Transcripts For CSPAN3 Russian Influence Efforts 20171020

Thank you very much for joining us. Why dont we get started. Im paul saunders, the executive director of the center for the national interest. Thank you very much, all of you, for joining us today for what we hope will be an informative and interesting conversation about russias information efforts. To apply left, our first speaker, dr. Eric hazelteen, who is a in oneuro scientist, also former chief Technology Officer at the National Security agency. I got that correct, i hope. And also a recipient of the National Intelligence distinguished service medal. Someone with really very extensive experience at the intersection of technology and intelligence, both in the private sector and also in government. To my right, we have my new colleague, george bee bibi, who is the director of the National Intelligence center. A career intelligence professional, who had been an adviser to Vice President cheney on russian matters and also on intelligence issues. After that, the director of russian analysis at the Central Intelligence agency. After his time in government service, also developing some important private sector experience related to technology. And how people influence one another on the internet. If i could put it that way. So id like to ask each of our speakers to speak for ten minutes to get us started. Then well open it up for questions and discussion, and dr. Hazeltine, if we can start with you. Please. Id like to start at 100,000 feet, before getting into the details of the russian Information Operation in this country. I believe that its not too much of a stretch to say that the russians view us in many senses as an adversary. And i think that its also safe to say they have a different view of conflict than we do, where as we tend to think of it more in terms of warfare. They think of it more broadly where they dont distinguish so much between conflict and not conflict. You have to remember what was said about war. Its the achievement of political aims through violence. Have you to keep that in front of you always, that the end objective is political. Whether you get it through violence or hacking or buying facebook ads, as far as the russians are concerned, the end objective is what they always keep in mind. And so just some context, if you look at the economys of the two countries. Russias Gross Domestic Product is roughly that of texas. So if you do a thought experiment and imagine you were texas and the rest of the you know, your adversary was the United States. And im not saying anything negative about texas. I love texas. But im just using that as a reference. You think about the scale of things. So your adversary is the United States and you have the economy of texas, what do you do . You start there. And what you do is several things, one, you want to avoid conflict against your opponents strength at all cost. Theyre going to beat you on the battlefield in conventional warfare, you dont want to fight them. So you want to do everything you can to avoid that. While still achieving your political objective. The second thing is, that if you do have to fight them, you want to win. And it isnt a given that the superior numbers and the superior economy is going to win. If one adversary is very clever about developing spikes of capability that exactly align with the weakness of a strong adversary, they will beat them. I dont think anybody would argue that the great achilles heel of our military apparatus, is the fact that we are so dependent on the network, if the network goes down, its difficult for us to fight. So it should come as no surprise that there may be no one better in the world at Network Warfare than the russians. And the reason theyre so good is very simple. Is that they have to be. So i think that its important to have that kind of 100,000 foot view of whats happening now, because i think it puts into context what were seeing. So if the russians view us as adversaries, its fair game to engage in what they Call Information confrontation without armed conflict. Because remember, theyre trying to achieve political aims. So now lets turn to some of the more recent things you heard about with facebook, for example, in that context. A lot has been said about the russian activities in the 2016 election. And how they were trying to favor one candidate over another. But clearly that cant be the only story. For one thing, the Facebook Campaign was continuing until august of this year. We know this. Facebook has acknowledged this. And when you look at the content of the facebook. Yeah, some of it advantaged one candidate. More generally, its aim was to divide our society on multiple levels. There were divisive statements on race, on energy, on guns, on just about every latent crack in our society, that we have, pressure was applied through those ads surgically. If you look at it from that point of view, the larger aim was to weaken an adversary by heightening already existing internal dissension. Because a weakened adversary who is fighting themselves is less likely to fight you. Or if they do fight you. Theyre not going to do it with the same wealth. Clausowits also said that the aim of war is not to defeat a military. The aim of war is to remove the will to fight from your adversary. Thats the key phrase, will to fight. If theres internal dissension in an adversary, their will to fight is less, and their ability to fight when they fight is less. I think that that is the context in which i would put what has been happening, and i think the prediction of my point of view is that this is going to continue for the foreseeable future. I suspect the sanctions are not going to produce Meaningful Movement in this direction. One of the reasons i believe that is that im not going to say with certainty that the russians wanted us to know that they were behind some of these things that were happening. I think one thing we have to keep in mind, its possible that they did. Or at a very minimum they werent too concerned about us learning that it was their hand in the dnc hack, in the facebook ads and in the other things that have been happening. You say, why on earth would they not be concerned about their hand being found in this or want us to know. Or the rest of the world . And that is a fascinating question. I do not pretend to be a policy person, im a technogeek spy. Right . Im not really a policy person, but to me we do have to look at that possibility. It takes you in fascinating directions. Was this a deterrent . It is well known principal of deterrence that if you dont really have the weapon, and you cant prove it works, its not a deterrent. Was this a show of force . Was this a warning of some kind . If you mess with us, were going to mess with you. I dont know. But i think that is an aspect of this whole evolution that i suspect because i will say this, that the russians are very, very skilled in network operations. When it is their intention to hide what theyre doing. I suspect theyre about as good at it as anybody. When you look at the trade craft that is reported in the press, it doesnt live up to the standards of some things that they are probably capable of. I think thats one interesting dimension of this, that we should think about, is there a meta message to us and to the rest of the world and to the russian people in these activities that have been going on. I will end it there, and turn it over to my colleague, george. Thank you very much. George. Take it away. Great. Thank you. Id like to start out by doing something that i think is fairly rare at events like this. And that is to quote taylor swift, the popular singer. Im about to make my 12yearold daughter very happy. But thats not why im quoting taylor swift. The quote is, haters gonna hate. Very wellknown expression. Why do i raise that . Because behind that thought is actually a fairly big idea. Its one that Graham Alison cited in his study of the cuban missile crisis. The organizational process model. Its the idea that sometimes when governments do things, there is central direction, theres a Unitary National actor pursuing coherence strategic directives. Sometimes its parts of government that are operating according to their normal organizational processes. Theyre doing the things theyre paid to do. And what were seeing is not the product of an elaborate strategic plan, its a process of routine business as usual. And that is very relevant to the question that were facing today here. We have a fairly interesting picture of whats gone on in the facebook and twitter advertising purchases, the messages that were targeted at very particular proportions of our population, and very specific geographic areas. Do we look at this as part of a grand kremlin plan with very specific objectives toward the United States. Do we look at there as the result of a lower level, working level activities among russians, that is fairly routine. Or is it something in between . I would like to argue its probably something in between. But i will caution theres a lot we dont know about this, and we ought to be careful about drawing conclusions so early in this process. So id like to tell you why i think thats the case. Before i get into that. I want to point out a common cognitive trap we can all fall into as we address questions like that, thats confirmation bias. Its very easy to start with a hypothesis, an explanation for whats going on. Then go out and do research to see if you can find information thats consistent with that hypothesis, when you go about doing things like that, you usually finds evidence thats consistent with your hypothesis. The trap that you can run into is that youre not looking at alternative explanations that are also consistent with that very same evidence. And in this particular case, the hypothesis that the kremlin directed, an influence Operation Campaign in the United States that is designed to play upon disunity, to sow disessential within the United States, and ultimately to destroy our democracy, and the broader liberal international order. There is evidence that is consistent with that, i would say, though, that that same evidence is consistent with other explanations, including the haters gonna hate model. Influence operators are going to influence, thats what they do. And also, with explanations that fall in between those two extremes. So i want to offer an alternative look at this, a little bit different paradigm as a thought exercise. It goes like this. As russia sunk deeper and deeper into political and economic and societal dysfunction during the 1990s, and as they watched nato moving eastward, russians began to think that maybe this wasnt an accident. Maybe the hoards of american experts that were coming over there, providing advice on reforms that they ought to pursue, actually wanted to see russia sink deeper and deeper into dysfunction, that this was a grand design on our part to finish our enemy off, to complete the Unfinished Business of that cold war defeat. And then as time went by, social media and the internet became more and more influential. We started having revolutions in the former society union, movements in the middle east, the socalled arab spring that seemed to be very much related to social media messaging. The kremlin began to get very, very worried that all of this was pointing toward a u. S. Directed regime change effort that would very prominently feature social media as well as other things. And they started to take action to defend themselves. You started seeing a lot of activity inside russia to get a handle on social media influence. So called troll factories were created. Where they employed thousands of people to go out and post things in this medium. Comment on blogs and other posts online. Take out advertising, create message campaigns of their own. This became very, very common inside russia. A lot of people were employed doing this, a lot of money was spent in this area. And this gradually moved from inside russia out into the world more broadly. Including into the United States. What years would you describe this process . The mid2000s and on. Now, the question here is, is what were seeing with these advertising purchases on facebook and twitter, the product of these troll factories going out there and doing what theyve been doing for years . Business as usual . I would point out that the methodology that appears to be being used, that links these ad buys to russians. Much of it is linked to what we know about one of these very prominent troll factories, which has gone by a number of different names. I think the most noteworthy is the Internet Research agency, which is operating in st. Petersburg. We can trace some of these ad buys to people connected to that group. These are not highly trained intelligence professionals, for the most part, these are people that need jobs, that are being paid on quota, to go out and post things. Theyre rewarded for high productivity. Going out and posting these things. They get some broad guidance, as to what they ought to be doing. But not a lot of day to day specificity, in the direction about what theyre up to what were seeing is not inconsistent with the picture were talking about. Do i know its a and not b . No, i dont. I can say these explanations fit with what we know so far, and the best way to ensure youre not falling into the confirmation bias trap on this, is to look for disconfirming evidence. Things that can rule out high hi oh hypotheses. If your belief is that this is an effort aimed at bringing about our demise. What would you expect to see beyond the evidence weve got so far. I would submit there, we dont have disconfirming evidence, things that rule out that hypothesis, but we arent seeing some things we would expect to see if the russians were really trying to bring our democracy down. For example, it is well within russias Cyber Capabilities to do things like turn out the lights, at least temporarily in parts of our country. Things that may not have a crippling effect on our business operations, but would have a profound psychological effect on our sense of security. Wall street trading is another one, thats one that could be highly disruptive. And not only psychologically there, its interesting we havent seen that. In the area of elections, a lot has been made about the probes that have gone on in state Electoral Systems there. There is a little bit of confusion as to what actually occurred there, and im not sure weve got all of the facts yet as to what actually went on. I think theres a general sense right now that they did not mess with the actual tallying of the votes, even if they didnt mess with the tallying of the votes, i think its fair to say, they didnt do anything that would suggest to us that would try to deceive us into believing the vote system was messed with. Even if you dont have the vote physically, thats a debatable proposition, they certainly have the ability to deceive us. Into thinking they did. So far we havent seen that, which you would expect to see if that hypothesis were really whats driving the russians right now. Now, do i have anything that rules out the organizational process explanation . The haters gonna hate theory . No. But i think theres one thing i would do that could test it. I think right now it might be in the u. S. Interest to try to test it. If the russians are trying to do some things that would get our attention, that would cause us to say you know what, all the things the russians suspect weve been doing inside russia, supporting opposition movements, trying to hasten democratic reform that they find very alarming if what theyre really trying to do is to show what they can do here to get us to knock it off, we can test that proposition. Just this past week during his first meeting with newly confirmed ambassador to russia john huntsman, putin actually mentioned principles he thought should guide the bilateral relationship. One of them was mutual noninterference into the internal affairs of the other side. We could look at that and say this is bluff, he doesnt really mean that. But we could test it, too, pursue that and see. If russias goal is really to bring down our democracy and opposed to get us to change our behavior towards them, they shouldnt bite on this. They may play this out, play for time. But actually reaching a deal we shouldnt see if that hypothesis is true. And i think thats one we ought to investigate, because personally i suspect this is something they would be interested in pursuing. So i will leave it at that. Thank you very much. Can i respond . Please. Please do. You know, the thing that i learned in the intel business, when you see something bad happening, you can attribute it to malice or incompetence. And 99 of the time incompetence is a better bet. What george is saying is it competent that Russian Organization heads got head of perhaps where the policy makers were, i think that is possibility. Except in the case of the russians, i dont think thats the case. And i would kind of contest a little bit something that george said where that, you know, are we looking for evidence that the russians are trying to take down our democracy. I think thats a little bit of a straw man thats too extreme. I dont think think in their heart of hearts they really think theyre going to be able to do that. I think they much less Ambitious Goals which would also explain what were seeing. In military affairs, we have denial, which is to deny us our democratic government. And then theres the notion of degradation. I think the russians are smart enough to know that extreme begets extreme. If they really did try to do as you say, take down the command and control of our infrastructure, then i think that would be viewed that something that would engender a kinetic response. Because thats a kinetic effect, as we say, in the military. So i think in my own view that the riggs russians have a kind of degradation strategy and thats what were seeing. And interestingly ill just close my side when i see it when we are incompetent and screw up, we say, yes, we shouldnt have done it but how do we exploit it. And i interpret some of the things that are going on right now on the other side in that context. Whether or not that was their original intent, thats kind of where weve gotten into. And if you look back on the world stage and say how does the rest of the world view whats going on, at the very minimum you would have to say that they look at russia as punching above their weight with all of this. And does that hurt russia . My own view is they would rather be feared than liked. And so it has served their interest. Perhaps you want to respond. Quick response in that. I think my views and yours are not all that far apart. I think the difficulty were in right now is that the public discussion of this has been extreme. Were told we are at war, for example, by Morgan Freeman and company, that russia is seeking to destroy our democracy, and underman the liberal international order. And thats actually something weve been told by official u. S. Intelligence Community Analysis on this. Which has offered actually two contrasting explanations for what we have seen since the election. One, that the russians were trying to elect President Trump, the other that they were trying to undermine our democracy and the broader international order. And i think the reality of what were dealing with is little bit more nuanced than that. And i think you pointed out some of those nuances which are important to consider. I would really respond, i dont think honestly the russians care about whether we have a democracy or not. I think they care about are we going to mess with them and get in their political ideals. I quite agree. So i think theyre somewhat apolitical in that sense. In that they have a larger agenda, which they more care about us from a pragmatic point of view, rather than an problematic point of view as it relates to their ideals. Lets go first to dmitry saunders. I completely agree with arrack. The issue for the russians is probably not american democracy. After all the russians are good with nations with such as india, brazil and i would say israel. Whatever differences russians so our issues on the ground in syria, lebanon, not quality democracy. I think that we, george, paul and myself, together, when we talked to russian officials and had some very vigorous conversations about the interference issue, which my impression is the russians still do not take very seriously and do not understand the blanket denials on their part and would not be sufficient. I think most of us agree there was russian interference. And the facebook episode does demonstrate the russians trying to create some element of destabilization, some element of politicization in american society. We do not know for sure as george indicated why they were doing it, and what their ultimate objectives were. But ive got a question for both of you. Was it a surprise . Should it be a surprise . I thought for a number of years it was next to inevitable that russia would retaliate in some way in terms of interference in american Domestic Affairs because they were complaining that were interfering in theirs. And senator, benjamin carden, one of the greatest, he was a very strong spokesman, very energetic spokesman doing more and more to change the russian process. I want to go to what arrack said. Its quite clear you can make a strong case that its okay for us to interfere in domestic Russian Affairs because we want to bring democracy to russia. And it is not a case for them to interfere in American Affairs because theyre messing with american democracy. But you say that in warfare business. And when youre in the warfare business you kind of assume if you do something to them, they would want to do something to us. And what is quite remarkable, to me at at least, to what extent with some people on the hill starting with senator cardin, not thinking of predictable implications of their actions. Where am i wrong . Eric, please. Well, i think theres surprise and surprise. Were we surprised where they did this and how they did this, i would say no. My own personal, speaking only for myself, i was a little surprised that they didnt hide their hand as much as they did. And that made me suspect there could have been a quid pro quo. Theres no point in poking a finger in someones eye and youre responding when you dont know theyre poking. So that a strong hypothesis i think has to be looked at. At another level strategically i do think we have short corporate memories shorter than the russians. Our administrations and policymakers tend to turn over much more rapidly, and i think that they do forget when in russia they dont. And i wanted to say getting back to the point are we at, quote, war with russia. My view of the rug russians is if theyre going to go to war, theyre going to weaken an opponent long before. So to them a distinction of war and not war is not the same distinction we have. George. I think its never a wise idea to tell your boss hes wrong, so in this particular case i agree. But in this particular case, i actually agree. This is not surprising what is going on. In fact, it would be surprising were the russians not to do things here that they believe were doing there. And i think that eric is correct here. Theres no point in doing that unless youre not looking to bargain at all. If youre not looking to change our behavior, then you do want to hide your hand. You want to do things that will hasten our demise. And you want to cover your tracks precisely for the reason you highlighted, which is it would probably evoke a kinetic response, which russia doesnt want to get into for obvious reasons. Its not a fight theyre going to come out well from. So all of these are reasons why i suspect what weve got here is a situation where the russians are looking to change our behavior. They dont like what weve been doing. They have been trying to argue us into changing, pleading, complaining, delivering a list of grievances for many years with not much to show for it. And i think they have moved into a situation where theyre Strong Enough and capable enough to push back in the hope that that will get our attention. And theyve certainly gotten our attention now. Theres no question about that. The next question is have they gotten the attention of a country that doesnt recognize these nuances between war and peace, that think, you know, youre either a friend or youre an enemy, but those areas in between are difficult for us to cope with. And i think theres a danger that we could overreact, regard this as some sort of declaration of war, read more into their intentions than are actually there and find ourselves in a very dangerous situation as a result. Ambassador burke. We have a mic, yes. Thank you. I have really two interrelated questions to ask both of you. And the first is i understand that in one way or the other in undertaking these various activities the russians have been trying to send a message. Maybe as demetri argues, we can play this game, too, we can try to tamper with your internal politics and so forth. But do you think theyve made a fundamental mistake by misunderstanding the kind of, say, the kind of current semi hysterical nature of american politics, in that there has been a ferocious counter reaction to this. Its breathed new life into both the hawks on the republican side as well as given the democrats a new rationale for going after the russians. And if so, does this provide us an opportunity as george was suggesting to maybe work out a new understanding along the lines of noninterference . And secondly, in terms of their information activities, i guess the question i have is how did they fairly quickly if you follow georges scenario how did they get so good at this . I mean, Hillary Clinton and her interviews now after her book was published has even suggested to be able to kind of fine tune their information activities to target certain states that were kind of strategic in terms of the election, shes actually suggested that they needed some sort of american political strategy advice on how to engage effectively along these lines. And if george is right, that the people doing this kind of stuff are sort of potentially Unemployed People in st. Petersburg, thats not the same as a high price washington lobbyist. So why have these activities on their part been apparently pretty effective given the fact at least in my experience with the russians their understanding really of grass roots american politics is not very acute. George, perhaps you first this time. First of all, im not how effective the russian efforts have been. Its a very hard thing to assess. And oftentimes what youll get is what you might call volume metrics, how many people might have seen the messaging, and then you end up with headlines like 10 Million People may have seen the russian 100,000 worth of ads, 10 mill wherein people saw it. The problem is its one thing to know someone may have potentially looked at it and saw it and then reacted on it. And then its another thing to know youve actually affected the views, the audience youre looking at. Thats an even harder thing to know. So i think we be to be very cautious about approaching that question of how effective these things are. The second question is really is how sophisticated, really, was this campaign . And how much depth of knowledge about the american political system is necessary to do what they did . And obviously theres many people out there that believe this was highly sophisticated, required a very nuanced understanding of u. S. Politics to do. Im not persuaded thats really true. First of all, micro targeting of an audience, if youre going to buy twitter and facebook ads, you have to micro target an audience. Thats what theyre built to do. They have pulldown menus. When youre going to build an Advertising Campaign and buy something. Youve got to select who you want to put these in front of. So it not only makes it easy to micro target, those platforms actually require micro targeting of the advertising in order to work. Thats number one. Number two, it doesnt take a lot of depth of understanding of the u. S. Political system to identify swing states. And even within those swing states its not very hard to figure out what the swing districts are. And i have heard it said that the russians couldnt possibly have known who to target within these swing states. All of that information is readily available. You can go to any one of a number of data brokers that are out there that sell this information. I can buy voter lists complete with all kind of information about who, where theyre registered, whether theyve voted and all kind of demographic information that goes along with it. So could the russians have purchased all that or stolen it fairly readily from any of the companies that have this . Absolutely. Its not hard to do. Yeah, i just have a short summary of what george said. Who taught the russians was facebook and twitter with pulldown menus. Yeah. Thats the short answer to your question. But i think the larger issue is was this effective . And you have it to ask who was the intended audience and what was the intended affect. And we havent talked much about the russian population itself. Which i think is something we should think about. Someone said all politics are local. Meaning when you look at someones yes. When you look at Foreign Policy and you see a change in behavior and aggressive behavior, the first thing you look at is whats going on inside that country. That might motivate a leanforward Foreign Policy. And so i think you have to say that part of the audience for this whole thing is the russian population. And what effect do they want it to have on them, and what was the effect on them . I think thats a i dont know a lot about that. I havent studied that, but i suspect thats a very important question in terms of if im Vladimir Putin and i wake up in the morning whats the first thing i think about . I think he does think about whats going inside his country. And i think the rest of the audience is the rest of the world. Because this is projecting to the world. Our navy shows the flag, we go to different ports, you could view this as a cyber showing of the flag across the world to send a certain message about this navy of cyberspace if you will. A great white fleet. Yes. We have susan and then eisenhower and then well go over here. The mic is right behind you. Thank you very much. Well, this is a fascinating presentation by both of you. I have one observation observation request for your perspective and then also a genuine question here. But 100,000 as an ad buy doesnt sound like much money to me. I was told the other day by a cyber expert, this is not my figure but his, if the russians spent 100,000 we are talking about small potatoes. I mean almost not even a blip. So id be interested to know from your perspective whether that might influence where in the food chain this might have occurred. Secondly, doctor hassle has mentioned a number of times the fact that it was so obvious that the russians had done it. I would just like your comments on whether there was any scenario of which it could have been someone else pretending to be russian . And if so, do we have any way of going to deeper and deeper levels to figure out the answer to that question . Thank you. Could it have been a false flag operation, yes. Was it likely a false flag operation, i dont think so. And can you comment on the ad buy . Well, i read a lot about the ad buy. And one of the more amusing ones, that it was a Training Exercise for new kids at the institute. Heres 100,000, go have fun and learn. The world is really weird and stuff like that is entirely possible. I think you have to acknowledge the 100,000 a lot of people think was the tip of the iceberg. Right . The russians are very good at denial and deception, at distraction. Look over here says the magician while im doing the real stuff over here. So if you take what ive said, that they can be very good at hiding their hand. You have to entertain the possibility that this is, oh, we only did 100,000 when we may have spent millions in ways that you did not know. You have to entertain that as a possibility. George. Yeah, i agree absolutely. If we assume 100,000 is the limit of what weve spent, then in fact thats not a very significant amount relative to the amount that was spent on the campaign. I think its enough to say this wasnt patriotic hackers. You know, the russian carter community, the folks that are out there that are very good at messing around in the cyber domain are also very stingy about spending their money on stuff. They like to steal money, they dont like to spend it. So i doubt that i think we can safely rule out that this was a bunch of patriotic hackers that were at work here. It had to be someone with connections to government money in some way. But i think its a very legitimate point, that this may not be the limit of what was actually spent. What about the false sorry. Well, i think false flag is always possible. You always have to look at the perception of a false hypothesis, but in this case i doubt that that was what actually occurred. Very good. Thank you. Down here. Okay, thanks. Scott shane from the New York Times. Ive been writing about some of this stuff, and i put a couple of paragraphs in each story you may be questioning and george may be questioning and that is what seems like a fairly rational explanation for all of this, which is im putin, i saw some pretty big demonstrations against me in 2011. I blamed Hillary Clinton for those. You know, whether that was sincere or delusional, who knows. Im, you know, worried about the world abroad. Ive got trouble in various, ukraine and georgia and estonia. I feel like thats my backyard, i feel like i should control that. So by damaging you know the theory you hear is that by damaging the u. S. Brand, the u. S. Image, by making the u. S. Look like a very divided gridlocked place, all tangled up in all kinds of disputes over immigration, race, et cetera, that putin can, you know, effectively turn to russians or georgians or estonians and say you may not like us, but thats certainly not much of a model for you. So why isnt that a rational explanation for this whole program . And, you know, frankly fairly clever and fairly effective you know, maybe to small scale, but to exploit those divisions doesnt make a lot of sense. Well, i certainly agree with you that the kremlin wants to take any kind of evidence of dysfunction in the west, in the worlds showcased democracies and use that for internal propaganda purposes. They certainly want the russian population to say weve got it pretty good here, and we certainly dont like what were seeing over there. No doubt about it. Where i might offer a somewhat nuanced position would be on whether the russians actually think they have to offer a reason to stoke that purpose. I think there is plenty of material for them to work with already. Eric. I cant add to that. All right. Jacob and then don. Jacob the editor of the national interest. Thanks, paul. My question is fairly simple. Both panelists in particular both panelists in particular have been talking about the russians. Who are the russians . Are we talking about when were talking about this episode, are we talking about the fsb, the military, the doctrine, putin steering this from the kremlin or giving his blessing to it vaguely whats going on . I was just wondering if we could get a little more specificity. Boy, i dont know if theres anything im allowed to say that would be constructive on that. I would just say this. I think if you have an idea of an organized state security like the russians are doing things putin found out about after the fact, you would probably be in error. I dont think its i think his command grip as we say in the military, over those organs is good. And so if you see them behaving to some degree the question i would put back to you is does it matter . Does it matter if it was gru, fsvr or the prejudice Protection Group or any of these institutes that are affiliated with the government. Im not sure that it does matter. There is an interesting complexion to your question. Our Intelligence Service is an organized crime. Although some people would say theyre not as separate as they should be, but in fact they are. In russia, not so much. I think a fascinating question is to what degree has organized crime in russia had a hand in this as a proxy, and what is that relationship . I think that is a interesting question. Its not the question you asked, but its the question im answering. Well, the russians have a saying. [ speaking russian ] maybe yes, maybe no. I do think in particular when youre looking at cyber operations, when youre looking at an officer conducting those, who are they working for . Their boss is going to get a cut on something, theyre boss is going to make money, im going to make money. I think theyre loyalty and motivation may not be the same. We always in intelligence have to guard against mering. Theyre just a different version of us. Well, im here to tell you, theyre not. I think this is an interesting question. And i think it does matter because it gets to the genesis of the activities and intentions that might be behind them. And it affects how you react, what kind of policy response do we provide on our end . So ill paint two different extreme pictures. The russians may be a unitary, kremlin directed, personally putin directed operation where he started with a plan. This is what we want to do, heres the plan, here whos going to do it, you all go out and play your part. Thats one possible explanation for what were seeing. Another is weve got some broad sets of instructions that are out there within russias special services. Youve got collection priorities, influence operation priorities. You know broadly what you ought to be doing. Go do it and report back to me on your progress. And folks at the working level can go out and be somewhat entrepreneurial within those broad directives. Right, i know i want to collect information on what the plans of the Republican National committee are and the democratic National Committee are, and i want to understand how American Voters are reacting to things. Im going to go out and collect information i know im going to be rewarded for all of this. And lets beyond that and assume some of the folks that are doing that are not just government staff who are wearing badges all day long. Theyre guys that are living in a gray world, where they might work under contract for the government. Theyre hackers, and theyve done some time doing organized crime things, theyve done some carting, theyve made some money, theyve got the skills the government needs. The government has put them on contract to do some things, maybe sometimes in return for promising not to prosecute them for old transgressions. And theyre going off doing this kind of stuff. And maybe during the evening theyre also doing carting, and theyre also trying to make some money to supplement their daytime activities, and theyve got some pretty valuable information out there they collected and maybe they want to sell it to somebody. Maybe that somebody is wikileaks. Im not saying thats what happened, but im saying the question youre getting to here is actually a pretty important one. It does matter who the russians are, to what degree were dealing with a kind of complex and confusing world there, where its not very clear whos who, who works for who and how they ended up being directed if at all to do what theyve done. Lets go over here. Hi, im donald smith. One question i actually have two. But the first is ive heard that russia has engaged in Information Warfare with us since back to world war ii. Whats different about this time, and how much more intensive is it . So im glad you asked that question because i was hoping somebody would ask that. The russians have been doing this kind of thing since well before world war ii. I think dating into the zarrest era we can see a long tradition of not just propaganda but disinformation, black propaganda, deception campaigns. And to some degree you can look at this and say this is just a continuation of standard procedure on their part. But i would make the case that on this is not just a continuation of things that theyve long done. Theres some new elements here that are important. One of the biggest new elements is technology. This is a lot easier to do than it used to be in the past. Never before could somebody use pulldown menus on a social media platform to micro target messaging the way theyre doing right now. We used to live in what you might call an information republic. What i mean by that is the media was one where we had a handful of very prominent editorial staffs that decided what was newsworthy and what wasnt, what was true and what was not true. So you could rely on the New York Times and the Washington Post and a handful of other National Level newspapers to make those decisions and to put in front of readers. The same thing was true in radio and television, content that they felt met certain standards. Were not there right now. Were in an informational democracy, which might be a charitable description of it. There arent those intermediaries that can help sort out whats newsworthy and what isnt, whats reliable and what isnt, whats fact worthy and what isnt. In that environment one of the big challenges were faced with is anybody can do the sorts of things were seeing here. And its very hard for audiences to discern what the difference is between truth and fiction and whats attention worthy and whats not. And that is an element i think matters a lot to whats going on right here. And it means what the nature the russians are doing and the requirement in which theyre doing it has change significantly. I just want to agree with you in the sense that i think we have had a paradigm shift. But i would refer to what the russians themselves are saying on this subject. Ive been reading on a number of theyre leading thinkers on this. The russians have a term translated meaning Strategic Task. Its achieving a major policy objective. For example, to neuter nato would be a Strategic Task in their minds. And their thinkers on this subject have recently been saying that we are now capable of achieving Strategic Tasks solely with information means. In the past we required a combination of information means and warfare. Now we believe we can achieve everything we want just with information. And i think that is the one thing i think that is different about us and i caution against mirroring. We tend to view bits as bullets or bits as intelligence. They i think more properly view bits as ideas. You cannot kill an idea with a bullet. You might be able to kill it with a different idea. And i think theyre more sophisticated in some ways in their thinking on this subject. And so i think because of the lower barrier entry, which allows someone with the economy the size of texas to punch above their weight, they now view this as a strategic weapon on the subject of other strategic weapons. Can i have a second. All right, sir. Ive heard a lot of reasons why the russians wanted to do this, but i havent heard the reason they would want to get trump elected and not get Hillary Clinton elected. Is there an element of truth to either one of those . Im happy to let george take that one. Well, i am i would say skeptical about the explanation that the russians were looking to get donald trump elected or looking to hurt Hillary Clinton in particular. I dont doubt for a second that the russians were not big fans of hillary for all the reasons i think have been elaborated. I do think that they looked at trump as something of an unknown. They were certainly encouraged by some of the things he said about wanting a different relationship with russia, rethinking our approach to democratization internationally. But russian as dont like unpredictability. They like things to be predictable. I also think some of the things attribed to putin on trump have been exaggerated or distorted. He said one thing to candidate trump, said it in a press conference, and his comments were actually mistranslate. He called him a colorful character that got mistranslated to a brilliant character, which then translated to a genius, none of which is actually true. So the degree in which putin actually intervened in commenting on the election i think has been vastly over blown. And to reinforce something george said earlier at looking at alternative hypothesis, you have to look at other elements of the campaign which are continuing to this day, which to one could gleam at being to stress the latent cracks in our society. Viewing that, i think the sole goal in this campaign to elect trump, its hard to make that conclusion in my case. All right. Anton from american university. Youve dup my introduction, so thank you for a very this is the most entertaining panel ive been to because weve entertained so many different hypotheses here. Is that a compliment . I would take the time to ask about the american society. I have seen a chaotic response to what some people say is an act of war and others say is the debastardization of an american society. It started with i think the two reports that, you know, were highly questionable in terms of the actual proof they presented. We started with 17 agencies. Then was the 8th of may testimony on the hill when we find out from clapper that it was actually three agencies and a hand picked set of people who came to the conclusion and theres a long list of theres been a lot of chaos in the way the American Intelligence Community has been looking at this. So if this was as serious as some people claim it was, is this an embarrassment . And as opposed to the post2003 weapons of mass destruction debbical. And i remember there was a lot of soulsearching in the Intelligence Community, and good came out of that. I dont see any soulsearching now. I may not be looking in the right place, but is there any soulsearching going on, and should there be a Major Overhaul of the u. S. Intelligence community if this is truly as existentially damaging and threatening as many people claim . Id like to entertain a number of thoughts on that. First of all i very much disagree that the Intelligence Community is in chaos on this. I have been inside the Intelligence Community at the highest levels. I was the associate director of National Intelligence at one time. And i was quite shocked at the unanimity across the board with this issue. I do not think there was chaos on it. I think there was pretty much consensus. The press likes to show conflict and turmoil because its newsworthy i suppose. But i really dont think thats the case. Should this cause a reorganization of the Intelligence Community . And ive lived through so many of those, you know, i wouldnt think so. You know, they rarely do any good. But you dont have to worry. Sooner or later my old boss said never throw away an old chart, theyre all going to come back. So its going to happen anyway, dont worry. George, anything you want to add . Well, i certainly dont want to use terms like chaotic or embarrassing to say this. I would say, however, based on what ive read about the process and im relying largely on work thats been done in the the Washington Post and the New York Times and among others it sounds to me as if the process was irregular, not the normal approach to this. So normally when you reach a National Intelligence judgment of some kind, theres a National Intelligence council umbrella under which that occurs. And theres a formal coordination process. And all the people that would reasonably have a role to play by virtue of their organizational responsibilities would be involved. It doesnt sound from the press reporting as if that was the way this was done. It sounds as if john brennen in particular put together a task force, a small number of people from the three agencies that you had mentioned and that they actually had sign a nondisclosure agreement about the evidence they were shown. But that evidence was not widely disseminated throughout the broader Intelligence Community. Thats a very unusual way to do this sort of thing. Now, i think the argument that i have understood that was made was that the sensitivity of the sources that were involved was so extraordinary that it requires this. But im not aware of another topic thats been tackled in that way. So when i look at this and want to be confident myself that the judgments that were being reached allegedly with high confidence were approached not just in a methodologically rigorous manner but through an organizational process that is very sound, im worried that perhaps that wasnt the case here. James. So we talked about the russians being mad at us for interfering in their elections with our democracy motion efforts. I was under the impression those had tapered off with encouragement by putin. If theres a debate to be had, putin says you dont mess in our internal affairs, we wont do yours. How much messing in their internal affairs are we still doing . Can anyone make any kind of clarity on that for me . I think one thing that i can say and i havent looked at it closely recently but i think a lot of the money for that went away, if were talking about open programs by, you know, not coming out of the Intelligence Community. But what most people are used to talking about and looking at, i think a lot of that went away during the obama administration. Theyre doing this and asking us to stop doing something weve already stopped doing . Well, i guess my response to that would be we just had a conversation about what we see versus what we dont see, and i expect they have similar conversations in russia. I think, too, we have to look at the broader effects of this whole thing. Who has taken the narrative . You know, they have kind of taken the narrative, and we have all spending a tremendous amount of time on this we arent spending on other things. I dont know if that was an intended effect, but that was certainly a powerful one. We have one down here. Thanks. Patrick tucker with defense one. They usually rely on sort of a partner you had deep in roads into the Intelligence Service there. And i wonder if were having the right discussion about collusion. Were going to come to a legal understanding of what collusion looks like, and theres a lot of evidence now just very historical fact that the russian emboss was very good at getting some people within the Trump Campaign and the trump government to compromise themselves, Michael Flynn clearly compromised himself. What discussion should we be having outside of legal definitions later out of collusion in order to better prevent people within the United States and particularly within the United States government from potentially compromising themselves and then actively colluding . Is this something that is as rampant we think its not ukraine, but what should we be talk about when we talk about collusion, because i think well be talking about that in the coming months . I dont know about you, george, i just dont feel qualified to answer that. Honestly, i dont have any information at all. In terms of moving away from in terms of moving away from where should we begin to think about the health of the conversation thats kind of offline between two people. Theres the side line state department stuff that can actually be very fruitful, and then theres the stuff that feels a little bit more malignant. And where do you think i dont know, how should we be talking about is that very broad abstract way. Not looking for you to say oh, i know the guy that colluded. In a very broad, abstract way how should we be talking about collusion in the next year . Im not sure how to answer that. There is classic intelligence recruitment where youre actually developing an ultimately paying a source to spy in some way, to conduct classic espionage. Obviously weve got a lot of rules on the books already, which as far as i can tell are quite adequate for dealing with that problem. Theres a second category of what you might call unwitting agents, people who are doing things that the russians want them to do, who are completely unaware of who might be on the other end that is helping them. Thats the kind of thing that, you know, is in a gray area. And im not sure that you can very fruitfully legislate things that can prevent that sort of thing from going on. Thats one where education and selfawareness sorts of things are probably best handled. And i would offer that an atmosphere in the country where people are afraid to talk to russians is probably not something thats in our national interest. So weve got to be careful in this area when it comes to collusion or accusations that people are doing putins bidding for him or advancing russian interest and that sort of thing. Very quick follow up. Something more precise what sort of education efforts, what form would that take in terms of helping people not be unwitting because you dont want to be hysterical and levels of the government saying to people dont be an unwitting agent. At the same time its a problem you want to bring attention to, so how do you draw that balance between helping people understand what that looks like and not looking like youre an alarmist . Well, i think the main point is that this is nothing new. I dont think a new thing is called for because we dont have a new situation. Guarding against foreign influence is something wave all been aware of for a very long time. And those of us inside the system get constant feedback and constant feeds from our contacts in that nature. Theres nothing in my mind that would cause us to depart from common sense. People in the political domain or not need to know as they always have, the National Security at stake and they need to be very careful. And when they have interactions with foreign nationals, to keep in the back of their mind, this may not be so innocent. And thats always been the case. And i dont see any need on changing anything based on whats happened recently because this has been with us forever. Ill just speak from my personal experience. I was a political aopponenty in the state department in the bush administration. And they hired me, and i went in my first days. And there was a briefing on, you know, how to do this, how to do that. And there was a briefing on security. And it covered certainly many of these issues. And those are things that are typically repeated by the government on a periodic basis for all of the employees who might have access to information that someone else might find desirable. So i would certainly kind of align with what george and eric said there. I would also point out on the question of foreign influence we have outside the room demetri knows my favorite president , george washington, his bust. And you go and read the farewell address and you read the portion that deals with foreign influence, it actually has two sides. One side is you have to be very careful of allowing your affection for another country to drive your policy because that can distort your policy. But theres also another side, which is you have to be careful not to allow your antipathy towards another country to warp your Decision Making process and to warp your thinking. And i think its a useful reminder for us to perhaps think about this during this unusual time period that were in. We have one here, and then well come here. Thank you. A brief question. From george mason university. We know the kgb was given freedal of interaction through the soviets in the past. And theyve been creative in destroying, abusing, recruiting. Still behind those technologies, i respect my fellow geeks saying theyre all human beings. Maybe its time to go back and examine in history books and examine our professionals, examine their experience and learn more about what kgb was doing then. Their skills and motivations and use it today, to what extent. I think thats absolutely i agree a good idea. Okay, all right. Thank you very much. Short answers. Maam, please. Im danna from the Washington Post. So you both have said what happened was more or less predictable given what the russians have been doing elsewhere. And you both have said that the ic was pretty much unified on what happened or what was happening. And if you look at what happened in europe you would know that it happens and its happening on social media as a platform. So it kind of relates back to antons question. If you were united, if it was predictable, if you knew the platform it would be coming onto, why did the intel committees seem so surprised, and what is the defense . What is the ic or government as a whole doing to stop this . And again given the fact you knew it was coming on social media, and you know what the restrictions on authorities would be, what is the effect . Well, you just opened what i think is a fascinating question, which is what role should the government and National Security intelligence and other take in getting into what amounts to the private sector . Facebook is private sector. Twitter is private sector. There is some question about how much National Security should get involved in guarding the it of american businesses, given that its possible that nation states are going up against some of them as happened in the sony case. And i think that its very unlikely youre going to see the government lean forward and get into the private sector and start, a, managing the message that happens in the private sector. And b, protecting the Cyber Security more than what the fbi and sectors are already doing. Its not the same in russia, that they would view it that way. Nor is it appropriate it for the government to get into determining what messages are and are not put out there in public media. So were not talking just about messages in any normal way. I mean were talking about it as an instrument to do something that weve already discussed is either akin to war or achieving their political goal. So we know its driven by a nation state to do us harm. Does that still mean you know, i want to come back to something that i think it was wright who writes interest the new yorker in his play. He ends his play by saying alqaeda cannot destroy america, only we can do that. So i think we have to look to ourselves, not necessarily to our politicians and how fractious we are. And i dont think that i kind of look at like a be sting and somebody having an allergic reaction that kills them, not the be sting. Its something we do to ourselves. Ask i think some people want to look at the government and its not appropriate for some government to do. Its us, how we react to this, how were going to vote based on this. So i would turn the focus more to the American People than to their government. George. Ill second that, and i will add a couple of things. I think there is much we can do and should do to ensure the integrity of actual balloting in election. That, i think, is something the government needs to be involved in. Theres much we can do practically. One very simple thing is to mandate the use of paper balloting backup systems so that were all confident when we have an election that those vote tallies are actually accurate. And relying on only electronic balloting under the cyber threat circumstances we face i think is very unwise idea. Its not hard to do, not expensive, and i think thats a proper role for government, i think. And interesting its one where the russians have long been claiming that information itself is a threat, that can be weaponized and we need to do something about this. Theyve been urging this on us for long time. The chinese has as well. And our reaction has been no, information yernz to be free and weve just started to say maybe information can be dangerous. Maybe we need to do something about that. And i think its dangerous for the government to be in that business. Im not at all confident we would do it well and i think it would change the nature of who we are to do that. I want to go back the point about voting. I couldnt agree more. Whereas they were given three of the voting machines, within 45 minutes theyd hacked into all of them. Let me follow up on this conversation and im going to go in a slightly different direction with it. But if you look at our media environment, if two big tv Networks Want to merge together and create some huge mega network. The government has an opinion on that, American People have an opinion on that and theres a monopoly and you can have this much share. Are facebook and twitter just too big and pervasive and is part of the problem actually that theyre sort of like monopolies in that space . And i recognize its a very that rr a pretty challenging question. You know it is interesting that technology moves faster than policy and law and so we have a new technology, social media which has created a new currency. Social information. And that currency is like a commodity that can be monopolized. My own view is being close to the web and internet and being a monopoly, and sort of is in the end information rule out. I think all there are so many ways the barrier to entry has made it difficult to broadcast to a large number of people and in return here from large number of people. Its moving from one to many to many to many. So i for one do not believe were in any danger of having someone monopolize information. I think its going to in the opposite direction fast. Agreed. So much for that idea. We have one over here. Dave. I want to just ask what is the ultimate goal for the russians here . I guess it was eluded to. You mentioned it earlier that they kind of want this non mutual noninterference pack. It seems like the thread theyve been on. I mean in detaunte. Is that what they want . A noninterference pack . Is that still ultimately their goal . I think thats at least one of their goals. I think that goal in particular is one we had a test. And call their bluff so to speak and see if in fact theyre serious about pursuing it. Its not going to prevent messing about in our political system. I think thats probably going to happen one way or the other. But i think it could take some of the sharper edges off that. Minimize the dangers and insure this doesnt get out of hand. My main comment is again ill return to the domestic perspective in terms of what their goal is. I have to believe very near the top of their list is to somehow use this to consolidate their own stability. Putin and his group and i think in some sense they may have done that because the poe potency of again, i want to go back to they have taken the narrative. Here we are talking about them. And so if im putin i can say look, we, with an economy the size of texas are completely dominating the american discourse and that makes him look pretty strong and not someone you want to mess with inside of russia. I think thats always what we need to keep in mind. He wakes up in russia. So in other words strike a blow at putin by not talking about him so much. You know i think that is a good idea. Thank you very much. I think that was our last question. So thank you very much all of you for joining us this afternoon. I think we had a very terrific and enlightening conversation. So thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Yes. [ inaudible ] join us later today when the Heritage Foundation hosts a Panel Discussion on recent Supreme Court rulings involving freedom of speech. Well have live coverage at 5 00 p. M. Eastern over on cspan. Later its remarks from janet yellen, the Federal Reserve chair who spoke with President Trump yesterday. Our live coverage begins at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, also on cspan. Tomorrow, President Trump and five former president s take part in the deep from the heart Hurricane Relief concert happening on the campus of texas a m university. Watch that on saturday night beginning at 8 45 eastern time on cspan, and a programming note, watch all of these events online or use our cspan app. When i first went in, its a long story but i was barely able to get back to the surface, but a bunch of them jumped in, and theres a picture, which i am sure you will show, of them pulling me out of the lake, and my arm was broken, and they were not happy to see me, probably because i just finished bombing the place. It got pretty rough. Broke my shoulder, and hurt my knee again. But, look, i dont blame them. I dont blame them. Were in a war. I didnt like it, and when you are a war you cant except to have tea. John mccain talks about the war and his life and the country sunday at 6 00 p. M. And 10 00 eastern to cspan3. In 1979 cspan was created by a Public Service and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Now a Senate Homeland security Security Committee on federal funding for Scientific Research. Senator rand paul calls for Greater Transparency in federally funded research, and they said federally funded for Scientific Research in the future. This is an hour. I want to thank everybody for rushing here, and we have to go ande