Andarched conclusions approaches to things. My mind will run a little wild, and i will write down that wild theory, then i will write down an opposing theory. As i do my research, whether it is working on a forensics case cybere there has been a incident, or working on a book like this, i was have a competing hypothesis. As i do my research, i start to make sure im researching both tootheses, which leads me what i believe is a fact based decision. Host what in your professional background would lead you to be that conspiracy theorists . Theresa it is interesting, i talk about my irish grandmother and her influence on me. , andead a lot of books even a lot of people in my family, this perspective, mi a was getting the straight scope from people . I will learn to think for myself, and that is something my parents and grandparents and great grandparents all ingrained in me. You may be told certain things by your severe air or the government or other governments, but make sure you apply critical thinking, and make sure you go , and decide to think for yourself. Dont let people tell you how to think. It has served me very well. On cuttingff working edge Innovative Technologies and banking, and in doing so i ended up on the front lines of fraudsters and money launderers. We did not call them cyber criminals yet. Of, iave me that sense always had to think about when i do this good action, there could be people taking a negative action or taking advantage. That Conspiracy Theory plays well in thinking ahead, what is the worst thing that could happen . Operativesnknown take advantage of the situation . Host you at one time where the government to my correct . Theresa yes, i had the honor and pleasure of serving as a political appointee during president george w. Bush is administration. Bushsge w. Administration. I was in the second half of the second term, and people think that is the sun is setting and the moon is rising for a new administration, what could be going on . You have to realize the Bush Administration had a mantra, leave everything better than we found it. One thing he was fiercely committed to and the senior staff was making sure the modernization efforts, the building, the process, the technology and security were setting up future administrations for success. It was not just about his legacy, but about leading things. Etter than we found it i had the distinct honor to serve the country at the white house for almost 2. 5 years, modernizing the technology of the structure and modernizing how we thought about protecting the technical infrastructure that serves the mission of the executive office of the president. Host what was your title . Chief Information Officer. I was the first female to hold that role. That job is basically around the scope of the job, are going to be typically made by the current administration. Owed in theed and fl different responsibilities, but it was an incredible job. I met so many career Civil Servants who are amazing. I sleep well at night knowing they are still there doing great work. I met so many amazing men and women serving in the u. S. , secret service, cia, nsa, fbi who also served on different types of details the executive office a great group of people to work with, and many still serving. Host theresa payton, what did that experience lend to your new would youipulated, say is the most important book you have ever written . Theresa what is interesting is when i got there, i thought i the a lot about capabilities of the adversary. I was working in Financial Services when the unfortunate day of 9 11 happened. I was on the front lines of trying to understand the money and terrorist financing, and how that was happening within the American Bank infrastructure, and had an opportunity to work on making sure we were providing information that protected our customers privacy. And at the same time answered National Security concerns around terrorist financing. Through,me to think how does the adversary target the Financial Services industry . I thought i had seen a lot. Once i got to the white house and received my clearance and into special let programs, i started to realize i was only looking through a keyhole of maybe a broom closet of what was a multilevel, thousand square foot mansion, so to speak. And that i only had through one vertical view the capabilities of the adversary. Candidly, as i was leaving the , i basically came back and told my family that i found i felt like the country invested a lot in me from a National Security turning standpoint, which is my lifes calling to give back. Basically, event to the work and we do in cybersecurity intelligence operations for companies, the government, and individuals. The reason it motivated me to write this book, we were going into the 2016 election cycle, i was not so much focused at that point in time around our cyber operatives meddling with our alexion in the structure, i was on how cyberd operatives that were nationstate trained were using Misinformation Campaigns to social engineer companies to break in, steel in electoral, steel consumer data, whatever the cybercrime tactic was, and as i started doing that research, that is when i uncovered they were manipulating on social issues. It was a global problem. Host theresa payton, as we conduct this interview, Cyber Attacks are happening on u. S. Government structures, u. S. Businesses at all times . Theresa yes, there absolutely is an ongoing challenge. What is interesting is in isrica, not every country like this. A big part of our into structure that is Critical Infrastructure is owned by the private sector. The majority of the internet, many Internet Companies that we rely upon, private infrastructure, not government or federal government or military infrastructure. The attacks are real. What people may not realize is the attacks against corporate america, middle and small businesses, the attacks against your residential infrastructure, and our government infrastructure it is an onslaught on a daily basis. Us good guysealize in cybersecurity, we had to it right every minute of every day. The back guys only have to get it right once, then they have their payload. Oftentimes we have learned the average number of days that cyber operatives are actually in a corporate infrastructure before anybody knows they are there is about 100 50 days. Imagine if somebody had access to crown jewels for 150 days. What could they do . They could run off with them. That is the near and present danger we are facing every day. Attack onn experian or Sony Pictures are bank of america, should that be considered an act of war . Theresa this is interesting, and you are right. Withaws have not kept up the technology, and that is a stark reality that we will be facing for many decades to come. By the time we figure out a law and have people on the hill get along long enough to pass the law, it will be outdated. Our International Treaties are outdated. What happened to a company like sony with the headquarter in , had north korea in anger set the place on fire, or done major damage to it through a bomb or other physical kinetic message, it would have been war on u. S. Tive soil. Because it is something you cannot see or touch, and it is digital, it is not treated the same way. The International Treaties in our nations laws are willfully outdated to handle this, and we do need to get around a table and hammer out with our allies and enemies and frenemies, International Treaties and accords around the cyber domain. Host is that doable . Theresa it absolutely is doable. Even when the country and the list changes from time to time who we get along with and who we do not get along with it is something we could use as a diplomatic bargaining chip, to say these of the things that are offlimits. If these crimes originate from your country, this is how we want you to treat those crimes. This is absolutely something that needs to be negotiated, and should be done in a multilateral agreement. It could be something discussed at the u. N. And nato, and it needs to happen because each countrys future relies upon it. What do you think of the proposed cyber branch of the pentagon . Theresa i think it is a fantastic idea. We have a situation where it would be incredible if we could incent men and women to consider u. S. Military as a career option to get the schooling and to spend the time serving, even if they do not make a career of it. Disclosure, both sides of my family are from career military, and i am married to a u. S. Navy veteran. I think it could be an incredible way to have a nation of people trained in this serving their country that can go out into the private sector and defend our Critical Infrastructure through the private sector operations. I love the idea, and i think it is something we needed to happen a decade ago, but it is never too late. Host your book is called manipulated, you spend time on political manipulation and electoral interference, but you say it is nothing new in our world. Theresa that is true. I spent a little time doing some historical Background Research for the readers, because i wanted to show this is not something that just came about because we have social media. History shows to us that as soon as there were two human beings on earth, there was some level of political espionage going on. Take everyone down a walk of history to show were countries, including the united states, leveraged propaganda campaigns. Justifies why they do the propaganda campaigns, for america the justification in the past has been overthrowing what we perceive to be a corrupt regime. Im not a politician, but i will walk through with people on policy what impacts of policy are. I do walk everybody through that and show them the different types of propaganda that has happened over the years to help establish this is an ongoing human nature battle. As long as there are Different Countries vying to be economic powers or superpowers or wanting to have a seat at the big kids table, that you will have espionage activity happen. It could be economic, political, social. The other thing i show people in the book is that today with the misinformation manipulation campaigns, it is not just about targeting it at america, trying to pick winners and losers. Many of these nationstates countries who conduct these campaigns, they actually perfect the campaigns from their own citizens first, because they want to show their citizens that their regime has the citizens best interest at heart, and you would not want what americans have. The cow much they argue with each other. You do not want to be part of the eu. Look at the u. K. , they are leaving, brexit. They do these manipulation campaigns and perfect them at home first, then tweake them and use them abroad another countrys citizens. Host our Misinformation Campaigns profitable . Theresa this is one of the crazy findings i had in my book. Im glad you brought this up. , i wentt is interesting into this thinking many of the nationstates, when they were meddling in some but he also Political Affairs in somebody elses Political Affairs, it was too embarrassed political officials were elected potentially pick the winners and losers. What i learned is that many of itse nationstates also find is very lucrative. They actually make ads off misinformation. Guess who else benefits . Unfortunately, the social Media Companies. The different types of news organizations that are the top orr trusted news sources alternative news organizations, they also make money in the process. We just saw a study that came out that said qanon was promoting different types of Misinformation Campaigns, and facebook, because they were using ads made money off of these qanon Misinformation Campaigns. Wherestem is in a place in order to shut this down, you could potentially have people saying, my freedom of speech but the other thing youre shutting down is revenue. Host theresa payton, you write that in 2017 126 billion users of facebook one had a 26 million users of facebook were exposed. Theresa yes, and how do you ask americans to unsee something . Especially if what they saw actually played to a confirmation bias . That is the reason why we tend to be vulnerable to misinformation, manipulation, and even amplification campaigns which are in a five to get you to have a gut reaction positive or negative. That is the thing, you have so toy people that are exposed these Misinformation Campaigns. The question is, where does it leave us . For many people, it leaves people throwing their hands up and saying, i do not know what to believe. That is actually part of the manipulators playbook. Believingn task out cast out believing institutions within the media, it leaves you open to believing anything. And especially if you see something that fits your confirmation bias. A study was done and i write about this in the book where people posted Misinformation Campaigns. Somebody pointed it out to them that it was a Misinformation Campaign that was false, and they did not remove the post or correct themselves. A left it up because it is a narrative for them. Now you have a challenge where it is hard to get people to unsee it, but they leave it because they know it is false because it fits the confirmation bias. One of thesa payton, things often said is that we are fighting the last war. Russian interference in the 2016 election, are we fighting that 2016 war, or have we moved ahead looking to 2020 . Theresa the good news is we have moved ahead. The bad news is the cyber operatives are in different nationstates and russia is not alone. Alla, north korea and iran looked at what russia was able to accomplish, and they are in on the action. I write about macedonia, and they do not want to manipulate the outcome of the election, they just want to make money. S, the macedonian operation. They will promote whatever makes them the most money. They are all about the money. Here are some great things that have happened since 2016 one, we called the social Media Companies and told them they had to come to the hill and do a better job disclosing Misinformation Campaigns. And fighting the good fight here. But a lotoing better more needs to be done. Same thing around probing of the states. Websites, Voter Registration databases, voter rolls, things like websites themselves that tell you when you can early vote, how do you get your absentee ballot. A lot of work is done with the states, the department of Homeland Security to improve our Election Security interest excerpt. We are not fighting the last battle, the last president ial cycle, we have upped our a game, but russia, china, north korea,. Ran have not given up unscrupulous political operatives here in america are also leveraging social media for misinformation and manipulation campaigns. The key thing for people to take away is dont allow these campaigns to convince you that your vote does not matter. That is when they win. You have to get out and vote. Dont allow these campaigns to unduly influence what you vote for and against. Forces. E your checking make sure you are measuring out what you are hearing, what you are reading, what you are seeing, and doing your own fact checking. Host do you have the in our electronic voting systems . We have someink documented challenges with electronic voting systems. What i have confidence in, everything is hackable. If someone tells you it is not, you should run the other direction because they do not know what they are talking about. There are documented vulnerabilities in our electronic voting processes and equipment. What gives me a lot of hope in this election cycle is the amount of training and processes areake sure where there vulnerabilities known, there are mitigating controls in place. For example, where there are security vulnerabilities with equipment, that equipment has place,nt failsafes in multilayers of failsafes that it would be hard to hack an election at some level of scale. Put inudit processes place, things were some states have moved to one entry where your vote was cast. Disabused of that notion, so there is a paper training of the voter and the precinct judges and the volunteers. A lot of work has been done. Votingat mean we will be irregularity free . No, we have never had an election where we are voting irregularity free, but i have a lot of faith in the volunteers and the board of elections. They have thought about this a lot and rehearsed and practiced disasters. They will do their best. It is a pandemic, and the wildcard for all of us will be how many people go to vote in person versus will we have an unprecedented amount of people requesting absentee or mail in ballot processes . And will the states be prepared to we are all used to staying up on election night, me included, watching the results roll in. Tractability is the process is to count these paper ballots may take longer than we are used to. You dissipate in these manipulation campaigns in other countries as well . Theresa we have. I talked a little bit about that. Is justification politically corrupt regimes help us with regime change and gives citizens better access to democracy. We can definitely have a political debate on whether or not that is fair and warranted. Thats why i really believe its time, we need International Treaties that cover the theft of intellectual property, the theft of personal data. Yes, we do need to have a discussion about political espionage and how social media platforms and a lot of times people dont talk about the video distribution platforms. They dont think much about email anymore. Much of that, i tie up in social media which is distribution of information, both kind of that digital print, but also audio and video. Cheaper, technology is faster to use, faster to produce deepfake documents, videos and photos. Thats really where the new frontier is going with these manipulation campaigns, where you literally think you are looking at you and i talking and that you and i are saying something, and somebody could manipulate the audio and the video to make it appear we said something completely different. Host do you see these manipulation campaigns and Cyber Attacks as threats to democracy . Theresa i do. To me, the reason why i spent so and time researching candidly, when i first have this book project idea it was actually before the 2016 election, when i went to my book agent, who was my book agent for the last two books that i coauthored with a privacy lawyer, and i went to her and i said i see these manipulation campaigns being used for social engineering. I was telling her about it. You know, shes a great agent. She said i dont think people will want to pay to be scared like that. I didnt really have an inkling it would be used at the scale it was and be used with russia with the 2016 election. Obviously, we all learned much later just sort of the scale that russia was able to pull off, their manipulation, Misinformation Campaign. Evolution oft the these misinformation and manipulation campaigns, it is like as new Technology Comes out, as new social media comes out, it is continuing to evolve at a pace and scale that is outpacing even us experts in cybersecurity and intelligence. Host what is your work today . Theresa the work that i do in the company, we do incident response. Host the name of the company . Theresa so, i found it a company, we do cybersecurity incident response. We also help companies prevent an incident from happening. We do provide intelligence operations to help them understand whether or not there are threats targeting them that have not turned into an incident and whether or not information is being traded about their organization in the dark web, deep web and open web unbeknownst to them. One of the things that were seeing is these manipulation campaigns can actually be converted at scale for conducting social engineering campaigns. So, as businesses go through this pandemic, and many of their employees are necessarily in many cases where they can work from home, they are working from home. Now, theyve got multiple jobs. They are thinking about aging and elderly in their family. Theyre making sure they are doing good work. Some of them have kids who have some kind of semblance of remote schooling. Whether it is hybrid or 100 remote schooling. That is where the social engineering campaigns are really taking advantage of the situation of the pandemic and leveraging that to get a chokehold into organizations that normally and otherwise might not have an issue letting the bad guys in the door. Payton is the former white house chief Information Officer and she is the author of the book mani pulated which came out in april of 2020. Thanks for being with us. Theresa thanks for having me on. Great talking with you. Cspan, yourwatching unfiltered view of government. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Trump hosted a signing ceremony in the oval office with the serbian president and kosovo prime minister. He normalized economic relations between the two countries. The president also took questions, including a story about him making disparaging remarks about fallen u. S. Service members. Thank you very much. Thisa