LAS VEGAS — At the largest hacker conference in the world this week, some turned out for a rare overtly partisan event: a fundraiser for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Organizers said the “Hackers for Harris” event, held late Thursday afternoon in a convention center bar at DEF CON, brought in more than $150,000 in pledged donations — a small amount compared to Harris’ recent hauls, but the largest political fundraiser in the conference’s 31-year-history.
Run by two former Biden administration cybersecurity officials, the event asked attendees to stand by the Democratic nominee, noting that she had been part of a small group of senators who supported election cybersecurity researchers from the conference in 2018. Organizers asked attendees to donate between $250 and $10,000. The fundraiser drew about 150 attendees.
Kemba Walden, who served in the Trump administration as an election cybersecurity attorney before temporarily becoming President Joe Biden’s acting national cyber director, led the event alongside Jake Braun, her former deputy and a longstanding DEF CON organizer.
“When Biden signed the national cyber security strategy and we came to DEF CON last year, we invited hackers to the White House,” Walden told NBC News. “I feel the community would have continued to be energized by the Biden-Harris administration engaging with them. The difference this year, though, now that Harris is coming forward, is they are much more interested in the politics of it all in a way they weren’t before.”
DEF CON has previously held much smaller fundraisers for the two previous Democratic nominees: Hackers for Hillary in 2016, and a virtual one for Biden in 2020, the sole year since 1993 that the conference was purely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. Those fundraisers combined brought in about $100,000, according to POLITICO.
The hackers’ enthusiasm for Harris contrasts with how much a different tech sector, the cryptocurrency industry, has embraced former President Donald Trump. Last month, Trump reversed his earlier skepticism of cryptocurrency and gave a surprise speech at the world’s biggest bitcoin conference, which made a sudden far-right turn and highlighted a number of prominent Republican politicians and conservative influencers.
While it’s common for many attendees at DEF CON and other hacker conferences to broadly associate with the left, cybersecurity officials have often taken pains to present the field as nonpartisan. Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under the Trump administration (CISA), the top U.S. defensive cyber agency, was a DEF CON mainstay in government.
But some actions taken by Republicans have alienated many in the hacker community. Some of Trump’s allies drastically misrepresented DEF CON’s findings about election cybersecurity in their failed attempts to prove he had actually won the 2020 election. Last year, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., introduced a failed amendment to stop paying the salary of a relatively unknown career CISA election cybersecurity official. Project 2025, a collaboration of more than 100 conservative groups launched by the Heritage Foundation, proposes gutting CISA as an agency.
Walden, to date the only Black woman to hold a senior cyber leadership role in the White House, said she views Harris as an inspiration.
“When I saw her become the vice president — as a Black woman, and unapologetically — I thought to myself, I can do this,” she said.
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