On cspan leading to a senate trial. Live, unfiltered coverage on cspan. On demand at cspan. Org impeachment, and listen on the free cspan radio app. Joining us at the table, ofeel jaffer is the founder the National Security institute at George Mason Universitys law school, also Vice President of a firm called iron net cybersecurity. Good morning. Jaffer. We will get started talking about cybersecurity. Guest it was started by keith alexander. We do Cyber Defense, so we look behavioral threats on not just one company, but an ecosystem. Host lets talk about Cyber Defense. We saw the commentary piece you wrote, iranian Cyber Attacks are coming. Considering where we are in this situation, what are you expecting in the area of Cyber Attacks . A the it looks like escalatory de situation. We responded with the death of emstom soleimani qass soleimani and then they had a debate internally. How big do we go. My assessment was they would come back with a response, but it would not be so big as to provoke further response from the United States and that is exactly what we saw. We saw them come back with a missile attack on u. S. Facilities, but done in a way either intentionally or partially intentionally to avoid a big u. S. Response. That was a smart move. Now the question is what are they going to do next . Do they think further response is necessary or will they conduct our level attacks and one of the things we think remains is the cyber arena. You can dynamically adjust how tough you are being in cyberspace and you can do things that are nuisances. Denial of service attacks, slow things down and you can go in data. Stroy it is not as binary as blowing up a building, launching a missile, the like. Host we are talking about irans cyber capabilities. Our guest was white house associate counsel to president bush and worked for the house intelligence committee, the Senate Foreign relations committee, clerk for neil gorsuch in 2017 and here is he is here to talk about cyber capabilities. Lets do some 101. What is a cyberattack . How do Something Like that work . How would it originate in a place like iran and who would the targets be . Challenges isthe we use it to describe a lot of things. It can be used to describe the acts of a thief who goes in and tries to steal credit card data or somebody going into conduct surveillance. It can be used to describe somebody who lets you destroy data and break your Computer System and make it unusable or do something more aggressive. We use it to describe a lot of things. People get confused. Was this a cyberattack . Was this hacking . Was it theft . In this array, we are talking about nationstate cyber activities in order to achieve a strategic tactical goal, something that has to do with Foreign Relations or the like. Collectinto intelligence, that is the most common type of cyber activity, breaking into a Computer System of your enemy. In the case of iran, the United States and russia and the United States and the United States does the same thing. We go after nationstates to learn what their plans might be. That is one colloquial term we. Se on the low end they went into a slot machine and they were able to obtain credentials and went into the main las vegas credentials. They were not able to get into the Gaming Systems or change the results they were able to get information about who was staying in the hotel, they could delete computers unusable and that was in 2014. It is about a decision of a nationstate to act. We know nationstates make mistakes. We saw that happen tragically in the case of the ukrainian airliner the iranians shot down. There is serious risk of miscalculation. That is something we might want to talk about. Host that may read the phone number so folks can call in for jamil jaffer. Democrats, 2027488000. Republicans, 2027488001. Independents 2027488002. Facebook postings, we will read for everyone else. I thought i read there may be as many as 10,000 attempts every. Inute by iran put that in perspective for us. Guest one of the things about doing things on Computer Systems all of thesetomate activities. Take data out without people knowing or manipulate data so people do not know it has been modified. There you probably want someone on a keyboard working on it. A lot of Cyber Attacks, we talk about a range of things. Toot of those are attempts slow things down, distributed denial of service attacks. Where they take control of a number of devices, whether your own ios devices or your thermostat and control devices in an effort to put pressure on another device. Basically a lot of, i am here, talk to me. If you have 1000 voices coming in, that slows things down. I dont know if you have been watching your tv and think slow. Own and start getting grainy that is because there is traffic and noise on the internet. A d dos attack does that intentionally to slow things down. Host tell us more about what happens inside iran. Devoted to allis of this . Iran has a strong military. We saw that in the 1980s. , me and the north players weree top us, the chinese, the russians, even the french and israelis were good about this capability. The iranians were an upandcoming player. E have seen them up their game the reason that matters in cyberspace is because like we were talking about earlier, using missiles, using bombs is a binary situation and you get yourself in a lot of trouble. There for a while before you take action and you can ratchet up and down what you are going. With iranians and north koreans, who are less the terrible eterable, were less likely to use traditional tools to affect their behavior and they may see cyber as a way of using an asymmetric tool. They dont have to put their full military against us. Their goal is to test the boundaries with the United States, see how far they can go, push as far as we can and remain at that level of activity. Tens of millions of dollars to this effort and in cyber, they made a commitment and have been successful. Host are there any particular cases you can point to we might remember from watching the news where they were successful with a cyberattack against this country . Guest we talked about the attack against the casino in las vegas. There are also wellknown ddos attacks against u. S. Banks. These are more historic. More recently, we have seen a lot of activity around iran looking at dissidents and the part of the iranians who have left iran. There is a lot here in the United States and many of them are opposed to the regime. They left in 1979 and they are opposed to the current revolutionary regime so we have seen a lot of activity about iran following researchers, academics, activists in the United States and those are upsetting and we have seen indictments talking about activities to get into american structure. We saw an effort to get into a. Am in new jersey, new york that shows an interest in what the powerrt of infrastructure and that means they are trying to create a capability to stay in for a long time and potentially take action. We dont see them taking action now, but there has been a lot of reporting about russian activities when it comes to american critical infrastructure. We think this attempt might have been a mistake. It might have been a case of mistaken identity. We think they may have been trying to go into a dam at the in another part of the country. It is a concern and something we need to keep a close eye on. Host lets get a call in for our guest. William from pennsylvania. Independent caller. Good morning. Caller good morning. You sound like a trump hack. That is what you sound like. Russia is more than of a threat than iran. We have an election coming up soon and we dont want to go through the same balderdash we went through before. Guest i think the caller raises a great point. You are exactly right, the russians are a huge threat to the United States. There are active efforts to undermine the elections in 2016 and our confidence in our electoral system and rule of law, the fbi, our intelligence agencies, the cia and the like. They are likely to target the 2020 elections. We need to be vigilant and stop that activity and you are right to say the president has failed by not calling out that activity and by not addressing that very serious concern. I think the u. S. Government has taken serious action to address it. The department of Homeland Security with the cyber Agency Within dhs, they are doing a lot of work with the states to get them to up their game and be prepared. Elections are primarily bound by the states, so we have to work with the states to do this. One thing states might think about doing is working together with one another, sharing information in realtime about Cyber Threats coming together. Dhs has taken substeps in that direction. A lot more can done and as we lead up to this election with russians targeting our country and maybe even other nations like the chinese trying to manipulate the views of americans and the conversation in this country, they did it successfully. If i am in russia right now, i am thinking we have done a great job and really succeeded. Republicans, democrats are chairing are tearing each other apart. Democratcontrolled house and Republicancontrolled Senate is unable to function effectively. The work of the American People is not getting done and that is due to the fight amongst ourselves the russians have generated. Host bruce in michigan, republican. Caller how are you doing today . I have a concern about the internet of all things in Cyber Security. I was reading an article in the free paris press and they said just Like Computers can be hacked, these Driverless Cars are Like Computers and they can actually a terrorist could hack the cars so they would all disable their brakes and increase their accelerator. Thatuld do so much carnage i dont understand why we are going to this internet of all things. It seems to make us more apt to be attacked. What do you think about that . Host guest thank you. There are definitely concerns about the huge explosion in connected devices we are using. I walked into this room with an ipad, iphone, smartwatch. At my house i have a nest thermostat and cameras and alarm systems and alexa devices. We all have even our refrigerators are talking to us now. You are exactly right to raise the point about all these connected devices and the fact they may have vulnerabilities and they all access the internet to give us that benefit. There are a lot of benefits Smart Devices have given us. I was in an uber with someone yesterday with a tesla and his got anr in his car update it is amazing the benefits and that is a small perhaps not so important benefit, but perhaps the benefits we gain from this Technology Insertion into our economy and the conductivity at the same time does introduce vulnerabilities. It is something we have to be on top of, so manufacturers need to Work Together to think about a secure Development Lifecycle as they develop code, in a way that addresses security. Cyber defense is important. We have an interesting theory about Cyber Defense. When it comes to defending our country and institutions and companies and people, we typically think it is the job of the u. S. Company. We dont expect target or walmart to have search to air missiles to protect against bombers. It would be too expensive to do that and if they did that, you create the risk of miscalculation. In cyberspace, the situation is flipped on its head. We expect companies and individuals, small businesses, Large Businesses to defend against hackers, criminal gangs and nationstates and when you think about it, target and walmart are not in the business of Cyber Defense. They cannot be expected to defend one individual against the whole nation state with unlimited resources. One of the things we have been talking about a lot is the need come togetherto to share information and collect with one another across industries and work with the government to defend the nation and that is a really important cost concept. Host what does the governments Cyber Defense posture, structure look like to the extent you can explain . Guest in the middle of the Obama Administration, the secretary of defense said it is the role and responsibility of the bargain of defense to defend the nation in cyberspace. The challenge is the Defense Department does not have the authority, does not have the budget to do that correct an important mission. E created u. S. Cyber command they have leverage to defend the nation and take the fight to the enemies overseas. Cyber command cannot see what is happening across the bulk of the u. S. Internet because the bulk of it is owned by the private sector and that is as it should be. We dont expect to have nsa or Cyber Command patrolling the boundaries. They have to be able to see what they dont see. They cannot defend what they dont see, so sharing information for the purposes of National Defense can be important and something we ought to do as a nation. Short of that, the government can do more to work with industry. We see that through dhs and nsa and Cyber Command, but we need to do more. Anthere is, at some point, effort by a nationstate to do something more aggressive in cyberspace, i think the American People will look around and say you knew about this threat, what were you doing . It is important for industry and government to get on the same page. One of the challenges we have is there have spent there has been a lack of trust. We need to rebuild the trust and get to the point where we are sharing information, working together tightly coupled together government and industry. Host our guest is jamil jaffer, founder of the National Security institute at George Mason Universitys law school and Vice President of iron net cybersecurity. We have a call from rhonda. Thank you for waiting, you are. N with mr. Jaffer caller good morning. Happy new year, america. My fear with this war escalation and cybersecurity has me with almost like ptsd. I am a mess because of this whole escalation, the 200 children that were killed by accident. Doesnt even have the backup that we as the United States have to protect ourselves. I am trying to say they are careless. They dont have the people we have here, so we dont make. Istakes that arent precise i am just terrified. I am not worried about them hacking my computer, i am worried about the electrical ands and our Nuclear Plants things like that. This is not funny and we need to take it down. We have to take the whole temperature down. They need to put people in there to help trump and his National Security team. Ngpublicans are really pissi me off instead of helping drum, they are watching our country go down in the toilet. Half of the people in the white house, positions are unfilled. Arek kushner and ivanka running our National Security. This is crazy and we have to do something. They have to help trump and go in there and stop talking about him. Lets stop talking about him and lets start helping him. Lets stop this impeachment. I am tired of it. Guest rhonda raises an important point, which is that the president has his National Security team that is weakened by a lot of departures. We have people in place that can help the president make important decisions and i think rhonda raises an important point about this question of how we stop the iranians from making a mistake. How do we deter bad behavior . Was the decision to go after soleimani was it as collateral and did it create attentional for a war in the middle east or did it deter iranian behavior . There was a very hot debate for the last two weeks, we can a half about this question and it turns out in this case, the president might have been right, this sort of very aggressive inyourface activity to take down soleimani may have had the effect of quieting things down until and told the iranians we have been taking it on the chin for a number of years and we are not going to take it anymore. This president will stand up and stop it and you do not want that fight. It did create the risk of escalation and there was a possibility the iranians could lash out and we could have been in a war. The president got it right on this one, but rhondas right to raise this question of what happens when you dont have the that isople in place . An ongoing conversation in this country. Impeachment is about something different, this question of whether the president did the right thing when it came to the ukrainian president and seeking to exchange one thing for another. When it comes to national lostity, i think we have that traditional bipartisan National Security consensus, the idea that when the president goes overseas, you dont talk bad about him. The idea that when the country makes a decision even though we may have disagreed in the lead up to it, we defend it going forward. That consensus is gone. We are at each others throats on all sorts of issues and that only empowers our enemies, russia, china, iran, north korea and if you dont think they are watching, they are. What is amazing about this fight we are having in the country and the vitriol amongst our parties is the people responsible are actually the russians. They wanted to create this very activity in our country through their actions and choices and they did it and we have fallen victim. There is a real need. You see spots of bipartisanship on capitol hill. Richard burr, Mark Mark Warner working together saying tough things about russia and the right things. We need a lot more of that and unfortunately, we are seeing less and less, not more. I worry as we get closer to the election and rather than coming together and saying russia, china, we will not accept a divide, we will get further apart. There is response ability in the white house and on capitol hill for that. Host michael has this text. Could a cyber attack lead to a military response . Guest absolutely. There is often a sense when something happens to you in cyberspace, you have to respond in cyberspace. That is not the case. If a catastrophic cyberattack took place, people talk about the power grid or the banking system. Interestingly, we saw the russia attack on ukraine that resulted in significant damage to the National Health system, you can see one of those attacks eliciting an offensive physical world response and that is as it should be. We should be willing to deter whatever activities a nationstate is doing against us in ever in whatever way we choose to. When you saw the killing of the u. S. Contractor going back to 2011 with the killing of 600 servicemen, the right response was to take out the mastermind of that attack. We did that and that was, in fact, a proportional response to the years and years, almost well over a decade and a half of iranian offensive activity killing americans in that region. Host carl from michigan, please remind mr. Jaffer our cyber strike resulted in their escalation of Cyber Attacks. St there is this debate this question about who was responsible. The u. S. Never fully admitted responsibility. There have been newspaper articles to suggest we or the israelis were responsible. This involved an effort to get Nuclear Program and to essentially make them catastrophically fail. This idea that us going in and doing activity is what caused iran to behave that way, i understand the point and it is an interesting point, i am not sure it is accurate. The iranians have been coming after us in physical space. They have been funding a terrorist group for decades and killing americans and people in the west for years. They have been aggressively countering our Foreign Policy in the region. , iran has a tremendous amount of influence post the conflict and that is a concern not just for us, but our allies and iran does not have the u. S. s interests at heart. If it wants Nuclear Capabilities for peaceful purposes, we are happy to have that conversation. They are enriching uranium to the point it is only usable for weaponry. That is what that effort was about. When a nationstate, whether it is ours or and allies goes into effects to affect somebody elses program, that may cause a response. What we spot what we saw was a response, but a response that was measured in and thought out. We dont want to get in a thought we a fight we are going to lose. Host good morning, mike. Morning. Od i understand the concern about Cyber Attacks on our elections, but what i dont understand is for a decade now at least, the right wingers and and attorney generals have been trying to keep large groups of people they dont agree with from voting. It is not even under the table. They have decreased voting stations by two thirds in places where minorities live and i dont understand why there is no outrage or why these people are not considered treasonous enemies of the state for trying to screw up the elections in the United States. Can you address that for a moment . Guest there has been a long debate in this country about voter fraud and ensuring the people who have the right to vote are able to vote and the people who are authorized to vote cannot vote. Youshow up and used to be did not even have to show an id, you could just say your name and cast a ballot. That ensures elections are protected and there is not fraudulent activity. Some people refer to it as voter fraud and Voter Protection and there were debates about is that an effort to disenfranchise groups from voting . These are political debates that have long taken place in this country. I was involved in election efforts in 2004. I did not see anybody suppressing votes in iowa. I ran the voter the legal operation when it came to the Bush Campaign in iowa and i did not see Voter Suppression even though republicans are often accused of that. It does not mean there are bad there are not bad actors. We should prosecute those people. It is unacceptable to prevent a person who is lawfully authorized to vote from voting. We should prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Voter fraud is a real thing and something we need to address as a nation. This should not be a partisan thing. It should not be people trying to suppress minority votes. We want to assure our elections are clean and well contested and everyone has the right to vote gets the vote. We should work on making elections more clean. People have a lot of debates about campaignfinance reform and there is a lot to say about whether that is good or bad for our election. What was good about the effort was when it was bipartisan. Passing legislation there is a hot debate about campaignfinance reform, but bipartisanship is something we have lost in this era. It has gotten very bad. The debates across the street on capitol hill are terrible, not doing the work of the American People and the American People should hold our represented is accountable for it in the next election. Host betty, republican, good morning. Caller good morning. I have a question. I have been thinking for quite a while, i dont think the democrats with this whole impeachment thing and whatever, i dont think the democrats are orafraid of iran or russia anyone else as they are of durham and barr. Now that we know their investigation is a criminal investigation and they have evidence to support the criminal klapper,tion and from we know he said he was following orders from the president. If obama is found to have committed high treason, usede firing squad still for that kind of a punishment . Guest on the last question about the firing squad, as far as i am aware, we do not use the firing squad in this country. The last state to use that was utah and not as long ago as you might think. Most states use lethal injection. There are debates in the Supreme Court about the humane nature and weather whether it is humane to execute anybody, but to use this methodology of lethal injection. Going back to the larger point and thee election russian influence and the investigation into it and the durham investigation, people forget john durham was not loved by the Bush Administration either. John durham was the same prosecutor who looked into the cia tapes investigation, the question of whether the cia destroyed evidence of improper activities when it came to the interrogation of detainees. Don derman during john prosecutor. Career whatever the outcome is, you will find he will have done a good, serious job the same way bob mueller did a good, serious job. He laid out the facts as he saw the. There is a lot of concerns we have seen particularly after the revelations from the Justice Department inspector general. Also a longtime career official about what was going on at the fbi. I have been involved in the effort to get foreign Intelligence Surveillance warrants. It is a serious process. People take it very seriously. We have a situation where we have evidence that lawyers at the fbi, one lawyer in particular pretty much lied and that is hugely troubling. He hid information about carter page. Tv and talkedt on about and said looks a lot like a russian asset given what we know. That was wrong because he was working for us. The fact somebody from the fbi concealed that fact to get an order is troubling. It doesnt mean we need to take down the system, but we need to make sure we are going after bad actors, that the judges on the pfizer court are empowered to ask tough questions. We need to empower them to do more and ask tougher questions and it is concerning that we see this activity particularly when it comes to a highly sensitive investigation of political actors in an election. It doesnt mean if the russians get involved and try to influence or infiltrate a campaign, that we should not investigate that, we should, but we need to do so in a very careful sense and make sure they are doing at the right way and a way that comports with the laws. Host a little bit more than 20 minutes left. I want to ask a couple questions about the news out there. Back to iran. Washington post, trump hits iran with new sanctions. Do any of the sanctions affect your rounds ability effect irans ability to do Cyber Operations . We broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 coup. It is hard to know exactly how they spend their money and how effective our sanctions are. We know the aggressive approach we have taken beginning with congressionally opposed sanctions reinstated by President Trump after he got rid of the nuclear deal and now with additional activities against the regime itself, we know they have been effective. The iranians are lashing out. Their economy is getting tighter and the reason we see this increased level of activity is because they are unhappy with the situation we put them in. They are working to put pressure on them. The question is what effect does that have on cyber activities . Oppositet cuts the direction. It may affect their ability overall to do military operations, it tends to be cheaper, more efficient, you have a big effect with a little investment. To the extent they are spending money on something, they are likely spending it on cyber activities, overseas terrorist activities. It is a lot to buy a fancy jet or tank, but you could spend a lot more money and have more bang for your buck when it comes to cyber and terrorism. That is why i think the cyber threat remains heightened even as we appear to be in a more deescalate or he deescalatatory situation. Iest i am really caller am really upset and disappointed when i hear someone called in and suggest a firing squad for a former president is appropriate and i think that signifies unfortunately where we are at now because we are so divided and this works into the advantage of politicians, they can keep this president and all these other people that want to stay in power, they will go along with anything he says and as far as iran is concerned, was in it highly inappropriate to send a drone to kill somebody . Arent there rules or ethics and laws about this stuff . What is going to happen when somebody else sends a drone to kill somebody here . Quite frankly, i have a suspicion and i hate that i feel like this, that this administration is going to use and these of iran to manipulate laws and our internet system to use it against us as well because that is all this president has to go on, misinformation, he is not a real president and he doesnt care that the country is divided straight down the middle and people are exhausted and our country is nothing to be proud of right now. This is really shameful and it is shameful to sit here and defend all these stupid things. Thank you. Guest i think jeanette is exactly right. The idea a former president would be sent to the firing squad is ridiculous and not acceptable and that is part of the problem with the debate in this country that we are talking about that kind of thing. At the same time, a lot of times we have seen people on both sides of the aisle questioning both the former president s motives and the current president s motives. We say barack obama and his fbi went after the Trump Campaign to undermine donald trump or donald trump is getting into a war because he wants to avoid the impeachment fight. We have to talk about the issues affecting us. Our enemies are taking advantage of this discord in our country. The russians are getting much more active in the middle east. We have seen them have a huge role in syria. And have taken over crimea they owned that land essentially. The chinese are building up islands in the South China Sea as they deploy their military. They are clamping down on protests in hong kong. They have interned muslims in the province. We are seeing a modernday goo login china and the world is ignoring it. Iranians have gone aggressive in the region. North koreans are on the verge of having a nuclear weapon. Our enemies are watching the discord. Jeanette is right to call that out. At the same time, that cuts both ways. We have to come together as a country. We have an election and that could be an opportunity to come together and find middle ground. I worry because that has an impact not just on domestic politics. We are tired of this harping back and forth, the president attacking nancy pelosi on twitter. It is unseemly and not getting the job of the American People done. People overseas are watching. Our enemies are looking to take advantage of our weakness and they are and we are missing it because we are too busy harping each other. Cybersecurity to that a few seconds. For a few seconds. What is the average cost of a company to be protected for cybersecurity . Guest it varies a lot. If it were to be destroyed or manipulated, would it make your ability to deliver product to your customer untenable . Think about the amount of critical information we are communicating. Almost 27 billion mobile devices expected around the world by 2021. That is three mobile internet connected devices per human being around the globe. That is a tremendous amount of the value isnd going up and up. As Companies Think about their cybersecurity footprint and what they need to defend, the scope is growing. Their ability to defend it is getting better. At the same time, there is a concern that do our corporate boards take it seriously question what do they have enough cyber experts on their board . Are there enough threats who understand the threat who can encourage the board to do the right thing . Our chief Information Security officers, do they report to ceos . If you are going to take Cyber Threats seriously and it is at the core of almost every American Business today, you have to elevate that position and view it as a core part of doing business and the risk factor you need to calculate four. Host kenny in virginia. You are on with jamil jaffer. Caller i am getting old. The old weapon the sword, you all remember the doubleedged sword. I say we check the term, the internet, the ultimate sword. Edged a nitroglycerin plant and i fought tooth and nail to keep it off the internet. Is our the negative side way and the other side and we have people addicted to the internet. I say we check doubleedged sword, it is the internet. Thank you very much. Imagine ais hard to world today where we get rid of the internet, but an important point the caller made where he has this industrial system that runs operations or machines in the question is can you keep things like that off the internet . Can you keep them disconnected . We talked about this idea of a physical separation, and airgap between systems connected to the internet and systems that may be disconnected. You want to know what those systems are doing, monitor them, say is that machine functioning the right way . I need to know what it is doing and to do that, you create connectivity. This idea we have air gaps between our systems and our Information Technology systems is going away even though we may try to maintain the separation, it is hard to do. That means you need to do threat the text. You need to watch both and watch connection points between the two because if an attacker wants if you want to get there, you have to find a way to get there and often it is from an internet connected device across that alleged airgap, so you need detection on both and you need those to Work Together in a way that allows for the surveillance and monitoring and defense of those systems. , whatfrom South Carolina would you like to say this morning . Caller thanks for taking my call. I am concerned about the power is is ity question being updated . I read several articles that were saying the power grid was very old, like 100 years old or Something Like that and that is why i was wondering if they were working on upgrading. We have seen a lot of activity in california with challenges with the physical infrastructure of the power grid. I know a lot of these electric transmission Generation Companies are doing a lot of work in a Physical Plant to upgrade their own systems that generatingg, electricity and generating it, that is a huge area of concern and they are spending a lot of money to do that effort. They are also spending a lot of money to defend themselves. They know like the Health Care Sector that they are on the front lines of cyberattack. They are spending a lot of time and effort focusing on acquiring the best technologies. Nobody will be perfect. The idea you can perfectly defend against an attack is not realistic. The question is how can you get the best defense possible and what can you do to rapidly recover and reconstitute if you are attacked . We should not expect perfections one of the challenges is we expect perfection from our government, our industries. It is not realistic. A committed attacker willing to spend a lot of resources, time, and effort and willing to give their lives, it is hard to defend against that threat. What you can do is create as much defense as possible within reality and then be able to rapidly reconstitute and get up and running again, protect the people who rely on your services and make sure you are there for them when the time comes. Host larry from alabama, democratic caller. Caller how are you doing this morning . I have a comment and a question. My comment is dealing with the electoral system. With cyberspace, i understand what you were saying earlier about why the republicans and democrats not doing anything and a way to stop this cyberattack because number one, they need to get elected. A number 2, if you have the foreign people like russia, iran, china, all of them grouped politicalo help one candidate than what do you think . It is not going to help you. My question is dealing with formerobama president for passing a law to sanction and ban this china spying working in china on the military soldiers as well civilians with ipods and iphones. I cannot even remember the name pretty the name. President trump came back along and lifted the sanctions and the ban on the Company Working with china. I would like for him to elaborate on that a little bit. Guest i am not sure about the specific company, but we have seen action in the Obama Administration and the Trump Administration to address the zte. T posed by huawei and we worry if they control the core infrastructures that transmit internet traffic around the United States as well as overseas, they could do a lot of surveillance and damage. In the United States, we have essentially prevented while way from selling their goods, their. Ard way their Hardware Congress is making efforts to work with rural and smaller Telephone Companies to extract that equipment and put in equipment that is more trusted. We worry because our allies and countries are taking in that gear and using it because it is cheap. The question is why is it so cheap and costeffective . The Chinese Government has made an effort to provide lowinterest loans and funding to allow these companies to operate below the amount a Competitive Company would have to and they have stolen property from the United States. There is a reason why an older router looks a lot like a cisco router, it is. They stole intellectual property, avoided that investment and were able to build that capability by having stolen information and intellectual property from the u. S. The reason that matters is as our economy continues to pivot ard more of a Technology Intellectual Property is part of what makes our country innovative. If they are able to steal that property and repurpose it for economic purposes overseas, that can be hugely damaging not just to our companies, but our economic competitiveness. To thisnt ceo referred theft of intellectual property by china as the greatest transfer of wealth in modern Human History and i think he is right. It is at the core of what we do as a nation. That is why the Obama Administration was right to call out the chinese for engaging in this and the trumpet ministration was right to impose sanctions and boot out while way wei and zte. Bet of this trade deal might a problem for National Security, something to keep a close eye on as we do this trade deal. Talked about government, business, all the devices inside your own home and what we have to watch out for. Tell us as regular americans, how should we protect ourselves from Cyber Security attacks from iran or elsewhere . Guest the best you can do is keep your devices uptodate. All these manufacturers, whether it is apple and ios or google, your web browser, chrome browser, safari browser, your cost of getting updates and often it is in the middle of something you are working on. Remind me tomorrow, remind me later. Those involve security updates that will respond to the latest, greatest threat. One of the benefits to Internet Connectivity is they can push these to your devices. A lot of times we do not want to install the latest ios because it will slow my phone down, but the tradeoff of Security Protection is often better than the downside. Dont wait a month. Sure you are conscious about your own activities online. Look at the email you get. It dont just click on those emails. Often times people get in attacks. Hishing it looks like it is from the ceo or hr department, be skeptical. Like we talk about earlier, we cannot expect perfection. The other day i looked like i got any mail from the dean of the law school and i responded and it was not it. I said did you send this email . He said nope rate i had to call the i. T. Guys. But bebeat yourself up, skeptical. Watch carefully. Think about what you are doing. Recognize that clicking on a link in any mail, you can get yourself into some trouble. Dont just assume the email you are getting from grandma is an email from her and part of it is social engineering attacks are getting more sophisticated because more and more by stealing databases and this information, hackers and nationstates know more about you than they used to. They know who your family is. They can shape these attacks in a way designed to target you very carefully. Scott in massachusetts, republican, good morning. In i have a comment and a question. Isnt block chain the answer to cybersecurity issues . Guest it is interesting technology, this idea you can Exchange Information without anybody having access to it, all the data is public and validated by sources. One of the concerns is how that validation is done. If you control a significant portion of block chain, can you influence decisions about what is approved and what is not . We have seen the government actually be able to very effectively take down a child pornography website about 6 months ago, three months ago by decrypting block chain walls. The ability to get into the block chain and understand what is going on as a public ledger is interesting. The block chain is an important step in the right direction, but it can be used for nefarious purposes. We see a lot of illegal transactions, child pornographers hiding their activity and luckily the government has been able to identify those, but that might mean it is not as secure as we thought. There are questions about how secure the technology is. There is a balance about defending cybersecurity and protecting things, one of the debates we have about encryption. We need it to protect our communications, financial transactions. At the same time, we have never thought the Fourth Amendment said if the government has a lawful warrant they cannot get into your house whatever how can we balance those things . Democrat, thank you for calling. Caller thank you for taking my call. I have a question i hope is relevant if mr. Jaffer could answer. I continue to hear what i consider misleading or completely inaccurate information through the media that obama sent on the pallets and i would like the money explain why had to be paid and why it had to be sent and cashed on pallets. Thank you so much and i will take my answer on the tv. Guest my recollection, i dont member the exact dollar amount and my recollection is that what was going on was there was money we had been holding for a long time that there were assets and money that had been frozen that belong to the iranian government, but we had frozen this money and there was an ongoing debate and we decided the money was the iranians and they had a right to it but because of the sanctions, we were not going to give it to them and that money could have paid victims of irani and attacks and the like. As part of the nuclear deal, one of the deals was something of a side deal was we would return this money we had frozen in the United States for a long u. S. For a long time. I think the question of the cash, and i was not involved in a direct transaction of that, but my understanding and recollection may not be exactly right, so i dont want the caller to think these are the facts of what happened, but my guess is we had strict sanctions in place, and we could not transfer through banks, so that might have been widely sent it through cash. Why they sent it through cash. In the aftermath of the soleimani strike, money is fungible. You can use it for different purposes. Itiving money to iran, enabled them to buy the kind of weaponry they are using against americans. Is that one for one . It doesnt really matter. When you make a deal with a nationstate like iran and give them access to economic resources, they might use that against you. That is a huge problem. Jaffer,r guest is jamil law professor at george mason university. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that affect you. Coming up sunday morning, the latest on u. S. Iran tensions on the strategy with the Program Director for the center for a new American Security for the middle east security program. Also michael rubin, American Enterprise institute scholar. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern sunday morning. Join the discussion. Campaign 2020 coverage continues sunday, live at 3 00 p. M. Eastern with senator Michael Bennet in bedford, new hampshire. End at four 15 eastern, mayor Pete Buttigieg from las vegas. At 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan two tuesday, President Trump is in milwaukee at a keep America Great rally. Watch coverage on cspan and cspan two, on cspan. Org or listen on the go with the free cspan radio app. We have the votes, once the impeachment trial has begun, to pass a resolution, essentially the same, very similar to the 1000 vote in the clinton trial. Under rules for the clinton impeachment trial, house managers in the president s impeachment lawyers had 24 hours each to present their cases. Senators were able to ask questions for up to 16 hours before debating and voting on whether to dismiss the case or call witnesses. Once all the evidence was presented, senators deliberated behind closed doors, leading to a final vote on each article of impeachment. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer responded to senator mcconnell. Right now, the republican leader and i have very different visions of what it means to conduct a fair trial. Democrats believe a fair trial means all the relevant facts come out, and witnesses and documents are part of that trial. Whoever heard of a trial without witnesses and documents . It is unprecedented. But if you are afraid of the fact, if you are afraid of what would come out, if you want to cover it up, even in something as weighty and serious as impeachment, you say no witnesses and no documents. , witnesses and documents, fair trial. No witnesses and no documents, coverup. The impeachment of President Trump. Continue to follow the process on cspan, leading to a senate trial. Live, unfiltered coverage on cspan, on demand at cspan. Org impeachment and listen on the free cspan radio app. Next, a look at Election Security ahead of the 2020 elections, with companies that sell voting systems, local elected officials and Computer Science professors. They testify live before the house administer an committee