Transcripts For CSPAN Elections And Cyber Threats 20170925

Gathered here today literally are the leading experts in a very complicated field. We are lucky they were all willing to come up here and talk about all of the things that make up Digital Democracy and the threat to it right now. You all know what that is. Those are things related to the First Amendment free speech, the Fourth Amendment privacy, to technology and the systems that underpin that and most importantly, our electoral system of democratic governance, which is what was under attack in 2016 and earlier. We are going to talk little bit about that. I would like to very briefly introduce myself. I am the codirector of the Belford Center for science and international affairs. Ive been in cambridge about six weeks now. I just moved up from d. C. In a past life, i was the department of defense chief of staff and a six and secretary and assistant secretary of defense, where i was in charge of all things cyber at the pentagon. This is an issue that really resonates very strongly in my heart and in my gut. In particular because the last year i was there in the obama administration, i saw a lot of bad things unfolding and the bad guys going after our democracy. And it felt bad. So, once i was out, i thought to myself, i am going back to the Kennedy School. There is still a role for people outside of government in trying to address this issue because it still is an issue. And my deepest fear, actually, is that all the bad guys around the world saw what happened in bad guys were going after our democratic system of government and they are rubbing their hands together getting ready to go back after the u. S. With that as an introduction, i want to introduce you to a cast of characters here. All of them are doing something about this. Different than in some parts of harvard. They are not only great thinkers and strategic thinkers, but they are literally doing press go practical things to address the issue. So i would first like to start right here. We start with marlee mccue. Marlee is interesting because not only is she a journalist for politico, she has been in info infowar expert for a long time. She is a special advisor to several governments around the world who deal with this issue in a personal way. She just got back from some of the Baltic States and will talk a little bit more about that. Clint watts is a fellow at george washington. But you know he knows something about this in a very operational way, because he is a former special agent from the fbi where he was working on cyber issues. He knows how this works operationally, and in a past life was also an army ranger and knows how to keep people safe. Then, we have here heather adkins, who is the director of Information Security at google. Heather, like debbie, who i will introduce later, is literally a pioneer in the field of Cyber Security. Heather was the first person at google, 15 and a half years ago, working on Cyber Security. If you can imagine. So she has seen a lot over the years in the way things have evolved and knows how to run Cyber Security operations and knows a lot about both the technical and information side of things. Next is robby mook, a star in his own way and very popular around the Kennedy School. I see little groups of people following now. He has got like a cult. Robbie is most well known because he was Hillary Clintons Campaign Manager. He is one of the hardest working , nicest guys i have gotten to know. We will tell you a little better about that story later. Sitting next to him, believe it or not, is a real, live, republican. [laughter] he is a real republican. He is not a republican in name only. This is matt rhodes. He was mitt romneys Campaign Manager. The story about why he is willing to work with robbie is something we will talk more about. But again, matt a great guy. A very effective guy. And one who is helping in the project we have started to navigate the complicated politics of all this. Last but certainly not least is debbie plunkett. Who at one point was one of the most senior people in the National Security agency. If you want to talk about someone who has been the bad has seen the bad guys go after your network debbie was responsible for all the Cyber Security for the National Surety agency. At that time, also the department of defense. It goes without saying that if youre a bad guy, you are doing everything you can to get into the nationals surety agent he. Security agency and dod. Thanks to debbie, they almost never did it. [laughter] if i said never i would be lying. And anyone who really knows cyber says you never say never. Here is the way we would like to progress. This is a very complicated issue. It is some politics, it is some technology, it is some bad guys and understanding the way the bad actors the russians, the chinese, the iranians, the way they act. Then it is a little bit of the private sector, too. So i dont have to tell any of the Kennedy School students, but this is a really complicated mix when you have all those things together. If it were just the technology issue, it would be complicated enough. But it is the reason we have all these people here. I will start with the politics and talk with robbie and matt. Move on to the technical perspective, where we will ask debbie about some of her ideas about how you can defend Digital Democracy. We will talk to molly and themed about info ops, russians in particular, their operations and some of the things that have been doing recently. And finish with heather, talking about the perspective from google, the role of the private sector, and open up to questions from you all. So, lets start with you, robbie. You are fresh off the clinton campaign. Obviously, a little painful. There are a lot of things you can do when you have been the Campaign Manager for a big Campaign Like that. Some of it involves making lots of money and others go to a Deserted Island and pretend the whole thing never happened. With at least those options, why me and mattrk with in particular on a project to defend the Digital Democracy, with all the other things you could be doing . Talk to us about that. [inaudible] first of all, you are fantastic people to work with, the people on the stage. I was charged up. I was very upset about what happened. I was concerned about two things. Our campaign and a lot of democratic campaigns were really vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. I did not see anybody in particular talking about what we were going to do to help the campaigns. It was important to me to fill that gap. Second of all, i was really concerned about how partisan the issue was becoming, because, you know i had known that in 2008, both parties had been attacked. Matt and i linked up through a common friend. It is a small club we are in of x Campaign Managers, very exclusive. Accurate. [laughter] and we were talking about this. I think first of all, i learned that romneys campaign had been attacked in 2012. Matt really understood what a problem this was. But i think we also had alignment on this issue that it could not become democratic or republican. Otherwise, we are basically going to be inviting foreign powers to attack our adversaries, and that wasnt ok. With the last piece, i want to understand underscore what you said, and what has been great about the you have given us to do this project is we are about getting practical things done. At the end of the day, we want to know that we made some campaigns more secure and that we have done more to help. To help the professionals scope out the bad guys, and keep them out of our campaigns. Matt it is kind of a funny story, but i was talking to my friends about this issue and how much it was really bugging me. It was i was losing sleep about it. People said, you should really talk to robby mook. I did not know who that was. Ive been buried in the pentagon for the last seven years. Who is that . They said, are you a political idiot . That is Hillary Clintons Campaign Manager. I talked to him, and he told me about matt rhodes, a republican who also thought this was an important issue. Matt tell us about your thought , process. Why did you want to get involved . Mr. Rhoades i want to thank the Kennedy School for hosting us. And eric and the Belford Center for providing a platform to elevate this issue. Robbie stole my thunder. But this did happen to the Romney Campaign in 2012, it just did not get as much publicity because it was not done in a very public way. But in the fall of 2011, we were notified by the government that our campaign had been hacked by the chinese. And what it did and how it impacted our campaign was, we had to use vital, precious, hard dollars,gn money that we wanted to use to win New Hampshire and iowa to upgrade our security, our Cyber Security. So it had a direct impact. That was money that we did not get to use when we needed it it when Newt Gingrich caught on fire and iowa, or Rick Santorum caught on fire five different times over the course of the primary. So i am well aware that is a bipartisan issue. It does not just face democrats. It is a challenge to conservatives as well. Matt, your campaign was hacked. Robbies was hacked as well. We want to spend a lot of the time tonight not just relitigating the past. When you think about the future, what is one of the things you worry most about . Mr. Rhoades im excited. Debbie is going to get into some of the things were working on. What i worry the most, from a campaign standpoint, i do not worry about the president ial campaigns in 2020. That is not to say that they are not targets. I worry about the next barack obama or george w. Bush, two candidates you can see coming from a mile away, and having some hacker decide that they want to change the course of history by hacking into some rising stars email and misconstruing something or targeting someone close to them and having that candidate stop on the launching pad. That is what worries me. When it comes to these campaigns, on top of that, from an election standpoint, i really worry about some secretary of states site getting hacked on election night. We live in a very, very polarized world right now. Whether a democrat or republican came out on the short end of the stick of a hack on election night, even if that secretary of state was able to verify the results with hard validates, in , i think inballots the polarized world that we live in, no one would believe the results, and it would create absolute chaos. Ultimately, in my opinion, that is what these hackers and outside entities are trying to do the most. They are trying to create chaos. They are trying to get something for the media to cover. They are trying to get guys like robbie and i to hate each other so much and be even angrier than we already are, and not be able to sit next to each other at events at this. That is what scares me the most. We have been talking about this project that some of us are working on. Tell us a little bit about that. Kind of what is the idea of trying to get a group outside of government working on an issue like this. Mr. Mook we are trying to be really practical and outcome oriented. I think it is very easy to put out a white paper and say, this is what the government should do. Our government is stumbling to do things quickly nowadays. What we have been trying to do is focus on all the resources that exist in the private sector. I do not want to speak to anybody here in the private sector, but i think they are really eager to help with this problem and get those connected to the campaign. First of all, we are trying to create a playbook. Debbie has been good with this. It can walk a campaign through the basic things to do not to get completely secure, but to get pretty close. And put that in language where someone like me or matt can understand it. We are not really technical. [laughter] it is a very practical issue. People would come in and say, you need to secure your campaign. You have no framework for understanding what that even means. The other thing i learned is the private sector has done a lot of organizing itself to better share information about threats out there and confront their adversaries. We want to bring some of those best practices into the political space so that parties can take advantage of it. Mr. Rhoades i love when robbie starts talking about the private sector and how great it is. You have to realize these campaigns are not all president ial campaigns. A lot of these down ballot campaigns, they are a bunch of young people who come together. They bring laptops from home. Someone gets assigned to be the digital director, i. T. Director. They are told you need to create a secure system. It is a ripe target for anyone to try to hack into. Hopefully we can do some things. Debbie, were all counting on you. [laughter] i just wanted to mention again, the fact that you see these two guys sitting next to each other and working on this together, it is a pretty rare thing nowadays. And it is not easy for either of them. Quite frankly, they are taking a lot of personal risk putting themselves out there right now. In an environment where you are talking about Cyber Security, maybe the russians or other bad guys they get a lot of flak for this. I am very appreciative of this. Moving the politics is one important aspect of this, and they are doing a great job. We are happy about that. Thank you guys. Debbie plunkett, back in a previous life, i got to know and see in real life action. She is one of the people i would say is a handful. She is one of a handful of people i most admire for everything she has done. When you are in charge of defending nsas networks, that is a pretty hard job. We called debbie up and said, we have this funny project. What do you think . She did not think twice. She says i am there. I am on it. She has been working really hard since then. She is working on a playbook, you have heard, to give practical advice. She is working with dimitri from crowd strike, another hardworking guy. Talk to us, from your perspective, about some of the things that campaign staffs can do to raise the bar on their security. Ms. Plunkett thank you for the opportunity to be here. And be a part of this project. For me, personally, i really felt like it hit at the core. Me, as an american, i want to know that our democracy is protected and that our electoral process is secure. I think it is really important that we join forces and protect it. For the campaign, the weakest link, not just an campaigns but writ large, are people. The first thing i think we have to do is to have a soundtrack of have some type of training for campaign personnel as they are coming into a campaign. It does not need to be some located it does need to be frequent, to frequently remind those who might not normally have been exposed to appropriate security acts of things they should and should not do on Campaign Time with campaign resources. The very first is, address the human factor. Next, i would say the campaign really needs to think hard about what they need to protect. Are donor to mind lists, strategies and plans. Matt and robbie can talk about what is most important better than i can. Things that need to be protected need to be protected in an appropriate way. So using the cloud for security and using Virtual Private Networks as needed to make sure that you are able to protect those assets that need the most protection. And then authentication and identity management. Have strong passwords. Tor control. You can at least raise the opportunity, increase the security of the infrastructure at large. Change the landscape and make it more difficult for someone to get in. That is great. Thank you. We have been talking about the pure Cyber Security angle. But there are a lot of other things that have been going on over the last several years, and the last year in particular, that are about more than just pure Cyber Security. You have been looking at some of the election processes themselves, and the things affiliated with that. What are some of the things that you are concerned about that we should keep an eye out for . Ms. Plunkett the elections are largely run by states. Different states have different procedures. Some are more attuned with security than others. To some extent, that is an advantage from a security perspective because you do not have one method across all states. Of course, the flipside is that almost all of the stateof the election data is networked, is put on some type of electronic device. Almost all of the state electiononce he gets there you a potential for alterations and destruction and anything that might change both the result and the perception about the result. The populace may not trust the outcome. Heard the political perspective, a little about the technical, and in the class i teach on these issues, think about policy, technology and also the threat. Molly andton plant, molly she just got back from estonia. She is a pretty brave person. When you are essentially advising other people about how to return themselves and mitigate the risk of russian attack, usually a russian built right after you. Molly has some good stories about that. Molly as i have my rights for political politico. Beurity systems would complicated. Sometimes complexity is the best security when you have different systems. The department of defense said we have 30,000 different sub networks. Security when you have other than is far some hacking voting machine just to hack people. What did you mean . The weak link is people. These systems are securities, fiber and leaky, whenlee you are talking with the mission, that is very different. That is not something you can cyber secure or find a rate firewall for. In this last election there was attention to the way that its a ship finding a life of its own no matter where it is generated from, and that information is a for the kremlin. Have information that is a tremendous tool for chaos moving across media. It is an accelerated means of information. When you have information social media that by that are sculpted in civic ways using news psychometric targeting, new campaigns coming out like the trumpcare aint bragging about how they have individuated this itdually targeted to is possible to scope these different landscapes of information. Heard the Truck Campaign talking about it after threeection, there were roots of american that we were targeting to keep them from voting. Black women, i cant member. They were running filter suppression commit campaign to keep people from voting. The technology they were using were not something pacific to them as specific to them. When i am in countries that are four Different Technology tools to monitor, track and fight i ammission or fair ine with the list of ways best with the winnie and and this means having it but not fine with russia having it. We are behind on understanding the power that social media challenges have given to the spread of information and new ways and how that affects us. Special companies talking about their magical algorithms. It is simple psychology targeting techniques. Idea is noyou of an different than convincing you to buy a pair of shoes. During the spring testimony by comey, when you during thesaw russian informatp uas celery into the u. S. Information base. Our there was this is chemical factory hopes that the media. S put on social some random chemical factory in this, there was a terrible thing was going to happen. There was a text on how you can mobilize people. On to provoke there was the was. Coming up through the election in the u. S. At the beginning of point of Public Opinion you have in that time. Shifted oncan base their views on three trade, on their views on latin america and 30 points on their views on the media to use restraint on political leaders. More shifting than democrat. If you have three issues that is the essay my isolated america more in favor of russia more leaning towards authoritarian tendencies on which there was a , when percent shift people start to come out and say the russians did the during the election and it happened to parallel the stuff that trump out wereked doing, that is false. That is where leaders on the hill talking to the hill there is still out were the path where there is cyber other and this other thing that no one wants to look at. Even if you cannot prove the election was not as a hack, which i think we dont know because nobody wants to look at it, the hacking of the permissions stake which is about how people think, it was documented really well. We have yet to discuss this in articulate way it was a response should they should be. People like us where the private sector want to come contribute but we are not the government. We dont haves strategic centers on this is sent on this type of thing yet. Things,t there are a couple of i wouldnt be a professor the difference between causation. We are working hard on his trying to help people understand all the facts associated with this, and have a candid conversation about. The fact that the russians acted against the u. S. To try to is welle the election established fact. There are intelligence reports that say that. Whether or not that is what tipped the is well established fact. Scale in my class i was a you have to just like whether that is correlated or cause. Showing causation is a difficult thing. One thing to keep in mind. There are a lot of intervening variables that may have impacted whether or not it was ultimate influence. What really is important to try to understand, and you have been working on this a long time is the russian mind set and what they are going after. The dos been studying talk to sue that part. If it is the russians it could very well be the norm for in time. Why are they doing this . The biggest thing an example the first Charlottesville Protests we saw, one of the first line they chanted was russia is our friend. I grew up in missouri and we. Layed war in the corn field we wanted to kill communists, man in 1980 1981 man showing up enchanting this. There was a guy talking about, ahead bomb making factory and was chanting about syria had the right. Russias goal is to parts. One is the strategy of devolution, to break impunity of all unions wherever they are at. That goes from a local level. Entrance of two primary adversaries, nato and the european union. If they can break up those that allows them to go on one with any country and that they have strength diplomatically in terms of information. Even economically and oil reserves. Beyond that is to wish their agenda, there are policy view. They have already won, they have one. In three years the greatest influence campaign in the history of mankind has been pulled off. They have now influenced over a nationalist agenda that stretches from russia through germany through france and through the United States. They have influence over audience segments that agree with them, they are antirefugee, antiimmigration, antiglobalist. This is the theme you saw whether you were a republican or democrat. It didnt matter if you are mark or rubio or Hillary Clinton on the other side. We need to understand antidemocracy through and through. We might have hated the sylvia when i was in the corn fields playing war but at least they believed in something. Regimees the russian believe in . It is against human rights. A country that is now controlling information. Wikileaks, which is a proxy of the russian government that talks about transparency. It is promoting a country that has zero transparency. Surveillance by the end of the year. What we need to understand is we are indian era that is National Security in a world of audiences. It is not defined by the borders of our country. We have lost that in the u. S. At this point. Segmentsvious that dont believe this. They dont believe elections are true and they dont believe everyone should have the right to vote. , if you look at opinion polling they are ok with democracy be replaced with other things. They dont know what that is, but examination is and always their strong suit. The things theyre advocating is what we fought the cold war for, it is what we are founded on. Problem over the longer term is what does the United States become if we are not united. And this digital disinformation matchup really well. We live in two countries right now. We have some districts where republicans fight republicans for seats. We are opening up another cyber not about acts in terms of influencing ,nformation, it is one bubble people together and they share and use the same information sources. Acting is for novices. Russians are masters at this. Anyone with enough resources can master it as well. A twopart failure of our thisnment going into election. I know this that we are trying to segregate, but there is no difference when 80 of your news comes off of social media feeds. A followup, after the election this year there were stories about how divided we , democrats watch these news sources, republicans other sources, and they are totally separate. The core of that was we as americans have chosen this. This is being done to us by the way that information is moving, by algorithms that show you what they think you want to see at by data and other means. That needs toece be discussed, not people choosing to see only what they want to see, it is the way that the internet is giving us this information. My former boss barack obama said that russia was the greatest National Security threat that we had. I agree with that, he was right. , toou look back at the data put that in perspective in the 2012 campaign on election day 43 . K obama was up i agree with the point that was chaosthey tried to create in the country. We should look clinton went on a book to her in 2013 and you could see her sweat and sweat. Entity toside foreign try to explain, i disagree with. I was involved in the 2008 and 2012 primaries. Rightlye burning quite and hot all the way back in 2007. Mitt winning the republican nomination in 2012 wasnt as easy as some people thought it was. I want to put things in perspective and bipartisan. On going back at you, to. Dont care about donald trump or Hillary Clinton. I work in the u. S. Government. Work over, under and around politicians. That if you you is believe in this country and the systems of democracy, you have to get out of the bubble. We dont have debate right now. This is what digital is important and why hacking is overrated. It is about how information is maneuvered and used in terms of influence. I was working counterterrorism and this is what we did. We would do an assessment. I can influence you with a laptop and microsoft excel. I can do all the analysis right there. It doesnt take any tricks to do it. Once you get the core down, the data that is available give you a huge advantage. Resources, with a desire and motivation, and those without rule of law and any limitations on their Intelligence Services you can maneuver on any audience you want. That could be a corporation or a political campaign, it is out there. , ifhere there is democracy i was going against state democracy i would use the same system or information platform that is out there. I didnt want to get into the republican democrat thing because i dont care a lot. Go after things that threaten democracy. This is not that advanced in anyone can target or influenced way very simply. It doesnt matter how good the russians or chinese or anybody is. They cant create this, they can make it worse. It is most successful in the Baltic States, there is a russian speaking population that is separate from the locals and you can make that worse. You can inflame them and give them a bigger platform. They are not good at creating the divides that they can use them effectively. To expand on the point, we are not talking just about hacking or info, it is a very potent mix of the two together which is typical of the hybrid warfare that the russians used. Target, geto a real some real info and mix it with information and put the two together and it is an even more potent mix. What issue is use of the russians want, i am an old army guy like you, i am not sure we can ever make the russians one, putinwin lost in france but still has a chance in germany. When did the french do that was different than the u. S. Government in terms of reacting to it . Is not just a u. S. Issue, this is an issue for democracies. Andant to think about that the countries not just the franceoing after is interesting. I know you worked on that so help us to understand that. Its cultural and structural. Much harder to compromise a french person than an american. People have mistresses, no big deal. Youre running for offices they are not as affected by compromise. They dont get their information digital tv as much as americans do, its about half as much. That will change. Which makes it much harder to do influence. You would have to set up a propagating the newspaper. That part is much tougher to do in the european context. They have the luxury of coming after our election. Things very we do dumb compared to some other countries in terms of elections. It is a much shorter run up space. Every fourtions years for four years. We are already talking about 2020. We could have a candidate stand up right now and get knocked down by 60 days by a hack. Ofprovide a huge rap to says influence. If you notice, they had a run off, many candidates. Takeu are in russia if you out your top adversary, both the most of his votes will go to whoever the replacement is and theres only a twoweek time frame. Also there is a media blackout. Before they dont take information. They also use some tricks email accounts, setting out. Upsides and putting out false information which is all in effective. That is taking up their time and their capital. They were wise to what was going to happen, and they also didnt get shook out by it. They stayed with traditional media outlets, wet with newspapers and friends and family and have discussions instead of virtual ones. Is a different political scene. Another thing that the french did related specifically to defending against information, when they found out they were under attack they went public with it. They said here is what the russians and the name explicitly are trying to do. Here is what they say and heres what the truth and they let people understand what was going on. One of the things to take out of this is a sophistication and understanding what the russians or bacchus are trying to do. About that is something that has a deterrent effect and also mitigates potential impact. That is one of the things i think you can take. The germans think a lot about this, too. They are the target of some of this effort. ,ow we will turn to heather after a super interesting conversation we will talk about the private sector aspect of this. Heather is not here to talk about all of the private sector nor defend all of them, but that that the private sector plays is important, with our election infrastructure, all the things that you all know about. Us about thealk to private sector. What are some of the things youre doing in the aftermath of the recent elections trying to get better to address some of the things that have come your way . First, i would not be alone in the private sector to say that i cannot believe im here talking about this topic. Most of us who got into this too and not for the political or economic perspective. The reflection upon what notave built is therefore as robust as we would like to be. In the physical space you have your five senses that tell you when you are you in danger and when you should feel fear. Who do not have a six cents to tell you that online. There is no digital fence or fear. This manifests itself with Cyber Security issues and with info operations. The way we have to solve it is very similar. To give people a technology that allowed them to sense what is going on and to make an educated decision with what to do. I am lucky to work for google. We have hundreds of people who worked on Cyber Security issues and we have built for ourselves robust infrastructures. One of the things we have started doing as of march was to start giving that to campaigns. And to election monitoring people, we call it that protect your election project. They are simple tools, they are free and they should help combat some of these problems such as how do you as a Small Campaign without funds and experts how do you protect your email . If youre using gmail we will help protect you. We will give you tools to protect against phishing and for we have use this effectively and places like kenya and the netherlands to keep and Information Online for people. Other aspects where we need a digital fence is for information and recently in april we announced that we will start to the best of our ability to apply a label to a piece of information that appears to political in nature. This gives people the opportunity to learn for themselves what the real facts of the situation might the. The example we give is the claim that there are 20 several million enslaved people in the world. That search into google they would try to also provide a place where you can do the Fact Checking for yourself. Trigger you told say i wonder if i should check this fact for myself. The Human Element going back to ,hat deborah said is important we are trying to protect with 7 planet andple on the we need to educate them. Sometimes the best time to do that is in the moment when they are making that decision planetd we need to educate and that action for themselves. This i know is a hard question. You saw on facebook just last week they came out and essentially admitted that in doing further analysis they found that a lot of paid ads had been paid for by foreign government, the russians in particular. The internet is set up nowadays builtt firms that arent to make a profit should make a profit but it can screw the way in which information flows. How hard is it when you are working at a firm like built to make a profit should make a face work to match up twitter when it is the right thing to do against what shareholders ask ask you to do. And maybe against your commercial interests, how difficult is that . Let me say that the only reason you probably use google is because its reliable, fast and provides things that are interesting to you. Not dohanged our egos to that you may not use our product and we went make the kind of money that we do. The open free web is very important and we believe that. We try to make up the basis of what we do. We are no stranger to fraud and as. We have hired actors in the cyberspace, we have people we are noe stranger to this idea then you revenuerevenue make alongside malicious intent. We have people to solve these problems, we are not 100 , we are very much learning what kind of technologies and strategies work. There are interesting one and have commissioned there are interesting one and have commissioned studies and are trying very hard to push on the forefront of this. It has been interesting and me, you can see matt and robbie want to band together to do something about this. The tech sector has stepped up to the challenge. They have a role also for democracy and doing something that is important, and it is not easy like its not easy me for them. It is not easy for the tech sector to admit that they may have inadvertently had something to do with things that they have done in the past. There is a long way for everyone to go. At which youoint have now a lot of information. And a lot of questions one of the best things you have in the form you have smart people who can ask really interesting questions to real experts. Up, therefore microphones. When we say ask a question, if you have a general point, no more than two sentences followed by an interrogative followed by a question mark. Tell us where you are from and a specific question so we can think keep things orderly. Sir, go ahead. I am a graduate of harvard Kennedy School. Everything that happens during the elections there was an a popular out of the system candidate bernie sanders. Everything we know how it was revealed, it was made public by someone. I am surprised why all this farce. Underminesnt democracy, not an attempt to find someone who drove this news is russians or someone else, i dont know. You setion is why do priorities this way . Why you do not see that is really your democracy. Why do attempt to shift the attention of one problem to the bad news. We are talking with shifting the bad news. Matt, do my taking that on . Or have readily. Ahead robbie. I just want you to leave russia alone. Good point as i should have. Chaos that was created, you can go back and tort, it started to rise astronomical levels were voters by the time she got to run against rice anders the primary primarye sanders in the ,. I have my personal opinion, i have shared some of them tonight. Have a realep back sense of what is real and go back and look at hillarys numbers over time. It started early, well before robbie. Is runprimary campaign state. Secretary of the. , i went tot through state nevada and we worked hard to win knows, sanders one overwhelm only overwhelmingly. One of the things that i was proudest of in the primary , i went to nevada and we workedcampaign wii did with bernie sanders. I voted for him three times. It was two separate elections, by the way ar. I was proud of that and i am proud of the work i did with sanders during the convention. They are good people. I think there are people out there that are trying to make it seem like we were close together about the platform we created was something to be proud of. I disagreeeasons with the premise of your question. I think what matters now is the future. We have a lot of new candidates. We will be voting in the primary, to. Of calling people back guys all the time. Once backpacked in russia or month, friendly and warm people. Ofsident putin and some other guys is done you. L apologize to we can talk after this, too. Neighbor and thank you for opening this to the public. I want to ask about what a gap i heard in this talk. Andfocus is on practical youre putting together a campaign, security 101. The whole other aspect that was talked about, information center, influence campaign, ope, etc. It doesnt seem to point to have any thing formed that is at work close to practical. Suggestionstain facebook should make, that it serves available to the public the don. Know what is what is being done. Are there practical problems and the don. Sphere can share ideas . The hamilton project deals with that. I would like him to talk about that. Thanks to the sponsor in this , we started called the hamilton , we are vulnerable as a nation form meddling in our election based on the way we ours yorkshire. We are structured. We have watched these campaigns over a two and a half year. Leading over up to the election. How do you inform the public of this. It was a tool for us to understand what is the russian decision. Position . Osters this is the state sponsored propaganda that is put out by russian news outlets. These are personas we have watched for many years, a lot of times rules are social bias that you see. The part about that that is important is it allows you amplify your. That you can change the way the media react to the story. It allows you to take information and shoot it like an artillery barrage to gain social media systems. The first heart was awareness. The first thing you do is you infiltrate the audience. To use their own organic amplify provision inside the electorate. Fightinggets them amongst each other. You,they Pay Attention to that is when you can start to influence. The second part which google is doing and i think it needs to be more expansive is nutrition labels for expansion. What youly do you know consuming . You are how many facts are being put out, when you read consumer you put it products, over 17 or a farewells and rate your information over a month, and you get an icon on your yout over 17 or face twitter feed. See this with opt in ouror of out out. You are not suppressing free suppressingare not freedom of the press. Makeed to empower them to their decisions about information. Russia hats into thousands of americans. I have been targeted by foreign government. Stolen,t know what was and you dont know how many have cap hacked. House they stole files out of his house take them to a news a for and published them. We are talking about armed conflict. Our Service Members have been attacked with malware. They had their version of mark c as well. Well. Democracy as the revelations about bernie sanders, another way we can help americans out is to give them a lesson. Civics we can help provide them an education. My problem with the russian , my issue is with the putin regime. They not only launched formation attack, it is winning through the force of politics weather event politics of force. We need to understand this, that is where my issue is. It is about Information Warfare and shaping the next generation. Sir, normally i would give you a followup but there are people waiting. Gogeneration. Ahead. Resident. Cambridge , itsstion is similar about legislation and information dissemination. Services like google and face book account for billions of dollars, programs like hamilton dashboard headlines we saw last week about facebook selling hundreds of millions of dollars to of ads. Several of the top results are as about the holocaust not being real. This is happening faster that any entity can regulate, how does the government create regulation for these american businesses that are propagating this around the world . Heather, quickly, one sentence of the question itself. How do you regulate misinformation . We had trouble classifying what the truck problem is it will be difficult to regulate it. We have difficulty classifying the problem. You see this in Cyber Security space, it is difficult to regulate what you cannot describe. To talk is too early about regulation if we want to talk about it at all. Will cease to be a useful information source to do if you do not trust our information. ,magine a time when we had cars early 1900s. Had we regulate and car safety before we invented seatbelts . Have had to use a horse and buggy. We have to think about these things thoroughly before we talk about regulations. Regulations trying to regulate regulations . More to your point i think the answer cant necessarily come from from a governing place to stop the flow. I think the Cultural Community i wonder a way i just dont know [inaudible] on thursday morning i will be testify on these issues on what we do about russian information information at no at 9 30. It is private sector, Civil Society and system. Butybody has a role to play we need to figure out how to put those uses together much faster. You. Ank this start, right here. Harvard law your comment made me suggestingresearch people with political views are pliable, presenting information contemporaryare alter their political inclinations. There is information suggesting it can bee people difficult or even understand their political intuitions, oftentimes to basic identity motivations. The problem seems to be that a people rate of trying to structure the flow of information, rating the quality theres online i suspect is a considerable part of the population that would confirm their antis establishment to questions tuitions. How much of this can be affected by the information industry . Could it come down to civil educational structure . Both it is both. You can use them for different things. The easiest thing is to radicalize people, to reinforce everything you believe, until you are so cut off from that theye views never cross over. The emotional factor is where you can change views. Project inng on this the Baltic States. Russian and state media propaganda versus russian language content. Story, my the two favorite focus group was College Graduate student level, working in journalism and media and really wellinformed. If you put two stories it in front of them i know that this is a propaganda story, but i like it it is wellbalanced. You can use both of those things , thats whereays the emotionalism comes in. Which is why things are the way are and answering the Big Questions of the world and the storytelling, the specific vehicle on how you get people tg questions of the that is important for longform efforts. Part of our looking at how to solve this problem commissioned a study and they looked at 14,000 people. It was published earlier this year. Iswanted to understand people really lived in a bubble online. There is something to suggest they may be a bubble they often , having theormation platform to be open and free they will find a variety of views is important. When you look at platforms like twitter where there is a voting i follow donald trump as well and i look at both sides. A lot more people do that then you realize. I think it is important to recognize what you pointed out and the studies you pointed out it is important to realize it might not be the majority of people. It might be a microcosm that we are still learning to understand how it works. Creating thesed platforms that allow us to vote for a favorite news is good, one of the changes we made in google apps is to make it easy to give us the feedback so we can make adjustments. Yesman. I have from arlington comfort virginia. I have a question about limitations on american Intelligence Services that Foreign Services may not have. Where they come from and whether it is from u. S. Domestic policy, or a moral line we draw for ourselves that will only go so what kind of information we collect and where we stop ourselves. Where that limitation comes from and how that separates the u. S. From foreign Intelligence Services. They come from things when the u. S. Government is overstepped generally. Those provisions are in there because we are not comfortable with it. Part of that is influence in the u. S. Audio audience space. Very cautious to not be influencing our domestic audiences. It is hard to know where the domestic audience starts and the International Audience ends. Test, whork times will stand up when these programs are put in place and defend them to we have a good system for that. Somebody agencies, goes i am not signing up to that. We know that isnt in line with our values, ultimately. I have never seen it and i pray. Od anything like that i think our country would hate ourselves for doing that. Even with the Edward Snowden debate we are uncomfortable with it. One is legislation we have artie done, do we want to be signing up for violating peoples privacy . We are not comfortable with that. We got rid of the u. S. Information agency during the cold war and that is one reason we are vulnerable to this. Nt we have to leave the last few minutes to join the house live starting with general speeches. Eastern,ve at 2 00 hurricane victims. The clerk the speakers rooms, washington, d. C. September 25, 2017. I hereby appoint the honorable roger w. Marshall to act as speaker pro tempore on this