Newshour, meeting with senator mark warner, who needs no introduction, chairman of the Senate Committee on intelligence. Ill be presiding over this discussion. Kenneth a moscow lecture. This is an annual lectureship that honors the memory of kenneth a. Moscow, longtime member of the council with a distinguished career in the Intelligence Community. Further details on his life and many professional accomplishments can be found in the booklet that you have at your seat. I do want to extend a special welcome to the members and guests of the moscow family who are here with us today, seated at the center table. Welcome to you. So, without further ado, ill just say i will invite senator warner. He will speak for about ten minutes, then ill have the opportunity to ask him questions for about 20 minutes and then at 1 00, we will open it up for questions for members. Without further ado, senator mark warner. Thank you for that introduction, judy. Looking forward to our discussion. That is, about the ten minutes, senate time, right . Its a great honor for me to be here, council on Foreign Relations with the moscow family and got a chance to meet the kids. Its a great honor to mr. Moscow and his service to our country [ applause ] what i want to talk about today and this, obviously, deals with cyber, deals with Homeland Security. I would like to talk about ch a china, subject of which for, you know, probably 2008 Going Forward for a long time i had what i would view as pretty traditional conventional views shared by others. I look at chinas a rapidly modernizing country with 1. 3 billion people, with rising incomes and expectations. And mostly opportunity. China brought into the wto was part of the world order would be good for the world order, competitors but more likely partners. I have to say a few years and many, many classified briefings later ive fundamentally shift mied viewpoint. I believe president xi, starting with his major consolidation of power in 2015 and 2016 reasserted the communist partys dominance in china across all fields of business, society, the military and he is now using that consolidated power to bring about both state and Civil Society to actually propose a role and view of china that would dominate the world. And that domination would lead to a diminishment of u. S. Power and influence. The Chinese Government uses all the traditional tools of the state to exert influence, expanded military presence. Weve seen that. Im sure well talk about it in the South China Seas, aggressive deployment of espionage to steal secrets. We saw that decline after his meeting with president obama. Weve unfortunately seen a dramatic increase since that. What weve also seen come out of china is more creative mechanisms that take advantage of the model to force others to act on behalf of the communist party. All of this has set the stage for the Chinese Government to aggressively display every lever of power to service the state. At the same time, exploit the openness of our society to take economic advantage. I believe in many ways this is the challenge of our time. Ill put a caveat here that is extremely important. My challenge and i believe our beef is with the communist party of china and the president xi regime. China is a great nation and a great people. As we see right now, the pushback in parts of china, when we see the pushback going on in hong kong, against some of the forces in beijing when we see the concerns raised by many chinese about the incarceration imprisonment of a million if not two to 3 million the concerns are felt across the region. The rest of this presentation are questions that we continue to reaffirm the concern i have is with the communist party and government and im deeply concerned that we dont allow this to turn into, in our country, diminishment of contributions made by chineseamericans, chinese nationals and others. We do not need, in any form, repeat of the case that took place in the early 80s in detroit. So with that caveat i would like to think about again where we go from here. First again with the focus on technology, weve leved in a world, and many of us in this world are in this room have lived in a world that still can remember sputnik. I would argue sputnik was the last moment when americas technological supremacy was really questioned and sputnik jolted us into action. We changed our academic institutions, ow research areas, military Industrial Complex and we were successful. I would argue since that moment in time, virtually every major Technological Advancement, trance ifrt, computing, in telecommunications, whether around the internet, social media, all of these innovations have been american or westernled. And even if they werent american we ended up setting the standards, having the Worlds Largest economic power, that ability for us to set the standards, and while the rest of the world would complain about us setting the standards, that meant the rest of the world had a default position. In many ways i dont think we, as a nation, appreciated all the economic, political and candidly kind of social benefits that our country by being the standard setter. That is up for grabs right now. I see this firsthand in the competition for. China is employing the tactics we used to employ. Providing equipment vendors with 120 and more financing, flooding the zone with engineers in terms of the setting standard bodies and in many ways whats happening in 5g could very well happen, Artificial Intelligence and a host of other areas if america doesnt try to reassert both its investments in technology and its willingness to set the standards. China is making these moves and coupling that with the ability to actually manipulate and use western companies in ways that frankly are confounding. Western companies in an effort to try to get access to the Chinese Market make sacrifices on Business Practices that they would make to get into no other market in the world. Were starting to see companies who made that entrance into china two decades ago start to rethink as they see chineseowned state enterprises pop up to their facilities or we see a forcing of sharing of intellectual property. Obviously, the peoples republic of china is trying to use this new enhanced power as a way to build economic dominance, i believe, not only in china but around the region. What weve also seen is china has been able in the Technology Field to do something that quite honestly, i didnt think was possible. That is to use and regulate the internet i remember famously bill clinton saying any company trying to regulate the internet would be like nailing jehlo to the wall. China has shown being able to use the powers of the internet, facial recognition, collaboration between the Chinese Tech Companies and Chinese Government to build a surveillance state that would make George Orwell flinch. I think were still trying to grapple with that. Basically offer them to other regimes around the world, threepart plan. One, authoritarian form of government, repressive regimes, two belt and Road Initiative that offers traditional 20th century economic financing for countries who are open and, three, increasingly they are offering this technologydriven state model to pakistan, eatingopia, venezuela and elsewhere. Quite honestly, one of the things that is of great concern to me about what the Chinese Government has been able to do, it bothers me a great deal when we see American Technology companies who have no problem working with china on development of their social Credit System or surveillance state tactics and some of those same companies then having challenges working with the American Defense establishment. That is something i think we need to examine and, frankly, have some honest hearttoheart conversations with some of those company. Where do we go from here . First we need to sound the alarm. Simply terrifying or scaring members of the Intelligence Committee to give us this information we are not doing our job if we dont find ways to declassify more of this information and get it out to american business, american policymakers, american academia. So i started road shows, weve done a dozen of them. I take a republican partner, and Deputy Director of National Intelligence, senior levels from dhs, fbi and our Intelligence Center and bring in venture capitalists, academics to really share in a oneday classified readin some of the challenges that china presents and some of the tactics that they use to try to advance their governments interest. We need a shortterm strategy. Here we need a lot of work. And frankly ive seen little articulate development from the administration. The Trump Administration has done the right thing, visavis china, in saying the status quo is not working. If the status quo is not working, he has to offer an alternative. Emerging china have been counter to the United States and frankly have been counter all of the west. In many ways the countries that first raised the challenges around china before they were fully recognized were japan, korea and australia. There was a time when we could have built a grand coalition and gone to china and said youre a great nation but youve got to play by the rules. Instead of building that grand coalition the administration has called canada a National Security threat. Not, i believe, the kind of plan we need to have. Particularly as the administration moves forward, we need to be sure we dont confuse trade issues with National Security issues. The president , i think, has launched this trade war without Building International alliances that i think were needed and without articulating clearly what his goals are. What particularly concerns me is recent comments where he has indicated that the administrations appropriate actions around huawei might be a trading chip in our trade dispute with china. That would be a disaster. We are starting to make progress with our allies raising legit concerns about huawei and other competitors in the 5g area. If that were to be traded away as a trading chip, the ability for our Intelligence Community, the ability for our Technology Community to have any credibility on a Going Forward basis would be extraordinarily diminished. We have to be concerned about that. Legislative front short term we need to explore, one, ive been a strong supporter of ferma. We may even need to take a look broader look there. There are certain tactics that chinese entities are using in venture, noncontrolled sectors that are falling into areas of great Technological Advancement that we need review on. I think that needs to be reexamined and ive put forward legislation around aml and beneficial ownership. Beneficial ownership legislation would be geared at trying to discover who the true owners are behind shell companies. This has an opportunity beyond, frankly, the china threat but does involve a tactic that china constantly uses and that is the use of shell companies. Finally in term fs overall where we go with this strategy, i dont think we articulated once we set the warning what are the interim step woos he need to take . Finally we need a longterm strategy. That strategy goes back to what kind of investment were prepared to make in this country in research and development. America has a Defense Budget last year at 716 billion. Chinas Defense Budget is roughly 250 billion. That 500 billion is investing in 5g, quantum computing and a host of other areas where again under president xis vision, china will not only lead but dominate. I worry at times our Defense Budget, we may be buying the worlds best 20th century military in a 21st century context when most of the conflict will be in the Cyber Security domain, in the misinformation disinformation domain and increasingly space and those are areas where were not doing as much as we need to do. We need to make those research investments. Historical basis at the end of world war ii, United States accounted for 69 of annual global r d. Were now down to 29 . China is on a dramatic upward trend. China will pass the United States in all expectations by 2020 in the number of patents issued and again in a world where a world where this is all worked on in a collaborative basis, i think we can get this right. In a world where the Chinese Government under the president xi looking for economic and strategic dominance, this ought to be a concern for us and what i hope that we can go through in our discussion here, judy is how we get this right, how we set policies on a Going Forward basis. We do not want to default into the old bipolar world that we lived in post world war ii. We do not want to have these concerns about the Chinese Governments actions, again, wipe off on the greatness of the chinese nation or the Chinese People or in particular the chinese americans, but we do need to come to an agreement or come to an understanding that the kind of best Motion Business case of five or six years ago is not coming to pass and how we get our act together on a Going Forward basis i again, will argue will be the question of our time. With that, judy, let me bring you forward and lets go forward into our conversation. Thank you. Thank you senator warner. You went over just a few minutes, so im grg oing to go r into the members time just a few minutes. What is the main worry that you have about china . What is the worstcase scenario . Do you think i hear you saying you dont think chinas going to come across the ocean with weapons, but what are you worried about . I would say there are two things i worry the most about. One is theres been no economic Success Story greater than chinas in the last 25 to 30 years, and if we go back to a pre89 world where the america and the west versus the soviets, there was this ideological conflict. I think were defaulting not necessarily into a pure ideological conflict with china, but china is on the move, on the go, and they are they are offering a theory of the case that to a lot of countries around the world looks pretty good. If you can somehow obtain chinas growth rates and theyre saying here dont look to democracy, look at our authoritarian form of government, that will grif you the kind of control you need to move your country forward. Second, theyre coupling that with the same kind of tools that we maybe used in the past in terms of economic incentives, and third, i am very troubled with what chinas been able to do in terms of its creation of a surveillance state, again, that i think would make george or well 1984 pale in comparison, when china is literally creating this social Credit System whereby it will know not on a financial credit basis but a social credit basis how loyal each of its citizens are to the regime based upon their daily movements, because of the presence of facial recognition, because of the willingness of the Chinese Tech Companies to share that information with the government. That authoritarian Monitoring Surveillance state concerns me greatly, so that vision that theyre offering around the world, number one and number two, what concerns me is i think we sometimes have underestimated the economic and other benefits that have accrued to our country from being the technological leader of the last 60 years, being the leader in setting the standards and house to these Technological Innovations really has brought us a lot. I think it will be a very different world if in these areas like ai, facial recognition, 5 g, quantum if china is the leader and china ends up setting the standards. Some of the european governments, you know this very well, are questioning the administrations effective ban. You have british diplomats, for example, saying they can allow huawei into their commercial Networks Without threatening they say without threatening their intelligence and military networks. How do you see that . You hear british politicians say that. You dont hear the accomplish Intelligence Services say that. Were not coming to this with clean hands as well. We have huawei equipment in many of our rural and smaller telecos, cellular systems around the country. Huawei has pretty darn good equipment, its about 30 to 40 cheaper, where we made a mistake, and we should have raised this issue much earlier. Its not and i think the Intelligence Community needs to be more forthcoming. Its not the fact that the huawei equipment has a back door in it right now, but when you buy a whole in a sense full kit from huawei, soup to nuts and the notion of a 5g network whic all of the upgrades that are sent are via software on future downstream, so you can no matter what you do in terms of defense today, you cannot prevent and the chinese law, the Chinese Communist party has put laws in place that says every Corporation First obligation is to the communist party, not to its shareholders. This is an important point to finish, is that you cannot prevent the government from telling huawei to send that malware downstream once the equipments installed. So what do you say . I mean, you raised the rural u. S. Telecom. What do you say to them . Theyre invested in this. They bought it. There are a couple of areas here. Number one, in terms of our rural carriers, i have legislation now with roger wicker that would at least take the First Step Towards creating a fund that would help potentially change out some of this equipment. And again, i dont want to go off on the technique side. There are some of the issues on earlier earlier versions of the network that wont be as that wont be as compromised, but there are we are putting forward legislation that would have about 700 million of funding in a sense rip out and replace. And at the same time on the Foreign Governments, you are starting to see some countries reconsider. Theyre not all doing it publicly yet, but one of the challenges we have is that because theres not an american based or large western country based equipment provider as an alternative, we dont have a particular horse. Were basically betting on nokia and samsung, all great countries. They dont have their resp t respective governments dont have the heft chinese can bring to support their player huawei and zte. In a nutshell, youre saying u. S. Late to the party on huawei. Should have been raising these alarms sooner. Late to the party, late to setting standards. In the past we would have had a whole government effort around setting standards. It should have started under obama. It didnt. It has been really very rudimentary until just very recently. In a normal white house you would have had somebody in charge of this, but we dont know how to operate with a normal white house. In general is the administration on the right track with regard to huawei . Yes, the administration has gotten the folks within the appropriate agencies, the fcc, ntia, dod, state department has an important role, and others have come together. As a matter of fact, senator bird and i have convened that group to make sure theyre working on a regular basismen. I just wish they would have been convened two years ago. Whats going on in hong kong . Does that how does that affect what youre thinking, what your assessment is of xi, president xi . What it says to me is the concerns that i and others are raising about the president xis model of governing, you know, dont take my word that this is we should be concerned about, take the people of hong kong who yesterday out of the 7 Million People who reported to me and showed up on the streets, we never i dont think i can ever think of any time in modern history where that graeat of a percentage of a population showed up in a protest. I think there is huge concerns about president xis kind of style of governing. Two other things i want to raise to you. One is a story in the New York Times over the weekend about u. S. Knewnewly revealed capabils to get inside the power grid in russia, and within the story there was interesting information about whether or not the president was told about this and so forth, but overall, is it a good thing that the first of all, is the u. S. Doing this . The president came out and said its not true. Is the u. S. Doing this, and if the u. S. Is, is it a good thing or not . Im not going to comment on what our government is doing or not doing in the Cyber Security arena, number one. I would say let me add two other things. One, i do think the overall willingness of the Trump Administration to allow us to use offensive Cyber Capabilities within reason is appropriate. I think for a long period of time, weve not articulated cyber document, even back to post 9 11 under president bush and president obama, our particular adversaries russia and china could frankly steal from us or hit us with impunity because i think there was a relucta reluctance on our governments side and a concern of a cyber escalation, the notion being in the extreme, you know, if we shut down moscow no power for 24 hours, you have a problem. If you shut down new york for 24 hours, you have a crisis. We were concerned about cyber escalation in many ways. Our over Technology Based leads made us in certain ways more vulnerable to cyber escalation, and one of the reasons why its absolutely crazy that weve not, for example, put in place things like minimum Cyber Security on internet of things connected devices. The second part of the story i think is worthy of commenting, and i dont know whether its accurate or not, but if it is accurate, its a pretty stunning statement, and that statement being if intelligence officials were afraid to brief the president because he might tell someone and that coming on top of the president s utterly outrageous comments last week, you know, coming out of the white house to a National Media correspondent that in a sense he would welcome assistance from russia or china in election interference and didnt have enough of a moral compass to know that there is a moral and legal obligation to report that, you take that story and you take his comments last week and if youre not concerned, you should be. And you took steps i mean, you jumped over to the next thing i was going to ask about, but just quickly on the Cyber Capabilities, offensive cyber capacities. Its fair to say that those have increased in recent years on the part of the United States . Again, the Trump Administration put out an executive order that i think appropriately took some of the constraints on the process off for us to use cyber. So but to move to the other story, which what the president said in an interview last week that he would listen and then he back walked it a little bit in another interview, you introduced a resolution that would have that would basically make it a violation, you would require anybody receiving information that amounted to an interference with u. S. Elections. I introduced this legislation a month ago, so this did not come it was already there. It was already there. Again, were talking now and weve mentioned more on the cyber front, but clearly the president mentioned last week in a statement, his words, not mine, you know, hed take something from russia or china. Its stunning to me that youve got the president s own director of the fbi, the president s own director of National Intelligence saying russia or others will be back in 2020 because its cheap and its effective. I dont think were fully prepared. I think its amazing that when the president s own sect teretaf Homeland Security wanted to hold a Cabinet Meeting on Election Security, she was told not to because it might offend the sensibilities of donald trump. To me thats outrageous. So i put forward three pieces of legislation that i would Hope Congress in a bipartisan way could pass if theyre really serious about protecting the integrity of our elections. First, if theres any ambiguity about taking foreign assistance in a president ial campaign, my legislation would make it clear that if you have an offer of a prohibited item, and thats already defined in law elsewhere, your obligation is not to say thank you. Your obligation is to report it to the fbi. I think i dont know how anyone could be against that. Second is we need to pass and theres Bipartisan Legislation on this Election Security legislation to make sure that theres a paper ballot after every one of our voting at all of our Voting Machines and theres the ability to have some audit after the fact. And third ive got a series of legislation on some basic rules of the road around social media so we dont have the kind of manipulation that the russians used last time that increasingly the chinese are using on we chat in a variety of other countries in asia right now, and again, thats a whole different subject area. I think all three of these areas, if we really care about making sure our election in 2020 is fair, we need these provisions. In brief, why are those being held up, and can that turn around . I think the good news is the republicans have the majority in the senate. The good news is if the Election Security legislation got to the floor, it would get 85 votes. On my ive got a series of bills in social media, every one of them ive got a republican partner. In terms of the reporting a number of republican colleagues have indicated that they thought that would make common sense to say if a Foreign Government int intervenes lets make clear youve got to tell the fbi. Whats stopping this is the white house. And can that be turned around . Well, it can only be turned around if americans of goodwill of both Political Parties say our democracy and the integrity of that democracy is more important than the feelings and sensibilities of the current occupant of the white house. Theres a lot more to ask you. You are the vice chairman of the committee that oversaw a lot of the work running parallel with the mueller investigation. But it is the turn, and it is the turn of the members to ask questions, so i do want to invite you to raise your hand. Im reminding you, again, everythings on the record. Theyre going to bring you a microphone, and we ask you to stand, state your name, and your affiliation, and limit yourself to one question. Lots of hands are up. So right here in the front. Im Ricardo Tavares from california, from san diego. I run a Technology Policy company there. You mentioned the fund that is in the bill right now to support the transition of operators in america from huawei to other suppliers, so were on a major changing wireless which is the from hardware to software, so software run, and interestingly American Companies is now medium and large have an advantage in the area of software, so china has had a long run benefitting from the manufacturing side where you use other parts. Chips and software could help us. Who can compete with 120 financing. I would like to see if you could offer a little bit more detail about that bill you mentioned. The irony is that the 120 financing model was started by the american providers back in the 80s as they built up the first generation of Wireless Networks as im sure youre aware. You know, it is its a challenge. Theres not a short answer. One of the things i believe the legislation weve put forward is a good first step. It probably doesnt go as far or doesnt have enough funding as needed. If you were going to really replace across all the domestic areas that have got huawei. I think this begs a bigger question, which is what china has defined, the Chinese Government has defined, and theyve spelled out in china 2025, specific areas where they hope to be dominant. They have in a sense modern industrial policy where they bring the power of the state and its financing tools, their banks and its financing tools. Their equipment vendors and their research to bear. Weve not done that in america or the west, but if were thinking about areas particularly where he who has the most data, he who has the most information may win in many of these areas, we may need to rethink some of that if were going to be able to stay competitive. Lets see, somebody in the back, the gentleman with the hand up right there, blue shirt. Jamie reuben, bow ard partners. Senator, could you address the South China Sea and whether you think the Chinese Government has violated its promises to not militarize those areas, and further, if we stay on the path were on, do you see a time when china will be a greater military power in asia than the United States, in asia . China is very aggressive plans for asia. We in a sense have chosen to bear the responsibility for the whole world. China is more focused on its neighborhood, although i would point out that china also has a military base in djibuti so its not just asia. I do believe china has efforts in the South China Seas go beyond what they promised they were going to do in terms of constraints. You know, i think some of my concerns has been, this is if we had the countries who are most affected are vietnam and the philippines, i wish we had a Foreign Policy that would leverage those ties so again, it would if the Chinese Government can make this a china of the u. S. Potential conflict or adversarial relationship as opposed to the region and the world saying china youre a great nation, but youve got to play by the rules and you cant continue to flaunt international agreements, whether its the islands in the South China Seas, whether its around technology transfer, whether its around Surveillance States in your own country, and we dont have that kind of Foreign Policy coming out of this administration so i do know this. There are grave concerns from our military about chinas rise, whether they were surpass us im not going to comment on, but it is clearly got the attention of our American Military establishment. All right. This gentleman all the way over here. Senator kevin she han from multiple private capital, youve called for greater regulation of social media firms. Im wondering if you could speak a bit how that regulation should be enhanced with regard to content. Im not talking about violence or hate speech, but rather deep fakes and other content that really can have a disruptive effect, even if its removed quickly once posted. Again, let me try to do this. I had a long, long spiel on this. Ill try to give you the short version. This is one more example where i would say where america has been giving up its leadership role. We started our Company Started on social media. We should have set the i think it would have been fine if we would have actually set the ground rules for social media. Our failure to act has made, you know, the europeans have set the rules on privacy. Now the europeans and the californians. You know, youve got the u. Ck d australia moving on content. This one more example, not unlike our failure to set the full standards on 5g where up until very recently we would have been setting all these standards and even though other countries might have complained to a certain degree by us having one standard, we were generally in the right direction and countries could default to our standard. You know, it overall worked all around. On social media there are really four areas that i think need examination. The first is privacy, and theres already some wellthought out ideas around privacy as i mentioned from europeans and californians and a number of states and Bipartisan Legislation. Second is around identity ral da validation. It would diminish hate speech quite a deal if you had to validate your identity. What about that female journalist in egypt who needs anonymous, but there are a number of people who think were either going to move to identity validation or default to it, a antarct the internet based on commerce is going to be with identity validation. And you have countries like estonia who have already had so many up outside interference that theyve gone to an identity validation model. Im not sure where i fully come out on that. I do think short of full identity validation we ought to at least know whether we are being communicated with by human beings or bots. Ill have some legislation on that. The identity validation is the second area. Third area does go to content, but identity validation and content are interrelated i would argue, and the content restrictions are whats called section 230. In the late 90s when we made the rules for these companies, we considered themselves in a sense telephone companies, common carriers with no responsibility for content. In 2019 when 65 of americans get their news from facebook and google, maybe its time to think of them as not as common carriers, so we have already taken some bites around content. Weve taken prohibitions on sex trafficking, child pornography, weve taken some bites on bomb making, but i think we ought to have a debate in this area around content. Im not again, sure where im going to come out, but i do think we ought to have because the deep Faith Technology alluded to, cause as much consternation with simply slowing a video of nancy pelosi, deep fakes is 10x more challenging. Some of us are working on legislation, ben sasse has already gotten some in that area. A final area i think, if we go privacy, identity, content, the fourth is just more transparency. This is where i think we may move first. For example, we ought to have a right to know how much data is being collected on each of us and what that data is. We have a right to know how much its worth. If your datas worth 15 bucks a month to facebook and mines worth 12, we ought to have that knowledge point. We ought to put in place, and ive got legislation with deb fischer on this that would stop the manipulative behavior where you indetectly giirectly give u information about yourself and never being able to find unsubscribe. Its called dark patterns in the technology business. I think we ought to have more transparency there and i think we ought to have the ability to have data portability. One of the things that drove competition is when we made it very easy for you to move your phone number from one company to another. We need that same kind of portability and interopper ability with data. Ky pii can pick up and move ally data to a new site. There will be a series of ways we can give it some of these issues that will indirectly deal with content and directly deal with content and the deep fakes short of the full breakup. In a sentence you said the u. S. Has given up its leadership role in all of this. Why . How . When did all of this happen . I think this is something that has been happening over a period of years. I think it is something that has happened because, you know, congress has not been willing to legislate. Some of these are legislative actions. Some of these are actions that could be done administratively. I think our fail krur ure to th about an articulated Cyber Strategy that also said on an international basis what kind of cyber tactics will not be allowed on an International Order would have been enormously powerful. We wouldnt have some of the ransomware and some of the other activities going on now. I think if wed set some of those standards, but this has been a process. It didnt start with donald trump, but it has gotten, i would argue worse because congress has become even more inefficient, and two, the ability of this administration to kind of build International Coalitions has been greatly diminished. All right great question. Lets see. This woman right here. Beverly lindsey, university of california. As you know in many of our Major Research universities we have large numbers of international students, particularly china, and they are involved in some of this Cutting Edge Research that gets transferred. What do you think should be our perspectives or how should we think about this continued interaction at our very best rer Research Universities and the students go back home . This is an extraordinarily important question. There are 360,000 Chinese Students studying in literally one out of every three. Thats double the most second nation. One of every three, what do you mean . Are students. Foreign students here. And all those students are paying 100 cents on the dollar tuition. Many universities, this is a Revenue Source that the universitys become addicted to. Two things that the Intelligence Community was willing to has declassified recently. We are currently losing 400 to 500 billion worth of intellectual property each year. That to china. Thats an enormous loss. I dont want to give the specifics because im not sure its been fully declassified, but it is the overwhelming majority of Counter Intelligence cases in our country right now involve chinese nationals. So how we think about this in a way that doesnt impugn the integrity of all these Chinese Students but recognizes the factual basis of what is happening realtime on our College Campuses right now is a hard issue. Three things have changed in the last five years around Chinese Students. One, i would argue that, you know, five years ago, eight years ago, ten years ago, most Chinese Students same as the Indian Students and the brazilian students and the ethiopian students, they wanted to come here and study, and the vast majority of them wanted to stay. Three things have changed since then. One, i would argue that america in 2019 under this administration is not as immigrant friendly. You macon test thy contest that think that is a feeling most people have. Second, chinas economy is worrying and is a lot more attractive to go back to. But the third factor that has taken place that is different is that the chinese spy services are literally threatening chinese families to say if youre son or daughter does not come back or comes back with intellectual property, your family will be put in jeopardy, so how we sort this through, one of the things most clenolleges universities have started to do is theyve started to remove some of these confucius institutes that are nothing but agents of the chinese to spy on the Chinese Students and hold them accountable. I think this is managsomething going to have to keep working on. If we dont, what im afraid of is that you may have some kind of draconian across the board cut that may not be good for our universities, the state of our research, and candidly, we dont want getting this down that our squabble is with xi and the communist party of china and not the Chinese People is something we have to be always sensitive to. Are you saying universities are now aware of this and theyre acting on it . They are we have had we have met with president s and chancellors of virtually every Major University in america, and this is much more on their radar screens today than it was 18 months ago. Because there are universities that have i mean, that have branches in china. If you simply look and again, i dont want this is were changing the rules of the game midstream. I remember when i went to china as governor of virginia and celebrated a partnership between foodon university and vcu, so im not being you know, if the facts have changed, some of our policies have to change, and figuring that out is something that i think were all trying to sort through. Yes. Lets see, this woman right here. Louise shelly, professor at char school of Public Policy at george mason and director of the terrorism transnational crime and corruption center. One of the issues on china that you didnt mention is its enormous role in what might be called environmental devastation around the world. The elephants have gotten a lot of visibility, but their role in depleting fish stocks off the west coast of africa, off the west coast of mexico, how theyre fueling conflicts and migration and deforestation that contributes to ecological damage, is there a way we can deal with some of these problems that are undermining the sustainability of all of us . Great question. And you know and i know the challenge is and that the countries that are sometimes being exploited are saying that we you know, you america, the west, you did that for hundreds of years in terms of exploitation, and now we simply want our piece of the pie, and the chinese are saying were simply doing what the westecoun did 80 years ago, and they may have some valid truth in those comments, but your point is exactly right. Climate change, Global Warming are affect us all, and i dont think i have seen a articulated strategy on how we convince those nations or push china into a more responsible ecological environmental role. I tell you this much, we didnt help matters when we got out of the paris accord. Yes. Lets see. Right there, this gentleman and ill come over here next. Thank you. Nelson cunningham. You mentioned the Counter Intelligence aspect of the Mueller Report, and people remember that it began as a Counter Intelligence investigation. I think many of us were surprised when we finally read the Mueller Report what he said that, no, no, he had hived off the Counter Intelligence investigation and simply provided information to the fbi for them to do their own investigation. Now, on the Intelligence Committees, you are entitled by statute to receive briefings from the administration on major intelligence and Counter Intelligence operations. Have you received briefings on the Counter Intelligence side of what mueller had been investigating, or do you anticipate getting such briefings . We have made very public that we hope and intend to get the underlying evidence that mueller looked at or considered in terms of our Counter Intelligence responsibility, and im very proud of the fact that were the last remaining bipartisan investigation. We may be the last remaining Bipartisan Committee in the senate, but were still doing our job, and we are very conscious of what mueller said and didnt say. Do you is it clear there can be a bipartisan agreement . We have our investigation has five components. The first was, you know, was the Intelligence Communitys assessment of january 17th accurate, that the russians massively intervened, and they did so to help trump and hurt clinton. We confirmed that unanimously. We came out with our report on Election Security, or weve got it written. Its going through declassification right now, and that was unanimous and bipartisan. We are drafting the Component Parts on social media. Again, weve had no disagreements to date. We will have we will point out some of the areas where the Obama Administration got it right and some of the areas where they candidly got it wrong, and again, weve had no disagreement. On the issue of conspiracy, collusion was a term we shouldnt have used from day one. You know, were still its been reported at least that we saw witnesses last week. It has been reported, hasnt it . Lets see. This gentleman right here, the tie lierright here. Yep. Hi, im eric higher, im a an International Affairs fellow. From our discussion today its clear that china is challenging United States everywhere all the time around the world, but it seems like our response is too little and too late, things like the bill to act, the Development Finance corporation, our minimum budgets. What is the will of the congress or this government to stand up and really take on the chinese put the money where their mouth is . Well, again, great question. An important tool, he would be the first to acknowledge its not near enough. When were looking at the bill, i would argue that and this is kind of my macro point that we need to make this not u. S. Versus china, that it needs to be more democracies, you know, calling on china to be a more engaged, and i think we need to do a better job of leveraging on the foreign assistance and Economic Development standpoint, our partnership with our other allies around the world. And again, thats not been a strong suit of the current administration, but and thats why i go when i left to my conclusion was one, weve got to put people on notice, and i do think making people more aware and trying to get more of this information declassified so that academia, business, and i would point out most everyone has been receptive to hearing this message with the exception of private equity who are, surprise, surprise, hugely invest instead a lot of these Chinese Tech Companies that are being used by the Chinese Government. So weve got to put people on notice and step stage three, which is, you know, weve got to invest more in s. T. E. M. And do more Economic Development, the kind of longterm broader investments that we need to make. We think, what do we call it, industrial policy are not where we ought to be, which technologies we ought to be really invested in. Thats what the race to the moon was. That was industrial policy by a different name. That shortterm interim, what do we do over the next couple of years . I gave out some ideas. I think were still pretty thin. One last question we have time for, lets see, somebody way in the back, all the way in the back over here. Thank you. Senator, im katie wong with ntd tv, i have a question about huawei. We know that it has been put on the list, so Many American firms and other companies have cut off their supply to huawei, but still we know that some chip makers in the United States took a hit by this by this export control, so they want to persuade the government to maybe lose the control on that so they can still continue the supply of some like nonsensitive parts or some regular parts to huawei, so im just wondering whats your point of view on that . You raise a very, very important question, and this is where i think even though this designation letter was a long time in coming, i think the fact that it i think it had not been fully thought through, and it shows that this was an issue that should have been received higher attention earlier because your point, particularly when were thinking about the Network Versus the hand sets, do we really want to restrict american and other chip manufacturers from selling Semiconductor Chips into the chip hand set. That i think there does need to be some exemptions granted to that designation letter. I think we should have thought that through on the front end, but i would be supportive of recognizing there is a difference between selling Component Parts to huawei versus purchasing huawei. And theres a difference between the network and the handsets. So i agree with your question. Thank you, senator mark warner, vice chairman of the Intelligence Select Committee on intelligence. Thank you to all of you. The meeting is concluded. Thank you. Thank you. And now to live coverage, a picture from the center for strategic and international studies. This is the start of a day long forum on u. S. , former officials with the state department and National Security council as well as former officials with the south korean government. This is live coverage on cspan3, and we do expect it to start in just a moment