Biden Says Cybersecurity Is the ‘Core National Security Challenge’ at CEO Summit

WASHINGTON—President Biden hosted executives from major technology, financial and energy companies on Wednesday for a summit on national cybersecurity, calling the issue “the core national security challenge we are facing.”

Top tech executives, including Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook, Amazon.com Inc.’s Andy Jassy, Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella and Alphabet Inc.’s Sundar Pichai attended the White House meeting, according to a list of participants shared by an administration official. The guest list also included JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon and Brian Moynihan, president and CEO of Bank of America Corp. , among other representatives of the financial industry.

The summit came as Mr. Biden is overseeing an urgent evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. The president has attempted to reorient national security priorities around what his senior advisers have said are the top strategic threats of the coming decades, including cybersecurity, competition with China and Russia’s efforts to destabilize Western stability and alliances.

Speaking to reporters briefly at the start of the meeting, Mr. Biden highlighted estimates that roughly half a million cybersecurity jobs in the U.S. are currently unfilled and stressed the private sector needs to do more to safeguard digital systems from criminal and state-backed hackers and spies.

“The federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ve invited you all here because you have the power, the capacity, and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity.”