The annenberg Public Policy center, also on the university of pennsylvania. There i hand it over to moderator, this discussion is being livestreamed, and you can post your comments and questions on twitter using the protectdemocracy2020. Our team will be monitoring the monitoring the hash tag and pose your questions to the monitor. America may have been caught off but theres no the samer falling for tricks again twice. Understand the influences around us, take steps take proactive steps to counter them, and work to strengthen our democracy. This collaboration is our effort to do just that. Im now going to turn the over to the professor claire finkelstein, my friend and faculty director of the center for ethics and the rule of law at the university of pennsylvania law school, who is theleading voice on intersection of law, ethics, and national security. Willto claire, who introduce our guests for the session. Thank you soin much, carrie, and its a to have this with c nas. N more important topic today than Election Security as we approach the 2020 general election and look back at what last foured in the years encompassing the lessons 2018 key. 016 and it is critical that different stakeholders, experts, academics, practitioners come together to think hard about the security of our democracy and about where we need to be moving forward as we approach the elections and beyond. I am delighted today to have two of the greatest experts on this topic and friends and colleagues as well. Kathleen jamison, the director of the annenberg Public Policy and the author of a very important book called cyber war that dealt with the 2016 elections. Im delighted to have kathleen here. And director james clapper, director of the office of toelligence from 2000 one thousand six. Im also pleased to say he is an executive board member of the center of ethics and the rule of law, of which i and the faculty director. Jump right into goingnversation, and im to moderate a conversation with director klapper and professor Kathleen Hall jamieson in an informal conversational manner, inviting them to jump in, and then we will field your questions. Im going to raise a few topics for discussion, and in the first instance, let me just pitch this to jim klapper. The general review of what we know about the 2016 election and the dangers that lead up to it are something you have spoken about consistently, written about and discussed widely, but give us a sense as we approach the topic of Election Security in 2020, what are the lessons we need to have learned from the 2016 election, and what should we be looking at in particular, drawing from those lessons for the upcoming general election . Mr. Klapper thank you and see thisnd others for hosting very timely discussion on Election Security. Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other peoples, and the expectation, i think, was we expected sort of the ambient level, some reconnoitering, if you will, reconnaissance, as well as perhaps intervention. Russia has a long history of interfering in our country, going back to the beginning of the cold war era. Normally not that difficult to detect. 2016, they took it to a new low, and of course, they capitalized socialtechnology and experiencedey never depth, scope, and aggressiveness on the of an attack on our fundamental system as we did in 2016. Multiprongs included a very sophisticated Propaganda Campaign on two Principal Networks funded by the russian government, in addition to, of course, the hacking and timely dumping of emails, but to me, the most disturbing thing, which we were unprepared for was the social media assault. The most current insights we have are that russia reached 400,000 americans on facebook alone. They had messages for everybody black lives matter, white supremacists, whatever group there was, they exploited their grievances and helped, i believe, to suppress in certain cases voting. The electionnd, came down to less than 80,000 votes in three key states that russians targeted. Beenng back, i wish we had more aggressive about publicizing this. Contemporaneously reasons for not doing that initially. It was quite reasonable. For one, concern about magnifying or amplifying what the russians were doing. I think the bigger point for president obama was he was very concerned about the perception, favoring one his candidate against another against the backdrop of the accusations already being made. Y then candidate trump others have gone to school and what the russians did, so we have the chinese and iranians involved, but the primary threat continues to be the russians. The chinese and arabians i think are overly ambitious. What concerns me the chinese and iranians i think are overly ambitious. What concerns me is the problem of the russians who will have. One to school the russians made public their tricks from 2016. Im convinced they are at it again, but it will be harder to detect, so i will stop there. Professor finkelstein in you book, cyber war, russianate if interference may have actually thrown the election. Can you talk about if in fact you think it did. Think then i dont social Media Campaign did. They were engaging in activities consistent with the Trump Campaigns and knees. They were trying to mobilize constituencies that he needed to mobilize like evangelical catholics, for example. They were trying to demobilize black americans, and they were trying to shift votes where they could to thirdparty candidate jill stein. We knew that from the early evidence available. By the time the second edition came out, we had a complete block of all the twitter content, though facebook was much less revelatory. What we could tell from that, from the additional materials that had been exposed between the First Edition and second edition second edition just came out in june we were able to analyze the extensive content that was there, that very large multimilliondollar number, most of which is not direct electoral content. If you look at the amount of the exposure they had, they would have had to reach high levels of susceptible individuals in large numbers to create a decisive impact. They did not have enough reach contentnot have enough on social media to do that. They probably created some effect on the margin. They changed however, they changed the media agenda across time, and that change was across time far more visible to the american electorate overall than anything on social media. Media in and the direction that disadvantages one candidate because you create a message and balance against that andidate, you create imbalance. 2016 was unusual. Electorate is pretty locked in by the conventions. It was not in 2016. We also had a High Percentage of people who did not like either candidate, and coming into the period in which that content was most visible, we had a high level of early voting, and as a result, the influence from the hacked content was much higher than the social media influence. Also, theres evidence the russians influence jim coming to Hillary Clintons investigation. The voting patterns in the last week turned against her decisively. That could have been a mediaation of the hacked and the comey disclosure. If there is any role of russian influence in that disclosure, then it becomes much more decisive. Dr. Finkel thing professor finkelstein you say this represents a shift between the first and second edition of the book . The First Edition, we knew the social media activity was based on sound information before the election. There was enough to create a message imbalance, but the First Edition did not know how money people were actually reached by electoral irrelevant content. Once we saw all of what was there, we did not see all of what was there before the First Edition was out. We largely saw the advertised content. Everything about her, but enough that was electorally relevant reaching enough people to create , the hacked content had ther hand media Agenda Setting is powerful and also creates message in balancing against and. We have advents from our server that those people who were shifting their votes across time were shifting them consistent with the patterns of media change associated with the hacked content released in the first and the second and third debates hacked content, its a media problem as much as a rush intervention problem. The perception that Hillary Clinton had one thing in public and another in private, the inference was strong the people he said that, difference between those who watch the debates and didnt were less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Thats a clear evidence of impact than anything you can say about the trolls. What did we know, when did we know what kathleen is saying right now, how influential the hacked content was and what could have been done about it . We had a month to put together our ica, so we didnt have the level of detail that you just heard at the time. I wish we had, but we didnt, and some of this, frankly, came from these sort of innate instinctive reluctance to media, Domestic Social and so we didnt have quite the i dont know that we were able to gauge in the short period of time we had what the impact was, and in my book, assert, which are published two years ago, that based on what i russiansel sure the really made the difference in swinging the election towards donald trump and away from Hillary Clinton. Now you just heard some very specific empirical evidence that makes that case, but we didnt have the detail or specificity specificity for years ago that looking back we know now. I would commend come for example, the first part of the Mueller Report, which doesnt get a lot of attention, and the extensive technical detail that the decision to publish was made while as intelligent people traditionally are concerned sources and methods as well. It went into just extensive detail about the technical basis and the evidentiary basis for extended russian interference, so all these things, this is a good thing, that have come out since the assessment we did which we put together in one month. All have one followup with you, jim, and then i will come back to you, kathleen. The hacking that took place, there were supposedly hacking of the rnc, not just the d c, but we never saw and emailed dont from the rnc we never saw an dump from the rnc. What exactly do you think the russians were thinking when they and then release them on wikileaks, as far as we know . Dir. Clapper i dont know what they were thinking, im not a mind reader of the russians, but i assume they felt there was political hay to be made here, since they clearly, it starts with putin himself had a very strong animus for both clintons, but specifically hillary, since he held her responsible for a revolution against him in the elections of 2011. She i guess they made the continued decision that whatever they could do that wouldnt anyway embarrass her and damage her candidacy, they would do. But i cant tell you what they were actually thinking. Kathleen what you were saying, the timing was a big part of the impact with the media amplifying that content and helping to assure ironically that it had the impact the russians were seeking. This question of mr. Clapper, on october 7, did the Intelligence Committee mean to convey that the russians were behind the hacking of the d c only and not behind the podesta hacking . Because what happened on october 7 was that the access Hollywood Tape being released on that day, your Intelligence Report comes out, then you get the access hollywood hit and the same day content washacked dumped. With the journalist to understand from the intelligence briefing that the hacking in was it only focused on the earlier dnc hacked . Dir. Clapper it was only focused on the earlier hacked. Would noturnalist necessarily have been able to say that the podesta hacked content was russian in origin when it was used to counteract counterbalance the access Hollywood Tape and that story. Dir. Clapper we didnt factor time, this stuff at the the access Hollywood Tape obviously caught us by surprise. We had decided to do that a week or two at least before it was actually released because we did have to haggle over the language wein, protecting source had to run it through the interagency, so it just was a happenstance that we got all that done in publicly release that statement on the seventh of october, and of course the message was completely emasculated by the access Hollywood Tape. First theres the evidence of the russians changing the media agenda. Had you had that announcement by the Intelligence Committee and the access Hollywood Tape, and remember the second debate is october 9, two days later, would have been an antitrump media agenda. How do you know, what you know about the russians for practical purposes, the media agenda, Intelligence Communitys report drops below the front fold on the first page and out of the media agenda on the sunday news shows and as a result was not being featured prominently by the media as it began to cover the rest of the hacked content week by week throughout the rest of the election. The first clear electoral effect of the russians through Julian Assange is to create an equivalence media play that day that resulted in the downplay of the Intelligence Community report and creates a parallel between what does donald trump say in private and doing public and what does Hillary Clinton say in public and do in private . So now instead of two pieces of news that would be potentially damaging, the counterbalancing of the hacks against the content been played against the access Hollywood Tape, donald trump potentially wouldve lost his place at the top the ticket had you had only those two pieces of potentially problematic news for trump and not the potential counterbalancing which is why its so important to know whether the reporters could reasonably surmise the russians were behind the hacking of the podesta content or not, and raises the question, when did the Intelligence Committee know the podesta content was russian hacked and how and when did it tell the press that . I do not recall specifically the date and time that we realized we were overwhelmed we were aware of the podesta tapes. I just dont remember clearly the sequence there. One of my critiques of the press coverage, as we look to 2020, how would the press treat , not as important important,xtremely and the press cannot know from the intelligence guidi that the podesta content was russian hacked, then you should have been saying all through october and november russian hacked every time you covered podesta content, because they wouldnt have known that yet. Why were you saying to the Intelligence Community, was it russia hacked . Lets go on to what we can anticipate in the next 50 days. We havent seen that kind of this time around and maybe its yet to come, but lets since youve highlighted that with the hacking side of things for the moment. Jim, what have we done, from what you know, and obviously you are not in office anymore, but from public reports or from anything else that you know, what have we done to protect ourselves against this kind of hacking content in the runup to the 2020 election . Dir. Clapper well, i think the first thing that is important, theres a lot more awareness and threatvity to the whole posed by the russians, so im sure a lot has been done through the state and local level to improve cybersecurity, and thats probably uneven in places, im sure are better than others. There is the greater awareness of it and if it were to occur, i would hope, i dont know, that there would be a more aggressive publicity about it. I do think that there could effortbe another such made by the russians. Im part of an effort called cyber dome, which is a group of people that on a volunteer nonprofit basis are trying to those helping and with the campaigns to secure their networks, and i think there are a lot of efforts going on. Dhs, they feelm confident that they are much better prepared, and im sure they are. Age how effective thats going to be or nor can i foresee exactly what other things that we havent thought of the russians might do. Questionsof the kathleens discussion raises is if such a hack and dump or to occur in the next 50 days, or we prepared to manage the fallout of that in a more effective way than we did the last time . Taught society and in particular is the media prepared to identify or at least be suspicious to a greater degree than they were in 2016 . Out,ch information coming itorder to potentially label as hacked content. Medialapper when you say , there are wide variances in the spectrum there, so i dont know the answer to your question about how well the media is prepared or the public. Im frankly concerned about how the government reacts. So what is your thought about that . Then i will turn back to kathleen and ask her the same question. Dir. Clapper the appearance at sort of muzzling or at least i think slanting the message a bit, we received so a highcant say i have level of confidence about just how much of this would be shared with the media and the American Public or anybody or Even Congress for that matter. Claire kathleen, do you think were better prepared to deal with this kind of hack and dump this time around that we were in 2016 . Kathleen we know there are attempt to hack right now, so the question is are we going to see this happening sometime in the next weeks . Failureure in 2016 is a of journalistic norm enforcement. In fairness to reporters, they had over 150,000 blocks of or units of content being dropped. Thats an awful lot to make sense of, but that failed to say they had an independently verify the content, which is journalistic norm. Youre supposed to say whether or not you have independently verified. They did not track it back to wiki leaks. They credited to wikileaks and in the process ignored the fact that Julian Assange had publicly oppose the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, so they had a selfinterest of sorts. As a result, they did not look at the timing of the releases by assange, which was highly strategic and was designed to do maximum damage to democrats. In the process because i think of this be the moment and simply being overwhelmed, they also i believe inadvertently took key pieces of hacked content out of context that occurred when Hillary Clinton statement that she said she had to say one thing in public and another in private was plundered from its contents, which was a discussion of Steven Spielbergs film lincoln and was a generalized statement and had nothing to do with her she was saying no such thing and the occasion of the coverage was that she was saying such things. She was not. Secondly, the press took the open trade statement as if thats what she said come that she set i stand for open trade and open borders. She hadnt, in the hacked content she said open trade and open border sometime in the future in the western hemisphere, and in the same sentence referred specifically to energy. When the press reduce those two, she confessed in private that she said one thing and another in public, which she had not actually done, translated that segment on open trade open borders sometime in the future western hemisphere and speaking specifically about Energy Transfer into she said gripping trade on the borders. They create a substantial disadvantage to her in the second and third debate. Thats why that debate in the presence of control said shes more likely to say one thing in private and another in public is so damaging. When you think that you are less ely to vote for her theres a strong indictment here of the press violating its own norms under the pressure of the moment. With an enormous amount of content to deal with in a highly polarized environment. Have they learned a lesson . We are not going to know until they are stress tested by having another instance. Hope we dont have another instance. You said in the 2016 social Media Campaign not by itself broke the election. Is there potential in 2020 when the social media interference has if anything got more sophisticated, and as jim mentioned earlier, other countries have gotten into the act. Do we think maybe the russians have learned how to make their social media impact more effective . Dr. Clapp directors they are adapting very seriously. What we can say is we are adapting, too. Social media platforms have put in place their protections. They make it former difficult for a Foreign National to buy advertising, for example, blatantly illegal in our system. And some of the ads were purchased in rubles and that shouldve been a clue that something was going on in 2016. Now you need id numbers. Youre going to have to work a lot harder at it. They now are shutting down accounts because theyre looking for what they call an authentic behavior, and weve seen them regularly shutting down those accounts since 2016. Thats hopeful as well. With the trafficking of material on youtube, in the past there was no identifying of a state actor behind you to postings. Now when you see rt posting material and already has substantial amount of public visibility, you will also see on the bottom of the screen that rt is tied to the russian government. Claire remember, thats mandated because rt is registered under the Foreign Agent administration act. Its doing that for pbs, too, but it gives you one more queue. In the past with the absence of sourcing, you could just think rt was one more media outlet. You wouldnt have known that you had the russian government behind it. Thats you dont actually have the same protection that we have with youtube posting of those videos. Claire jim, how do you see the social media side in the risk of the runup to the 2020 election . Dir. Clapper as kathleen indicated, there have been some demonstrable improvements and theyre now doing things they didnt do in the runup to the 2016 election. So hopefully those things will help. But also i have to recognize that the volume of material that they need to screen and hopefully point out, so i dont do social media, so i cant is, andw effective that i will tell you given First Amendment considerations, i wouldnt want to be the one to have to write the rules on what whats put the screen up. Thats a difficult problem, but is certainly better than prior in previous election. Claire before we talk a little bit about what social media and the private sector can do in more detail, i like to talk about election day in particular, and talk about some of the risks from disinformation that could occur. Let me give you a scenario. People, many that people are voting in person who would otherwise have done mailin ballots because they are concerned about whats going on with the post office, they are concerned about the reliability so despiteballots, fears of the pandemic, they flock to the polls. And then there is a social media put that posts that says out some disinformation, for example theres an active shooter at such and such a polling location, or someone has been discovered to have active Coronavirus Infections and that polling station is infected. Lets imagine this is russian source disinformation. What can we do in the runup to the election to guard against that effect . It could have a very powerful effect of dissuading people from voting. Dir. Clapper if you are asking me, i suppose this is a responsibility both for the government and the media, and given the decentralized nature of our voting system, this would have to be done on a local level. Thats where i think the rubber is going to meet the road on potential or contrived rats to the safety of the voting process. About my own case where i live, what election fishel officials would have be alert to such a situation and then be able to verify or corroborate or not what has been postulated. Thats going to be difficult task, particularly if the russians only do it a few places, thats manageable. But if it is widespread, i cant say how well we will collectively react to that. Could be quite daunting and could have demonstrable impact on the outcome of the election. Claire and this really lies with the states, doesnt it . Because we are unlikely to see any kind of solution from the federal government to protect against such disinformation, given the political climate, given what we know about this president. So the question is whether or not the states are up to the task of policing the disinformation and impact on voter turnout. Kathleen, do you have any thoughts about that . Concern isirst, the not simply foreign interference. Its a concern of domestic actors as well and its more likely you will have something happen domestically amplified by foreign actors than that foreign actors would actually initiate. You need a reasonable amount of local information to understand how to play that tactic out. This is the reason its so important that local news be trusted by its audiences because if we are told for example in philadelphia that theres a threat to the mount airy voting station, i would vote in mount airy in my neighborhood, so i need your trust the local news will be there to verify, and that we have the vigilance in the community to have alerted local news to the fact that the social media stream is now saying that theres a threat. There is still high confidence in local news, but heres the worry that i have. New in 2016 that we had what i call sleeper accounts come of that is these were troll accounts that did not engage in any form of propaganda. They didnt look as if theyre trying to amass audiences to persuade them in one direction or another. They simply look like local news accounts. Weighing in order to activate at some point the same way a sleeper agent would have in order to plant disinformation, so to the extent that we have those accounts that have been masquerading as the local news and they havent been caught by the social media platforms because theyre not giving the cues that might otherwise make them detectable, theres a possibility that those sites are trusted and as a result those sites are competing with our legitimate local news to try to correct this information. It is more important than ever now that our local news stations are in touch with every source of Accurate Information and every source of this information as we approach election day and that we say to the electorate, trust your local news outlets that you know. Heres other ones you can trust. Anything you got on social media right now that is a local news outlet is suspicious. The russians and other malign actors in the United States have sites that are often called fake news, a label i quite dispatch from everyones vocabulary because it delegitimize his news. I would like to replace it with viral deception. When someone is appropriating the identity of news and pretending they are news by taking the form of a new site, for example, abc. Com. Com was set up in 2016 to look like abc. The dangerous people think they are going to reputable local news and theyre going to an imposter site and they are deceived. So anything that doesnt have exactly this logo, this identity , and in our case in philadelphia, jim gardner from channel six, come to us jim gardner channel six. Come to the channels you know. The danger is you go for verification and you get a sleeper site and you stay home and just dont vote. Claire so it sounds like what kathleen is talking about which is really a concerning scenario of imposter new sites helping to magnify disinformation or put out disinformation, really would require intense coordination sites, local voting local Law Enforcement, and media. Do we have anything in our Intelligence Community apparatus that would allow for that kind of coordination and outreach and sort of, what is the state of of itsright now in terms robustness on the federal level for assisting in these efforts . Dir. Clapper i have no idea. Structure would be, i would look frankly to the fbi, 66ch has through their 55 or field offices, they have probably the best network of local liaison with local officials for enforcement of anyone. Department Homeland Security leastes i think 77, at when i left the government in 17, fusion centers, which work with the fbi. So i would hope, but i have no idea that theres been some some scenariosn spinning on just what they would do. One other factor i would mention being effect of states red or blue, and in a red state, how aggressive would a governor, republican governor be about efforts on russian social media to disrupt the election . Versus a blue state. So thats another factor and i have no way of gauging, i just know its out there. Course at thew of federal government supplied in the wake of the 2016 election finds to help shore up security. However, never states actually ,urned down those funds particularly red states were not actually interested. Dir. Clapper there are bills languishing in the senate right now to enhance Election Security , of course they are not going anywhere before the election. So for my part, very concerned about, even in spite of the justns learned since 2016, how well prepared we are given very partisan charged environment of this election. If the scenarios that you suggested occur just how we will react to them. And again, its all basically local, and i think the point about media being our National Conscience is a good one, and upefully the media will step in these situations because i think thats going to be our most important bulwark of defense. Claire let me ask you briefly about the fbi. We have a president who has attacked Intelligence Community andntlessly since 2016 indeed is currently engaged through his attorney general in encounter investigations of a number of members of the Intelligence Community. Let me askat you to what degree has that ability ofpled the the ic to respond to anything that comes up and others who may insist there was an impressive report out of the senate Intelligence Committee, a bipartisan report, that did identify a number of threats to reviewed theand 2016 election situation. Do you think that there is ourgh robustness between congressional committees and what remains of our ic to address any of this on the federal level . Again, iter well, has to have implicitly a Chilling Effect on people at the individual level. I just read the media today that apparently have been subpoenaed by senator johnsons committee, and here we are four years later in less than two months away from the election. So when people see that, or they as in the case of dan coats, who was telling truth to power and as a result was removed essentially as dni. So people see that and its hard to gauge because its kind of a subjective thing and boils down to what individual intelligence people think and do in a given situation. And its very hard to forecast that. Claire on that note i like to get in some of the questions from our audience. Document here that will present some of your questions, if you can please forward those questions, and i will be delighted to present him to our extraordinary speakers. While you do that, let me mention that theres a real role for the Academic Community to be vigilant as we begin early voting and through election day to monitor all the social media traffic thats relevant to their media market. So that they can help flag this information to reputable local Media Outlets to disseminate widely. The reasons that you should be able to trust them but also the reasons you should be wary of alternative strains of influence, particularly about your voting. Claire i think i need to remind members of our audience how to send your questions in. Youll want to use twitter, and theres a protecting democracy 2020. Please feel free to send your and ions to that hashtag will convey them to our speakers. I think i have some questions coming in, but while im waiting for those i will continue our conversation just a little bit. Briefly about voter suppression. One of the things thats changed dramatically since 2016 is that we of course have donald trump in the white house, who was election in 2016. The president of the United States himself was not running for reelection. That means the of our executive branch has a vested interest in andoutcome of the election, in the runup to this election, there has been a lot of activity on the part of the white house and various cabinet secretaries trying to support the reelection bid donald trump. See withwe expect to regard to things that the executive branch uniquely has the ability to influence . One of the things im thinking about is security on election day and the threat to actually send Law Enforcement to polls. Jim, have you given any thought to that and whether or not that would have a Chilling Effect . As i understand it, that actually would not be legal, and that there would have to be some kind of threat to justify as well as a request from local officials to bring federal officials in. However, the possibility of fake security threats and disinformation circulating in that regard could provide the ,xcuse for federal agents similar to what happened in portland, to actually come to polling stations. Any thoughts about that . Dir. Clapper ive thought about it when the threat was made about sending federal Law Enforcement to polling places. Theres an awful lot of polling places in this country, so for one it would be just a simple limitation, physical limitations. Theres not that many people we could send to that many polling places. Analysis think that in many cases, that local officials negatively toite that and certainly would raise a stink i think particularly because they had requested anything. So i think for minorities particularly, if federal police of some, of portland show up, that could have certainly an intimidating effect on voters. So i hope it doesnt happen, given the bent of our apartment of justice and particularly the attorney general. I think would look for opportunities to do just that, though. Have isnother concern i about potential federal intervention in what is essentially a locally conducted activity. Raise a i like to question in a different fashion. We are so polarized now we have so many instances in which some individuals legitimately are not has attacked the integrity of agencies that in the past we wouldve trusted to give us Accurate Information. So there are questions now mccann we trust the food and Drug Administration to tell us the truth about a vaccine . And specifically in the context was 2016 so polarized that when youre reporting from the Intelligence Community were concerned that it wouldnt be believed because people would assume youre simply an operative of the Obama Administration . Dir. Clapper thats very true, and i think your point about Government Entities that have formerly normally been trusted will not be. There could be i think easily a anything theut government says, which is regrettable. I dont think we have that 2016 asn as stark as in it is now. If anything, polarization has gotten worse. When i was writing the First Edition of cyber war, when we knew much less than we do now , it was unclear that the russians were actually behind it they werepeople essentially saying you cant trust them, they are just obama operatives. I remember talking to people of integrity, goodwill, who are smart people, who said what youve got to factor in his these are the same people who told us there were weapons of mass destruction. So perhaps the problem is theyre just not competent. Now of got a second reason you might doubt. My logic went like this, if an agency made a mistake on maps weapons of mass destruction, it would be so much more careful than it ever was in the past even though it mightve been careful in the past and inadvertently got it wrong. That im going to go with the idea that they are telling me the truth. So before we have the evidence i was premissing the book on the assumption that it was the russians. In the absence of confirmation , butthe Mueller Report people within the Academic Community have raised sufficient doubts about the integrity of these processes to say who do you trust, now in 2020 if someone were to say the russians are doing x, would we even believe that they are . And should the news media say that they are . Then our whole system breaks down. Dir. Clapper i would just add that thats one reason why i personally cautious and conservative, because i was around, i think it was october of 2002, and my fingerprints were on the National Intelligence estimate about appenzell mass destruction and i was director of what was called nina, National Imagery and mapping association. I was present for National IntelligenceCouncil Meeting that ended up approving that, although it did have some compelling to since i got buried. , fastforward to 20152016, is one reason why personally was very careful thet what we said and that conference levels that we ascribe to the assertions we made about russian interference. Particularly the case with respect to the Intelligence Community assessment that we published in january 17. Claire let me now as some of the questions the audience is asking. Is, howt question secure are american Voting Machines . Now let me sort of rephrase this question a little bit, because some of them are strictly electronic balloting, and theres a big difference between electronic and paper ballots. And then of course there are those states with electronic balloting with paper backup, so this is a very technical subject. Do you have any thoughts there . Let me just say one more thing about it, and 2016 of course there were reports about hacking into Voter Registration roles, but we didnt have at least even with further information widespread reports of attempts to manipulate actual votes. Dir. Clapper we made the statement in the assessment that we saw no evidence of tampering machines or voter tallies. Thats not to say didnt happen, we just didnt see the evidence of it. And again, i think this time there will be heightened awareness of this. Without ive read, and i cant verify this, but theres a very voter votingge of processes where there is paper ballot backups. Be ald hope that would buttress against tampering, but it certainly quite possible. One of the things that concerned russians rickthe and ordering sometimes they were quite noisy they almost wanted us to know they were doing it. Voter registration rolls, for example, theres all kinds of mischief that can be done manipulating them, but they never did anything with it. The supposition was that this is a sleeper thing and that perhaps they were doing it to understand how to penetrate and if they wanted to manipulate later, i dont know if thats a case or not. I do think theres a greater sense of awareness and aboutened sensitivity manipulate theto voter tallies. Is it a changed game in 2020 because of the connections . Ill just leave it that way, between foreign malign actors havehose who are actually a vested interest that level of coordination . Is that a game changer for 2020 . Dir. Clapper well, it could be. I mentioned ive talked about this in my book about the striking parallels and similarities between things that the russians were doing and saying and the Trump Campaign was doing and saying. Particularly with respect to Hillary Clinton, and specifically, her health. Striking parallels and similarities. Im not suggesting the c word or anything, but how much of that we will see in 2020, i dont know. But we certainly shouldnt be similarif we see parallels in some areas. Claire so let me ask an question. Are you aware of whether local media have set up any portals to receive and investigate election interference tips . The person who asked the question says im aware of meter squint, but that sends tips to registrars, not media. I would encourage everyone who has access to local media structures to do that. So what can they do specifically . Kathleen if i were running a major media outlet, we know some news outlets are more popular. I would open a tip line and i would publicize it and say, the same way they open consumer helplines, that safety think youve been defrauded, just contact this line and our reporter will see whether or not, i think thou to consider this consumer helpline and it ought to be a voter helpline and that we ought to be encouraging every local media outlet that has an audience to do it, and to set up a capacity around election day itself if were particularly worried about the physical voting on election day. You dont have a Second Chance at that point. Once it is past, youre out of the game. To set up those kinds of structures that let people raise concerns that theyve read about and heard about and then have regular onair breakins in order to engage in what we know from scholarly standpoint is the best means of debunking. You can debunk in ways that would legitimize a claim if youre not careful. So you dont want to set this up and magnify concerns that are not actually there. Claire one of the things we havent talked about that could also be help here is that systems that have been set up in some states could be more widespread to verify voting after the fact. Organization called verified voting. We have at least one individual from that organization who we speaking with us in our afternoon roundtables. About how verification of boating could work. One of the things thats berisome is that there will an initial readout of the election on november 3, then theres going to be the tallies coming in from the mail in an absentee ballots that could affect that readout. If you then on top of it have verification procedures to verify the votes that have been cast that could yet revise the tallies further, so this could be a very drawn out process in which if its a close election, we really wont know for quite a while, and if the initial sense is that one candidate or another and then that won changes, how that will play, whether or not people will be prepared to accept and have confidence in the announce results of the election. We also need to think systematically Going Forward because early voting is now going to become far more normal across all elections about changing the patterns of reporting having the state systematically think about when they start to tally the votes that they have, and how they tally because people for the most part are able, i believe, and ive been talking with law , to revoke a vote once at cast it. One problem with tallying is a state that allows you to say i now want to cast another vote, how would you do that if you wanted to have early vote tallying . We need to think these things through so that we can protect the integrity of the ballot, but also protect the ability of the individual if they decide they want to change their mind to revoke that boat and cast another vote by election day. That is complex and hasnt been systematically discussed. I worry we will have to decide it on the fly. Claire let me get a couple more questions before we are out of time. Has miss information related to the coronavirus pandemic created hospitablee environment for election related this information . Thats a really important question and one of the things i know you been looking at is the spread of conspiracy theories. Weve also been hearing about that with regard to the attorney general recently and the degree to which members of the cabinet seem to subscribe to conspiracy theories. What about the link between coronavirus disinformation and Election Security . Kathleen well first, we know the russians have been spreading conspiracy theories. Weve been focused on russian disinformation about elections, but the russians have spread disinformation about gmos, 5g, vaccination, and coronavirus. They are engaged in any move they can make that makes the United States look bad, and they always have. Becomes ann environment in which you have conspiracy theories more active and have been in some domains, and this is a health debate, but Conspiracy Theory about health could affect the likelihood that you cast a ballot. We know that people are more likely to believe that conspiracy theories are no more likely to not engage in protective behaviors that they ought to be engaged in. Youre less likely to say youre going to take a flu vaccine, youre less likely to say if the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective fda standards, that you will take the vaccine. So we know that conspiracy theories are able to affect projected behaviors. The question is what would happen if you harness those conspiracy theories to a claim about the election that had something to do with covid, with that in fact be effective with those individuals . The worry is that the answer might be yes. Claire did you want to add anything on that . Dir. Clapper i think that allows me to make a point thats kind of important because just to make, at least in my mind a clear distinction between cybersecurity and the physical administrative security, if you will, of the voter apparatus and the means by which votes are cast, compiled, computed, and reported. And thats all very important, but to me, theres a second major category which i would call cognitive security. This has to do with resisting what is promulgated on the internet, on social media otherwise, getting people to question what they see are read on the internet. I think weve done precious little preparation for improving our cognitive security. Is very subjective, but i do think that at least for me, there are two distinct categories of concern that i have. One is sort of the cyber administrative physical security versus the more subjective cognitive or intellectual security. Questioning the conspiracies and other falsehoods that are spread on social media. Claire and that concept of cognitive security is an incredibly important one. We may not have caught up to where we need to be shoring up our cognitive security in advance of 2020, but are certain help it something that we will be looking at in the future. Let me get one more question in here from the audience. What if any is the impact of foreign election interference on elections for offices other than that of the president in 2020 . To foreign governments only care about the white house, or should state and local elections as well . Go . Far down do they think inper i russias mind, the most important election is the one for president. Forppose if they chose to senatorial elections that could involve themselves but i think in their mind the most important thing is the president. We sort of pat ourselves on the back on how well things went in the midterms in 2018. I dont really think that was a real good index for the extent of russian interference, because i dont think they were that interested. Thats an important lesson, we were sort of saying to ourselves, we got through 2018, no major evidence, we must have improved. As you point out, it may not be our improvement but their lack of interest. Kathleen the russian hacked content did disclose a congressional level data that was used in at least one of the campaigns of 2016 at the congressional level. Claire thats helpful. Morning, former dni dan coates called for a Bipartisan Congressional Commission to oversee the election and guarantee the integrity of the vote count. Do we think that would be how measure, or do we reliable would that be should congress get into the act . With that be an effective thing for them to do . What i would offer idea, is of course a good but im not sure if theres time left to organize something of that magnitude and complexity this late in the process. Would raise the question in this polarized environment, do we have people who are considered nonpartisan and trusted enough by both sides to actually staff one . Governore people like kane and congressman hamilton who headed up the 9 11 commission, while everyone said they are people whose judgment i would trust, they would never play games with any evidence. We are so polarized now, we may have made it impossible to put in place any structure that would not be challenged by someone for venal partisan inns. Dir. Clapper i completely agree with that. Changedi fear its a game from 2016, the degree of polarization has become so extreme and the level of mistrust so high. Jim, you mention the fact that you had recently been subpoenaed, and im sorry to hear that. I saw it when i read the paper. I havent actually heard anything officially. Claire thats interesting. We know that the attorney general is working on a report outugh durham that may come and there are several other attorney generals as well as three Senate Committees we talked about in fbi investigations. Should we be anticipating that some major report could drop between now and the election that would have a very similar impact to what the hacked emails had . You get the timing exactly right, you release that, and before people have a chance to really digest the reliability of what they have read, it throws the election. Dir. Clapper well, i dont know. I assume that certainly thats the president subjective, that there be some bombshell that would be dropped just before the election about actions that people took in 2016. But i dont know. I guess the message i take away from this is what we were supposed to get done was to nor the russian interference. Have we done that, then everything had been hunkydory, i guess thats the message here. Claire of the counter investigation, yes. There is a real concern, you rhyme beamer that bill barr, went thats when he was recently testifying, was asked whether or not he would refrain from issuing any reports that might impact the election and the immediate runup to the election and asked specifically about the potential for an impactful durum report. And he said i do not promise that. So he might very well be doing that. However, durum himself has said that these investigations take a long time and he may not be done with the report in time for the election. Dir. Clapper all i know is what i read in the media. I dont know what to read into all that, and whether or not durham will come out with something before the election. I dont know. Claire we are pretty much out of time. There will be a 45 minute break now. The next panel, which will be moderated by my colleague carrie cordero, will feature robert fellow at sear nas, scott bates, deputy secretary of state of connecticut, bonita group to, president and ceo of the Leadership Conference on civil and human rights, bill kristol, the director of defending democracy together an editor at large of the the director of the alliance for securing democracy and the german marshall plan. Been a fabulous and fascinating conversation between the two of you. , having knownss both of you a little while, i have been excited about getting both of you in a room together, even a virtual room for this conversation. Jim, of course, your service to the country and continuing engagement are so deeply appreciated. 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