Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On National Security Priorities 20240713

Everyone please sit down. Know we have people trickling in, but we are starting anyway. Ok. Welcome to the Wilson Center to those who are physically here and those who will be watching us on cspan and by other means. Harman, the president and ceo of the Wilson Center and former member of congress who is proud of her role in helping create the department of Homeland Security. Today we are pleased to cohost ural Homeland Security Experts Group meeting with support from the miners association, american airlines, and mckinsey. It is the group of the best americann the Homeland Security. It was found over 10 years ago and is now rebooted and housed at the minor corporation. Secretary and my dear friend Michael Chertoff and i are honored to be cochairs, and rob walker is the newly minted director. Mission is to offer independence, nonpartisan advice to key government officials as they face hard security programs, raise awareness, and offer solutions. We are nonpartisan and we hope we add value. Sitting in our audience today are some of the most Brilliant Minds sharing more than 1000 years, i am not making this up of service and u. S. Security posts. Household names like Charlie Allen, suzanne spaulding, lisa monico, and i want to pay tribute to an extraordinary patriot, general mike hayden. [applause] mas jane i could take all day and thank all the rest of you, but thank you for your service. I used to say that the group is made up of the mothers and fathers of Homeland Security. Most of us were instrumental in standing at the department and staffing it. But over time, i have to be honest that we are the grandmothers and grandfathers of Homeland Security. We are sprightly and as passionate as ever about the mission. The Wilson Center is also delighted to host i guess it is called the state of homeland. The state of homeland addressed by our current secretary of Homeland Security, three of his statesssors, also, gave of homeland addresses here over the last five to six years. It is my pleasure to introduce former secretary Michael Chertoff who will introduce our current secretary. Please welcome him. [applause] mr. Chertoff it is great to be here and to see a lot of familiar faces and in particular, welcome the acting secretary of Homeland Security, chad wolf, to address this meeting. Confirmedwolf was last november and he was then at the same time designated as acting secretary. He brings to the job a lot of experience going back to the in 2001,the tsa back and he has served at various levels of tsa. He has worked on Security Issues both in the private and public sector. He came back as deputy chief of staff and chief of staff of the department before ascending to his role, and he is a recipient of the Homeland Security distinguished Service Medal which is a high honor. We welcome secretary wolf. Overview andus an then we will have time for discussion and questions. I am happy to invite the acting secretary to the stage. [applause] sec. Wolf lets see if i can get this right. Thank you, secretary chertoff, congresswoman harman, for the kind introduction. It is great to be here with the Homeland Security Experts Group where colleagues, experts, and thought leaders can currently address the most pressing threats to the homeland. Asers continue to serve mentors and friends to the department leadership. A few of you have stood in this role, and often refer to the example that you have set for the Threat Landscape that is more complex and dynamic. On behalf of the department and me personally, i want to thank you for all of you for lending your expertise, your insights to making our country more safe and secure. Thank you. As acting secretary, my priorities are guided by determination to ensure that the department is robust, resilient, and forward leaning in 2020 and beyond. 360 degreerovide a view of the current dhs priorities. As i walk you through these threats, you will hear some missions you are familiar with. We have been doing some work that you might have missed that do not always make headlines. One example is earlier this week, we formally rolled our first ever strategy to combat human trafficking, the importation of goods produced with forced labor, and Child Exploitation. These horrific crimes do not just threaten americans personal and Public Safety, but they threaten our physical and virtual borders, our prosperity, and our National Security. It is why dhs is at the forefront of combating this evil. Actionategy outlines 40 items the department will work towards. Our work formally established this mission as a department priority, allowing it to be addressed accordingly in the months and years to come. There are a variety of issues like this one that may not rise to the highest threats of the departments but are nevertheless important and critical to what we do. The media may not focus on it, but rest assured, the men and women of dhs are determined, focused, and heads down every day doing the work to keep the Homeland Security. With that, lets jump into the top threats. In light of recent national event, i will begin from the threat emanating from certain nationstates, iran, china, and russia. Each country has a different motivation and end goal, ball attempt to undermine our interest but all attempt to undermine our interests. Lets start with iran. There is no credible or specific threat to the homeland from iran, however, giving what we know about their capabilities and motivations, the department continues to operate with an enhanced posture. Summer 2019, the department aegan working on contingency plan. Have been ready and we remain ready to initiate various protective measures immediately should the need arise. Given these events, for the first time in history, we have taken the extra step of issuing a National Terrorism advisory system bulletin, driven by a specific event. It was the right decision. Bothulletin was issued to inform and reassure the american public, state and local governments, private stakeholders, and dhs was actively monitoring and preparing for any credible threats. We remain specifically vigilant regarding cyber enabled attacks from iran against u. S. Based targets including critical infrastructure. Looking to the long term, it is china who remains our most significant and persistent strategic adversary. Toworks the threaten the u. S. s power and dominance from within the system using covert and overt means. Be it our academic and scientific communities or Silicon Valley to aggressively expand its ability to shape information in the chinese narrative abroad. Beijing will continue to use overt legal, political, and economic endeavors to further pressure and shape the information environment. Covertly, it employs a number of tactics to undermine our influence in standing around the world. Persistentr most threat in the cyber realm. It is pursuing a longterm hole of nation effort to threaten undermine the United States. While we value our partnership with beijing to promote global prosperity, we are working to hold the chinese bad actors accountable. Theon is being taken across executive branch including dhs to use regulatory tools appropriately, to respond to the threat it poses such as the committee on foreign investment, and team telecom. Dhs, we are focused on leveraging the unique authorities, data, and missions to counter beijings longterm objective. When i step in the position, i found each component addressing the chinese threat in their own silo, and in most cases, perhaps not coordinating as much as they could across the department. A siloed approach is not efficient. As a result, we have decided to address and this includes but is not limited to the protection of critical infrastructure, supplychain integrity, immigration security, maritime security, and countering foreign influence, cybersecurity, and counterintelligence. We will identify and prioritize threats that match our resources and capabilities accordingly. We will be able to quickly identify any vulnerability gaps and determine where any Additional Resources are needed as they are needed. It is the type of planning that goes on behind the scenes daily. It does not make the headlines, but it is critically important to make sure we are positioned to respond to any threat quickly. Lets move over to russia. Unlike china, russia does not seek to weaken our economy are surpass us on the world stage but they focus on actions of undermining the american way of life. We expectin 2016, russia to interfere in the 2020 elections and undermine our Democratic Institutions. The state and local officials who run our elections are prepared. We are working with our federal partners to make sure those officials in the front lines of our elections have the information they need to combat russian interference. We are working to make sure the American People understand how russians seek to undermine confidence in our election. The simple steps they can take to avoid amplifying foreign influence campaigns. Dhsre prepared in 2018 when established classified and unclassified war rooms. These connected local officials and all 50 states, political parties, social media, and agencies across the u. S. Government including dod, fbi, and the Intelligence Community. It helps to make the 2018 elections the most secure. In 2020, we are doing this and more. That is to prevent our adversaries from degrading faith in our democracy. Let me move onto Election Security more specifically. Election security is front of mind for many of us as we go into 2020. From the white house down, the department and u. S. Government more broadly his later focus on this issue. Under the leadership of director we have been working diligently around the clock to ensure the election systems are secure and resilient. Thanks to their efforts, we are working with the government and state and local Election Officials better than before. This is in contrast to 2016 when we were in contact with few to none and we had relationships with few to none. This is providing these partners with information, technical assistance, resources, and tools to promote resiliency of their systems. Localction day, state and Election Officials could bear the risk of their systems so we are doing what we can now to ensure they are secure. Voters play a crucial role and elections. In elections. We recognize the potential effect of targeted attacks on our elections both real and claimed. We will continue to educate targeted populations to make them less receptive to misinformation campaigns, and continue to work with partners to prepare and practice exercise from potential disruptions. As all Homeland Security operators and experts, 100 security is never realistic. We are focused on building more resilient election systems and processes, and encouraging states to audit Election Results by paper. 20, over 90 of votes will have a corresponding paper ballot. We can do more. Border security. Our number one duty as a country is to not only know who is coming into our country but what is coming in. Transnational criminal organizations work on a daily basis to funnel people and illegal contraband such as drugs, money, and weapons into the u. S. Border security is National Security and we are prioritizing it as such. We have seen and experienced the last several years it is our security that is closely linked with the stability to our partners to the south. Working with our Central American partners, we have built a historic regional framework to reduce the reach of Transnational Criminal Organizations and ensure those who are seeking protections can do so closer to home. U. S. Support to build their capacity and also promoting regional safety and security by sharing information to combat Transnational Criminal Organizations. The coalition is founded on a basic premise to secure region, to stable and prosperous region. We will provide opportunities for the youth of those countries to represent the future of those countries. Signed 12e agreements with guatemala, honduras, and el salvador. This will lead to further partnership and prosperity in the region. We are working closely with the Development Finance organization as wellify investments as increase Economic Opportunity in the region. In addition to promoting economic securities, such investment also counters influence from our adversaries in the region. It just makes sense. Where we have a strong presence, our strategic adversaries will not. We could all agree that we would prefer not to have countries like china and russia establishing that influence in our backyard. International engagement is only one component of the strategy to address the Border Security crisis. Over the last several months, we put together a strategy that is working. We have ended catch and release, eliminating the incentive to exploit children for entry into the United States. We have cracked down on asylum fraud across the board, working tirelessly to restore enforcement of federal statutes enacted by congress. Lastly and most critically, we have expedited and continued construction on the border wall system. When we ask our agents on the ground what will it take to fully secure the border, there is no ambiguity in their answer. Number one on the list is a border wall system. miles under construction in over 200 miles in the preconstruction phase. Today we remain on track to complete the construction by the end of this calendar year. We have decreased illegal crossing seven months in a row for the First Time Since 2008, and will continue to take action against Transnational Criminal Organization that threatens american safety. While we have achieved Great Success the past couple of months, we remain in crisis of over 40,000 apprehended every month crossing the border illegally. This is not sustainable and we must do more. Let me speak to the mission that has been synonymous with the Department Since inception, counterterrorism. Since 9 11, we have achieved significant successes to attack the homeland significant successes including raising the baseline of security. Aviation threat, tsa and dhs worked with International Partners to raise a security baseline around the world. Today, commercial aviation is more secure because of the actions we took. Raise dhs is working to the global place global baseline for security. We are transparent and upfront with every country on the criteria and information we require. There are no surprises. We are a small number of countries that lack the will or capability to adhere to the criteria, travel restrictions may become necessary to mitigate the threat. Travelbe clear restrictions are not based on the faith of the citizenry of the regions of the world these citizens reside, but the countries otherwise pose an elevated risk to the safety of our country. We do not leave room for error. As we continue to address the threat of terrorism, we also concede to see the threat of domestic actors. Americans trends of driven by violence ideologies, and attack with little warning creates a unique challenge. Times,eat israel and at unpredictable and has serious the threat is real and at times unpredictable and has serious ramifications. The position of the department to confront this evolving threat was released last fall. Address the evolving challenges today. I want to call out the frameworks focused on enhancing prevention and resilience. This calls for a whole of approach and build up points. The framework explicitly recognizes the need to support and protect our most vulnerable populations, particularly our yout. Our youth. We are glad to provide additional funding in fy 20 to advance our work. We are working aggressively to a developed an Implementation Plan that will be ready in the coming weeks and the plan will serve as a twoyear action documents, running from fy 20 to fy 22 to lay out steps and milestones for dhs along the way. Lastly, i want to mention the urgency of this threat to our faithbased communities and houses of worship. We are responding. Acting in the recommendations on the prevention of violence against faithbased communities. I want to thank the subcommittee for their work on this important issue, and we are moving out quickly but smartly on these. As each one of these threats show, dhs professionals are operating in a complex and dynamic environment. Throughout all of the work that we do, we continue to emphasize the importance of transparency, the protection of civil rights and civil liberties, and the perfection of data. It is an honor and privilege to lead dhs and the mission to protect American People, but it is true, no one agency can tackle these issues alone. Robust partnerships are critical to the this the securityrom Cyber Companies to Disaster Response organizations, and a variety of others. Our private sector partners and many in the room are ultimately why we are successful at securing the homeland. Let me think congresswoman harman, secretary chertoff, and others for your contribution to the full group. Our nation is fortunate to have some of the bright minds applying their expertise to some of the most pressing issues we face. Thank you for the opportunity to outline the tremendous work of the men and women that the department of Homeland Security do every day. Thank you. [applause] mr. Chertoff secretary, thank you for a very since sink very succint and compelling exposition of the strategies. We are delighted to welcome you here and want to pay tribute to the work that is done by those in the field in the air. Those who are protecting us and are very, very dedicated. Let me take you back to the issue on which you opened and you kind of concluded which has to do with the Traditional Mission against the global terrorist organizations. Thealked a little bit about and task with hezbollah but i also want to ask you in addition to hezbollah and the challenge it poses not just in the region but this part of the world, but i want to ask you about isis. There is some question at this point about the dimensions of the role and the feel that the u. S. Will have any in iraq or syria. Are we concerned about isis resetting itself and becoming more active . And putting hezbollah and isis to one side, what other groups from a global terrorist and point are we now being concerned about . When we talk about hezbollah and iran, when we look at the capabilities of iran we emerge with concern we talk about the homeland and terms of cybersecuritys. These are lowlevel cybersecuritys, and these are mostly disruptive case abilities, but that is something that we take a look at. Hezbollah, they are sophisticated and capable of attacks in the homeland as well as overseas. I wasave a history and run through the history of assassinations. Presurveilthem iconic infrastructures. It is a partnership between the departments, fbi, doj, and others as we look at how do we combat the threat from hezbollah. The campaign to defeat isis in iraq and syria is working and we are seeing a degradation in their capability. We are still concerned at the department on their ability to inspire individuals in the homeland. It is not necessarily to export their capabilities, but it is that inspire. Individuals in various parts of the homeland behind a computer doing whatever they do, are looking at this content online, becoming inspired, and will certainly take certain actions into their hands. As we look at the threats, those are the ones that is how we approach it. Public, bute to the a lot of what we do is unseen as well. Obviously, there is a discussion about foreign fighters. And of course, hezbollah has a. Resence in europe how do we take steps to make sure that it is not become an intermediate step in order to carry out an operation . Sec. Wolf that becomes the really ships we have with our partners and we have a number of capabilities at the apartment the department that we share with our foreign partners to make sure that it is building thatity and making sure they have the ability to track partners. We are able to share the information that we have on our holdings, so it increases security across the table. Thes almost a free Service Department provides to our partners. Vetted and making sure the security is there, but it is a very valuable partner in this, so our partners are sharing information with us, we share with them, and we build the capacity with our other partners in the area of the world as we look at foreign terrorist fighters and the like leaving the battlefield, trying to enter europe and elsewhere. It is building the capacity from our perspective. It is obviously continuing to share intelligence. It is building that capacity, and making sure they are able to identify individuals. In making sure the ones are really bad, that we decent about them. Sure that the ones that are really bad, that we do something about them. Fmr. Sen. Harman thank you, mr. Secretary. It was a very worthy address, so we appreciate that. I would just add something michael was asking you about the as Charlie Allen pointed out, hezbollah has actually attacked the western hemisphere and argentina in the 1990s. Several jewish sites were attacked, and people may forget that, but they do have global reach. It is something of great concern and it is a great comfort that you are focused on it. I want to turn to your workforce, and say, thank you again to the men and women of dhs. It is a huge workforce. 240,000 people, the thirdlargest Largest Department in the u. S. Government, and it is on par with the global footprint of a bank like jp morgan. The department has been treated like a political football from ime to time, i ought to know, work and another location about a mile from here for quite some years. Also saw or so, and i from this Vantage Point which affected our workforce, the Government Shutdown last winter is definitely affected your workforce. How is the morale . And what would you say to someone, one of the brilliant people out there somewhere or maybe even at the Wilson Center considering a career at the department . A privileget is and an honor of a lifetime to lead the men and women of the dhs. It is difficult to underscore, and i am sure secretary chertoff can sympathize, it is difficult to describe what they go through day in and day out. Thealluded to it, i think political environment that we have does not help. When you talk about the attacks workforcekforce, ice who are simply doing their job. We like to say, if you do not like the law that we enforce, go to congress, have them change the laws, but we will enforce the laws. It is tough in terms of leadership. We have a great leadership component across our components, making sure that there is direct vision, direction to the folks underneath but i would also say that the workforce is resilient. They continue to meet the mission with success each and every day and i go back to the difficulty of the job. We are the Largest Law Enforcement Agency in the world, not the nation, but the world. 66,000 Law Enforcement officers who have a difficult job across our mission sets. Like any other large Law Enforcement agency, there is always going to be a morale challenge. We are certainly facing that, and i would also say for the most part, we are a relatively young department. We are 17 years old this year. If you contrast that with states, dod, department of justice 200 years old. That counts a lot for the institutional processes, how you take care of your workforce, how you mentor, what is that leadership, and how you continue to build a career within the department. All of those things add up to morale. The department is still working on it. We still have a long way to go, but i like where we are at, i like where we are positioned, and we are doing great work. I getec. Chertoff before to my next question, i would observe i have assumed that there is little progress made in congress for the perennial wish that never seems to be granted. Sec. Wolf i will take a pass on that. [laughter] fmr. Sen. Harman i will add on that. The 9 11 commission which was cochaired by lee hamilton, my predecessor, recommended that congress reorganize in order to fully support the mission. That recommendation has not been followed. Get wolf i will say, i reports every day, a congressional report that outlines the activities that the department does on the hill every day and every day, that report is four pages long. It is briefings and at least three days out of a week when congress is here, which is not a lot, is someone is testifying. A component ted, a Deputy Assistant secretary a component head, a Deputy Assistant secretary the amount of work Energy Resources expended, and im not saying that oversight is not needed, but at some point it is repetitive. Fmr. Sec. Chertoff let me come back to the election issue. That stateto hear and local governments have been much more willing to embrace assistance from the department. Let me ask you a twopart question. In terms of the issue of disinformation which goes beyond theelection, and also attempt to create a general dissension and disunity in the american populace, how are we counteractefforts to that . And it particular to refer to something we talked about this morning, the senses is coming up and in terms of security of the a and again efforts, misinformation efforts that might be aimed at disrupting the senses, was the departments approach . Sec. Wolf when we talk about this information campaigns the information campaigns, bureau and the doj definitely has a role here. We talk about identifying certain activities, investigating those, and taking them a step further. Departmental standpoint, how to educate the electorate when we talk about elections, and it is sharing the information and building the awareness of. I do not think the average american is thinking about this. Individuals at the department are, but how do we communicate that, i think that is the challenge that the department and the federal government is facing. We see the intelligence, and we know their tactics and techniques, we know what they are targeting, and how do we push that out. Taking just recently is a more proactive approach which is good, and i know the department is taking a more proactive approach of sharing that information with our stakeholders so they can make their own informed choices. Nformationout disi campaigns, sometimes they are on the political issues. The government has to be careful about how we validate or are amplifying one group over the other, or seen as picking sides. We do not want to be in that. The question i have for the group and certainly what we talked about offline is what more can we be doing . Should we be looking at third party that validate that . These are all under consideration at the department and we continue to look at this. I would not say we have the silver bullet, but cisa is making great progress. Joyce let me add an observation fmr. Sen. Harman let me add an observation about that and then turned to the audience for questions. , ourservation is constitution says that states shall regulate the time and manner of elections. When the Homeland Department first offered to be more helpful in terms of Election Security, a law of the state said no, thank you. It was comforting this morning to learn that that attitude has turned around and that the department and i guess most of the states have now become andnds and are cooperating sharing resources, and that is the way that we will return security to the elections. So good work. Sec. Wolf i appreciate that. The issue here is about federalism and where is the right balance. From a departmental perspective, we want to make sure that state and locals are in charge of the elections, no question. We want to make sure that they have the tools and resources to respond to certain activities should they occur. Making sure we share the information and that they use us as a valuable partner and i think that gets to your question earlier. I do not think initially they saw us, but that is not unique. We see that in the number of different mission steps in when we first come in perhaps even to regulate which we do not do in this case, but when we are new to a mission space, there is apprehension about what the federal government brings. Fmr. Sen. Harman i thought it was a good move of your predecessor to declare infrastructure and federal systems, that freed up federal funds and underscored the importance. Our free democracy depends on free elections. Onfinal question is something else. You talk in your remarks about the border wall and that is controversial. I am sure you have not missed that. [laughter] sec. Wolf i was unaware. Fmr. Sen. Harman most of us supported in legislation when i was in congress some parts of the border being secured by a wall. This is my question. Just yesterday, Congress Passed the Senate Passed the u. S. M. C. A. , the u. S. Mexicocanada agreement by an overwhelming, bipartisan margin. This is amazing and we should salute most of the people who were able to vote for a. It also passed in the house. A lot of our trade with mexico and canada is cross regional trade. It goes across borders. Could theoretically interfere with this. How do you balance, or do you think about the equities here, we want to open the borders of people who are properly coming to the United States can get here, we want trade to flow easily, and at the same time we want to keep bad actors out. How do we think about that . Sec. Wolf one of the Main Missions of the department is to make sure the free flow of trade and travel continues. It is front and center on our brain to do that. We talk about a border wall system, we are not talking about trade facilitation. We are talking about illegal entries into the country. Those are two different conversations. Currently, weomy, make sure that we continue to have that crossborder trade with mexico. At of that occurs ports of entry, so we need to monetize our ports of entry, make sure they are staffed appropriately. I was in texas last month talking to a trade group about these issues, making sure we have some of the busiest border crossings in the state of texas, and making sure with that trade, he continues to flow unimpeded, while making sure that we have the right security processes in place. A lot of that is what we do on the vetting side, but a lot of what we do a technology at the ports of entry. It is what cbp does, and we will continue to do that. When we look at the border wall system, when i talk to my men and women in Border Patrol, that is the number one ask making sure they have a system that provides the impedance in the nile. We are not talking about border wall system. It is also the fiberoptic tables, the access roads, the sensors, everything. Locations, and priority locations are difficult to patrol, we put that up so that we move the flow. We are able to congregate our Border Patrol officers there. I think we can do both, i know we do both and we do it very well. Both are critical. Fmr. Sen. Harman we have about 10 minutes for audience questions and to michael, why dont you recognize people. Fmr. Sec. Chertoff this is for members of the group, so if you raise your hand and announce so people know who you are. Fmr. Sen. Harman microphone is coming. Chad think chad, thank you. Pj crowley, Homeland Security Experts Group. You just gave a fairly strikingly different state of Homeland Security then say Michael Chertoff might have done a dozen years ago. Big powerd with competition, threats by states. Talk about the evolution. Michael and his time did not have the luxury, because we still had the urgency of external terrorism threats, but to what extent is this where we now have a Comfort Level where we at least understand the evolution of the terrorism threat to what extent is that the growth of cyber since the threat from iran, russia, china is largely cyber based . Ad to what extent are we from National Security standpoint and Homeland Security point, come back to the big power competition . Sec. Wolf a couple of ways to respond to that. One, we have not left we still have oure our eye on the ball regarding foreign terrorism in general. Probably what the secretary faced after 9 11 and the like. That is the core of what the department does in our counterterrorism activities and programs. When we look at nationstate ,hreats, nationstate actors digital age, cyber, all of what you said is a can tripping factor. From a departmental perspective, we go where the threat is. In,e see threats coming economic threats, and intelligence and the like, we adapt our procedures accordingly. The threats the secretary may have been faced with are different today because our adversaries are changing as well. As they change, we will change as well. As ave the growth of cisa result of that, and making sure that not only the federal networks are protected but that we are sharing information with our state and local partners. Me, how do you prioritize at the department . And i would say, we follow the threat. Not only the threats of today, but as we look forward, what are the threats of tomorrow and how do we position the department accordingly. Sometimes, that is difficult when working with congress because it is a little bit of a budgets andu build get new authorities, so it takes time to do that. When ieats of today, leave the department and in three to five years, there will be new sets of threats, and the department will have to continue to innovate to address it. Stewart baker. Pieces oftwo Unfinished Business in the 9 11 commission were recommendation for real id and recommendation of biometric record who comes in to and leaves the country. It looks like you will finally implement those. What is that going to mean for most americans . Sec. Wolf i appreciate that question and i am looking for the tsa administrator. There he is. I am sure the administrator can talk to you all day about what this means. October is the0, deadline for individuals if they are choosing to fly commercial, they need a real id. What we see today and i will say backing up, this is a law from 2005, i believe. Many years is a is a goodmitat implementation stage for the states. It goes to security. Making sure that we know these individuals, it goes to ids, and a whole host of issues that the administer has to deal with. When we came in as an administration, if you look at the map of the u. S. And a fragment states were not compliant, you would have seen in the neighborhood of over 40 states noncompliant. Today, every state is compliant except for one or two and they are online for the next one or two months. We have been very specific and pointed that the october 2020 date is firm. We have seen states step up and take a number of initiatives to do that. When estate is compliant is one thing. Issuing the cards and getting them into their constituents hands is a whole other matter. The compliance rate across the country is very low. It will be in the high 20s or low 30s. You can do the math, what we have asked is to have the state dmv is continue to supply us real data every month. We cannot require them to do that, so we are asking them nicely to do that. Some going to help us make informed decisions of where we need to allocate our procedures. Some states are 20 , other states are we need to make sure that they continue to do that and we will continue to have conversations about what that means. The biometric record, nothing to announce, but the department is working on that as well and hopefully, there will be something to announce soon. We have time for one more fast question. Suzanne. Thank you for being here. Suzanne spalding. Suzanne spalding grandmother of cisa. You have noticed of the departments responsibilities at the border. One of my concerns is in the minds of the american public, dhs has become the departments for immigration or department for the border, and i worry that it taints their view of the and havet writ large impacts on our broader missions. How big are concerns of yours and what can we do about that . My only concern would be, and it was one of my priorities was that the americans understand the full mission set of the department. Medialluded to, while the and others may focus on one or two mission sets the men and women of dhs every day are doing the full range of their mission. It may look like we only do border immigration. L, so weat is rea are focused on it. The men and women inside the department do not feel that way. They understand what they do everyday matters. A lot of what i talk about we are doing every day at the department. It does not get the headlines until we actually perform. We go back to the threat from iran, when we were able to take off the shelf, work that we had done for 5, 6, 7, 8 months that never got the time or attention or anything else, we were able to implement those in a matter of hours. I kind of brushed it off a little bit, understanding the media or Congress Kind of focuses on what dhs does at the border which is critically important. The mission the dhs does across the Homeland Security enterprise, it is critical to securing the homeland every day. Then michael and might have a final word, our thanks to american i american airlines, and mckinsey, and our current secretary of Homeland Security for making this very informative. The wilson ourselves safe politl space, and we are safe in this space, and it is good that different views were expressed in question today because this is a hard mission obviously everyone in the country wants you to succeed. The bad actors have to be successful once, and we have to be successful 100 of the time that is not achievable. But if we can mitigate risks and make the whole country feel that we are putting scarce dollars to best use and real talent on the case, i think that puts us ahead. You have been at the Homeland Department for a long time in various roles, and your leadership is very much appreciated. Michael i echo that, and i will , in outstanding, experienced team, very dedicated. I think the american public, if they look at the full story, in an environment online as well as in real life. There is more surface area to defend, but people but people who are dedicated to do it. Thank you very much. Guest let me say tod what an honor it is deep the men and women, not only leadership at dhs is truly of Standing Bear while i get the opportunity to talk in forums like this about the department, they do the real work. So whether it is the administrator, coming on his leadership team, directing crowds and the like, that is what they department is doing. It is a fantastic Leadership Group and i think the country should really be proud. Jane thank you all for coming. [applause] we are going to try to stay on schedule here as much as we can. All right i would like to think acting secretary wolf, secretary chertoff. I am rob walker, the executive Director Director of the esteemed Homeland Security sector Experts Group. For those of you watching cspan and following along online, website, and on twitter. Todaysge in conversation. To put a fine point on the recurring theme that came out, i once heard a senator from the Homeland Security committee note that dhhs answers to 94 communities and subcommittees, puts them in formal bodies within congress paired if that is not oversight, i dont know what is. Today our next topic of conversation is the Election Security for 2020 era to lead us in that conversation is former undersecretary of the National Protection and programs directorate, suzanne spalding. Thank you, rob. Well, here we are, 2020. We are in the throes. Of a president ial election year. We are just over two weeks away from the iowa caucuses, if you can believe it. For years it think back to four years ago ofn i was the undersecretary Homeland Security, responsible for the organization that is today sis a. We were at about this time completing our sort of refresh of the map of election infrastructure, making sure that everybody understood that this was way beyond election Voting Machines but started with Voter Registration and all the way through to reporting and tallying of results and reporting them on the networks Election Night and everything in between. Looking at the various attributes and characteristics of each of the different states, pulling together that information. By spring, we were getting reports of malicious cyber activity. By the time we were able to sort of get our arms around and get Interagency Agreement throughout beach, through outreach, we are in early summer. Getting the secretary on the phone with the 50 secretaries of state all across the country and those from our territories, and they are way down the road in their preparations for the election, which to them are basically tomorrow. They are around the corner. Theyre planning starts way in planning starts way in advance. Secretaries of state, they dont know from dhs. They are not the usual stakeholders, they do not understand what our role is. We, as everyone knows, got off to a very bumpy start in our work with state and local Election Officials. We knew pretty quickly when we started seeing activity on Voter Registration databases that this was not really about feeling stealing confidential information, getting access to the personally identifiable information, but was more likely to be part of an Information Operation around the disruption of activities on election day. If you could delete or change information on Voter Registration roles, then as people showed up to vote, there would be lots of potential lines,on, long undermining public space in the legitimacy of the process, faith outcomeegitimacy of the of that process. We were not organized as a government. Even with that insight, to know what to do about that. Other than to protect those Voter Registration databases, and try to alert state and local Election Officials. We were not organized for Information Operation assignments, roles, and responsibilities had not been given out. So as we set up our war room that night on Election Night and 2016, we knew what we were looking for in large part, a big part of what we were the four is any activity or claims of underminehat might public confidence. We knew what the highest risk was and what we should be looking for. We were not prepared necessarily to respond to what we might find. So fastforward, here we are four years later. As we got a sense from the remarks, of homeland we are light years ahead of where we were. We were already we already made tremendous progress in 2018, and we have made even more progress now. E are much better prepared not to say that we are everywhere we need to be. I think our panelists today will admit that, but we have made tremendous progress. The fact that we had these two individuals here with us today in newly created positions i think is both a reflection and also is a contributor to our being in better shape today than we were four years ago. So were very lucky to have these two very busy individuals joining us today to help educate weand the public about where are, what we are seeing, and what we should anticipate. Shelby pearson is the Intelligence Community Election Press executive, and the principal adviser to the director of National Intelligence on all Election Security related matters she is responsible for leading and aligning all relevant oh dni security efforts, including integrating report with intelligence operations, collection, analysis, and partner engagement. She was the National Intelligence crisis manager for the midterm elections in 2018, where she managed critical election Security Issues and increased information sharing operations across the Intelligence Community. Ms. Pearson has over 20 years of service in the Intelligence Community. She was awarded the president meritorious rank award for officers in 20 and became the National Intelligence manager in 2017 and became the National Intelligence manager for eurasia. Director of the Election Security initiative at the department of Homeland Security. Body is charged with coordinating federal support to the election infrastructure community. He is a certified Information Systems manager, an experienced Cyber Operations planner, and has supported the office of Cybersecurity Communications at the department of Homeland Security since 2010. As a personal point, i will note that he shares with me the honor of being an alum of the university of virginia. So we will get started. I will join you here at the table. Given i think these are just on given the numerous the newness of your position and the efforts that you would lead, i think it would be helpful that you start by giving us more background on how your positions came about, where your debt where youre situated in the your scope andd relationship with the broader interagency efforts. Shelby, lets start with you. Te shelby i know, ete phone home sometimes. I am delighted to be here and appreciate the work that the Intelligence Community does in partnership with Homeland Security as well as the support that we provide to the broader enterprise, even outside of the election and infrastructure enterprise. We will talk a little bit about that. I think for me what i look back on where the Intelligence Community has been on this topic , i think it is important to note that we have worked counterintelligence threats, cyber threats, and have provided regional expertise and have studied our adversaries obviously well before 2016. Yet, i think as many of you have heard me say before, 2016 was a watershed moment in that the Intelligence Community had very specific information that was relevant and very important to this other domestic enterprise that was burgeoning and sort of growing in real time. So at that point, we certainly look back, which resulted in the 2017 Intelligence Community assessment that many of you are familiar with, as we declassified our findings. At that moment, i think there was introspection certainly under the leadership of dni coats to say what is next, and how do we recognize that not only Election Security with foreign imports operations as an integrated domain, not just work within the various different interdisciplinary areas that i just mentioned. But as you know, the dni was created out of the push of integration, in this case after 9 11. 2016, weespect, post look at Election Security as an opportunity, what further can we integrate across those communities . That is what brought jeff and i together originally as colleagues, as we went into 2018 together. I think we had a very Strong Coalition of colleagues and organizations working this front together. Of 2019he summer continued on, we had discussions within the Intelligence Community saying we would like to have further leadership on this topic and a cadre of officers that work this full time. So not only was my position identified and the director of National Intelligence, but i have executive colleagues across all the major intelligence organizations. I think what i really appreciate about how we have arrived at this moment in time is that it has been a very deliberate process and one of investment, and i certainly appreciate that my overseers do not like us to overcompensate. By replicating capabilities that already exist in other parts of the community. But rather, in a very paced fashion, pull together the right posture at the right time. I dont think that is a finished discussion. I think it is a moment to get us into 20 20 and we will continue to Work Together as to what is the right posture not only with the Intelligence Community, but across the federal government. Jeff . Jeff it is an honor to be on the stage with you. As you will recall, in january of 2017, as we made the selection of election infrastructure as critical infrastructure, that task dhs to be the specific agency to ensure the importance of our federal service to this community and that we were bringing federal resources forward to help that. Across 2017i really owe that designation for the job, so thank you. Across 2017, we started to realize that we had to marry this Infrastructure Initiative with something looking at the effects of foreign influence and foreign interference alongside. So that foreign interference work at the department started as a task force which we then nested within our elections effort, and we built this for the service of the community. Suzanne so the foreign influence, broader foreign influence efforts were nested under the Elections Task force, which gets me to one of the questions i have, which is, we know in this january assessment, shelby, that you referenced, talked about the interference that we saw in the election, the attempt at interference, were part of a Broad Campaign by russia to undermine our democracy. And christopher wray, director of the fbi, has said we should not be talking about this he says this is a 365day a year threat. They never left, they are here every single day. There was reference earlier Sowing Division and chaos. There were definite efforts to undermine efforts. Work fit into,r support, the broader look at how our adversaries might be trying to use Information Operations to undermine our democracy . One of the practical challenges and i have shared this with my colleagues across the community as we try not to spend any time determining whether something is election related or not, i think there really for us as an Intelligence Community, we want to look at our adversaries and threats when they have a specific focus on election infrastructure or they are targeted at are plenty process or they are looking at members of our legislature or are looking at political topics. That is when it starts to gain more momentum in our community. But i think as you rightfully point out, there is not a fixed either you are in or you are out. As i mentioned minutes ago, this is part of an involving posture against what i think the better backdrop is foreign malign influence. At any moment in time, that is a 365 and ever and that the election is but one moment in , that anposture adversary may look at a moment that is a president ial election and it could be down at the local level. I think that is a very important revelation, that this does not just start every four years with president ial elections. This can also find its way in the very early stages of some of our political leaders as they start their careers out at the local level. Spendnfluence can frankly an entire career. To your point, it is important to recognize that what we try to do is maintain, and i think part of the designation of our positions, whether it is dhs, odni, nsa, and others is that this is this malign influence concept day in and day out. Part of it and i appreciate much of the work that mike police at dhs and fbi have done their focus on this issue. For us in the Intelligence Community, we are focused on what is covert, what is illicit, and what is targeted without the knowledge of the targets because we know the political influence is a reality globally, and that is not necessarily our focus. Our focus is on that which is unknown to the target. So i do think it is again against the broader backdrop with which we do our work. Geoff to echo what youre saying, far too often we might use the term elections and number Credit Institutions interchangeably, but it is clearly, as shelby said, adversaries look to undermine Democratic Institutions, so there we see activity that references legislative policymaking, that targets the ongoing census bureau, the efforts there, judiciary, and so we really do we take our Lessons Learned in trying to support the election community, but the aperture has widened as broad as can be imagined. Suzanne so both of you talked about the work that you do in trying to understand, track, make sure you are sharing knowledge and awareness. Talk a bit about what role you have in encountering, and what we are doing to actually identify and better understanding this. What you are doing to counter it. Shelby i think we feel a full spectrum of questions about this thec, and i appreciate spectrum of tools that are available not only to the Intelligence Community, but to the United States government to counter foreign influence. Speaking for the intelligence communities, first and foremost, we seem to not only collect against this activity and develop insights, those insights are critical not only to inform our policymakers so that they can make good decisions, but i think even more so to develop a level of expertise so that we anticipate these moves before they happen and provide the greatest amount of decision space for leaders in order to best defend the United States. That can also find its way into providing intelligence that supports our diplomatic engagement, which could range from working with our allies, which is such a strong component, all the way to informing how best the state department can you marsh countries that are looking into this activity. It also can inform intelligence can inform the designation for sanctions, and i think you have seen a certain surge in sanctions recently in terms of a major policy mechanism by which we try to impose costs and have consequences for those types of activities. This also then on the other hand, i think several other tools are available to us, to help our colleagues in cyber manned, develop their own capabilities for the target and stop this type of activity on the network before it even happens. Also what gets a lot of attention is the downgrading of intelligence information, which can be challenging to share that with network offenders and those that are involved in influence operations or social Media Companies are Tech Companies so that they can use that to better defend their networks. It is not just downgrading classified information, and i recognize there is a heavy premium on that word, but there that theyrum of tools have in their toolkit. We needed to inform a broader level of activity across the government. Geoff we like to think of it as a supply and demand challenge. Shelby discussed a lot of the work of the fbi and the Intelligence Community and cyber calm that really targets the supply of what the bad actors are providing in operations. We have a much more actoragnostic responsibility in this space. It is to reduce the supply reduce the demand, those influence,f foreign reduce their engagement with this type of information. We have the Media Literacy aspect, where we are putting out products that help to recognize risk or walk through the tactics that foreign adversaries might be using, all for the purpose of bettering the environment on which these Operations Land and reducing the spread there. Of course, as you are familiar, dhs is not always the best voice in this community, so we have to partner with some experts across the community, experts that can help to shape and amplify this message with a trusted voice across targeted sectors. Think that fits so security and Resilience Mission because i think what you just described, Building Public resilience against malign influence, pernicious messaging. Part of the way you do that is to educate the public, and shelby, you have been out this week speaking and emphasizing how important it is, walking the talk about educating the public. We just saw the fbi announce the way it was reported their policy will be two, with regard to malicious activity, i think primarily cyber activity, targeting state and local election infrastructure, that they will be more forthcoming in notifying the local Election Officials, probably in most cases the state, but they definitely hedge on notifying the public in congress. I am wondering whether dhs has a slightly different posture with respect to the information that you independently develop with respect to what is going on out there. Fbi has Law Enforcement sensitive equities, but how high a priority is getting information out promptly to the public about what you are seeing , working with shelbys team to get that information declassified so that you can educate the public . Geoff so handling of classified information is one side of this i think that we do not always need to operate with declassified material in order to educate the public on these broad sets. A lot of this is available in the public sphere, in open source, but yes, dhs has made a commitment to share as much information as possible to system owners and the public alike so they can manage risk to their system. It is important for us. We took a tongueincheek kind dhspproach to introducing to speaking with the public on foreign influence. We took the divisive issue of pineapple on pizza, whether pineapple belongs on pizza. No, it does not. [applause] shelby it is not pizza then. Geoff we were thrilled with how that was received, and it was picked up some of our partners. What we really liked was some of our state and local partners would take it and make it their own. Rhode island has an issue that said pineapple on pizza is not a thing in rhode island, but how you eat your italian ice is. With a spoon or without a spoon . We were seeing that throughout the country. We were seeing that with other resilience products and recognizing the risks, question eyes in this questioning the source, talking within your circle. This allows our Partner Network to take, rebrand, and talk amongst themselves with the backing of dhs information. What i if i could add, am proud of relative to the announcement by the fbi and i know dhs feels the same way posturethe governments cannot be static. I think there was certainly about, as much as we have invested in a very important relationship in how we supply support to the victims in the cyber realm, when it comes to Election Security, there is a broader constituency that is not only interested in this information but has a role in helping us boost confidence and maintain that integrity. So i appreciate that this has evolved and continues to evolve because there has been a challenge, and i think this is part of the reason the Intelligence Community continues to be introspective about this topic, is that there really is a Public Safety aspect to this that makes it very, very different and distinct from the other threats that we face and how we protect a broader infrastructure, and i think seeing fbi and seeing dhs kind of mature where they are at is a huge sign about how we have looked inwardly and said we recognize that we need to be broader, we recognize we need to be more forward thinking, and i think it is a complement to my policy colleagues having invested in them. Shelby one of the areas suzanne one of the areas around elections that often gets overlooked, we talk about Voting Machines etc. , is the campaigns themselves. We know they were targeted in 2016, in the midterms, they are being targeted now. But it is a little sensitive interacting with the campaigns, and they are obviously very partisan because by definition in their nature i am on the board of the defending digital Campaigns Group which got the fcc ruling that Cyber Community Cyber Companies can we are lining up providers with campaigns that are interested. Tell me what you guys are doing with respect to campaigns, and what kind of response have you gotten . If they are doing outreach to campaigns, everything from the cardi committee that from the Party Committee down to the local challengers campaigns, how are you doing that outreach and what kind of response are you getting . We partnereds, with fbi and dni, for fbis initiative on protective voices, and that talks about hiding practices, particularly targeted at campaigns. We have done a lot of direct outreach campaigns to offer them our technical services, establish lines of communication. It is an interesting challenge because it is often far less infrastructure heavy, and in some of the more testy communities me we more heavily operate in. So there are hygiene practices sharing a password. We have been received by all these campaigns. That hate they have sat in a war rooms on election day, the channels are there for identification and reporting. Some have picking up on Cyber Services some have picked up on Cyber Services. We look forward to this developing as a more normal practice over the future elections. One of the challenges in 2016 and 2017, we produced a paper, an analytic paper on what had occurred in 2016i think one of the activities, if not challenges that we certainly embrace, is also operationalizing information, which includes acting on it. If we have information within the intelligence sources that needs to be shared with a candidate or a campaign, the on the defensive, which geoff talked about as many people here, listeners and readers know, we have made additional strides as part of the president s policy which further allows us a structure by which some cases, very Sensitive Information to be shared with campaigns, and again, the protective voices is a very important and enabling program, and it should be married up with this very dynamic and i think active enterprise with which to bring information to those who need it in the moment to best manage the threat as they see it. One of the challenges Going Forward is who is notified. I think we have talked about how high does it go in these organizations are who is that person, is it a system administrator, or is it the political figures themselves . That is something we continue to work on and try to instill confidence as we go forward. Geoff what shelby has referenced is worth echoing. The posture of sharing incomplete information early is far better than complete information after the fact. This is a Seismic Shift in the way we are approaching information sharing across this community. Whonne and the issue of gets notified is not in anyway way a trivial issue. One of the things we have learned again in 2016 is we thought we were notifying all of the states. Well, it turns out the governor sub office and the secretary of states offices do not always talk to each other. Who knew . I have lots of questions, but we have some really smart people in this room and i want to give you an opportunity to ask questions of our panelists as well. Throw it open. If you have questions . Yes . Thank you very much. Thank you for holding the event. I am wondering i know we are in an open setting, but if you can give us a sense a little bit at this stage who the main players are, by volume of sophistication, if you would rank them and turns of in terms of their efforts so far and if there are any in particular you can identify that you are monitoring. Try not tocertainly rank them because we do not want to hurt anyones feelings. [laughter] shelby all joking aside, i have because even if you an adversary that does not necessarily have the same capabilities of a russia or a china, they can still do significant damage, if not in actually affecting our infrastructure, but also simply messaging and undermining the confidence thereof. For us, we have recognized that it is in some ways a fools errand to try to rank these adversaries. But frankly, to discuss the spectrum of threats, and certainly as you have heard us comment publicly, russia, china, iran, and other areas that we work closely with dhs is nonstate affiliated actors as well, which we certainly would believe could be on terms of Information Available on the web,red on the dark hacktivists. This is a dynamic situation. Much open and dynamic and evolving. So i think knowing that these countries have capabilities, they also have already existing presence in some of these areas, that that is something that can asnge and turn and evolve the election is unfolding. So we look at this not only from a threat perspective but also from a temporal perspective, as to how this can change relative to our relationship with these countries, relative to our messaging and deterrence activities, relative to our own operations, and relative to their calculus as to what is in their interest. No shortage ofs interest in what is occurring, and we are really, i think, bringing all of the levels of energy across our enterprise collection operations, analysis to bear against this problem. Add. i have nothing to we are preparing for resilience measures to combat any type of actor in this space. Theainly there is always big three plus two or however you want to do the math, but when it comes to Network Security and public resilience, voting resilience, we can be actor agnostic. Ransomware is one that we have not seen, but we are conscious of in targeting state and local governments in other capacities, be if timed correctly, can challenging for election offices, so we have done a lot of work at the same local level to provide those security practices to help resilience toward ransomware. As you know, we have traditionally talked about the topic as infrastructure, and influence. I think one of the things that we also want our constituencies to be aware of, that Cyber Operations on the infrastructure can also acquire Voter Registration data that could be used not just at the ballot box, but to enhance those influence operations because it has a level of detail, it has demographic information which can enable the efficacy of the influence operations. That is a very important intersection, that these are not sort of binary disciplines, that it is an opportunity that i think we are looking at about the availability of publicly available Voter Registration data that can be used for those purposes as well. Yes . Ne we will take this one in the back and then come up here. Thank you very much. I am a fellow at the kennedy institute. I have two questions that i would keep brief. How do you deal with the domestic line influence . You mentioned foreign operations several times. Effectiveible to have measures against proxy actors at home and how do you recognize them . You findd question, do pr companies where is the redline between influencing and illegitimate one, which is the one you are trying to counter . Where is this going . Thank you. Shelby those are two great questions. I wish i had my bureau colleagues up here as well because i think the federal bureau of investigation such an important broker between that which is our foreign Intelligence Mission and that which gets supplied and utilized and scoped relative to domestic activity. I think this is probably an area that merits further discussion relative to the u. S. Intelligence community. I think it is very important, areas of responsibility, and we gn focused. Forei we rely on transiting that information via the fbi and dhs as they understand how that landscape can be inculcated here in the United States. We are very concerned about proxies, whether those are americans, and i think sorting out as to whom is operating on behalf of a Foreign Intelligence Organization versus an american participating in legitimate freespeech, is a challenge i think the bureau deals with all the time. To your second question, i think it gets also back to some of the themes that the fbi has resonated with me, which is for us, the lines are really that which is covert, that which is clandestine, illicit, if not criminal. And particularly, that the sponsorship of the malign activity is unclear to the target. So i agree with you, there is a Broad Spectrum of influence activity and opportunity globally. But the clarity and the accuracy of the true intent and hand behind that activity i think is what is most critical to democracy. So that is why i think a front page add is taken out by a legitimate firm, that might be employed by a foreign country. But as long as it sort of is clear, i think that is something that is important to us. That is part of jeffs comment about Media Literacy about about mediaent literacy and an important part of where it is coming from. Where do you think the government stands in terms of developing a strategy to deal with these fullspectrum threats you talked about . And somem challenge communities have paid the ransom to get their records unlocked. Expense, at great chosen not to. When you get over toward the statesponsored aspect, certainly within Cyber Command and other places, there is a struggle here, where cold war kind of philosophies, mutually assured destruction, can work in this space. It is one thing to understand what is coming our way. It is another thing to figure out how do you deter these threats over time in a meaningful and successful way . Think we haveen i eyes on the Building Blocks of a longerterm strategy, we know the vulnerability is present and we understand the consequences. We have eyes on the threats there. ,t is a rapidly evolving space but it allows us to take action toward things like ransomware. A cadrewo thirds of that meets all the time to take a coordinated action in support of states and against foreign influence. Geoffsand i think, to point, this is an involving conversation. There is an even broader discussion about the role of Civil Society in this work. We recognize that there are some very important distinctions that state is a local data that state and local Election Officials have autonomy in their elections. We recognize that there are not only private u. S. And International Firms administering platforms that could be factors for this type of operation come and we have americans participating in legitimate speech. Is spot onthat geoff in that these Building Blocks are in front of us, and that there are probably additional conversations about how do we further integrate, frankly, a coalition across Civil Society, inclusive of our state and local officials, inclusive of not only the Intelligence Community, the federal space, but also the press and academia and think tanks and methodologists that understand this as well. That is ahead of us and will not stop certainly after we go through 2020 and beyond. Yet i think we are having even more conversations. When i think about where my colleagues at dhs were in 2016 relative to the challenging relationship with the states, i think there is movement in a greater openness. For example, i was with jeff yesterday briefing at the National Association of secretaries of state with other colleagues to talk about intelligence, and to talk about the threats that are coming. I think that is a huge step forward. But it is not over. So much more work to do in this area. Havene rob, i think we reached our appointed time, and i hope you will join me in thanking these two Public Servants for what they are doing to save our democracy. Thank you. [applause] rob thank, panel, for your comments. And q, suzanne, for your moderation. We will take a 15 minute break with refreshments set up outside. Please mingle, network. We will see you back here at 2 00 p. M. Thank you. Announcer as you may have heard from this discussion, we will resume at about 15 minutes or so. We will continue our live coverage then. Will hearait, we wore from earlier comments from active Homeland Security secretary chad wolf. Chad thank secretary chertoff, congresswoman harmon. Some of you have served at the department, and others continue to serve as mentors and friends to departmental leadership. If you have you even stood in this role. And often refer to the examples had thatsaid that dhs the date that the landscape is more dynamic than ever. I want to thank all of you for lending your expertise, your insights, making our country more safe and secure. Thank you. As acting secretary, my priorities are guided by the determination to ensure that the department is robust, resilient, for leaning that forward leaning coming in 2020 and beyond. I want to provide the Threat Landscape and intern the dhs priority this year. As i walk you through these threats, you will hear these and these missions that you are familiar with. You may have missed some of the work we are doing that doesnt make the headlines. Earlier this week we rolled out our first ever strategy to combat human trafficking, the importation of goods produced with forced labor and child explication are these crimes do not just threaten americans personal and Public Safety, they threaten our virtual and borders. Our strategy outlines 40 action items that the Department Works towards implementing. Our work formally establishes this mission as a departmental priority, allowing it to be resourced and addressed accordingly in the months and years to come. There are a variety of issues like this one that may not rise to the highest threats facing the department but are nevertheless important and critical to what we do. The media may not focus on it. They may focus on only one or two missions at a time, but rest assured, the men and women at dhs are determined, focused, and heads down every day to do the work to keep the Homeland Security. Lets jump right into some of the top threats facing the homeland today. In light of recent International Events that begin with the threats emanating from certain nationstates, specifically iran, china, and russia, each of these countries have a different motivation, but all attempt to undermine our interests and our international standing. First, lets discuss the one that has been dominating the news recently, iran. As i have stated repeatedly, there is no credible or specific threat to the homeland from iran. However, given what we know about iran and their capabilities and motivations, the department continues to operate with an enhanced posture to review threat from iran is not new to the department. In the summer of 2019, the department began working on an established iran contingency plan to do address a variety of threats. We remain ready to initiate various protective measures immediately should the knees a right to the need arise. For the first time he dhs history, we took the extra step of issuing an interNational Terrorism advisory system bulletin driven by specific events, and it was the right decision. The bullet thats the bulletin was issued to inform the american public, state and local governments, private sector stakeholders, that dhs is monitoring and preparing for any specific edible threat should one arise. As the bulletin mentions, we remain vigilant regarding cyber enabled attacks from iran against a range of u. S. Based targets, including our critical infrastructure. However, looking to the long term, china, who remains our most significant and persistent strategic adversary, unlike other nationstates, china works to threaten the u. S. Power and prominence within the system through both overt and covert means. It uses the openness of our society and institutions against us, being our academic and scientific communities or Silicon Valley to aggressively expand its ability shape information and the chinese narrative abroad. Beijing will continue to use legal and economic coercions such as Market Access to shape the environment. It employs a number of tactics to influence our standing around the world. China is our most persistent nationstate threat in the cyber realm. Andugh Cyber Espionage other activity to impact our Economic Prosperity and intellectual horsepower, it is pursuing a longterm polarization effort to threaten and undermine the United States. While we value our partnership with beijing toward global prosperity, we are working to hold chinese bad actors accountable with their malign activities. Action is being taken across the executive branch to use regulatory tools appropriately to respond to the threats imposed to the threats it poses. Telecom at the department specifically at dhs, where focused on leveraging the unique authorities, data, to counter beijings longterm strategic objectives. When i stepped into the position, i found each component was addressing the china threat in their own style, using their individual authorities and in most cases perhaps not coordinating as much as they could across the department. A silent approach is not sufficient to address the threat. We have an effort underway to evaluate all our mission threats when it comes to china. Includes supply chain integrity, immigration security, maritime security, counter and foreign influence, and counterintelligence. We will identify and prioritize threats that match our resources and capabilities accordingly. We will be able to quickly identify vulnerability gaps and additional whether resources are needed. This is the planning that goes on behind the scenes daily. It does not make the headlines but it is critically important to ensure we are properly positioned respond to any threat quickly. To russia. Over unlike china, russia does not surpass us on the world stage p they focus on actions that disrupt and undermine the american way of life. As we saw in 2016, we fully expect russia to interfere in the 2020 election, through public discord and to undermine our Democratic Institutions are the state and local officials who run our elections are prepared. We are working with our federal partners to ensure those officials on the frontlines of our elections have the information and tools they need to combat russian interference. We are also working to make sure the American People understand how russians seek to undermine confidence in our elections and the simple steps they can take to avoid amplified influence campaigns. 2018 weared in were prepared in 2018. Included agencies across the u. S. Government, included dod, fbi, and the Intelligence Community. Our efforts to help make the 2018 election the most secure election in the modern era. In 2020 we are doing this and more to prevent our adversaries from degrading faith in our democracy and our Election Results. Onto to Election Security more specifically. It is front in mind for many of us as we go into 2020. From the white house down, the department and the u. S. Government more broadly, laser focused on this issue. Under the leadership of director crabs at the Cyber Security infrastructure director krebb thanks to their efforts, their working with government, state and local Election Officials, better than ever. We had relationships with few to none. Technical assistance, resources, and tools to secure resiliency of their systems. Localction day, state and Election Officials bear the risks for their symptoms. For their systems. We are doing all they can now to ensure that they are secure. Voters play a crucial role. We are working hard with the department to make sure that voters are also aware of their includes ach provisional ballot if anything goes wrong on election day. To educatetinue targeted populations, make them less receptive, and we will also continue to work with partners to prepare and practice our exercise for potential disruptions. Homeland security operators and experts, men in this audience will tell you, 100 security is never realistic. Instead we are building more resilient reelection systems and processes. In 2020, over 90 of those having correspondent paper ballots that is a significant achievement, but we can do more. Let me talk about Border Security. Our number one duty as a country is not only to know who is coming in, but knowing what is coming in our country. The Transnational Criminal Organizations work on a daily basis to funnel people and illegal contraband such as drugs, money, and weapons into the United States. Is simply, border Security National security, and we are prioritizing it as such. We have seen and experienced over the last several years that our security is closely linked with the security and stability of our partners themselves. Working with our Central American partners, have built an historic regional framework and coalition to reduce the reach of Transnational Criminal Organizations and to ensure those seeking protections can do so closer to home. These agreements not only provide the burden sharing of asylum response abilities, u. S. Support to build capacity, they also promote regional safety and security by sharing personnel and information to combat the Transnational Criminal Organization or the coalition is founded on a basic premise. Secure region is a stable and prosperous region. It will attract public and private investment and provide opportunity for the use of those countries which represent the future of those comedies. In 2019 we signed 12 agreements with our Central American partners guatemala, honduras, furthering to prosperity in the region. We are working at dhs to identify investments that will improve Port Security and increase Economic Opportunity in the region. In addition to promoting Economic Security such as investment, such investment counters influence from our adversaries in the region. It makes sense. Where we have a strong presence, our strategic adversaries will not. I think we can all agree that we would prefer not to have countries like china and russia establishing that type of influence in our backyard. International engagement is only one component of a strategy for the ongoing Border Security crisis. Over the last several months we put together a strategy that is working. We have ended catch and release, eliminating the insidious incentives to a split children for entry into the United States. We have more tools than ever to return or repatriate a lens who illegally cross our borders. We have cracked down on asylum fraud, working tirelessly to restore enforcement, a federal statute enacted by congress. Lastly, probably most critically, we have expedited and continue construction on the border wall system. We ask our agents on the ground what it would take to fully secure the border. There is no ambiguity in their answer. Number one on their list is a border wall system for her last week i visited the border to announce the completion of 100 miles of new wall. We have another 130 plus miles of construction and over 200 miles in the preconstruction phase. Today we remain on track to complete construction of over 400 miles of border wall track by the end of this calendar year. We have decreased illegal crossings seven months in a row for the First Time Since 2008 and will continue to take action against Transnational Criminal Organizations that threaten american safety. Let me be clear. While we have achieved Great Success over the past several months, we remain in a crisis with apprehended every month crossing the border illegally. This is not sustainable. Last, let me speak to the mission synonymous with the department, counterterrorism. Achieved1, we have significant successes in mitigating the ability of foreign terrorist organizations to attack the homeland. We have done this in the number of ways, including raising the global baseline of security. Threatcing an aviation emanating overseas, dhs and tsa worked with International Partners to raise the security baseline around the world. Today commercial aviation is more secure because of those actions. Much like then, today dhs is working to raise the global baseline of security. We are establishing criteria for all foreign governments to assist. We are transparent and upfront with every country on the criteria and information required. There are no surprises. For a small number of countries that lack the will or capability to adhere to the criteria, travel restrictions may be necessary to mitigate those threats. Let me be clear, travel restrictions are not based on the citizenry or the region of the world these countries reside. Instead, they are imposed because the country does an inadequate job of sharing information or poses an elevated risk in safety for the country. Safety and security of the American People says we do not leave room for error. As we continue to address the threat of foreign terrorist organizations, we see an increasing threat from domestic techniques toto inspire individuals to violence. The recent trend of americans driven by violent and extremist ideologies or personal grievances commit acts of terrorism with little warning, and it creates a unique challenge to Law Enforcement methods. The threat is real and unpredictable and have serious ramifications. The departments strategic framework for counterterrorism ad targeting violence is position to the department to confront the evolving threat. We will leverage the tools and expertise that protect the to addressm ftos evolving challenges. I want to call it the focus on enhancing prevention and resilience, which calls for a whole of Society Approach in identifying individuals on a path to violence. Importantly, the framework recognizes the need to support and protect our most vulnerable populations to secure. I would like to thank congress for recognizing the importance of this threat, for their work in this area, and were glad to have been provided agile funding in fy 2020 to advance this work. This will be one of the Top Priorities under my leadership. We are working aggressively to develop an Implementation Plan that will be ready in the couple the next couple weeks, and it year actiontwo docket with steps and milestones for dhs. Last, i want to mention the urgency of the threat to our faithbased communities in our houses of worship, we are responding. Preventionmmending of violence against faithbased communities. Chatter]nible thank you. Welcome back. Our makes conversation is about ongoing counterterrorism efforts at home and abroad from threats both international and domestic. Ise to guide us awardwinning journalist and s. Jeannehe group meserve. Jeanne thank you. We have heard of threats against a country, and some are new and some have intensified. Unfortunately, it does not sound like and been reduced. We will look at that landscape with our guest, executive assistant director of the National Security branch of the fbi. Terrorism, espionage, weapons of mass destruction. You have a very successful and decorated career within the fbi and bring a lot of knowledge and expertise. Because istart first, mystill trying to reform time as a News Reporter with the news of the day, and we heard there were three arrests of individuals who allegedly pose a threat with connection with a gun rights rally scheduled for monday in richmond. First, have there been any additional arrests . Good afternoon. Thank you very much. I want to say thank you to the Wilson Center. Rob and jeanne, thank you for hosting the fbi. The answer is yes, over the last few days we have arrested six individuals. Three were arrested in maryland and three more just arrested down in georgia that are involved with a group known as the base. The nature of the arrests have to do with their advocacy for violence and their conspiracy to conduct violent acts. Unfortunately, because were so early into the process, there is not a lot ive can say outside what has been put out in press releases. Jeanne can you tell us anything about the charges they are facing . Individuals in georgia, the newest individuals arrested, among other charges, they were involved in conspiracy to commit murder. Jeanne of whom . Jay cannot talk about that right now. Jeanne state charges . Jay they are. Jeanne will there be additional federal charges . Jay it is likely. Jeanne associated with this group called the base, which until yesterday i had not heard much about. What can you tell us about this group . Jay i would turn everybody to the Court Documents put out, but the base is a group that largely recruits individuals online. We would categorize them as racially note motivated violent extremists, a neonazi group. They believe in white and ethnicity and power and have called for a white ethnic state in the United States. Jeanne is it a coincidence that the base is al qaeda translated . Jay i think it simply is a coincidence. I do not think there is any direct correlation at all, from what i have seen. Jeanne can you tell us anything about their size, reach, their influence . Jay no, i cannot because i do not know that we have strong estimates on the number of individuals that share this ideology that is specific to that group. This group will know we do not investigate people based on their membership. We investigate them specifically in this area for the ideology married with violence or threats of violence to affect social political change. Jeanne i have read this is something of an umbrella for other groups of neonazi sentiment. Is that correct . Jay i do not know that i would call it an umbrella. What we find with individuals that claim membership is they also claim membership or have affiliations with other individuals that are likeminded that subscribe to similar ideology and might have i should say this also, there is not a lot of physical membership with these groups. There is quite a bit of virtual membership. So you and i would meet online and maybe have like types of things posted on our social media. We might visit similar websites. And that is how we would make connections. Jeanne is there crossfertilization with groups overseas . Jay there absolutely are. One example is the christchurch attacker in new zealand had significant connections to likeminded individuals in numerous countries, numerous western countries, and he had traveled extensively in western countries. Jeanne was he part of the base, as well . Jay not with them. Jeanne i have heard that this group, the base, has Training Camps in north america. Can you tell us . Jay i refer everybody back to the charging document documents. I am not sure. Some threatening was done amongst the numbers we arrested. I do not know that i would call it a training camp. Jeanne i read the complaint on those you arrested yesterday, that they are alleged to have had men sheen guns and ammunition had machine guns and ammunitions and had been to firing ranges. What about today, what did they have in their possession . Jay truthfully, i have not seen anything regarding the arrests. Jeanne one of the ones in the group we found out about yesterday was a canadian. Matthews was his name, and he was former military and was said to have had explosives training. I do not see reference to explosives, only to the machine gun ammunition and also to an illicit drug. Did he find anything related to explosives . Jay i do not believe we found anything related to explosives or explosive components, but i may be wrong. I have not seen the search inventories myself, just family with verbal briefings. Jeanne in the news report i heard last night, the reference the possibility of them weaponizing drones over this demonstration scheduled for monday in richmond. What can you tell us about that . Jay i think that is probably an area we should not talk about. There is further investigation we are involved in. Jeanne so this is ongoing and we will learn more. Jay i think so. Part of the timing of the disruption of this investigation , and i think everybody in this room will appreciate that this is not independent of the fbi, but there are two separate task forces in conjunction with the joint Terrorism Task forces in richmond, which is protecting the lawful rallies that are going to happen on monday. Itig reason why we disrupted now was based on the timing of the rally on monday and the intent of some of the individuals to potentially conduct violent acts it down in richmond. Jeanne are you saying that the folks were just finding about now who were intent on hurting somebody, that richmond was also their focus . Jay no, unrelated. That specific conspiracy is unrelated. Jeanne do you anticipate that there will be more arrests before the rallies on monday . Jay specific to this group of individuals . I do not think so. Jeanne what about other groups . Jay and i dont think so. [laughter] unclear . Because our subjects get a vote, i have no way to predict what some of these individuals might do between now and monday or even monday. We do know that there is a high degree of interest in some both spectrumsm in the ongoing debate around gun rights, around ethnic and racial issues, that potentially has them coming to that event on monday and might end up with some sort of criminal activity for which they might be arrested. N onne despite the ba firearms in Capitol Square . Jay lawenforcement in virginia have said they are doing everything that they can to make that event and all events around that monday as safe as possible. Jeanne it is a flashpoint, a big day for demonstrations in richmond. Gun issues particularly inflamed in virginia right now. It is also Martin Luther king day. Historically in richmond, this is the day they celebrated confederate heroes, jackson day. So a lot of potential conflict points built into this event. How worried are you about monday . Jay so i think the fbi has a fair sense of worry about monday because of all the factors you just talked about and because we cannot account for everybody and ofrything we have a degree certainty from individuals who say they will be there, but we have no way to predict where rhetoric turns to violence. We just do not. That is the landscape domestically, that we have a hard time predict link predicting were just talked turns into action. It is so difficult to disrupt sometimes because the amount of time between some of the talking and turning violent can sometimes be just days. Jeanne and sometimes you do not even know the top. Jay absolutely. More and more, these individuals are incredibly insular and not involved in a conspiracy or plot with anybody else. They are what we call homegrown violent extremists or domestic violent extremists on the domestic side, and literally the only people that might see the change in behavior is very close family or friends. Of course, they do not always to Law Enforcement. Jeanne so how do you do prevention in this environment . Jay we are doing it all the time, but unfortunately our job is we can never be wrong on this. If someone successfully attacks us here on the homeland, we have failed in some sense. Jeanne if there were any indicators i remember hearing about the people who did the shooting at the kosher deli in new jersey, that there was absolutely nothing that would put them on the radar. Not only did they shoot up the deli, they had a phenomenal amount of explosives in their van. Jay that is exactly right. I think we are increasingly challenged with disrupting these individuals ahead of time because, to add to the issue that they might have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health, that is an issue also that many are juvenile offenders in federal and even some state systems, and add that to other challenges which are they are utilizing encrypted applications for their communications and they are making it more and more difficult for domestic Law Enforcement and Security Services like the fbi to disrupt. Jeanne i want to get to that encryption. First, i want to ask you, given the difficulty in detecting these people proactively, is this just the risk that americans are going to have to live with . Jay sure, it is. I would say you have already been living with it. Jeanne but it has intensified . The numbers are going up . Jay the numbers of mass shootings, yes. The numbers of violent acts perpetrated by these individuals or plots, yes. Also, i think our counterterrorism machine in the United States is much more adept than it was 15 years ago, much more ensure. We have 4000 joint Terrorism Task force members now in addition to the fbi. Something like 600 agencies. Just incredible the number of people we have working in this space. Jeanne lets skip the encryption. Do you have the phones of these individuals that you picked up . Jay i would presume that we do. I have not seen anything from the searches, but i would presume that there were Electronic Media obtained when we arrested the individuals and conducted the various search warrants. Jeanne you do not know what kind of phones or whether or not we have gotten access to the information in those phones . Jay i dont know. Specifically to these cases, probably way too early to even talk about that. Jeanne not too early to talk something that has been talked about by the attorney general. Have you been able to and encrypt the phones and the data . Have you been able to unencrypt the phones and the data . Jay cannot speak to where we are on the two phones of the shooter in pensacola. But we are working diligently on those phones and receiving help from apple in that work. Jeanne apple pushed back. The attorney general said there was not help from them. They found the phone late in the game, and they said they have provided Something Like nine gigabytes of information to the fbi, including cloud backups of the devices. Backups not give you . What is missing, and what do you still need to get out of the actual phone itself . Jay to be clear because i think there has been conflation over what the attorney general set, apple has absolutely responded to the Legal Process that we served within hours of the investigation beginning, which is within hours of the event. So apple has been assisting right from the outset. As is commonly our practice and as you from as you know from the press conference, those two phones were damaged. So they are attempting to get the phone working, and then they have to make some attempt to get lawful access to the phone. We get search warrants. And if you are not able to, you go to the phone manufacturer for help. The notion that apple said we were delayed, we were not delayed we followed the process, what we know now is the right process. Jeanne and you go to outside vendors, too, for help . Jay absolutely. And the American People would want us to do that. Get a lawful search warrant to search the phone. Jeanne tech experts have actually been surprised that you have not been able to get the help you needed from those outside companies, to get into those iphones of the pensacola shooter. They said you should have been able to get in there. Why havent you been able to . Is it because of the damage that was done to the phones . Jay i would be speaking way ahead of my knowledge level. I do not have the technical knowledge. And about the cloud, i do not know exactly what you get die know it has something to do with what is for good physically on your phone and the cloud backup may not actually include that information. Jeanne cybersecurity, of course, is part of the fbis remit, as well. Do you know what apple and the other tech company say, if we allow you in, that will give access to bad guys, hackers, criminals, authoritarian governments they have a point, dont they . Jay they do have a point. I want to make it clear, the fbi very much values strong encouragement encryption. Data protection is part of our charter at the fbi, part of what we do. We are incredibly thoughtful about what were are asking for here. That what the manufacturers and anybody, whether you are a software or hardware manufacturer, what theyre asking for is likened to you having a room in your house that i cannot search with a Court Authorized Search warrant, with an actual judgeordered search warrant, like literally me coming to your house and i would search everything in your house but one closet that only you had a key to. Jeanne this argument has been going around and around and around for years. How do we break that cycle and actually come up from a solution . What is it going to take . Jay a partnership between the individuals that make the delight devices and our legislators to decide what is a way to do it and still protect us from nationstate adversaries. Jeanne havent you been discussing that for years . Jay discussing it, but i do not know that we have gotten everybody at the table that might have an interest. Jeanne who will it be . Jay i do not believe we have had the right people sitting in a room talking about how we make this happen. I think the issue had some steam five years ago. It really moved for a few years. I think now it is back after losing momentum. Jeanne will it go to court . Jay i do not know that. Jeanne turning to domestic terrorism, we have a statute, and the phrase gets thrown around a fair amount with some of these recent events. But the folks who you just arrested who were allegedly posing a fret threat in richmond were allegedly posing churchesge ends an alienrelated charges, not terrorism charges, because there are not terrorism charges, correct . Jay yes. There are not actually penalties definition, but unlike Material Support to terrorism where it is illegal to materially support foreign terrorist organizations, we have nothing like that in the domestic front. We made a little over 100 arrests last year in domestic terrorism. Of those, about 60 were on state and local terrorism spirit. Jeanne i know you cannot talk of potential legislation, but can you tell us what difference it would make if there were penalties associated to the mystic terrorism to investigative techniques and charges . Jay i think it would depend on what authority he came with. It is hard to give an opinion on what it would do for us. Yes, we would have a charging statute that would make it furtherto do this to social and political change, including ideology consistent with a group like the base. Sure, it would, to havre a charge that allows you to charge that, versus a gun charge. There would have to be discussion over what other authorities you would get like enhanced wiretapping or something to that effect. That has to been done be done very thoughtfully. We have to have a clear discussion about what to do. We can do a title iii wiretap of those individuals currently. About the lets talk Inspector General issuing a scathing report, citing 17 errors or omissions in the application to survey a surv page. Rt page carter the fbi has said it will improve that, but some have come out critical to the plan, saying it does not go far enough. I will get to david chris and a second. The first thing is we made mistakes. We omitted material facts. We made mistakes in the applications. We owe the American People and our country better work. You should get better work out of us. Jeanne why hasnt it been done yet . Jay we made some errors. Humans make errors. We made some errors. A small group of individuals involved in the areas, we looked at the process of fisa. We proposed 40 changes to change. He process the fbi survives on its ability to elicit information from people. My job is to correct collect and report information. That reported information is used as evidence, maybe intelligence. At the end of the day, im only as effective as my ability to present my credentials to you and give the information. We take very seriously that responsibility. I want to be very clear, we are absolutely taking responsibility for errors we make. It is a process. I have not looked significantly at what was written. He is a career professional in this area and in a position to tell us that we need to do more and perhaps we do need to do more. And dhsiran or the fbi put out a bulletin about the soleimani killing, warned of threats. We heard from the secretary earlier this money, no credible threat at the moment. Jay correct. Fbi feels the same way. Domestically here in the homeland. Jeanne have you seen an uptick in cyber activity by iran since that attack . Jay globally, yes. Jeanne against domestic targets in the u. S. . Jay no actual intrusions. I believe that there has been an increasing level of activity, and you will have seen that we put out some bulletins in cyberspace which i believe the acting secretary referred to that both cisa and the fbi have put out that have tried to get private sector people we think potentially could be targeted to harden their systems and be more attentive to this type of activity happening. Financial sector, any commercial sector. Jeanne can you tell us anything about what kind of resources you think that the iranians or hezbollah might have in the United States . Sleeper cells . Jay yeah, sleeper cells is such a strong term, which i do not really agree with necessarily. Will point you to some destructions over the past five years with respect to individuals we have tied directly to the iranian government and to its proxies. We have seen reconnaissance work here, logistics work here in the United States, and we have charged and disrupted some individuals for doing that. Ado admit that there are number of iranian americans and lebanese americans that live here in the United States that we know in the past, those countries and adversary services there have enlisted their help to try and collect information on the United States, in those cases are representative of that. Jeanne there seems to have been a deescalation of the tension in the middle east. Does that mean the threat of reprisals here have evaporated or are you still very concerned . Jay no, were still very concerned. We continue to not have a strong understanding of what would potentially cause iran to attack us in the homeland. You will hear from members referred to redlines. We just do not know what that specifically is. I would say they are far more dangerous regional threat tha nin in the homeland. Jeanne one question about isis before audience questions. Gone. Soleimani is and posetrengthen isis more of a threat potential here in the homeland . Jay my sense is i am a ct professional, counterterrorism work, but i strongly believe the way to keep our terrorism adversaries from striking us in the homeland is to put pressure on them abroad. I think with isis, the key is not to relieve pressure. Jeanne although we pulled back for 10 days. I guess were back in the fight now. Jay it appears we are back to normal. But i think pulling out of the region would potentially cause isis to have a resurgence. Jeanne what about pulling out of africa . There is talk of the u. S. Reducing. Iy you mean east africa, think. Specifically, alshabaab. Jeanne no, talking mali. Jay my general sense is reduction in force and pressure in those areas will cause resurgence of the groups we are most concerned about. Most of the groups there are regional threat groups, in my opinion. Jeanne now. Jay yeah, right now. Not as concerned about that. Jeanne lets take some questions from the audience. I see a hand right back here. Microphone is coming to you. Tell us who you are, who youre with. Natosha bertrand with politico. I have a question about the worldwide threats. There is reporting that perhaps members of the Intel Community do not want to do that publicly, do not want to testify before congress, as they usually do. I am wondering, is the bureau still preparing to give that testimony in the public . If not, will there be some kind of work around whereby they testify in private and then perhaps it is released later . Wondering also whether you think that that is of real value to the public, to be able to hear every year. Jay i have not heard that there was a consideration for that. I know they are preparing for that, and you know it is usually an opening closed session. Open to the public and media, and there is typically closed session with members where we can get into more classified information. It is probably not a surprise to you that when the members, the give theic agencies threat briefing, they have significant limitations in giving wholesome and complete information in an unclassified, open forum. Of its relevancy and usefulness to the american public, i do believe probably it is very useful and relevant to hear about it, even if it is only an hour or two and then the closed session is many more hours. I also think the process is appropriate because it is part of the oversight that congress to askr us, to be able us how we are preparing to defend our country. Jeanne another question. On your point about the encryption len with national Economic Security alliance. On encryption devices, why hasnt anybody taken up with these Tech Companies that going to china, saudi arabia, and a host of other countries that have laws that require them to be able to produce the Encryption Keys to their devices if they are going to market them in their country or even introduce them into the country and they do that, yet they refused to do that here, so there is a false narrative there. In the second point, a lot of discussion about far right wing activist groups, but what about the far left wing activist groups like antifa and some of the other ones creating havoc on the others . Jay to your first question, i ate heard that discussion the highest levels of government. And i have also heard that discussion i was not present, but i heard that discussion being had with some of the Tech Companies and manufacturers. I do believe it is a legitimate question. I think your assertion is spot on, and i would love to see that be more publicly talked about. , theecond question is threat from the far left, while significant, is, frankly, not as violent. They historically are more involved in destruction of events, disruption of and that type of thing. That said, we still have a number of active investigations of individuals of interest, and there still a real threat to our homeland. Jeanne a followup to that. How worried are you, given how inflamed attitude and opinion is right now, about violence from either extreme . That is in the runup to the election or the time between the election and the inauguration . I think right now we have a significant increase in racially motivated violent extremism in the United States. I will not put a number on it, but a growing increase in White Nationalism and White Supremacy extremist movements. That, unfortunately, is fueling some of those polarized groups to be more vocal, and vocal leads to confrontation, and confrontation leads to violence. Jeanne another question here. Suzanne. Suzanne exacerbating that threat you just described of course is a potential maligned foreign influence. Riperichmond really is a opportunity for russia to pour gasoline on an emotionally divisive issue in the hopes it will lead to chaos and violence. We saw this in texas. We saw this in the aftermath of the alton sterling shooting, which weeks later we saw the tragic killing of five Law Enforcement officers. How is that fitting into the work that you all are doing in anticipation of this richmond rally . Are you seeing adversaries, maligned influence, specifically focusing on the richmond rally, for example, or the gun rights issue . Has there been an up to an uptick in foreign, inauthentic messaging to that . Are you working with platforms to take it down . Jay i cannot speak specifically itthe event on monday as relates to investigations. In the past, we have seen maligned foreign influence, and what i would ask everybody to keep doing is to Pay Attention to where you get your news from. Pay attention to what information you are ingesting and reading. It may not be authentic. We know that for a fact. Unfortunately there is not a good way to stop it. One way that we have combated this, as you noted, is working with social Media Companies to attempt to identify the profile of what that looks like when there is a false account that is conducting the activity. Of course, it is their decision what to do with that. More often than not, the individual doing it is signing the terms of the user agreement, and then they do contact content flagging, and they agreed to leave the account. We are working closely with them and have been for years. Powers withn university of maryland global campus. There was the comment about counterterrorism, where it has gone jointly. My question is, how would you look at International Cooperation that we started since 9 11 with partnerships and nontraditional allies . Does that continue to progress, and do you think it is effective . Jay a great question. The simple answer is, absolutely, it has continued to progress and is incredibly effective. Terrorism nowadays in the u. S. Or anywhere, it is global problems. That connectivity we need to have with international Law Enforcement and security agencies is imperative to protecting our countries. We have an incredibly strength and strengthened and rich partnership with the u. K. , canada, new zealand, and australia, and then a number of other western countries, missed middle eastern countries, that we continue to share Threat Intelligence with an investigations with to make our country stronger. When i say we, i mean the bigger we, because the fbi does that in conjunction with a number of ic agencies. Jeanne when brexit was being debated, there was discussion about whether britains decision to leave the eu would disrupt intelligence and information sharing between britain and other members of the eu. I know they are part of the five is. Im wondering if there decision to the heat leave the eu is coming this up at all from the u. S. Perspective . Jay not at all that i am aware of. Jeanne questions . Yes, right here. I support u. S. Coast guard. I am curious your thoughts on how you Counter Terror groups that are not unified by an ideology, until groups are Transnational Criminal Networks incne would you defined els . Jay i hesitate to call it a movement. Hard to respond. Ho believe in as a group are highly violent towards women. There have been successful attacks in the u. S. And canada, a really horrific attack in canada in the 1990s, and then several attacks in the last few years here in the United States. It is that kind of not definable group of individuals, but we still look at them through the lens of domestic terrorism because we see an ideology married with an attempt to affect social and political change married with an advocacy for conduct of violence and often times criminal activity. Easily fits the scope of our ability to open them as a domestic terrorism subject, and we have a few of those cases. It is a disturbing movement. I hate to call it a movement, but a disturbing group of individuals that we are paying close attention to. We disrupt them in ways we disrupt all groups, working jointly with partners in the Middle America and anywhere america and with the joint Terrorism Task force, and part of it is education. Often times state and local Law Enforcement may not notice that that is what they are. They might just see an individual who has an issue with women and they might just be considered another individual who is a violent felon. Jeanne were just about out of time. Is there Something Big on your radar that we may not have talked about . [laughter] jeanne here is your chance, man. Jeanne, i do not think you have. [laughter] jay,e thank you so much, for your insights. [applause] next is john the jo john talks and peter bergen to about the influence of china and their activities here on the United States homeland. John pete good afternoon. I have the privilege of introducing our final speaker for today, assistant attorney general of the United States, who runs the National Security division, and for the purpose of this conversation, also importantly leads the China Initiative at the department of justice. To speakndly agreed for probably about 25 minutes with me, and then we will take questions from the audience. Canme start, sir, with you give us an overview what the chinese have been doing and what you have been doing to counter it over the past since you have been in office . John great. Thanks for a much, peter and to the Homeland Security group for having me and for all of you who are here are watching online. Thanks for talking about these issues. On the china side first of all, let me say, what a shift from the first time i was on the National Security division when we were doing all counter is him all the time to today where we are really and the subject of this part is sort of great powers, and that is really our focus these days. In addition, i know jay was just are talking about domestic terrorism. But from the great power side, our focus is are, as always, sort of china, russia, iran, north korea. With respect to the chinese, we are seeing a lot of espionage. Political traditional and thetary espionage, and China Initiative, which we put together about a year and half witha little less, attorney general sessions, that continues today under attorney general barr, and it is focused on various aspects of chinese maligned behavior, but the big thing has been economic espionage. The intelligence we were sitting on a daily basis out of the fbi, the nsa, cia, etc. , about the extent of chinese economic espionage here in the United States am i stealing everything technologynd rice, to the bpa free lining of your water bottle to commercial jet airplane technology, things you might actually expect them to be stealing. Peter can you give us a sense of the problem over time . You started at the National Security division in 2006. Counterterrorism was obviously the main focus at the time. President obama did kind of go to the chinese and say knock it off at one point. Was that effective . What has proven effective and what has proven ineffective . Chinesell, changing behavior has proved to be a real challenge for people in every administration who have dealt with this. Period so there was a of time when the chinese and the u. S. Had an understanding with respect to not doing cyber intrusion activity to steal intellectual property. That appeared for some time, perhaps diminished the volume of theft by pure cyber means. But these days and even before sort of just the present day, what we saw was a real increase in the use of the chinese Intelligence Services. Those initial cases were Chinese Military services doing pure cyber activity. And what we see these days, although we still do see cyber economic espionage out of china, we see that really complemented by the use of the Intelligence Services to steal intellectual property. Have a end result is we lot more Insider Threat cases. The Intelligence Services, yes, they do cyber activity, but what they also do really well as get information out of people. That is the craft they are trained on. And there almost information agnostic, that is, they have the tools, skills, experience, and if they want to get a military secret out of you, that is what they will used to try to do that. If they want to get an economic secret out of you, they will use those same tools and threats. That is what the cases over the last year and half, two years, reflect, and Insider Threat when it comes to economic espionage. Peter give a sense of the scale of the problem. I know the National Security administration talks about hundreds of billions john right. I do not have a better number on the Economic Impact than they have. We did have a case go to trial not too long ago which involved a theft of wind turbine technology, and we did have to quantify the losses to the company. And that was just the theft of this one particular piece of software that govern how the Wind Turbines interact with the electric grid. In that one case, the company lost about half of its market value, about 1 billion, and 800 people 700 to lost their jobs. These are real impacts on individual companies and obviously the individual workers and families who lose their jobs. Peter the macron case also seems significant. Can you tell us about that . Case is a casen where the company came forward help and for the fbis cooperated with the government. It has been very public. It is a case used to illustrate the benefits of coming forward and cooperating with the government early, because what we were able to do there was charge the case do the investigation, charge the case, case,en we charged the the Commerce Department put the Chinese Company that had stolen the goods through the use of a joint venture by poaching certain employees, put them on a denied entity list, which meant they cannot import the tooling they need in the u. S. To make the parts that they stole the technology to make. A greatit is illustration in talking to the private sector, which we do very often, to convince them about the benefits of coming forward. Putre not just trying to the thief in jail, right, which may not help you as a company if, in the meantime, that other company has stolen your technology and are making a product to replace it on the market. But if we catch them early enough, we can prevent the harm from occurring. Another example was at the end of last year, we arrested a fellow who had stolen what we call a nutrient optimizer, basically software that helps farmers determine how much and when to water their fields and how to fertilize their fields depending on weather conditions, soil conditions, crops, all of that, stole that from monsanto and was bringing it over to china. When the company noticed that, you know, he had downloaded all of this, and we were able to stop him at the airport and take the computer that had the software on it. Get involved early enough, and that obviously requires the targets to be aware of the fact that they have been stolen from early on, but if we can do that, i think we can take great actions that will benefit the target, in edges into obviously than pursuing the case against the wrongdoer. There are a lot of Chinese Students in the United States, many doing basic scientific research. How do you distinguish somebody who is just doing basic research for his or her own purposes from nefarious intent . Seems like it could be pretty fuzzy and you could imprison or obtain or otherwise arrest someone just doing research. John what we look at our behaviors. Right, so we are not looking at, you know, what are you here studying . Were not trying to divine your intent. We are looking at your behaviors. What we see in some of these cases is, and this is what we boast on the corporate side and academic side, are people trying to get access to information or places that they really have no business getting access to given what they are here to do . So if i am here to study with this professor but i am over over hereother lab or at this other school, as we see sometimes, what are you doing over there . The same thing in terms of computer access. If i am needing to be in these databases to do my job but i am actually over here downloading information or sending it to my home computer, information that is over here, why am i over here . So what we try to focus on and what we tell universities and companies to focus on are those behavioral characteristics. Because then it really does not matter why they are doing it. Regardless of whether it is the person acting to enrich themselves or acting on behalf of china or other nation states, youre going to catch them. And that is the right way to do an investigation. If you start with the fact that the person is chinese, not only would that violate the law but, secondly, it will be impractical. The bulk of students here just doing what they should be doing and what we want them here doing. Peter switching gears, election 2020. What are the countries trying to interfere in that process . John in the elections, we anticipate that we will be dealing with election influence, interference activities from russia, china, and iran for the most part. Peter what will they look like, and are there differences . John theyre absolutely differences between them. The russians, you have plenty of illustrations of what that looks like from 2016 and even continuing to some of their social media activity today. Charged about four or five cases involving russian actors in election interference. Nsd proper, in those cases are back there right now. Thatnk we will see more of. We were certain we will certainly see a lot of the kind of social media activity. One of the things i am concerned about is the hacking and dumping activities that occurred back in 2016. Peter are there better protections for that now . John ultimately, and that is the hard part here, there has been a tremendous amount of work hardening election infrastructure. One guest was here earlier today talking about that. When youre talking about somebodys email, including sometimes personal email used for work or especially if theyre doing Campaign Work and their main job is at a law firm or Something Like that and theyre just using personal email, it is very dependent on their cyber hygiene practices, right, not clicking on that wrong email and all of that. What the russians did in 2016 in terms of the means by which they gained access was the spearfishing. It was not super sophisticated cyber intrusion activity. I will send you an email and see if you click on it, but once you click on it, you are in trouble. That is a greater vulnerability. Email has vulnerabilities because every station has emails that they would rather not be other publicly. A lot of that is perfectly jim demint email, legitimate email, but it could be talking about the merits or demerits of a candidate. But it is embarrassing if it gets out and we are talking by email. That is why i say this is a means it is effective, also because the emails are real, it means on the media side, it is among her to say i will not publish that because it is stolen. Peter that is a very interesting point. Is the media making a mistake essentially putting out stolen materials . John well, as members of the media, we could ask that there are members of the media you can as that question two rather than me. Everyone has to be very thoughtful about it, and i think there has been a lot of discussion in the media about what the right lanes of the road are in terms of that. I think on the chinese side, you know, we have not seen that kind of activity. But we are worried about what i call more foreign influence activities. Right, so we do know that the chinese use their economic power and the availability of markets, for instance, to convince companies or people to make certain choices or take certain positions. We see that all the time, from soccer players in europe the basketball, general managers in the u. S. , and on and on, in terms of the examples. That could also be done those are sort of the public examples and public reaction, public comment, but it could be done much more quietly. Peter give an example. John so folks who have business in china or in areas that are controlled by china are ,ulnerable to economic pressure and those are the same people who may be involved in a variety of ways in the election campaigns here in the u. S. So we worry about that in terms of the chinese. On the iranian side, or the russian and cyber intrusion capabilities which they have, we. Ill see how that plays out on the north korean side, it is possible but not in the top three. Peter questions on capacity . John no, theyre quite good. The question is, what is your ultimate purpose in undertaking or interfering in elections . China often has very specific policy objectives that they are after. Kong. Alking about hong stop interfering with our desire one day to control taiwan. There are very specific policy objectives. Election side, there may ease some of that, but a lot of it is just, you know, i will take you ann and weaken democracy as alternate and Computing Division of organizing society, and thereby i will increase my own power in the world. So depending on your objectives, youre going to behave very differently in terms of your means. Peter are you sanguine about 2020 . John you know, were very focused on it. I think we have come a long way since 2016. I think we had kind of a dry run in 2018, but certainly congressional off year elections are not going to be the focus as much president ial election. Be0 is where we could really tested. But when i think about how far, even just all of us as members of the public, have come in terms of awareness of foreign influence, how far the government has come in terms of its work, work with social Media Companies and what social Media Companies are doing on their own, work with state and local Election Officials because that is really the way our elections are run here in the u. S. , we are miles ahead of where we were. So that gives me a certain optimism, but we need to stay laser focused on this. Peter what are you communicating to state and local authorities, and how does that work . John that is mainly not a main justice issue. It is dhs and fbi. State and local, a lot has been about strengthening their election infrastructure, by which i mean Voter Registration systems and the election system itself. Having resiliency in the system. If, for instance, you had a Ransomware Attack on a Voter Registration system on the day before an election, do you have a backup system that is offline that you could then use on the day of the election . Paper ballot. Backups have been the subject of a lot of conversation. That is a great example of resiliency within the election system and another topic of conversation. Then there is just the Cyber Security consulting, and here is what we are seeing and sharing intelligence with them and here is how you can improve your networks and all of that. It is the fact is obviously that we have a federalist system of state and local of dictate a oft by thewe cannot t things. It is a process of Getting Better at what we are doing very peter switching gears a little bit, you speak to and i commence. I was fascinated by the fact that you have invited some Russian Military officers hunting around in the hague, and also in the antidumping antidoping era. Talk to us about the indictment than what you are hoping to achieve, because obviously these guys are not going to come tomorrow. Why do you do these things, and what were these particular military officers doing . John sure. Starting with the more general questions, why do we sometimes indict individuals who we have very little chance of ever catching . There are a variety of reasons, but when you think about the russian example, especially thinking about the russia 2016 purposes is of the to educate your we want to build a show what we can do in terms of attribution. One of the things the chinese will always deny welcome attribution is impossible. You cant really do attribution. You knows if you really got this right. And we can say no, we know we got this right, because we do not and i nation, we do not ru, we indict individuals, we have the names and faces next to us when we do the indictment. Can do are showing as we attribution so well that we can tie it back to an individual at the keyboard at this time, on this day. The second point is education in terms of the general public, and that is i believe that indictments have a unique ability in our legal system and in our sort of political system, a unique credibility in terms of the government speaking, because i am not appear speaking like this when i speak to an indictment, and i am not telling you, look and i have read all of the intelligence, and trust me, here is what it says, right . When i was something, i am telling you i can set up tomorrow in court and convince them of this fact beyond a reasonable doubt using only nonclassified, admissible evidence. Speaking as of course the justice department. So when we lay out, for instance about what we laid out in the cited,ent that you which is about the russian hacking, the World Antidoping Agency, and the agency involved in testing the poisons used to skripal in the u. K. It gets lost on the election side, remember, the russians were banned from the olympics because of doping. This is obviously very embarrassing to them as a country, so what they did, basically, was go after the World Antidoping Agency to pull the medical records of many athletes around the world and post all of those publicly to show that there were other athletes around the world who were also taking medications, but of course, without any context for whatever their medical reasons for taking those medications would have been. But if you think about it, i mean, what case does this remind you of . Of going into the dnc emails and posting all of those online. Peter yeah. John right. So that technique, it is a good illustration that this is it is not you know, like the russians did this once in 2016, they did not do it before, and they will never do it again, because, boy, what a unique time 2016 was. No. Consistent pattern of objectives, and they will continue to do this, not only in the election context, but another contexts, too, in either trying to get revenge, embarrassed, or muddy the narrative, right, you guys also did this. You do. Punish them, which means your punishment of us is only political in nature. Same thing with what they are trying to do with respect to that chemical testing laboratory, right . Oh, you tested that poison, you said this is a poison only the russians use. I am going to go after, you know, your scientists and your records and embarrass you for doing that, right . It is not unlike what we saw the North Koreans do with sony. This is a common technique, lets say, totalitarian governments to try to delegitimize anyone who says something that stands in opposition to whether goals are, or just embarrass them and the antidoping situation. The other interesting thing about that case is you did not just have the remote computer access the way we did in the u. S. Cases, you actually have these teams, right, these closedaccess teams who were sent. If we cannot break and your system remotely, maybe we can break into your wifi. But to do that, i have to be near the building cure so when they were caught, right, trunks open, meant to break into the wifi of that entity. And they did break into the wifi of some hotels of the various folks involved in the antidoping organizations were staying to then take the records off of their computers. Making know, other than the everyday me paranoid about using my phone in my computer [laughter] john these are everyday behaviors we have to watch out for in the future. Peter thank you very much, sir. We have only about 10 minutes left, so i want to make sure that we get questions i n. Ellen. John ellen, yeah. [laughs] ellen ellen not a shema with the washington post. The pensacola case is the latest case of the fbi being locked out of a shooters iphone. Ramping up the pressure to give, and the fbi gain access, the company and the company argues that doing so would weaken security for all of the users. Are you prepared to take the next step . Will you seek legislation to require companies to build in access for Law Enforcement when they have a warrant, and if so, what without legislation look like . I do not you know, know that i would comment on sort of how far along we are. That is a decision whether or not to seek legislation. I will say, you know, if you look at the december hearing on the senate side, i have never seen the atmosphere here in d. C. Passing conducive to some kind of encryption legislation or, you know, lawful access legislation, as it is today. The point that the attorney general is trying to make is the decision whether the government should have access to communications on a thee should be one that people make through their representatives in congress and not one that the Company Makes on its own, and i think that is very much to the undertone of the comments and the questions at that Committee Hearing this past december. So, again, i think the ground is as fertile as it has ever been for lawful access legislation, but we will see where the dialogue goes. We would still like to find some kind of solution with the companys cooperation, but we have been trying that for many, many heirs, and so far years, and so far, that has not happened. Peter mr. Attorney general, just to follow up on that, one apple, andanies is why would it try to sell the economic model by doing this . It is quite understandable, it seems like this is an immovable contest. Only well, if it were the company, that is one thing. If this becomes the norm of the industry, it is another. It is not sacrificing itself in a way where it has to change there respectfully, sir, what is the bad guys just migrate to German Companies or something outside of the american purview . John you know, they might over time, but what we see in our cases is, frankly, regardless, these days, there is still a great unevenness in terms of encryption. Behaviorays, bad guys is not much different from our own. They still use the most commonly forms of communicating. They still use apps. There are some that migrate to encrypted cons, there is no question about that, but a lot of people, whether it is sort of through you fall for your back into your old habits and routines. They will use the most commonly used apps not only because they are communicating with each other, they are communicating with a wider world. I am not saying that will never happen. Im saying it will vastly improve us to see whether it is terrorist intentions or child exploiters and the like. Look, this is an issue that obviously has been there for a long time. I can only speak to it from a lawenforcement perspective, which is to say i see the impact of this issue every day in our investigations, both on a terrorism side, the intelligence side, and those are the areas i am responsible for. Other people see them in Child Exploitation and other cases. So for me, the problem is real. Obviously that leaves open the question of solutions. Peter this gentleman over here, and then the lady in front of him. Sean hi, john. Sean linkous with cybersecurity. Thank you for being here. There has been an Unidentified Group calling th,elf intrusion truc allegedly identifying a Chinese Hacking Group in the high nonprovince in china. There have been lakes of personnel associated with that group and other details. I am wondering what you learned from those disclosures, and how that might complicate your first of all, how you might use that information to sort of building future potential Law Enforcement action and how those kinds of unidentified leaks also complicate the process that you have. John hmm. I should really not comment on that. [laughter] john that is an excellent question, but ok, the lady. Bonnie thank you. I am bonnie gerard, and i am president of china limited. Sincee been doing work the 1990s, and have been working in china since the 1980s. About manyyou of them are legitimate, as you said, but our Research Shows that at least, at a minimum, 40 of the Chinese Students that come to the United States are either members of the communist party or at least, a minimum, have taken membership in the communist youth league. That means that they have taken the oath, and the oath is a very serious one, to defend their homeland and protect their homeland, so we have to wonder if there is an agenda for coming to the United States, and im wondering you have rightly said we cannot target people based on the nationality. Understood. But can we target them if we believe they are foreign agents . The way that works is peter ok, i think we have got it. Bonnie and therefore the government answers to the party. Thank you very much. We canure, i mean, yes, target individuals and we have reason to believe our foreign agents. Their membership in the Chinese Communist party may not be enough by itself, right, to say that what they are doing here and the actions they are taking your or on behalf of china. China. On the half of but the things we worry about, and membership in the chinese itmunist party, you know, can be an indicator, obviously come of intent, but the fact is any Chinese Student who is here, regardless of whether they are members of the party, is also subject to pressure from the Chinese Government when they are here. Some of it could be unspoken or pressures,conomic like, well, you are in the u. S. I am sure you would like to have a good job when you come back. Others could be, you are in the u. S. , but you know who is here . Your mom, your dad not to my siblings [laughter] aunt,dear aunt, your your uncle. Kind of about that behavioral pressure a great deal, and we worry about it in some cases. Membership in a party may be an indicator, but there are other chinese are even more forceful in getting folks who are here some of them who came here not planning on doing anything but ended up, you know, doing things. Peter so we will take a question on the side. John mmhmm. So, john, go back to your case you mentioned earlier about the wind turbine software. John yep. What was the motivation, you know, for that . People tent are intellectual espionage for financial gain versus intellectual espionage to strengthen the chinese how much of this is directed entrepreneurially, and how much is directed by the government . Isn i am not sure it conspiratorially, as the question assumes it i have discussed this part of their Technology Steel or technology, replicate the product, replace the American Company on the market. That is an aspect of the chinese individuals and companies who will prosper as a result of that strategy, but that is an as act f the made in china 2025 plan, which is a Chinese Communist party plan, which is an obviously very authoritarian topdown government, so things get planned at the top, and then those plans have to get implemented all the way through. And the goal is the made in china to5 plan is for toa tom and it player in be a dominant player in every thing from commercial jet to Artificial Intelligence and so on and so forth, and of course every one of those is not one technology, it is thousands of technologies. The meehans is sometimes investments on the part of the chinese state. That is fine. But other times are theft. Some of it we see directed by the Chinese Intelligence Service, so a number of our cases actually allege that the Chinese Intelligence Service was involved, for instance, over the past year or so, three of our promotional airplane engines involve involvement of the Chinese Intelligence Service. Other involvement are we do not alleged state involvement, up the state has still set an ecosystem which is ultimately responsible for the kind of theft that we see. Peter well, we want to thank you, assistant attorney general, thank you very much for keeping the nation safe, one of the most responsible jobs in the federal government. Please join me in congra ts. [applause] [indistinct conversations] the homeless Security Experts group looks forward to continue these conversations and elevate them beyond politics. Thank you for engaging with us. Thank you for watching. We look forward to further [applause] conversations. We look forward to further conversations. [applause] [indistinct conversations] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] 2020 president ial candidates speak at this years legislative conference of the Iowa State Association union in des moines. Watch that Live Saturday 1025 a. M. Eastern. Then it is pete buttigieg, deval patrick, any clothes are, along with Elizabeth Warren at a forum on money and politics, marking the 10th anniversary of the supreme courts Citizens United decision. Live coverage begins at 4 00 p. M. Eastern sunday, also here on cspan. A reminder, you can watch all of our programs online at cspan. Org, or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Senators, i attend the senate in conformity, which you will notice, for the purpose of joining with you for the trial of the. President of the United States i am now prepared to take the oath. Will you place your left hand on the bible and raise your right hand . Do you solemnly swear that in to thengs pertaining trial of the impeachment donald john trump, president of the United States, you will do impartial justice, according to the constitution and the laws, so help you god . Ideal. Do. Thank you very much. At this time, i will administer the oath to all senators in the chamber, and the Senate Impeachment rules. Will all senators now stand and remain standing and raise their right hand . Solemnly swear that inhingappertaining to the trial of the impeachment of president donald john trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do so in accordance to the laws, so help you got. For the third time in history, a president is on