[laughter] that is not a recipe for progress. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website booktv. Org and click on the after words tab to find deborah stones interview along with all previous episodes. High everybody. Welcome to the National Book festival and this had difficult time of the pandemic. One thing we can do, i know you are loving it as i am is to read good books. I wrote a book that was published this summer which was about a cia officer who was struggling with one of the central problems of our time. Which is knowing what is true and what isnt. And it is my great pleasure to have with me today, toeople who wrote two of the very best books of this summer. About issues related to our new technological associated world. First i want to introduce mark galvin my former colleague at the Washington Post wrote an extraordinary memoir of his dealings with Andrew Snowden that led to t revelations out nsa technology and surveillance. The subtitle of his book says the american surveillance state. I also want to introduce anothe outstanding author Thomas Redden who teaches at john hopkins whose book active measures is a history of what we have come to call disinformation. The ways in which our election system, our politics are great political fabric and the manipulated by foreign governments in the history of that kind of operation going back many decades. These are two extraordinary books. I am delighted to have them with me this morning. I went to ask each of you if you would begin with a brief one minute summary of what you would most like readers at this National Book festival to know aut your books. And they build go on to a broader discussion. Bart lead us off. Dark mirror is an attempt really to combine thr books. Is a story of edward stoughton, who he is, how he did what he did, why he did what he d. And it takes you behind the scenes of our interaction journalistic source. It is a story of the surveillance state. In the content of the revelations snowden made about the nsa. And the change of boundaries that it secretly put into effect after 911. So there lines that were crossed after 911 that the American People did not know about. On this third is a more personal memoir which i did not expect right. As investigative reporting that went into this. It brings you into the newsroom, unto the Moscow Hotel Room and all of the places where i was doing my own reporting and the dilemmas and risks and in some cases dangers that i faced. See what i should say just enclosing, in the opening discussion of dark mirrors that readers will find in berks book a highly technical version of the source of dilemmas and dramas we associated with the president the stakes are high and bart takes us inside the newsroom of the 21st century. I think that is when the strongest parts of the book. Thomas your book is similarly one i had a chance to talk about with the public early in its publication. An extraordinary book as i said in my review in the Washington Post. I ask you to describe a little bit of what you were trying to do in this broad book with the history of active members of disinformation over time. In 2016 was the election interference here in the general election was Getting Started in mid june that year. The public side of it. Investing gating a russian hacking campaign, an older one is closely playing attention to a russian computer Operation Network at the time. Very quickly became clear looking at a disinformation operation literally within one day it was quite clear. While i was able to understand most of the technical forensic evidence very quickly became clear i was not equipped to understand the history part i was not equipped to understand the dynamics of what it means when large intelligence organizations develop a focus on this informing, on shaping narrates on interfering in public and sometimes private conversations. Either in a broadway or in a ry targeted way. So that history was what ultimately allowed me tot put into context what happened in 2016. And i spent about four years writing that history. Host thomas i think everyone looked at this in a couple days before the 2020 president i election would want t ask you, this effort to manipulate our politics from abroad in particular by russia continuing in your judgment . Guest it appears to be continuing. But look at the 2020 election from the perspective of Russian Military intelligence or indeed another russian intelligence any russian intelligent actor be a government or private sector. They actually have a real problem. The expectation that a lot of people have is they will be aggressive, they will be effective, they will again try to play this game of Political Warfare the cia called in the 1950s. Theyre delivering against extraordinary expectations. 2016 in many ways was the perfect storm for them. Highly polarized situation. We still have that obviously. Nobody expected election interference in 2016. Not everybody but a lot of people are expecting it today, which to a degree but only to a degree creates a certain amount of unity or at least the senses are up today. So yes they are trying, but probably harder for them to succeed again. Host bartz i want to turn this question to you and ask you to assess the foreign threats to american citizens by a Computer Technology versus the thing that you focused on the road about in your book the american surveillance state. Is there a way for you to assesshe relative danger external from the kinds of people tha thomas is focused on in mosw and internal and the continued efforts bysa to collect information around theorld that may target amerans. A very differentinds of threats the external Threat Landscape is abroad. A lot of it has to do straight up espionage. Whether it is commercial o traditional americanstyle defense of natiol security espionage. You have many actors, some with criminal motivation and some with commercial, and some with security who are netrating american Computing Devices wh phishing attacks and other more sophisticated methods. Sohey arereaking into defense contractors. The breaking into university research. They are breakin into commercial procees. They are breaking into covid research. In order to gain some sort of advantage. Of course theres a large number ofackers who are looking to steal personal identification for identity theft, fincial theft, there are blackmailers who are comingfter american to they think can pay. And they are using ran somewhere to lock up computers and thrtened to destroy informationf a ransom is not pa. The threat from t nsa is a more of a shifting of boundariese tween the government and its own peopl in a democracy. It is a fact thatn the course of surveillanc of foreigners they have moved into the large digital comments, it is surveilling large swabs of t internet itself. And in so doi it inevitably pulls in huge volumes of u. S. Citizen traffic. And so, we a being asked to tolete a level of surveillance over americans that we never had before. Sue and let me talk about a question you addressed somewhat i your book. To put it in t most direct wa way, do worry that the revelation of all of the things that the nsa could do, al of the cabilities may have weakened the United States ability to defend itself against very aggressive an increasinglys sophisticated adversaries . Ihink there is no doubt that some of the revelations must have reduced collection. Must have interfered with nsa operations. And not least because of the opportunity cause. The time and personnel and money that was expended on mitigating against those risks. Survey of the hundreds and hundreds of people in the Intelligence Community were occupied fulltime with learning what risk there has been to collection, mitigating those and finding alternate paths to the same information, those people are not doing Something Else they would normally have been doing. There are other ways in which snowdens revelations could be argued to have led to collection lawsuits. But i dont know you could count that as damage under the way our system operates. That is to say if the revelations lead consumers to demand greater privacy because they did not like having their own data intercepted. Until than Internet Companies like google encrypted its connections from google servers to your own servers. That interfered with nsa collection. That is the marketplace working the way it supposed too. If citizens did not like some of what they were learning when asked for legislative changes are brought legal challenges count that as the system working the way its supposed to work. So a lot of the things in the Health Community regards as damaging about snowdens leaks is actually the system responding appropriately and according to our own Core Principles of how we govern ourselves. If i could quickly jump in. I also had the privilege to review boo in the Washington Post. It was truly an impressive book. And in fact changed my opinion and views on what Edward Snowden did. In some ways its the highest compliment you can get as an author. If you read his book next to mine, theres really a question that leaps up from thatomparative read so to speak. The question is, how can i be the nsa has these really impressive signal intelligent capabilities that barton talked about, yet, failed and i say in referce to the entire u. S. Intelligence community really significantly if not spectacularly in 2016 and understanding an ongoing election interference before it happened and even in realtime. Because a member of the people tracking it early on were private sector companies, dell secure works and outside expert experts. Not people in the Intelligence Community. At least they did not mention any of their early findings publicly and in hindsight im not convinced they had their eyes on the ball. So what happened there . That is a greatuestion. To some extent i can speculate th relates to, you dont find something you are not looking for. With the nsa and the community are governed by an extensive and prioritized list of questions and topics that are meant to be looking at. So it is proliferation of nuclear weapons. What exactly is happening with iran on any of the following subject areas and so on down the list. Where they tasks . Did they think to look for outside terference in u. S. Elections . There could be some doubt about that. Think this mig be a useful time to ask you to share with our viewers you are sense of what Edward Snowden is like. This is an elusive personaty for most of us. He someby that has really shaped the world. Youave the unusual opportunity to talk with him, im guessings much as any other person except his wife heard youve seen him and moscow. Describe for usor the National Festival viers what hes like as a person. What trouble do, what you admired, what your take away was . He is certainly a character. He is someone who follows his own rules. If he is not interested in something as a student does not pay any attention to it. And gets terrible grades. Hes tired of high school so after spending most of a year away because of illness he never returns and takes the ged instead. Which he aces with flying color colors. He teaches himself computer techniques because he enjoys the computer. Any signs up to take Certification Courses for a bunch of advanced certifications in the computer field. Included certified ethical hacker, thats one of my favorites. And many cases without even take the course he takes the exam and he has a natural ability to understand what the examiner is looking for and to answer the question. He takes a highly unusual route into the Intelligence Community. Starting off as a nighttime security guard. On finding that his talent for computer work is accidentally discovered route he is encouraged to get a microsoft certification and just start applying for jobs in a community that its not caring much about Educational Attainment it cares what you can do. He is someone who has a very strong and unbending sense of what is right and wrong. In that sense he is a zealot. In my experience many whistleblowers are. They see the same things that other people see, they judge them and they say ifo one else is going to do something about this than i am. These capable of being funny. He will every now and then relax and shoot the breeze and talk about offtopic things. But he is unusually focused. And quite stubborn about what he really wants on the subject that he has become best known for. We had a fraught relationship and a lot of tension at the margins about what he wouldve wouldnt tell me. Theres one significant moment in whi i believe he had misled me to it another kind of confrtation. The Different Administration come next year would you like to s snowden allowed to come back and faced trial here in america . The evil would demand that in the National Security community. What do you think the terms of that trial should be . Should he be allowed to make an argument that he really helped more than he hurt . How do you see that going first about its not going to happen voluntarily on his part. The charge he actually faces includes espionage. We cant sort of makep how you would like a trial to go. I would fit his own sense o justice. I think i agree wh him here if he were able to mount a public offensef he could show a jury try to advance the interests of the United States and its own citizens. But the way the laws written right now, the onus of the cre as he had lawful access to classified material and he gave it to someone who did not have lawful accs parade that said thats the whole crime. He cant s what it turned out i exposed some legally doubtful operations. Even if every Single Program he exposed had been found t be unconstitutional by the suprem court, i would still be considered espnage under the terms of the l. Until we are not goi to get the kind of trial in whiche is allowed to offer evidence of his intentions or effec on security. I turned to thomas and ask about the riddle i found most tauntingn your back active meures. You got there a dailed powerful description of all thehings russia over decades has done to try and manipulate other countries. As you talk about recent events the waves turned upside down through the 2016 elections and since, talk about the way in which individual american citizens have been carriers of this disinformation. Even the mules we carry the poisonous material back and forth for amplifying spreading russian tidbits, we would not have had much effect. Is tt an accurate way to describe whereou end up in the book . Elaborate on that theme. The underlying party polits is crucial and how this information works. Back this infortion is almost like a parasit. At lives off an amazing host. What i mean by that is for example active members exacerbate existing tension, existing friction, existing friction on the old communist language does emerge in the 1920s. This was designed to exacerbate information that was already existing. For example a highly parized situation in the 1970s the context of the peace movement. Soviets in east germany for example very much in the exampl example. Lets ultimatelyerves their interest. But that creates an intellectually really difficult problem. Im going to suggest something unusual, look at this problem from the point of view of the operator running an operati say the kgb in the cold war. You are exacerbating an existing phenomenon,ow can you tell really whether you are the cause of a certain development or whether something was already happening without you . So i think what we are looking at today is the situation that trying to especially known 2020 the russian Intelligence Committee tries to take advantage of existin debates, frictions in the United States. But if we fall intohe track of ascribing to to much power. For example if you think her claim that the Russian Election interference with response before getting donald trump elected simply not enough evidence to support that claim. We cannot say for a fact theres an actual impact on the electio election. Lets make that judgment if you say i believe the Russian Election interference is responsible for donald trump winning the election at least partly, you are ultimately helping them to achieve that goal. The nutshell this becomes part of disinformatio. We are really in a constructiveightmare here. T me ask each of you t think with of us about what we can do about the threats that you describe so wlin your book there active measures part because our title is big brother is watching. What can we do to help the modern day insta smith he was the hero of that book resist, fight back,urvive all of these technological threats . Ill start with you and name some the people who might help so you can tell me ifhey will or wont. Obviously psycholog companies could help protect us. We are not sure if thats a good idea or bad. Conceivably government could help protect its citizens. But again, terrible problems and not occurring. What way do you see, to get the citizens of the United States better ptection, better security. Hows that going to happen . Quebec f you can conive the u. S. Government, t u. S. Intelligence community had breached a line that it h previously been able to respect wit surveillance of its own citizens, then you have a number of possible actors here. The technology have quite deliberately done a substaial amount to restrict that. Because just about every website you go to now is a secure website. Xt tps, little like lock icon in your browser by. This is not the case. E whole internet has made that change led by a few Companies Like google. Whose motives were explicitly a desire to spend tens of millions of dollars and possibly more than that in order to thwart colction by its own governme government. Which is a remarkable thing. It is not hpen before its largely they been cooperators. Some extent still are. You can look at it cynically and say google, facebook, crosoft with their poor attitude towards us i knowing despite honor users but us. Because theres a whole differt set of problems having to do with the information, and the surveillance economy and the private sector. You have other players, their polical processes with ngos and their demandingore from more privacy in achievingt in some legislative forms. There are litigators were challenging some of the lawful basis for some and sai operations. Butundamentally of citizens in the marketplace are aing for more privacy theres a chance they can get it. , someone to ask you toalk about the future threats beyond the nightmares we have been discussing and my new novel i talk about the ways in which computers can now create video and sound imagery that is so perfectly wovenogether that you can create a fake david, a fig doll, a fake joe. Its very difficult to know the difference between the fake and the real. So we are entering a new era in which we are going to have to put quotation marks here around truth until weve done our checking. And i want to ask you as the historian of this information if you will, what you think about this new world of deep fakes and the ability to not create fake news but fake events. How will we deal with that . I think the quantity of forgeries is much higher than i have seen to date. And of course they use technology with much more handson. You cant say orgies in the cold war were as they are industrial today. Quality of forgeries today, the future threat youre describing is is indeed in the futu from now. What im more concerned about is almost the teat of deep denial instead of deep fakes. For example imagine the access hollywood saber candidate donald trump use foul language to describe women, the access Hollywood Tape came out today. He would simply deny its authenticity. Because its credible and easy to forge an fake his voice. So its easy to dismiss actual forensic evidence in a way that was just not possible before. So tts on the flipside as well. But what can we do about this i dont think it would be impossible to draw the line between fact and forgery. In fact what im seeing is an enre discipline, an entire community of people emergg and that includes intelligent officers that includes Law Enforcement includes investigative journalist include scholars, opensource intelligence really obsessed about the quality of forensic evidence of all kinds through images sound artifacts. There is an obsession really with the truth. But its come sweetly countered acacia flying we see in different disinformation today. Im hopefully we will be in a position to accept that community that is emeing of people who are of the mindset of investigative journalist so to speak. Will be able to teach others to really enjoy that moment when you find a new peace of idence that leads you to revisit your existing assumptions. In a way thats when the greatest things of a scholar and investigative journalist. Im optimistic. Could i just mentioned david that in you own book you have come up wit a near ture scenario. I dont want to spoil it here. In wch a deep fake is sophisticated enough to fool a lot of people in the short term. And that actually does not matter to the purposes of the fakers whether forensic evence comes law factor say maybthis thing isnt true. Theyve achieved their goal simply by causingeople to believe it or believe it might be possible. Even for just a few minutes. Thats a problem that is not solved by forensics. Guest i was thinking about that problem. I put to you a conclusion that i have come to. You tell me if i am being naive here. In this role where it is so easy to manipulate, to create false information that creates to be real. The value of the truth, no quotation marks, the truth, reliable action, information you can trade upon and security markets you can used to vote as a citizen in our political case. Value of that truth will become much greater. And people will pay more because its so important to them. So that gives me hope. The market for what we do as journalists as analyst is going to be greater because people cant, going to die with information string. The second questions id like to ask bart and thomas to answer. We wonder whether Technology Companies should be more responsible for the truth or the falsity of what they put on their site. An argument that facebook should be like the Washington Post. Barter i write an article and they say thats not true our paper can get sued. They published it, should that case apply as well to a social Media Company like facebook whose going to have to be liable for what itost . Bart what you think . Thats a rlly interesting question. There are two issues among probably many others that come to mind for me. One is, these Internet Companies have vigorously resisted that role or legal and regulatory reasons. They are a public utility, they are essentially a neutral conveyor same with the phone company. You dont hold the phone Company Liable for the fact that people make telephone calls or say untrue things or make damaging forms of speech. That is the place they want to be. For legal and regulatory reason reasons. If you ask them to be, as facebook says, it does not want to be an arbiter of truth. You have to try to imagine how that can be done to scale with well over a billion users. And god knows how many posts each day how could they possibly be for all that many things and yet they are deliberately promoting content in order to keep our intention to keep us for ten seconds longer. With the advertising business per their algorithms doing them to be responsible how they use that. The same thing with youtube. New thinking about a subject and the next thing you are no your watching videos that are more and more insightful. More and more extreme. You are locked into a pattern which there is an interactive process of radicalization. Stood back so thomas im going to ask you to wrap up this terrific discussion. By taking your role as historian of this information, and pull your cama back think 20 years from now. Howe are going to look back on this. Have been living through with a normas uproar over russian efforts inhe 2016 election and everything surrounded. But we lk back and see this as the beginni of a problem that got worse that we never found a way to deal wit . Or will be over time get more sophisticated. And i want to say cynical, and not be as disrupted by these externals . Of course especially f anybody with historical luck youre very cautious about predicting the future. Because we tend to gett wrong. The two overarchinghreats and problems that im really concerned about now are unrelated to Russian Election interference. The first one is the Current Administration with the president himself laying the groundwork calling on the legitimacy of the 2020 election immediately after words. Hes doing that in a systematic fashion and he is not alone in preparing that. Mbine that with a potential second wave of covid19 hitting us exactly in that timeframe. Which in some way could suppor the argument the election was not legitimate because it was so risky to go out and vote in november, difficult to say. Thats a pretty scary combination of trends. In the covered situation howeve however, i tried to be optimistic. I meant immigrant to overcompensate on the optimism side sometimes. But covid in some ways is accelerating a positive also. That is look at twitter in the wake twitter has handled misinformation. Even coming from the president s son and the president himself. They took action because now its not jus an ideological argument whether speech should be somehow curtailed. Announce life or death. Misinformation has become lethal. If you think covid is a hoax, you have a Family Gathering in a couple days later couple weeks they lady her mothernlaw dies that is likely going to change your perspective and ideological unsocial made it would never change but we see stories like that coming up. So covid and away giving out the observation you just made yourself. Factually correct information based on Clinical Trials based on Reliable Research in science is increasing in the face of misinformation. At the extraordinary cost of getting the information wrong. Well on that affirmation of the privacy of fact, i think its a good time for us to conclude this conversation. I want to thank our two superb authors art to gilman with the dark mirror is unique exploration of what Edward Snowden, what hisase meant, but the future of surveillance in america is. And thomas who is active measures is the best history of this information ofhe effo to alter the basis of what we see and pitics that i have ever read. Author of a novel called the politician which some and went t thank the National Book festival the theme is American Ingenuity i think weve got a pretty good dose of technoersion of that as the two authors help us walk our w through some of the bigge issues of 202020. Thanks very much ladies and gentlemen. I hope to continue with you. Your watching book tv on cspan2 on this holiday weekend. Television for serious readers. Heres a programs to watch out for, former appellate judge Douglas Ginsburg exams a constitution to the eyes of judges legal scholars and historians. Former president barack obama flex on his life and political career. And Sally Hubbard looks at the history of monopolies in american industry. Find a complete schedule booktv. Org or on your program guide. During a Virtual Event hosted by new york citys strand bookstore New York Times columnist ross delta interviewed author tele burton about her book strange rights in this portion of the program she describes how views on religion are changing in america. So we are not necessarily talking about people who are atheist although atheist tend to under selfreport. We are talking about for whatever reason alienate by institutional religion organized religion who feel they have nothing to offer them. Who may believe in the traditional Judeo Christian god actually still had some form of faith but who are unwilling to identify or participate in as a different self or talk about the spiritual but not religious. Were also talking about a broader category i called the religious remix which is not just the spiritual but not religious was i think is the most visual version of the phenomenon. But people who identify kicked the box as it were. But whose personal practices, belief system are eclectic. A system i like to bring up here looking at how widespread this is about 30 of christians believe in reincarnation. Which is not shall we Say Something moment associate with christian orthodoxy the sort of vast array of modern expressionism witchcraft and is one of the fastestgrowing religions in the world and so on and so forth. Welcome to the National Museum virtually. Im here physically. My name is jeremy collins. In the tractor conferences and symposia. Today we are bringing this program to you with hurricane said a couple of hours away from hitting so i wanted to let all of our audience members know that we are going to bring this program to come heck or high water. If we