This is from russia with facebook, foreign influence in the u. S. Elections. So please take your seats if you would and silence your phones. This will be a onehour session. Please hold your questions until the end. If you have a question we will , have a runner with notecards. Going up and down the aisle. Please fill out the note card, pass it to the person in the blue volunteer shirt. In the spirit of unrig, if something in here today inspires you or presents an idea you want to go back and share with your community, please share it with the rest of the folks here as well. There are inspiration cards outside the back door. The folks in the blue shirts will hand it to you. Fill it out and put it up in the engagement station, if you would. Also, please do not forget to give feedback on the summit app about the session. My name is scott. I am your moderator today. I am senior counsel with represent. Us. I work to develop the legal advocacy work, and i could not be joined to discuss what has by a better panel become, in a very short time an issue of true , national priority, the vulnerability of our states, local, and National Elections to foreign influence, and the urgent need for americans across the political spectrum to come together to find bold, forwardlooking, and Sustainable Solutions to this problem. The 2016 elections made very clear that our elections are vulnerable to foreign influence. 21 States Election systems were targeted by the russian government. The u. S. Intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the russian government interfered with the 2016 president ial election in order to, according to the office of the National Director of intelligence, undermine the public faith in the American Democratic process. As we will get it into get into this not being the first , time there has been russian influence, and we have every reason to think that the loopholes exploited present vulnerabilities for 2018 and beyond. There has never been a more important time to talk about i will briefly introduce our panel. Terratec they will get it started with some opening remarks. I will ask a couple followup questions. The remaining 20 minutes will be for question and answer. To my far left is commissioner Ellen Weintraub of the federal election commission. She has served on the fec since 2003. Before that, she worked at a , and servedw group on a legal team that advised the Senate Rules Committee during an election contest in 1996. It best next her is professor anthony johnstone, a professor of law at the university of montana. He teaches and writes about federal and state constitution law, election law, and related subjects. Prior to that he served as a , solicitor for the state of montana. His recent scholarship on this issue has focused on the historical and constitutional perspectives on life or in on foreign influences and why it is such a concern to our democracy. Then we had a professor of law from Stetson University college of law, a fellow with the Brennan Center of justice. She worked as counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. She looks at how dark money could be heading illegal foreign money and how it threatens our National Political sovereignty. Can you speak a little louder . Yes, i can. I would love to. [laughter] to her left is the senior director of trial that ignition in chief of the Campaign Legal center, where he directs District Court litigation and coordinates, implements, and manages the broader trial court strategy. He previously worked in the office of the general counsel of the federal election commission, where he litigated cases like Citizens United. Lastly, we have eric wang, a senior fellow at the institute for free speech, a political law attorney who focuses on political activity regulation under federal and state Campaign Finance, lobbying, ethics, and tax laws. He previously worked as interim general counsel at americans for prosperity. He was counsel to carolyn hunter, chair of the fec. Commissioner weintraub, start us off. Commissioner weintraub thank you, scott. Thank you all for coming. Great to be here. In 2016, we know, because our intelligence agencies told us, that a Foreign Government took steps to try and intervene in our election. Our intelligence agencies warned us that they will do it again if we do not take steps to stop it. Mike pompeo, head of the cia, said that just last week. So this is not a theoretical concern anymore. Do foreigners also take advantage to loopholes in our Campaign Finance system to spend more money directly into our elections . That is the funny thing about loopholes we do not entirely know, because we do not have all the information. But given what we already know, that a Foreign Government but buys facebook ads to interfere with elections, we would be naive to think that they would not be exploring other avenues. It is a remarkable Cost Effective technique buying these ads on facebook. Senator mark warner, the democratic head of the Senate Intelligence committee, has pointed out that if you added up all the money that the russians spent to try and influence the u. S. , the dutch, the french, and the british elections, it still would not cost as much as one fighter jet. So we have to think very hard when we think about money and politics and the influence that it can have, about how cheap some of this is to do. Ae of the various mechanisms foreigner could use to get into our elections, they could try and get a direct donation, which has happened. They could use dark money vehicles, llcs, c4s, other entities that can spend money in our elections but do not tell us who is behind them to try and influence our elections. Bear in mind that if you look good how much foreigners own of our corporations, about 25 of stocks that are u. S. Corporations are actually owned by foreigners. So when corporations are spending in our elections, think about whose interests they are actually representing. Then, of course, there was the hacking of the infrastructure, which also cost money to pay the hackers. I hope the department of Homeland Security and state governments are working hard on hardening the resources against that. That one is a little out of my jurisdiction. And then there were those internet ads. We know they had an effect. Y actually caused people they organized events with people on different sides of the issue. People showed up and actually got into fights with each other, all of this organized by a foreign country. That is pretty scary. When we look at Digital Democracy and how much of our political advertising is moving to that, we have to feel a more attention to this. In 2016, 1. 4 billion was spent on digital political advertising, an eightfold increase from 2012. This is skyrocketing. It is the wave of the future and we have to do something about it. One small test step were trying to take at the fec is to make sure their adequate disclaimers on the advertising you see on the internet. Believe it or not, this has not been clear until now. This used to be a sleeper issue. When we put it out for comment about a year ago, asking, should we do something about this . We got six comments. But a couple of months ago i said maybe we should take another look at this, and we put it out for comment again, and 150,000 of you commented on this. 98. 5 of them said please do something. If any of you in the room were among those 150,000, thank you. We appreciate that. We need to hear from you. Beare going to shortly forming the rulemaking process and there will be more opportunities for public comment. I will be tweeting on this, so follow me on twitter. Make sure you dont forget the middle initial. There are states and localities that have been active in these issues. What we do at the fec is just a small slice of what needs to be done. There are acts in congress that take aim at trying to keep foreign money out of our elections, and all of those proposals need your support. I will stop. I want to start with the whos of richard banner, could not be on this panel today, but it is just perfect for being in new orleans at this time of year on a campus. The way that professor painter puts it, getting foreign money in u. S. Political campaigns is about as easy as getting illegal a call into the freshman guard yard of a typical college campus. [laughter] i want to draw some context around this and particularly think about the cross partisan concern that this represents. One way to look at it is to say, you know, it is russia. They are interested in disruption of the dnc last year. Who knows what it will be. Two years ago, who knows. 20 years ago, the dnc was actually known for going after Foreign Campaign contributions. I want to go a little deeper. I worry a little about the suspicion about outsiders. When we talk about citizenship and think about this issue of outside influence, it is not a matter of drawing lines of bigotry against outsiders. Its not about that. Its about selfgovernance. To choice to who we want participate. We ought to be able to make that choice how we want. We have avenues to bring outside places in. They are welcome. We can draw the circle of citizenship and we can draw the circle of citizenship and belonging to the american Political Community broader if we want, but that is our choice. It is not a red dawn moment of being scared of these russians. It is just that it should be up to us to make the decision in the first place. One common vocabulary for thinking about these questions and what i think about in my job is the constitution. We will hear about the First Amendment, but it turns out there is a lot more in the document beyond the First Amendment. And if you read the constitution, the whole thing, there is also its of concern there is all sorts of concern expressed in there about foreign influence. We want house members to be citizens for seven years. The father, in some ways, to the bill of rights, george mason, including the First Amendment, argued for seven years. They wanted to say three. George mason was for opening a wideopen door for immigrants, and if you are following that issue, it is worth looking at with the Founding Fathers had to say about immigration. They were quite proimmigration. But what he said was, wide open for immigrants, but we are not choosing to let foreigners and adventurers make laws for us and govern us. It might happen that a rich foreign nation might send over her tools that will bribe the legislature for insidious purposes. So we will express concern about outsiders. The president being an natural born citizen. The emoluments clause which im , sure if professor painter were here, he would mention. More generally, this idea of a republican form of government that James Madison talked about. The concern, once you open government to represent us and the people, is to make sure it is the right us, that we have some say in that. I will in end and what i think is maybe the best argument for getting a hold of this issue for empowering both state and federal governments for this, is medicine said enforcing rights are not necessarily on the same side in republican governments. The minor party, the Party Without the majority may have such a support your ready of resources, of military talent and experience does not have to be jet fighters, can be hackers or of secret suckers from foreign powers, as will render it superior. The party with less political power in the country, through foreign help, can gain control and power through our democracy. That is the concern and the reason we should care. Good evening. I will try that again. Good evening. Good evening. Ok. We are all in the same room together. My name is sierra Tori Spelling my name is ciara torresspelliscy. Let me get to the crux of the matter. The constant lying out of d. C. Is giving me a headache and is breaking my heart. One of the biggest lies that is troubling me today is one that has been told by the president s lawyers, and that line is that there is no crime that the special counsel is investigating. That drives me nuts as both a citizen and as a law professor. So if you will forgive me, here are some possible crimes of the special counsel could credibly be investigating. Bribery is a crime. Moneylaundering is a crime. Violating the foreign corrupt practices act is a crime. Lying to the fbi is a crime. Lying to the special counsel is a crime. Making false statements to the fec is a crime. Failing to register as a Foreign Agent is a crime. Violating the logan act is a crime. Breaking into a Computer System is a crime. The receipt of stolen goods is a crime. Soliciting money as an american president ial candidate from a Foreign National is a crime. Accepting money from or receiving value from a Foreign National as a president ial candidate is a crime. Aiding and abetting the foregoing is a crime. Being part of a criminal conspiracy is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Last but not least, treason is a crime. [applause] fortunately for all of us, many of those that i just listed i listed the federal crimes. There are also state analogs to most of what i just mentioned, and the reason why it is important that there are state analogs to what i just mentioned is president ial pardoning power only extends to the federal crime. I am hopeful that there will be serious prosecutions, whether it comes out of the special counsels office or out of our state attorneys general. I will leave it there, but i will just ask you to banish the word collusion from your vocabulary. It is not useful, because that is actually not a crime. [laughter] thanks. I want to thank those from represent. Us for inviting me to speak here today. I would like to make two points. One legal point and one related point that is more about messaging than about the law. The legal point i would like to make is that the issue of stopping foreign interference in our elections is fundamentally different, constitutionally different, statutorily different, different in terms of enforcement than pretty much Everything Else we usually talk about in terms of Campaign Finance a debate. In every other area, you have our side, the prodemocracy side, trying to enhance the First Amendment right of the citizenry as a whole to meaningfully participate in the democratic process. And you have the other side, the ,ort of procorruption side seeking to enhance the First Amendment rights of oligarchs and corporations to overwhelm the First Amendment rights of the citizenry. So you have this balancing of First Amendment interests. In the context of stopping foreign interference in our election, that is not the framework. Foreign actors outside the United States have no First Amendment rights. I am going to let that sink in for a second. There is no First Amendment interests on that side. The russian actor whos posting things on facebook from a troll farm in kiev or moscow is not protected by the First Amendment. On the other side of the equation, the interest the government is furthering by stopping that activity is not just the First Amendment interests of the citizenry, but it is the fundamental core obligation of the federal government to keep the country safe from Foreign Agents who are seeking to harm it. In the regular campaignfinance context, you have the First Amendment rights, and we balance of them. It is a balancing act. In this context, there is no balance to be had. And the second and final point i want to raise, the one i call messaging, is that i think despite what i just said, there is a tendency when talking about this issue to go into the same terminology that we use for the regular campaignfinance debate. Talk about transparency and responsiveness and burden. I think that is unhelpful. This is a National Security issue just as much as what the department of defense does. We would not let russian soldiers enter this country and station themselves outside polling places, so we should not be letting russian agents enter this country electronically or otherwise to interfere with our process. That is the framework within which we should be having this debate. [applause] thanks for that. Thank you. Adavee with a lot of what just said. For those of you who know me and the institute of free speech, you will recognize that i am sort of the odd man out on the panel. I have an alternative viewpoint. We were asked to discuss the policy and action items. Because i relish the role of rebel so much, i will discuss action items first and then policy. I think you will see why. Lets say you want to toughen laws against foreign interference in our elections. What are some things you can do to achieve that . In certain states, you can bypass the elected officials by getting a Voter Initiative on the ballot, but you will need to form a ballot measure committee, which i will refer to as a pac. They involve complex registration requirements, including donor disclosure, even urging your neighbors and social Media Contacts to support a ballot measure initiative. It requires you to form a pac. It is not uncommon for the act of one to get tens of dollars in Legal Compliance costs, if not more. That is the tax on free speech, accept the proceeds go to members of the Campaign Finance bar, like myself. Last year, my colleagues and i lawszed campaignfinance in all 50 states. We found that 15 states purport to regulate you as a pac even if you spent so much as a penny. In more than half of the states tax status may be triggered by , spending less than 1000. Of those states, 20 report to regulate you as a pac even if your major purpose is not political campaigns. Campaign advocacy. Changing the laws of our system often requires action by an elected official. Certain elected officials simply dont align with your agenda, so you might need to remove them, right . But if you advocate for their pacction or defeat, the same analysis i described will apply. In many states, even if you disseminate messages urging your fellow citizens to contact their elected officials about legislation, what Campaign Finance attorneys call issue advocacy, that might trigger pac status. If you dont trigger campaignfinance laws, the lobbying laws might get you. More than a quarter of the states regulate socalled grassroots lobbying. The campaignfinance regime, there is complex registration and reporting requirements. You might wonder what the big deal is requiring disclosure. It is just disclosure when someone else is being gored. Democrats here, i ask, do you want the Trump White House and breitbart accolades keeping tabs on all your Political Activities . To republicans, in an alternative universe, would you want the Hillary Clinton administration and her partisans monitoring everything you are doing . We heard from katniss everdeen. Do we want president snow looking over the shoulder of katniss everdeen. And her Political Activities . Thats basically the hunger games, right . And the problem with these laws is they do not just stop at disclosure. More legal opportunities are created for opponents to file politically motivated complaints , or for government officials to undertake politically motivated investigations and other machinations. Why do i raise these issues . It is because they inform and affect the policies we are discussing on how to address foreign interference in our elections. Many of the proposals being bandied about today come straight out of Rahm Emanuels playbook of let no crisis go to waste. The foreign interference problem is being used as a pretext to enact the reform agenda, longstanding goal of more regulation of political speech. The socalled honest ads act, which is not very honest, that was introduced last year in congress is a perfect example. 99. 99 of regulatory effects would fall on american political speakers and not foreigners. What would more focused policy would like . A bipartisan duo of u. S. Senators has introduced a bill that would cause an array of sanctions to be triggered against any foreign country that is found to have interfered with our election. It has also been suggested that the Foreign Agents registration act could be updated to specifically address problems such as russias 2016 social media propaganda campaign. These are the types of laws i hope you all will push for, because these are the types of laws that would specifically target foreign states and Foreign Nationals and do not use foreign interference as pretext to be more onerous on american political speech rights. For enacting more onerous on americans political speech rights. Thank you very much. [applause] it sounds like one thing we can all agree on is that this is a National Security issue. It sounds like another unfortunate thing we can all agree on is that the federal government is in no position to address it. The honest ads act, any act from congress, the federal election commission, big issues from Ballot Initiatives having money coming from foreign sources to online political ads. There is another ingredient in this, which is what state and local reformers can do when the federal government will not do anything. State and local activists, reformers, what they can do in the name of our National Security. Speak to that. After Citizens United and the little thing of the state of the union between president obama and Justice Alito on whether Citizens United opened up a flood of foreign spending on our campaigns, there was a test case brought to test whether Foreign Nationals could make expenditures into a campaign. It was actually a pretty good test case. An israeli citizen went to kinkos and ran off some things. In that case, the Supreme Court , because of the technicalities, was able to dodge it and not able to justify it self. Upheld the ban on foreign contributions and expenditures in our elections. The reason that is important is because the lower court on the d circuit quite conservative , a judge in washington, d. C. , wrote an opinion they came to this commonsense conclusion that we, as a community selfgoverning community, get to , a draw close lines with respect to political participation that was based on earlier Supreme Court precedent that was about foreign activities in the state and what states could do to regulate foreign activities. A long line of cases about when states were able to, not generally discriminate against aliens that is still suspect, but when they could regulate the presence of foreigners in politically sensitive roles. By upholding the federal law and relying on the state law, it left open the field for states to come in and take various measures. Perhaps mimicking the federal ban, but certainly other lesser measures like disclosure, not disclosure for friends and neighbors but the disclosure of 150,000 of purchases. They can do that. They can do lobbying. They can use the public contracting power. States are Major Players in public contracting power. States have a lot of tools and are much more engaged and dynamic at this moment than congress or the fec sorry so theres a lot the states that do. This course has lit that path for them. I am actually not as pessimistic as you are that action cannot be taken at the federal level. I think it actually makes sense to the federal government to address the problem of foreign interference in elections, because the federal government is responsible for protecting the country from foreign invasion. The issue of foreign spending in our elections is governed primarily under the federal Election Campaign act, the commissioner weintraub administers. There are a few states that have their own prohibitions under state law against foreign spending. California comes to mind. Are sort of the belts and suspenders measure. The federal law is the primary one prohibiting foreign interference in our elections. Where we are running into problems, as Amy Clover Sade covert chart senator Amy Klobuchar admitted, her honest ads act she admitted was not primarily motivated by foreign interference. It was an attempt to use that as a vehicle to enact the disclose act to which the perform community has been pushing before the ink had dried on the Citizens United position. These ancillary laws are being pushed through congress. That is what is causing gridlock in congress preventing congress from passing a law that will address this problem. A word of practical advice, as a republican, if you want to address this particular issue, dont use other legislation, ancillary legislation and use this problem as a pretext for enacting other disclosure laws. Scott lets talk about a state that has adopted protections. I want to talk about california. One of the few tangible, proven examples of foreign money being used in the u. S. Election was 2012, in los angeles, they had a ballot measure about business about the use of condoms during pornography. Wouldnt you know it, a foreign pornographer decided to spend over 300,000 in that los angeles race. There was a complaint made to the fec. The fec declined to punish the foreign pornographer you have to be fair, it was a split vote. [laughter] i would not anyone in this room to think that i voted for the pornographer. [laughter] while the foreign pornographer got away with it, under a split vote, he did not get away with it in california. The california regulators held his feet to the fire and levied a stiff fine. [laughter] is that something that every state could do im going to let that it took a while. [laughter] and we are back. [laughter] is that something, by the way, that every state could do in Ballot Initiatives which is not covered by federal law to protect Ballot Initiatives . Indeed. I was going to say exactly what you just said. The federal law covers all elections. Federal, state and local. The one thing it does not cover is state or municipal ballot measures. There was an certainty about that for a while. The fec said federal law did not cover it. There are no federal ballot measures. Any state or municipality that uses the ballot measure process can enact its own band to cover that. Are states doing things now to address this figure problem . Legislation, ballot measures . Why dont you tell us about st. Pete, my hometown . Ok. St. Petersburg, florida adopted a local ordinance that says if you are a foreign influence corporation, meaning you have an ownership threshold that is at least 5 , one single equity stakeholder one aggregate, it , limits the money you can spend in expenditures in a st. Pete election. Are there other efforts going on now to respond to this, whether it is through the guise of corporate spending or the guise of any other way foreign money may be able to infiltrate and affect our elections . It is likely the ballot measures that will be on the ballot later this year are not completely cooked yet but there likely to be at least two states that submit to their voters the question to ban Foreign National money from ballot measures, or through other mechanisms. Those two particular states are likely to be alaska and north dakota. But, that is not definite yet. There are likely to be more in 2020. With so much of this conversation being occupied by the mueller investigation. Can conservatives and progressives move past the elephant in the room and hunker down for something that is a shared interest . Are there opportunities for reform that dont go beyond certain parameters that could be viable for folks to come together in the middle and support . I mentioned taking a harder look at the Foreign Agents registration act. There are two companion bills in congress. One in the Senate Introduced that chuck grassley, and other one in the house. Those dont actually specifically target of these problems that we have been talking about, like foreigners posting ads on facebook. I think that is a surgical approach, a legislative approach, that perhaps could be accomplished. I think people ought to be advocating for that. Said, if weit eric want those policies to be beective, there might nothing wrong with a belt and suspenders approach. Think we look at National Security and say it is the federal governments issue, but for most of our country history, states had a much more active role with respect to foreign affairs, integration, etc. Particularly at a moment where im sorry, the federal cop is asleep on the beat. I think empowering states, state attorneys general, and other folks to enforce these laws at other levels, can be a good thing to make sure that the policy we want actually makes a difference. I am not going to speak so much to the state stuff, because my jurisdiction is a most almost exclusively federal. Except when it comes to foreign spending. I want to circle back to something eric said about disclosure earlier. He is smiling because he knew i would not be able to resist, but it is part of the reason why we did not find out during the election cycle the russians were buying ads on facebook, because we have such poor disclosure of who is behind Digital Advertising. The disclose act has been beefed up in the last congress to try and address the possibility of foreign money coming in through corporate means. That is a whole new, separate section of the disclose act. The honest ads act is not a rehash of the disclose act. One of the things the honest ad act does is make sure we have Digital Advertising covered in our disclosure rules. We really need to have beefed up disclosure and disclaimers, a subset of disclosure, in order to find out where the information is coming from. People were spreading information around the internet that came from a russian bot farm. I dont think anyone wants to get their information from and if they knew thats where the information was coming from, it might affect how much they were paying attention to it. I think disclosure is not the end all and be all, but a necessary step we really have to take. If i could just respond to that, lots of these what are the ads we are talking about . Do we all agreed that in order to address the problem, we have to identify it currently . I think we all agree on that. Ads wouldm of these not even meet the issue of issue advocacy. They were just messages about social issues. A lot of us know, the ads were about issues like black lives matter. Do we want the federal government or state governments regulating black lives matter and their messages . I think that is a dangerous road to go down. Moreover, i would point out that, according to the Washington Post, which we all know its fake news, right . 10 Million People who saw these facebook ads we are talking about sponsored by russians, 5. 6 million of those views were after the election. I dont think even under the broadest definitions of campaignfinance law, we cant regulate ads that are run after the election. I just dont see any disclosure laws that could realistically speaking be enacted that would target these socially divisive but not necessarily political in the legal sense, political ads, that were run by Foreign Governments. I want to be clear about why disclosure and disclaimers matter in this context. No one is under the illusion there is going to be an ad one day and the disclaimer is going to say paid for by the russian government. No one thinks that is going to happen. [laughter] the reason it matters, giving that information on the face of the ad and whatever sort of disclosure may be mandated, gives Law Enforcement, journalists, watchdog groups like us, and voters as a whole the opportunity to investigate further and to detect illegal activity when it is happening, and ideally to deter it from happening in the first place. It is not a cureall but it is a necessary step. Scott lets talk about solutions that can come from outside of the government, quickly. Companies like facebook and twitter especially twitter, as the threats of regulations started to heat up, talked about new disclosure policies for online ads. Once that threat receded a bit , we have yet to see any plans go forward, or the public perhaps, and their Media Literacy to be able to identify ads. This is a problem in europe that the public has to be able to respond to, and encouraging public watchdogs. What are solutions in the absence of federal action, the public, media or private companies, especially Internet Companies like facebook and twitter can do . , one of the things that i work with with the Corporate Reform Coalition is shareholder resolutions. So, since Citizens United, it started before then but it. Picked up after Citizens United, shareholders have been using powers under the securities laws to bring shareholder resolutions am a witch asked for more transparency. Resolutions which asked for more transparency. The most popular things they have been asking for is more transparency about lobbying and corporate political spending. Because of that, about half of the s p 500 has decided to be voluntarily more transparent about where they are spending their money, including the money that would otherwise be completely not captured by our regulatory system as it stands now. The money that would go to 501 c 4s, social welfare organizations and 5013 sixes, like the chamber. Other me other any thoughts on private companies . On that point, there is this uneasy tension i have noticed, at this conference, you have some panels complaining about all of the influence and power large corporations have over our democratic discourse, and yet now we are talking about the specter of large media corporations, large social Media Companies regulating political speech. Of course, as a republican, libertarian, i would be surprised these companies can do whatever they want. There is this uneasy tension that is apparent here. Think we probably would not object if facebook came up with a new policy who said, we are not going to take ad money in rubles anymore. We will not allow for ad money to be paid for in rubles anymore. Could we agree that would be a good thing for them to do . Sure. [laughter] but facebook is not purely american. I know in china it is not available because it is censored. I dont know if it is available in russia. But certainly if their platform were successful in russia, they would have to make some accommodation for russian users. If the ads are in russian, how about that . Scott a question for the audience written in english, on that topic, what is the costbenefit analysis of regulating tech social Media Companies to prevent foreign influence . What are the sides of that conversation . I want to just say i think facebook has voluntarily said they were going to take steps that would be helpful, but when we put out our notice, and i specifically reached out to the Tech Companies at facebook, google, and twitter to comment on this and give us ideas, they actually all said they would appreciate having some guidelines. They would like to hear from the federal government to give them some parameters. They think that might be helpful to them rather them try to make it up on their own. I consider that a positive step. In terms of the costs, i have written a lot about this. These social media platforms, even though they have great influence for social change look at the me too movement. That started on social media. Look at the womens march, sparked by a facebook post. It spread like wildfire. Look at a lot of these democratic movements in the middle east in recent years. They were all conducted on social media. My message is you have to be careful about not imposing Overly Burdensome Regulations on social media in a way that will stifle a lot of these genuinely grassroots movements for social change. I agree with eric, you want to make sure youre not fighting the last battle. Some of the reforms, i think the most important response to the russian interference in our elections is that we know. Fool me once. That is powerful. These conversations are powerful. We do not know what the next thing is going to be. Think on the cost analysis, there should be some caution that whatever our response is, its not about what happened last time, and is a supple enough response that the institutions are Strong Enough , Law Enforcement institutions are Strong Enough, to deal with whatever we dont know about what is going to come next. That is the concern. We dont know what it is and we cant talk about it. Scott interesting question from the audience. How can we ferret out box and other platforms . And when you identify something as a foreign actor or a bot, what should you do . Part of what is frustrating, foreign interference in our elections is already illegal, but our regulators cannot be everywhere at once. I am reminded of signs that went up in new york after 9 11, if you see something, say something. One thing to do if you see something that looks peculiar on your facebook feed or your twitter, it looks like it is coming from a bot, report it to facebook or twitter. If it is really pernicious, call your favorite journalist. Im sure they would also be interested to investigate whether we are getting another foreign attack on our current election. We are in an Election Year after all. On that point, my side is always saying that the best antidote for bad speech is more speech. I dont know exactly how it is done on facebook or twitter. I do use facebook, i dont use twitter. If there is a way of flagging suspicious posts, i would be for that. I always flag scam emails because i know that will go into the algorithms that these Tech Companies have so that those types of emails from certain senders will also be sequestered for all users. I think that is a way of crowdsourcing a response to foreign attempts to sow division in our society. I would add to that. One of the things that some of the russian bots were doing during the 2016 election was pretending they were Bernie Sanders supporters, so they would get into these fights with clinton supporters and would never turn off. They are a computer program. The clinton supporter would think they are arguing with a real person and get frustrated and waste time thinking they could not convince this bernie supporter of some political points. I would encourage you to step and know that that is a possibility. If you get into an argument and the other side just wont give its possible you are arguing with a computer. [laughter] dont waste your time on that. Just dont waste your time. It is not worth it. Maybe even if it is a person , dont waste your time on it. [laughter] [applause] scott another question from our audience. Does Citizens United enable nonus citizens to legally contribute to u. S. Elections, and could foreign contributions be used as a premise to overturn Citizens United . No, not technically. The reasoning of Citizens United, which is that you cant discriminate on the basis of who is speaking, even when it comes, especially when it comes to campaign expenditures, that reasoning, it wasnt a crazy lawsuit to bring on behalf of Foreign Nationals in our elections. That reasoning applies. That is what president obama was talking about in the state of the union. But the Supreme Court, in a one sentence summary, dodged the im not sure they could really explain themselves in any more than one sentence as to why that should be the case. Thats the problem. That now has been settled. The idea of foreign contributions being a visit vehicle that, at Citizens United, the court made its decision and said Citizens United is a different issue, even though it isnt. Unfortunately, they have dodged the issue and i would expect they will continue to. Clarify, what do you mean by the same issue . It seems to me the reasoning you just talked about before would invide for a distinction, one sense that you are talking about Domestic Corporations being able to invest in politics versus this idea we dont want Foreign Nationals outside of our political system, which is the language of the blooming court views in their decision. That is what prohibits outsiders from spending on elections. Why isnt that a principal distinction . It is just not the principle that they used in Citizens United. Ok. I guess i would just add to clear as mud in the current campaignfinance what counts as a from the point of view of a corporation. My go to is budweiser. A lot of us think of budweiser as being an american company. They are run by anbev, which is not an american company. The fec has articulated clear guidelines. You cant have Foreign Nationals controlling you cant have Foreign Nationals controlling the spending if it is a domestic subsidiary. It has to be controlled entirely by american citizens. Moreover, no part of foreign revenues of the company can be used to engage in those political spendings in the u. S. It has to come from u. S. Subsidiary revenues. So, it is a red herring that is being thrown out there. It is just not the case. That line of cases, that line of precedent stems from old law that is concerned about whether companies can subsidize the operations of their pacs which draw money exclusively from u. S. Citizens who work for those companies in the United States. It is not clear to me post Citizens United whether that law is still good. Would it be possible for a company, a private corporation 49 foreign owned, to be able to spend money in an old American Election an American Election . , underably, as long as current law, as long as the company is using money that was generated in the u. S. And the people who are making the decisions are u. S. Citizens. I think this is a problematic area. I have written about this. New section in the disclose act as well as in the st. Pete laws, even at the local level. I think that we have to really take a hard look at what it takes to control a corporate decision, and who even u. S. Managers are thinking about what and what their priorities are when they think about corporate resources. In some instances, they work for foreign bosses, and they dont have to have those foreign bosses dictate to them, i want you to spend this money in the greater interest of the larger organization. They know that is their job. If i may, i would add to this that we have to remember that millions and millions of american citizens work for subsidiaries of foreign corporations. This idea that corporations may spend an American Elections to some extent, whether it is through direct contributions, or expenditures at the federal level, which most corporations dont do, by the way but you dont want to disenfranchise the millions of American Workers whose interests would be affected through these corporations. That is why you need to have an outlet for corporate spending to some extent. And those millions of American Workers have zero say over how their corporate bosses are spending their money. [applause] we have five minutes left. A question from the audience. 2018 midterm cycle is coming up. What does the threat of foreign influence look like for any election, federal, state, and other right . Otherwise . How bad does it look and is there any realistic chance something may be done to close those loopholes and opportunities before the elections in november . I will reiterate my point. We cant that it is going to it is probably not going to be rubles buying facebook ads. Maybe it will. Maybe they are that clever. [laughter] we dont know exactly what its going to look like. You kind of feel like they almost wanted us to know when they used the rubles. I think there is a good chance, and im going to push hard for it, that we can enact this very tiny advance in fec regulation to address the disclaimers on express advocacy, internet ads. But this is such a small sliver of the problem. I really think that what is needed is more pressure on federal legislators. There is just so far the fec can go under current law. I think we need more pressure on federal legislators to take stronger steps. I would echo that. If we are trying to take action items from this conference, one is just making it Crystal Clear to your representatives, your senators, write the white house. [laughter] you know, tell them that you care about the issue. What do we say about not engaging in arguments that are unproductive . [laughter] touche. Let your elected member of Congress Know that you care about dark money, and you do not want to see more of it. You cant say that enough to them. If i may, i would just point out, from my perspective, this whole debate illustrates the vulnerability we face. We are barking up the wrong tree. We are looking at the wrong problem. I was reading a Washington Post article. The article points out that the targetedds nonbattleground states like maryland and d. C. Anyone who knows anything about president ial politics knows that if you are trying to influence that election, you would not target maryland and d. C. The ads did not even target battleground states. That was the subject of another panel today. The real problem that i see in terms of our vulnerability is russian attempts to hack our voting system. Thats the real problem. All these debates about disclosure, this goes to my suspicion that this is being used as a pretext to enact disclosure measures that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do it the problem of foreign interference in our elections. That is the great vulnerability. I agree with you that we need to do everything we can to ensure our voter databases are secure from hacking. That is absolutely a strong priority. But to say that when all of this information has been spread around the country by russian bots, that it is not a problem, more people exposed information being spread by the russians than people who voted in the election. Thats how many people saw that. We need to do something about that. [applause] would state and local reformers be able to respond to, if they were fearing russians, would they be able to pass state or local laws to stop that from happening over platforms like twitter or facebook . That runs into wicked preemption problems. By preemption, i mean if you have regulation at the federal level, that will displace of the the ability of state and local systems to regulate, and i would imagine things that look like they are regulating the internet are most likely going to be deemed to be preemptive by federal law. But to pick up on this Common Ground, for many people, the fact that states and localities are the ones that administer our elections, including federal elections, is a bug, lets make that a feature. The Common Ground here in terms of addressing infrastructure, election infrastructure, that is something that states have to do , and it will be states and localities alone. The fec this time, but the feds, congress, the resources for the states that have traditionally been there, the federal resources have dried up. Absolutely contact state and local officials about hardening infrastructure against attack, and talk to federal officials about getting the help that was once there. Scott a good note to end on. Ladies and gentlemen, please thank the panel. A reminder, we have inspiration cards on the back door. Please grab an inspiration card and please evaluate this on the app, if you would. One more round of applause for the panel. [applause] announcer washington journal live every day with news and in you. Ffect former and a treat secretary discusses Nuclear Threats facing the u. S. And the world. And the Leadership Institute talks about conservative is a conservativism and millennials. Watched cspans washington journal at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Join the discussion. Announcer a few live events to about. 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