on the cloud which cannot be taken down in the same way in which the in country information had been. huge kudos to the ukrainian government. we have been honored to partner with you. >> uber has stepped up. you're traveling back to ukraine. you told me it is next week. third trip to ukraine in the span of a year. talk a little bit about how uber

has expanded its services across ukraine since the start of the war. when the full-scale invasion happened we were operating in nine cities across ukraine. since then we have expanded to 18 cities across the country so we have doubled our footprint and invested heavily to do that during and despite the war. we are able to provide riders with transportation. importantly, more than 25,000 drivers have been able to maintain a source of earning income for their families during the simultaneous economic challenges. if you think of that as the expansion of our core operations is a foundation, we lay it on top of that several discrete belief initiatives. we do free rides for displaced families living them to safety. teachers getting to school.

we have built customized logistics software for police agencies in ukraine. we delivered more than 500 truckloads of emergency supplies. a lot of emergency food relief. a lot of winter shelter supplies. things like tarps for blown out windows. stoves and more reconstruction material. as we push supplies out to the front like communities, we have evacuated from the front-line areas a lot of irreplaceable pieces of ukrainian cultural heritage. artwork, historical archives, religious icons from over 250 sites that are under continuing threat of russian attack. that has been the focus of our work inside ukraine. we have leveraged our platform outside ukraine. we have been in partnership with the ministry of digital transformation and president zelenskyy's fundraising platform. we have a feature in the uber

app that has allowed people to donate likely. we have already sent more than 50 ambulances to ukraine and that number continues to take off. that is where we are today. those efforts have always been in response to the needs of our partners articulate. as those needs change what we do will change to match that. food and supplies, that is so important for the people of ukraine dealing with daily life in a war zone. that is where uber can also play a big part. >> we had to do a lot to keep operating through this war. we are somewhat distinct in we are a technology company but we are linked to the real and physical world. remove data across networks but we also move people through cities. in ukraine those have been cities that have been repeatedly and horrifically attacked. it is challenging to do that reliably and safely so we have to do things like establish and

constantly update geo fences so we keep trips away from sensitive areas and only expand to new areas when it is safe. we have to respond in real-time to airstrikes. reroute trips around the impact. identify any drivers or riders who could have been impacted. managing things like cell phone networks going down. how we continue to work through that. that in -- that has been an incredible challenge paired we have an incredibly talented team on the ground. you have heard throughout the day that ukrainian tech community is incredibly dynamic and incredibly entrepreneurial. incredibly driven. i am very proud my colleagues and friends in kyiv are among the very best. if there is one take away it is if you have to do something, you are not sure you are capable of

doing i would go higher ukrainians. >> we have uber. we have google. we have a ws. three extremely well-known companies to the general public. for a company that is medium-sized or even a small business, how do they help out? how do they use your offices to help out the people that need this help in ukraine? >> that is a question we are constantly talking with so many of you. what most people don't understand is over 9% of our -- over 90% of our transactions went to small business. authorization was about 1.6 billion last year in the small business realm. about 90 people of the 400 focus on small business. what we like to say and which is true, no transaction is too

small or too large for xm. we have the ability to work with small businesses especially in this digital area. especially in the 5g space because we know that is where a lot of the innovation comes from. that is the companies that are creating the jobs. we have the ability to look at our working capital, our guarantees, our loans apply to small business. we understand in all of the meetings we have had with ukrainian officials small business is driving not only our economy in the u.s. but the economy in ukraine. we stand ready to have our counselors and advisers available to assist our companies in the united states especially those who work with the large companies in the supply chain. i have here with me our chief officer. our office of lord financing who

is our senior vice president. as well as our external affairs. please raise your hand so they know who you are so they can target you when they leave. the most important thing when we understand his people or try to have an ability to know how to work with xm bank. that is why we are open for business. we are available to you to help you understand how in the sectors that are going to be so sorely needed that we can assist you in your financing to participate in the rebuilding of ukraine. when i look at the companies here, they have strong supply chains. we want to be out there talking to not just the companies on this stage but to any of our exporters who have the ability to have individuals who will need xm financing. to go into markets which we all know --

it is all about the business of this is an institution -- we send back with the full faith and credit of the united states. we are looking for applications. in our authorization it definitely says we have to ensure any transaction we get a reasonable assurance of repayment. nobody wants to a less. -- nobody wants to os. >> won an answer from amelia and matt. how do you stay operational in the course of a war going on? we see in the united states images of this war every day and yet your company is operational. you are providing the necessary services to the people and businesses in some cases that need it. how do you do that? >> i'm going to steal a line from the minister and start with

be like ukraine. they were fast and innovative. it was five days from the time we worked with the ministry to provide them these high-capacity storage devices called snowballs. we got the information on there and got it out and on the cloud. people find reasons a lot of times for why they can't be fast or innovative. a crisis drives that but it does not take a crisis. i would say first of all be like ukraine. one of the things we took away from it was we need to make it easier for governments and businesses to think about resilience. so we created an offering called continuity of government i.t. which helps governments around the world. a war is an extreme circumstance but there are a lot of other

reasons why you have interruptions in operation capability. resilience is a critical thing to think about. several speakers have talked about the emergency scenarios they deal with. the cloud allows you in a way that legacy i.t. can't to drive innovation, to develop resilient scalable i.t. capabilities. third, to ensure security. those three things i think are the key, certainly the areas we focus on further private sector and public sector customers and we think about how do we make sure they are on all the time? >> certainly there are teams outside of ukraine who have been supporting the folks in ukraine. security teams, management teams, hr teams etc. but the

real heroes are the people working day in and day out in ukraine under extraordinary conditions. they're the ones inspiring us and they're the ones who deserve the praise. >> i'm just going to follow on that one. we have teams around the world pretty much in every time zone dedicated to supporting colleagues on the ground in ukraine and they do tremendous work of which we are very proud. at the end of the day there is not a single auto, tool or solution we could take off and deployed in a war zone. that was not what we had. we had to deploy it. it had to be broken down and rebuilt. the people that did that were the people on the ground. >> i'm going to come back to you. these are prominent companies we have here on stage that are helping your country in a very

tangible way. our companies coming to you or do you have to make a sales pitch to companies to help out during this war? >> in those cases they come to us and are asking what can we do. i want to thank everyone on this panel and every company supporting us. i think they have been a little bit humble because what we calculated so far is a dozen millions of dollars in cloud support, in -- you mention. in support of startups and supporting united 24 as uber mentioned. we know everyone. communicating every day basis and usually that is an

initiative of those companies. which is what we need. we have this conference with the digital freedom. at some point we decided to show what kind of areas we need help. each company can pick their own path. and support education or support reconstruction or digital governance. we try to come up with a systematic approach. so we do not lose anyone and deliver help when it is needed. i think there are hundreds of millions of dollars that have already been delivered by tech giants and different kinds of companies. what is interesting for me in the beginning we were worried

since we are a strong outsourcing industry companies from the united states which actually 60% of all clients of ukrainian i.t. will start telling them we don't want to work with you. in the course of next month we realize it is the quite opposite. they insist they want to work with ukrainian developers because this way we went to support ukraine. it is very significant. i always tell them the best way to help ukraine is to invest in ukraine. working with ukrainian interpreters. invest in ukrainian startups. work with ukrainian companies. that is a contribution we really need and we are grateful for that. that is how 7% growth was

achieved because people realized ukrainian companies need that. they need those jobs. and contractors. they have gone this. >> this may seem like an obvious answer to this question but i have to ask you and the question is why? why help out ukraine? in some cases you might be losing money in terms of your investment. what is the answer to that and what do you say to companies who perhaps would like to help out that may realize there may be a loss initially in terms of their investment in ukraine? >> for me as the leader of our worldwide public sector business our reasons are simple. we have three tenets that guide

the way we do business. customer priorities are our priorities. this is a clear national priority. the second one is we look for customers who are simply dissatisfied with the status quo and believe they can do better. we love working with colleagues like those in ukraine. with mr. fedorov who had this digital vision to be the world's most convenient country. he had a small scrappy group of people that embraced the cloud and developed these applications from scratch to the place where they are now deployed across ukraine with better than half the population online and digital in a compact time. the third reason is from day one we have already said it is important for us to strive to make the world a better and safer place. all the ingredients came

together and when the war started, amazonian's leapt at all those different opportunities because it was aligned with the way we think about long-term customer value. >> let me ask you that same question. why is google stepping up? what does google get out of this? >> i don't think this was a very difficult decision for executive management team to make given the circumstances in february of last year. the second thing i would say is and this has been said in these four walls many times today which is the extraordinary vibrancy and talent of the ukraine tech sector. one number that sticks out in my head and boggles the mind for me is the revenue of ukrainian startups last year exceeded $6 billion which was 500 million more than the previous year. that is incredible when you

consider the circumstances under which they have been operating and ukrainian startups today are worth three times more than 2020. i think the case is sort of made for itself. >> i would echo. the slight distinction for us is we are so embedded in the cities in which we operate in a way that is somewhat unique for a tech company. we have employees on the ground. we have tens of thousands of drivers on the ground living through this war trying to support their families. trying to support their communities by driving doctors the hospitals, teachers to schools. >> as i mentioned, i cover the white house. i cover everything associated with president biden. he has spoken on the idea the u.s. will support ukraine for however long it takes.

let me bring it down to the level of what you are doing. how long are you committed, each of your companies, to the things you have done over the course of this war since it began on february 24 of last year? >> for as long as it takes. as long as there is war in ukraine we will be providing wartime relief. whether that looks like what we are doing now or if ukrainian needs evolve we will evolve to meet those needs. as regained has controlled -- has regained control territory we will expand. we want to play our part in ensuring ukraine cities are economically dynamic, culturally vibrant and socially connected within themselves and to the rest of the world. we know there are millions of ukrainians outside ukraine right now. ukraine needs them to come home. we want to play a part making sure ukrainian cities welcome

them back. >> you talk about google's plans going forward as it relates to the war in ukraine. >> earlier i was speaking about the dynamic startup sector. google announced a google start up supporting ukrainian startups. we pulled together 58 of the startups we started supporting from last year. in warsaw last week to talk to them about how they are doing. it is amazing. on average revenues are up 106%. they are employing 800 people. they are really thriving. they are also facing really significant challenges. 90% of ukrainian startups are looking for additional funding. at google we are committed to supporting these and other startups and talking to vcs. >> aws, talk to us about that going forward. >> is important to number one

continue to support ukraine while the war from russia is still in full swing. i think it is equally important to lay the foundation for rebuilding. that is the second thing we are also focused on is helping lay the foundation for rebuilding. that includes both rebuilding the institutions but also doing it in a way that is secure, resilient and agile. it includes laying the foundations as others have said for a small business success. aws makes programs available that allows startups to get access to free technical skills, free cloud credits all to start that journey of digital innovation for themselves. the third thing i think is super important is the private sector. being able to support the private sector as they rebuild is something that is core to

aws's is nessel around the world. start, enterprises, public sector. all of them are going to be key to the rebuilding effort in ukraine. host: i'm going to end our session with you. it is a divided congress right now. publicans control the house. democrats control the senate. talk to us about that challenge and what it means for you right now and what you expect in this divided congress. do you expect congress to have the same bipartisan support for ukraine even with one party controlling each house of congress? >> i know that my colleagues from commerce, the secretary from the state department and the white house spoke eloquently around the president's commitment. one of the things we know is we have had strong bipartisan support when we were

reauthorized in 2019. all of the nominees who were nominated by the president in this term were confirmed by strong bipartisan support. we have to operate in a bipartisan nature. it does not matter where or what state someone comes from. we are there to help our american exporters. we are very clear in our commitment. we have worked strongly with the sovereign right now. we continue to do that. what people may have forgotten is that we were the implementers of the marshall plan. that is one of the reasons why when in the work we have done throughout last year and this year talking to our lenders, talking to our brokers, talking to the banks, talking to ceos --

great opportunity there. in that opportunity we want to work collaboratively with the private sector. it is going to be very important as we move forward and we look forward to working with every member of congress in this effort. >> that is a great way to end it. i want to thank each of our panelists. thank you for what you are doing. thank you for continuing to do that. thank you. ♪