At this time, let me introduce the participants in todays discussion. We have a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She served as a minister to the dutch parliament. Focused parliament, she on furthering the integration of nonwestern immigrants into dutch society. Larry diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Years, hehan six directed fsi center where he now leads the program on democracy and its Global Digital policy incubator. Was the 26th assistant to the president for National Security affairs and served as a commissioned officer in the u. S. Army for 34 years before retiring in june, 2018. The moderator for todays panel is neil ferguson. Hooverior fellow at the institution and a senior fellow for the European Studies at harvard. Please join me in welcoming this esteemed group to the stage. Thank you,ernoon, tom for that introduction and thank you for joining us on such a beautiful afternoon when you could be outside playing frisbee. Im extremely excited to be moderating at this distinguished panel. When you come to think of it, we have some amazing expertise appear on the platform. We have a former National Security advisor who really was the mastermind behind a thorough remaking of National Security strategy in 2018 and we will talk a little bit about his contribution to that. Diamondr left, larry editor of a role as major report on chinese influence operations has caused a major stir around the world, both sides of the pacific. Seated sitting on my immediate left is the leading critic of islamic extremism and fundamentalism and in the interest of full disclosure, i should say she also happens to be my wife. [laughter] [applause] reassure you, there will be no softball questions. Quotationbegin with a the first time we have ever appeared on stage together. We put it off but finally hoover talked us into it. And incidentally, our sons are the first hoover fellows to have been bred in captivity. [laughter] i want to begin on a more serious note by quoting a grand master of strategic thoughts. Henry kissinger, who for a man who just turned 96 has an astonishingly acute grasp of the issues we will be discussing this afternoon. He has written on Artificial Intelligence and in his book, world order he made the following observation the social, financial, and military sectors have revolutionized vulnerabilities. Most rules and regulations and the technical comprehension of many regulators it has in some respects created nature. Asymmetry, and a kind of disorder, areld built into relations of cyber powers in diplomacy and strategy. Absent articulation of some rules of international conduct, a crisis will arise from the inert dynamics of the system. Framele more quotes to the subject. Admiral michael rogers, former head of the National Security agency and u. S. Cyber command said a couple of years ago we are at a tipping point. And finally, i want to quote from an assay cryptographer famousmorris senior, the rules of computer security. And you may want to make a note of these, ladies and gentlemen, because everyone these days has to be worried about computer security. Rule one, do not own a computer. Rule two, do not pirate on. Role to, do not turn one on. Theory, let us start with h. R. Mcmaster. Cyber attacks offer low cost and opportunities to seriously damage infrastructure, cripple businesses, and attack the tools and devices that americans use every day to communicate and conduct business. Impose swift and costly consequences on foreign governments and other actors who undertake significant malicious cyber activities. Can there be effective deterrence in cyberspace . Thank you. Motivatedoverall what this dramatic shift in policy that you saw broadly in the december 2017 highly readable, just in time for the beach, National Security strategy. 2018 is when we were able to put this in place. Sensek it was really a that we were at the end of the beginning of a new era but we were behind. Behind because we were not competing effectively against adversaries and rivals. The reasons we were behind were due in large measure to overconfidence in the 1990s associated with our priam in the cold war, the collapse of the soviet union, the lopsided victory in the gulf war and a period of sustained Economic Growth. Dot com success. Our overconfidence lead to complacency. And then we encountered difficulties. Unanticipated length and difficulty of war in iraq and afghanistan. Financial crisis. I think that jolted our confidence in a way that we became passive and did not engage competitively for reasons of pessimism rather than over optimism. Tomade a conscious choice there out how to reenter competition from which we had been absent. Ciber is one of those. Can deter certain attacks in cyberspace by two fundamental means. One is to impose cost on a cyber actor or make clear that you can impose cost far beyond those which the actor factored in at the outset of the decision to attack you. Those are cyber offensive capabilities. But also capabilities outside of cyberspace that you can then there to the physical space through sanctions and Law Enforcement actions. When you have the authority to do so, military action as well. Deterrencespect of to go back to Thomas Schelling in the 1960s, deterrence by denial. Convincing adversaries that they cannot accomplish their objectives through the use of that capability. That involves defensive measures. Moreg our infrastructure resilient. And ensuring our systems can degrade gracefully rather than fail catastrophically. We have a reminder of this Ransomware Attack on baltimore for example. These are with us right now. We have to recognize that our hasusiasm for technologies also made us more vulnerable and prone to catastrophic collapse. I am reminded of a book from the 1960s and titled man, machines, and modern times. In it he said men and women have it have expended a great deal of effort in trying to contain his Natural Environment. And in so doing has created an artificial environment that is more complex than the Natural Environment ever was. I think we are on the right track in terms of recognizing this as a competitive domain. We have seen a lot of critical actions taken to make it easier to use offense of capabilities as a part of deterrence and offense. Long waynk there is a to go both on deterrence by denial and the ability to impose cost. We have an opportunity to learn from someone who has been right there in the room where it happens making and remaking american policy. Ofn i of harper joe nye harvard wrote an article saying deterrence in cyberspace it is not really like deterrence in the age of the cold war where you had to determine the soviet union from firing a missile because if they did, we would be in world war iii. This is a different type of deterrence. You will have cyber attacks. It is a question of whether you can keep the level down so you do not suffer serious distraction. Actors are trying to avoid the imposition of cost back on them. Cyber is a way where we have , competitors such as russia, china, but north korea as well and iran try to accomplish objectives below the threshold that would elicit a concerted response against them. I think we have to do a number of things. A range ofevelop capabilities that can be applied against these actors. You have seen that in the last election. In the midterm elections. And there are other actions that we can take that are not purely defensive and inoculate ourselves against the effects. I know you will talk more about influence operations. But we can take a lot of important tasks like educating ourselves so we are less susceptible to manipulation by these actors or we can figure out a way to present credible information based on verifiable sources and be able to access that routinely in a way that blocks out the attempts and misinformation and propaganda. Can we draw that distinction out a little more . About cyber war for cyber warfare before 2016. That was our focus. In fact, what the russians did in 2016 was quite different which was information warfare. Can you help us understand the difference . It gets back to the complacency problem. A corollary to this overconfidence is we believed there was an arc of history that guaranteed our free and open society. Our confidence that came under attack. Our confidence in who we are as a people. Our common identity. 80 of the messaging and bought traffic wasnd bot aimed at dividing merchants all along lines of race. A distant second was on immigration. And then gun control. Whatever could be a polarizing and then to attack our election so we do not have faith in our democratic processes and institutions. We came late to the game on this. It was because we were overconfident in the inherent strength in our society and system. Im glad you observed a the fact that there was not effective disruption of the 2018 midterms ourto be put down to disruption of the communications. I think we can say that we did learn from 2016. Is thatverall lesson you cannot separate in andrspace offense of defensive. It is Public Knowledge that if you develop a cyber tool and use it, it has a shelf life of 96 hours until there is a countermeasure. Is what clouse said war is. It is happening at electron speed internationally in a new form of competition. What we had to do is aligned the authorities for those operating to defend us from these actors, to employ combinations of offense of an defensive abilities. This is a good moment to turn from you to our next guest. I remind ourselves that though there has not been a major islamist terror attack in the United States or sometime come it has not stopped around the world. And just remind the audience, these are numbers from the u. S. National consortium on the subject of terrorism their most recent report records 10,900 terrorist attacks around the world which killed more than 26,400 people. The top three perpetrators were Islamic State, the taliban, and alshabaab. Overwhelmingly, the incidents around the world that kill people in large numbers are driven by or perpetrated by radical islamist groups. I wanted to begin with a question about those groups the ways in which they have used the Technology Developed in the west to organize, to mobilize, and to build far Bigger Networks in 2001. Aeda had back educate us about how these networks currently operate. Thank you. I was listening intently to my colleague, a chart, and thinking here we are, talking about operations. This is cyber. , ourare the people adversaries, who are using ciber. In the 15 years i have been in since 1989,ybe even the one thing we rarely talk ideas, ideologies, and principles. Said our core of identity i automatically assumed that it is these classical, liberal ideas that the u. S. Has established. What we forget is that there are who organize, who have political and social frameworks that are radically different from ours. So when you think about islamism , it is a political and social philosophy with a religious underpinning. And when the agents or the people who believe in this i think you look at islamism and you see a tree with two main branches. One branch is the use of violence to achieve their aims, to achieve what they think of as which is ton ideals establish a society on a local el and even a global level to achieve an end goal that society is based on the rule of god. That is their interpretation. That is their organizing philosophy. Now, think of it as a tree. One branch is the use of violence to reach that goal and that is called jihad. Everywhere i go, i ask americans raise your hand if you think you know of the concept of jihad. Just raise your hand. That is exactly it. A lot of people, maybe 80 or room like people in a this say they are familiar with it. And then i ask people, raise your hand if you have ever heard of the concept of [indiscernible]. 1, 2, 3, 4. Always a minority. But that is the other main branch of the islamist tree. What does that mean . It means the believers in this philosophy that has its underpinnings in religion puts in engagingeffort in campaigns, argument, propaganda. In short, it is the effort to promote the ideas, the effort to persuade. And that is where cyber comes into it. I know that when it comes to jihad and we are focused on that they are focusing on the jihadi aspect. Where are they plotting a terrorist attack . That is all under the branch of jihad. But when it comes to the other concept, you have to ask yourself how are they using ciber to raise awareness . To recruit people to their cause . How are they using it to organize, strategize, and Exchange Tips and tactics . Are they using it to raise money . How are they using it to pass the idea that the United States is trying to destroy islam. Me, i will say the concept of islam a phobia i put it under the realm of disinformation and information warfare. How it is used. Everything my colleague, h. R. Mcmaster, said is true. We are used to firing these operational wars. The two things you mentioned, make sure you impose cost on defense by denial. That works on the operational level. But the question remains, are we really engaged in terms of these ideological confrontations . And are we not really wasting the opportunity to use the promote acyber to counter ideology . And a counter system of ideas. And i think that is where we are failing. One of the things that most rec me when i was writing a book related to this was how very different the Islamic State was from al qaeda. Al qaeda had carried out the 9 11 attacks partly because it was so cut off and closed as a tiny, conspiratorial network that it was undetected by our security forces. Whereas Islamic State is quite though a quite open rapidly changing network that uses social media, all kinds of different platforms to disseminate its ideology. When you look at some of the work that is being done in National Security in the u. S. That graphs the network of islam and state activity online, it is mind blowing how big this is and how sophisticated. It right to say that Islamic State may have been defeated on but it is in syria still very much alive in cyberspace . Think of Islamic State as only one brand of this global. Henomenon of Islamist Al Qaeda is another brand of islamist. Al qaeda failed because they put all of their money on the jihadi branch. They thought, we are going to shock the world into submitting to our deal. And that did not happen. They were almost obliterated. Obviously, they adapt as we do. They learn from their mistakes like we learn from ours. I think the world has gone back to let us redevelop or other branch. Getting into the minds of human beings to persuade them to come to our viewpoint. The way to do that is through , family, neighborhood, and community and through the internet. And making use of all of these areas tools that are available to all of us. We in thet to say, United States or people who try to study because we are academics, we tried to draw these Straight Lines of distinction between al qaeda, between Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other organizations but that is not how it works. If the tree is islamism, they have their disagreements on tactics, on how to get to the end goal, but remember they agree on the end goal. A lot of communication takes place and collaboration and exchange of money all of that happens and much of it through ciber but that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that while we focus on brands like Islamic State, we are missing the big picture. I see right now reconfigurations, reunions between the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood. Al qaeda and some of the iranian shia islamists. Read any of our newspapers and shia andold the are killing each other. A lot of the communication takes place through cyber and the internet but when our government makes it difficult for them to you ciber, they turned back to the old methods of communicating and carrying out. One question i wanted to ask you specifically about nonviolent extremism is how important the internet is in the process of radicalization . It usuallyreads after a terror attack that the perpetrator was radicalized online. Is that actually what happens . Yes. There is a school of thought were a number of people that believe that if we shut off all the social media accounts then radicalization would be minimized or disappear. I tend to disagree with that. I think by the time an individual goes to his smartphone or laptop or whatever to access any of these social media tools, they have already at least been inspired to rethink things. Mostly young people. They are looking for some kind of moral guideline. When you think of morality and your 15, 16, 17 outside of the west, 90 of the people will think about going to their religion. Imaman go to your local but most of them have been displaced. Countries like saudi arabia and qatar have put a lot of money into their own in moms and messages and an entire infrastructure in place that has lace for get along muslim get along islam. You are a young you are thinking about the difference between right and wrong. You go to the mosque. They tell you about this worldview that is so coherent, with the hereafter and the sacrifices you have to make. It is only because it is so complex that i think many individuals think, because they give you preferences at the end of my talk, i say, why didnt you go to the Hoover Institution website . They say in to the Classical Liberal website, this, that, the other. On to these references, they are thinking, on going to get more information and they get sucked in. On going to come back to the bigger question. The open society and its enemies is in the title of our event. I know that you are a devoted reader, but i want to turn to larry. Weve talked about russia, weve talked about islam. Lets talk about china. Influence Operations Report talked quite a bit about technology theft. But it stopped me that it said relatively little about chinas online activity. I would like to talk a bit about that. I wonder if we aint seen nothing yet because in some ways compared with the russians, the chinese have not really begun information warfare. Should we be bracing ourselves for that . It marked as the brilliant essay of the coeditor of the report noted in his superb article in the wall street journal on saturday a really decisive pivot away from reform and toward the neototalitarian or orwellian. And the increasingly aggressive state that the peoples republic of china has become. I think that before we talk about the cyber element of this in china, we need to talk about generally what they are doing. No state in the world has a more dedicated international and institutionalized within the communist party apparatus, we have a whole complicated chart in our report that unveils and maps the bureaucracy that has a more dedicated infrastructure for propaganda and the promotion of influence around the world in subterranean and illicit fashion than the peoples republic of china has. You dont have to be doing this online in order for us to have tremendous impact. Gathered all of their communications channels, China Global Television, china radio international, the news agencies, Everything Else theyve got, into something theyve called the very original title, the voice of china. This is increasingly centrally directed as part of a Massive Campaign to propagate their narrative around the world to suppress other narratives to buy up newspapers and inserts in. Ewspapers and Radio Stations one of the most disturbing , if you look at the chinese language media in australia, the United States, canada, europe, the major democracies of the world, forget about africa and latin america for the moment it is now predominantly parroting a probeijing line. Democracies, we have lost freedom and pluralism of information. What we have is Chinese State propaganda and chinese direct intimidation within our countries of alternative voices to the point where i was just informed yesterday of a city councilmember i wont name the city but, you know, lets say it is in california, who was told by an official of the chinese consulate that if he met with a representative of the Taiwan Representative Office that the chinese overseas mobilize theld power to defeat this person in the my next election. This is happening in the United States of america, not in some asian semidemocracy or Something Like that. Look at what they are doing to penetrate the universities of the United States. Just the confucius institutes, where the Chinese Communist Party Ministry of writing the curriculum and appointing the instructors to teach chinese language in the United States, something that i find inexplicable we are letting happen in the United States of america and that i think we could end very simply by simply adding a new National Defense foration act that provides federal government funding of chinese language instruction in the United States, which is an important National Security objectives. , which was our instrument for fighting communists and terrorists in liberal and authority and propaganda around the world. That got merged into the state ofartment, into a new Bureau Public diplomacy, that has had on average about one undersecretary every 18 months, and it has never been effective. Recently, fortunately, a bipartisan initiative, we have seen the creation and undersecretary pompeo a serious effort to stand up to wage this battle of ideas. It must have a digital counter narrative and counter messaging component. That is not enough. A lot of the ways people get news and information is not digitally. It is the oldfashioned way. Lets say we are talking about a closed society, which we need to penetrate in north korea in particular. How are we going to get through . It is not going to be by digital means. We could take quite a large swath of the classic canon of liberal ideas that i think they were referring to, put it on thumb drives, and infiltrate quite a large number of them into the peoples republic of , into north korea, and into a lot of nonpermissive societies. These are not even expensive initiatives. We are not thinking creatively enough and we really are not even yet now when we are getting more serious, i dont think we are matched and resolved for the arrow we are in. Is this a structural problem . The chinese have an authority in authoritarian system. They have been a golden shield for online surveillance. It just seems to me that it has become a very asymmetrical contest, even if we do as you are saying. It is harder for us to do to them what they can do to us, no . That is absolutely true and we note that in report. That is why we stress in the ort the need, which your whatever your opinion may be of the Trump Administration, the Trump Administration is pursuing say withy and i would some considerable effectiveness to get more reciprocity in the relationship. We cannot just sit back passively and say, we will wage this battle with one arm tied behind our back when they have all four limbs to run with. If our media companies, our Television Companies this is my own opinion i could not sell it to my working group, but nevertheless i feel it very strongly if we can get our table Cable Television channels to be able to broadcast to the chinese public, why should China Global Television e access to our blaber Global Television airwaves . Journalistsars and are increasingly being threatened with visa denials if they say or write something critical of xi jinping or the , why should they have unfettered access in the other direction . We will never eliminate the asymmetry, but i think we can narrow it and fight back. I want to say one other thing. It is asymmetrical in both directions. Because we have an intrinsic advantage here. Feel this very deeply the truth is on our side. If we can mobilize it. And broadcast it and penetrate it and counter the lying narratives against it around the world. , who was therow founding director of the u. S. Information agency had a very good line she said the truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst because lies can be exposed, but we need to expose them. In africa, in latin america, we have to show people the truth about the society. What are people going to decide about the relative value of the two systems when they really get a rounded exposure to the United States with all our divisions, all our warts, all our flaws and see 2 Million People of the Muslim Minority ethnicity sitting in concentration camps purely because of their ethnicity . Most people dont know that and we need to make sure they do and we have evidence to show them. Im interested in the echoes of the cold war and you are harking back to that. That is your word, not mine. You have taken us back to their and i wanted to turn this back to hr. In cold war ii, we will have to have a much more coherent sense of the need to combat the other sides propaganda. Has your view changed since you came here to hoover and civilian life . As a fellow historian, you know that we are skeptical about facile uses of historical analogies and it is important to look at every situation on its own terms, while learning about past experience. What everybody recognizes is what is fundamentally difference thats different is that we are intertwined with the peoples republic of china, economically, and this is part of a Global Economic system, which you know far better than i do as an economic historian that is far different from their isolated economies of the cold war period. Compete, we may have to do so in different ways. This competition gives us more opportunities. I think larrys comment is that our sidee the truth on is borne out by the Chinese Communist partys failure in any way to deal with not only the Tiananmen Square massacre, but any kind of Movement Toward democratic governance and rule of law within china. Our colleague has a great essay in Foreign Policy today about that. We have to mobilize for history. What i would characterize as bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity among those who say, the chinese are really deferential to that kind of hierarchical order, desert of a confucian thing that they can be preyed upon by their own government. Of course, taiwan is an example to counter that as well. We have to compete in different ways from an ideological and economic. We do see opportunities. I think what you are going to see following what has been a concerted effort to call china out on unfair trade and economic practices, as well as a sustained campaign of espionage, in the form of december 20 of , the conventional wisdom is the United States is on its own now december 20 of last year, 16 nations have called out the chinese Hacking Organization for their industrial espionage activities ,anctioned that organization and announced a number of indictments in multiple countries of individuals associated with it. Is k what the next step can i quote Gwyneth Paltrow here, the cautious decoupling . [laughter] economiesng of our such that companies are no longer going to accept the risk of operating in china for , theterm profits intellectual property is stolen and transferred to the state, and used by state owned enterprises to overproduce a lowcost and dump goods back into those economies and drive. Hose economies out of business i think what is going to happen economically will in some ways mirror what we have seen happen with the internet. There is now a divergence and our colleague has made this comment, a divergence toward two separate systems. We are going to have to manage that carefully and try to mitigate the downside of that, but i think we are entering a fundamentally new phrase phase in the relationship between the United States and likeminded countries and the peoples republic of china. I think europeans increasingly share that view. I was in europe over the weekend of essentially transatlantic participants. This conference had been going on for many years. It is interesting to see how attitudes have shifted. In the same conference, the view was that donald trump could never be elected president of the United States, by the way brexit could never happen. The same conference in 2017 said it was the worst possible situation we could ever be in. Then it was, i guess we are going to have to get used to this. Last weekend, they are so on board with the Trump Administration policy on china that there is almost no daylight between europeans and the United States. Thes amazing trance europeans dont seem at all interested in the way in which the administration is thinking about this problem. Im struck by the fact going back to something that you said that if there is going to be a kind of cultural fight to combat theiolent extremism, are europeans not going to be in that fight on the right side . I think what we see behind hopecenes is there is a that the new conference of saudi arabia with his new vision, if only we give them a chance, if only we collaborate with the oilrich countries of the middle attentioniver the away from spending money, lots of money, lots of propaganda on that one, and to if i the economy, their populations will come to live by the principles of freedom, tolerance, equality. Of what we thought would happen with china if we engaged economically with them. Morethey would become open. When we talk about overconfidence, up until 1989, there has been that sentiment in the west, that it is very strong, we defeated the soviet union not only on military but we defeated them in the battlefield of ideas. Won, and theree thethis sense that it is end of history, everybody is going to come to our way of thinking and doing things. , thatt the same time overconfidence that went along with an insecurity about our basic principles, the founding principles of this country, people are promoting and in the gripwe are of a terrible, terrible, nonsensical idea it is summarized in the four letter word woke. You hear phrases like toxic masculinity, white privilege. You dive into this and what do you learn . Of this country is all about exploitation, slavery. We are fighting amongst ourselves to bring down the statues of the people who established our history. On the one hand, there is the overconfidence, since 1989, everybody is going to become like our principles, but we are inhibited. I think at some point, we have to come to a place where we should this identity politics, which i was talking about how our adversaries can exploit our weaknesses and where we are amplifyd, and if we racial confrontations, a polarization between men and parentshildren and the of the level of authority, you start togbtq fragment our society. Sight. Lose tohink it is very easy persuade the populations of the middle east, of latin america, of africa that the basic principles of Classical Liberalism are superior to the basic principles of radical islam. It is very easy for us to do that. We can prove it empirically if only propagated. Marry our overconfidence, everything is going to become like us, but actually promoting the ideas. People want cars, smartphones, they want to wear trousers and miniskirts that is all true, but they forget what are the underlying basic principles . Can we sell capitalism, Free Enterprise . Can we sell the idea of Political Freedom . If we cannot do that, we end up becoming like them instead of them becoming like us and we see a bit of that coming into europe. We are going to go to the audience very shortly, so you better think of some difficult questions for the panel. If you dont, i will cold call some people to get things started. [laughter] larry, you have written about a democratic recession. Andou take a step back deliver the global picture, do you feel like there is a asdamental disadvantages far democracy is concerned, partly that it is an open society and cannot have great firewalls, part of our internal divisions . Talk about the democratic recession you have written about and are there ways of combating it. The real idea is to turn the tide back in favor of democracy. You are asking to summarize a whole book i just published. [laughter] you can do that. But i cant and 20 seconds and i want to carry on with the theme that was just sounded. Let me just say these below points. First of all, if you look at the data from Freedom House or the economist or most other ratings agencies on the democracy and freedom front, we have been in a 1012 year stagnation. We have been in a slide in terms of freedom and democracy in the world. It has been getting worse for a lot of reasons, rising income inequality is a part of it. The divisions we have inflicted on ourselves is a part of it, the immigration crisis, and i think the lack of sensitivity and effectiveness of in many ways, liberal and wellintentioned government leaders, but nevertheless, ineffective. Angela merkel was very naive in the way she handled this in germany. The election of donald trump shows, you have to have your year to the ground in terms of this. I think there have been a lot of drivers of democratic dysfunction, polarization, cultural backlash, whatever you want to call it. Then you have the big factor that many people have not been paying attention to until recently and i would say the december 2017 National Security strategy that hr led the drafting of was a big factor in helping to educate americans and really the world that we are in a new era, an era of return to great power competition. ,e have resourceful, dedicated and to some extent narratively, driven,deologically big, powerful, authoritarian adversaries who are trying to , and up, discredit reversed the very idea of freedom and democracy. We really just have to push back. We have to do so i dont use the term cold war but i think there are a striking number of parallels between where we were at the peak of the cold war, particularly around 1960 and where we are now. And one of them was that around 1960, we got back a sense of purpose and selfconfidence and in waging this ideological struggle. It is that. It is a struggle for freedom, for the open society. It is a struggle for the equal worth of every human being, and against all these sources of illiberal ideas, whether they are radical islamist, whether they come in the kremlin version of a white, christian, conservative, nationalist, european stand against the rest of the world, or whether they come in the form of if not communism, than the china model of authoritarian capitalism being superior. I want to close with two points. One also builds on what was said. There are a number of reasons to be more hopeful about the opportunity we have not the inevitability but the opportunity we have then most people realize. One is if you look at the Public Opinion data, particularly from subsaharan africa, you find that even though there has been the barometer is not 20 years old even though there has been modest erosion in public support for democracy and liberal values, it remains overwhelming. Two thirds of people in africa and even in parts of Northern Africa say they would like to have a democratic system of government. Often, the Political Science skeptics say if you peel it back , there is not much there, it is very superficial. This is want independent courts. They say they want checks and balances. They say they want their president s to not be able to serve more than two terms. They say in various responses to questions, more or less, that they want to be secure in their rights and have an open society. That doesnt sound shallow to me. That sounds to me you see, it is more equivocal in latin america and in parts of asia, but we have got a lot of stuff to work with. People dont want to live in an authoritarian surveillance state where they have no freedom, no privacy and can be sent to a concentration camp at any point. If we cant make that work for us in this next round of global competition, we are doing something deeply wrong or illconceived. Niall larry and i almost worthy of a round of applause. [applause] niall i want to invite you now if you have questions to take advantage of microphones that are standing right there on either side of the auditorium. I want to remind you a question is a short thing with a question mark at the end of it. [laughter] niall and if you decide to give a speech, burly men will appear from the side of the auditorium and escort you up. Thank you so much for your courage and bravery at being the voice of women in the islamic world. You are really hero and i am so happy. [applause] ayaan thank you. My question as a matter of fact i am looking for advice from you for women like me or for me as a matter of fact because i am in a critical situation. I would like to ask you because this is the point i will start to do something about my life. Some years ago, advisor to Gerald Mcmullen from carnegie was here, and i never get to ask the question but i could tell her, share with her my idea about what issues have done or should do in afghanistan. And then she encouraged me very strongly to speak out, speak up and all those things. And i have lived 35 years in fear of islam and Political Correctness and all of those things because i experience the revival of islam. Can do and what it is doing with societies. Then she encouraged me very much and told me one thing. She told me people in islam [indiscernible] needs to hear from you, and she said these people take 10 years to understand what you are saying and i dont think it means my accent. But i have tried to really talk about this, but i am coming to a crashing point. I feel i am hitting my head to the wall because i feel i am betrayed by a society of intellectuals that were supposed to support me, my new beautiful country of u. S. That should support me, but i feel that everywhere that i go is this Political Correctness and many other things. It is easy i can show you what is happening. Niall you have got to get to the question. My question is that i speak up against islam, i am thinking islam is imperialistic and pedophile ideology and we should tell the truth, not going with the line of the peaceful religion and so on. But i am crushed because people say they dont say they kill you niall we need a question, we really do. [applause] i get islands down, and i am crashing. And i want to ask you honestly, give me advice what should i do . Should i stop working there . [applause] ayaan i will be very short and said yes. Maybe at this stage it is better to stop talking about islam and Start Talking about freedom. We are here to talk about how we can use online and cyber and all of that. It is not technologically impossible to connect a lot of people and see afghani women, women from afghanistan and i know a number of them are attracted to the ideas of freedom and equality and raising their children, especially their sons, to be different, to embrace these ideas. That is where to go. Lets stop talking or lets talk less about what it is that has driven us out of the ideology of radical islam and talk about what has driven us to the principles of freedom. [applause] niall please keep it brief or others wont have a chance. Wonderful insights. You dont read this in the New York Times these days. Thank you. I was trying to think of a difficult question and come up with one i would like to get perspectives from hr, from inside the government and then from ayaan, the outside. Muslim brotherhood, it is kind of it is obvious why they drive this violence, jihad if you will. Sorry for using the word. We have failed to declare them a terrorist organization in the United States. I read that we tried but it is not happening. Why is that . Why have we failed to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist Organization Even though should we identify it ourselves . Sometimes we try too hard to disconnect the dots because these groups are overlapping and mutually reinforcing but we also have to be cognizant that not all of these groups are the same especially in both Muslim Brotherhood which has different chapters, philosophies. Some of them are actually active and useful disappearance of political processes. If you were to make a blanket designation against all of the brotherhoods and get brotherhood organizations, is it to drive them underground in a way that sets conditions for a post Mubarak Egypt . There has to be a distinction made between those who advocate for violence against innocence and were those who advocate to be able to determine with sharia law the nature of the government with the exclusion of other parties. That is the way to think about it. There is not a Silver Bullet solution to the problem of islamist groups, that want to restrict freedom, but i dont think they blanket designation of the Muslim Brotherhood does it for you. Ayaan i agree with hr. Everything he said is true. But we could go one step further and designate them like we are confronting china and what they are doing, it doesnt hurt to say Muslim Brotherhood, with all of your branches and chapters, we know what you are up to, and here is the answer. It is not a terrorist organization, but having them come to the white house and in our institutions of education and information i think in that sense that is a mistake. Hr i think a way to think about this is to really make sure we ought to understand terrorists are using a permuted perverted definition of islam. Today we ought to say eid mubarak to everybody. Who are the victims . Other muslims. We have to not play into the terrorist hands who try this Conspiracy Theory that is really the zionist crusader against them. It is a fight between all civilized people of all religions against those who are perverting islam. [applause] well said. Niall question from the righthand microphone. Do foreign governments enjoy a bill of rights when it comes to an ownership of media and of newspapers, television stations, etc. . Hr i think the answer is no. I think we have blocked chinese interests from buying Radio Stations in the United States. You know what they did . They bought the largest wattage Radio Station in north america in tijuana and from there started broadcasting over the border to southern california. In any case, i do not think that foreign governments have, and i dont think any court has established or suggested that foreign governments have, protection of freedom of speech or freedom of ownership inside the United States. Particularly when they are pursuing ideological objectives that are hostile to our bill of rights. It would be perverse to suggest otherwise. Niall lady in the black dress. I am to be in a room so great to be with your courageous presence. Thank you so much. You have talked about islamists, russia, and china as the greatest tyrannical threat but i believe we are surrounded by people who think the greatest threats to their lives are plastic straws, singlesex restrooms and trumps personality. What are the organizations we can support . Where are the sparks of light that people in this room can get behind when they leave here to fight the battle you are describing today . [applause] niall thats an easy one, the Hoover Institution. [laughter] niall the last bastion of free thinking and the principles of open society in american academia. Ayaan what we do in open and free societies is we have our internal disputes. We have conservatives versus liberals, republicans versus immigrants and others, and sometimes we use an exaggerated language to describe and analyze these differences, when really it is not that exaggerated. So facing china, radical islam, is very different from the adversity republicans and democrats accuse one another of. At times as a relative newcomer , i think we really need to mind our language and sober up a bit and maybe that will one day get us to the quaint idea of bipartisan cooperation. We should not confuse external enemies that wish us harm, existential harm with our domestic niall one peculiarity of 1989 has been about Eastern Europe rather than beijing. I think in the absence of external threats, we fell upon ourselves. We divided ourselves more deeply than had been true when there was a clear external threat. Seems to me one hopeful prospect of our wakening up to these different threats is we begin to see a return to bipartisanship on precisely these issues. What is the one thing democrats do not criticize President Trump for . Standing up to china because of fact they were almost quicker than republicans to endorse the imposition of tariffs. This may be one of the unintended promising consequences of this discussion we are having. The lady at the microphone on the right. Thank you for the brilliant conversation. It is a big discussion nowadays whether more technologies, blockchain, ai, Artificial Intelligence, military robotics, can really contribute to inclusion, decentralization of power, and helping open societies further. I believe how do you see this process going on and how that maybe they can even be used against the free society. What is your opinion . Niall you were involved in organizing this. What is your take . Hr any Technological Development will have tremendous possibilities associated with it as also dangerous. We learned from the internet which many people saw as unmitigated good, that it can be used for nefarious purposes and within social media. I think what is important is to understand the implications of these technologies for our own security and the preservation of our way of life. If there are dangers, putting in place mitigating measures from the beginning but also accentuate the positive the blockchain, which has been an powered i think people in a way that has led to Economic Growth to formalize land in ways that cant be corrupted and also enables, enables may be a flattening of Financial Transactions in a way that is more democratic. There are positive aspects of that technology but as you know it encryption is the great example of a benefit in terms of privacy, but also a disadvantage in terms of how it can empower terrorist organizations to coordinate efforts broadly without detection. Niall it was on this stage last year that someone observed may be ai was communist and crypto or blockchain was libertarian. I thought long and hard about that, but it does seem as if Artificial Intelligence is going to be the basis of this new cold war, china may have certain advantages precisely because there are no constraints of individual privacy when it comes to the chinese platforms mining big data. The gentleman in the big pink tshirt. This question is mostly for niall and ayaan. This question is mostly for niall and ayaan. Brexit has not more not lost much popularity and in ayaans country, euro skepticism is chic. I am wondering about moving to the continent and what the Young American like me can do to ensure the collapse of brussels. [applause] niall do you want to take that question . Ayaan i want to point to the remarks larry made earlier which is in a free society the leadership, the people we elect, they have to hold their years to the ground and listen to the concerns of the people. The European Union was a project that started in my view very positive and started with a great deal of good intentions. But over time, people who live in europe are feeling they are not being heard, that their concerns are not taken seriously, that there are people, from bureaucratic level, making decisions that have farreaching consequences for people in their neighborhoods, in their schools and daytoday lives and not being listened to. When i served in the parliament in the evidence, i felt that was a constant thing. We would go as members of parliament to our constituencies and try to persuade them in a certain direction area and listen to them, they would persuade us and we would start to get a majority for certain legislation. We will be told they would become prospect because it is against e. U. Laws. People would ask, who are they . Are we ruled from belgium or the hague . As long as european numeral from belgium you will have a lot of disaffection. It is an expression of the dissatisfaction of not listening and in a Free Democratic society if the leadership stops listening constituencies, it is not a democracy anymore. Niall it must be said if you wanted to do advertisement for how to leave the European Union, you would not follow british politics the way it has been followed the last three years. It has had the opposite effect on most continental europeans. The gentleman at the other mic. It was partially answered about chinas right to broadcast, but how do we decide what discourse is appropriate for a free and open society . Where do we draw the line and who decides . Niall larry . Larry you always err on the side of the freedom of speech. I am not in favor of censoring chinese speech, russian speech and so on, but i think giving the access them access to airwaves and buying a Radio Station is a different thing. If they want to spend half 1 million to insert a large amount of posts, that is their right. I am not worried about that. I dont think many people are reading in washington. [laughter] larry i would always say err on the side of freedom of speech. We have, i dont need i think to get into it here, i think niall could give a real dissertation on this, we got a problem a problem of freedom of speech on college campuses. If we cant bridge the polarization in a University Campus and look at all points of view with something of an open mind and a willingness to debate, we are in real trouble as an open society, liberal society. We have got to turn the question back on ourselves in the university environment. Niall we need to bear in mind as the network platforms, be it facebook, be it google, youtube, twitter, come under increasing pressure from the woke left to restrict hate speech, we run the risk there is systematic censorship practiced in the most important part of our sphere. The bias should be in clear favor of free speech, and although they are not bound by the First Amendment, First Amendment rights online, it means hate also we will hear arguments from the Chinese Government and the Muslim Brotherhood but that is what a free society is like. There should be truly an open society and not least on University Campuses. I think we have got time for one more question, and then i am going to have to disappoint the microphones because there is only four minutes left and there are two small boys running amok. One of us has to get back. This concerns chinese influence in africa. The west has a long history of ignoring Global Trends that are happening, and while they sleep, things happen. I do a lot of business in ip and watched china for many years confiscate western ip and now we have seen the trade imbalance grow and grow and there is no addressing of that. Trump is trying. But we are missing the growing influence of china in africa. It is imperialism. They are confiscating resources, influencing governments like the congo. What does the panel think, how big a threat is that and what if anything can the west due to reverse that . Niall i am going to ask each of you to respond. You get one minute each and we will end with the one african on the panel. But lets start with hr. Hr the new vanguard of the Chinese Communist party is a Party Official in a suit carrying a duffel bag of cash. What they are using is corruption and working with corrupt governments in particular to coopt those governments and once they are there and create issues of dependency under the rubric of the one belt, one road, they change it to a course of relationship in which the country is used as you alluded to as a place from which to extract what china needs, but also to get this country to align with chinas Foreign Policy. There is push back significantly across the wall now. Across the world now. The curtain has been pulled back. You have small countries like sri lanka and the maldives who have changed governments because of the exposure of the corruption of their own government officials. It is in ecuador as well as malaysia is an important case with 1mdb but also chinese influence. There is a problem but also opportunity in the context of competing effectively. The first step is to pull the curtain back on chinese activity and expose it to sunlight. Niall you spoke eloquently about the african positive attitude. Is china undermining that . Larry xi jinping sees democracy and the model of democracy in an open society and the rule of law as a threat to the china model. They have an increasingly global sense of this. This is where the truth is on our side and we need Public Diplomacy to pull back the curtain wider, more vividly, and in the view of many more ordinary people. What is going on can only be described as gross neocolonialism. First of all, most of the bri construction is coming through loans and commercial rates that are really exploitative. China calls it, i think this is, if it is aid, it is a perverse kind. The classic instance of the sri lankan port, you get yourself 8 billion in debt and the chinese neocolonialists say we can write that down if you give us your strategic port for 99 years. In australia, you have experience with this yourselves. I think we just have to aggressively expose this. But it cant be all negative. We have got a lot of work to do i would say to revive maybe with a different kind of logic that reenergize western aid flows and capital flows, Capital Investment and Infrastructure Development in africa, if we dont want china being by default the major actor here. The facts are on our side, the Natural Inclination of africans is on our side, and we need to organize our effort and story. Ayaan i want to use my one minute. [laughter] to Say Something about free speech and intellectual honesty because we are in a University Campus and we know there are problems going on here. I want to give you a demonstration. My colleague hr has said a few things about the Muslim Brotherhood. I hold a different view. I have a great deal of respect for him and affection for him, but the fact i disagree with him i think the problems we are seeing a manifestation of violence, the subjugation of women, homophobia, i think that all of that is baked into the islamic cake. Hr thinks islam is being perverted by bad people using it for other things. It is possible to sit on the same stage as grownups and disagree and share material with one another. You dont have to hate one another. If we can do this, demonstrate this, then i think we have things going. [applause] thank you. [laughter] [applause] niall it remains to me to thank my colleagues for their brilliant contributions, but to point out something very like Tiananmen Square might be going on in an african country, sudan in khartoum and china backed by russia blocked a bit at the United Nations Security Council to condemn the killing of civilians in that country. Ladies and gentlemen, that is where we are in 2019. It may not be a cold war, but it doesnt feel like peace. [applause] thank you, what a wonderful discussion. Thank you for coming and i hope you can all stay with us. We will have a reception in the pavilion and if you cant stay, i will look forward to seeing you at our next event. Good evening. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] seras is a look at tuesdays Live Programming on the cspan networks. The house returns for what is to be its final week of work before the august recess. At noon for general speeches, 2 00 p. M. For work on a resolution supporting israel and an air force funding bill. Coverage of the house is on cspan. The senate comes in at 10 00. The have hearings on defense minister. Fbi director crist testifies before the House Oversight committee. The House Intelligence Committee chair talks about the Mueller Report and wednesdays hearings with the former special counsel. That is at 2 00 eastern. At 5 00, a hearing on protecting whistleblowers at the v. A. Airstrip in the , havingungles of guyana just concluded a congressional delegation to her with then congressman leo ryan and we were ambushed on that airstrip and shotshot. Congressman ryan was shot 45 times and died on the airstrip. There were members of the press that died. One defector of the peoples temple died. I was shot five times on the right side of my body. , sunday night on q a California Democratic congresswoman jacky spear talks about her memoir, undaunted. When people say it was a mass suicide, it was not. They were forced to drink this jones and he had many pavilion to make sure that people did as they were told. At 8 00 p. M. Ht eastern on cspans q and a. George Washington University and the Derek Sheely Foundation hosted a daylong conference on reducing injury risks among studentathletes. We hear about research from Penn State University in the area of traumatic brain injury. The entire conference is available on our website. This is about 20 minutes
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