Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hoover Institution - Threats To Free And Open Societies 20240714

Values. At this time let me introduce the participants of the asked discussion today entitled theed battlegrounds of perception, courtneying threats to free and open societies. Ion heresy ali is a refrp fellow at the Hoover Institution. Served as a had minister of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006. While in parliament she focused on furthering the integration of nonwestern immigrants into Dutch Society and on defending the rights of muslim women. Larry diamond sat senior fellow at the hoover stumts and the institute for international studies. For more than six years he directed fsi center on Democracy Development and the rule of law. Where he now leads the program on arab reform and dpkz and the Global Digital policy incubator. H. R. Mckaufrt is a senior flow at the hoover stiegs 26th assistant to the president for the National Security affairs and served as a commissioned officer in the United States army for 34 years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in june of 2018. The moderator for the panel is neil ferguson. Neil is the mill bank family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior fellow for the center of European Studies at harvard he where he standarded a lawrence a tich professor of history. Please join me in welcoming this esteemed group to the stage. [ applause ] well, good afternoon. Thank you, tom for that introduction. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen for joining us on such a beautiful afternoon when you could be out playing frisbee. Im extremely excited to be moderating this distinguished panel. When you come to think of it we have some just amazing expertise up here on the platform. We have a former National Security adviser who really was the master mind behind a author o remaking of National Strategy back in 2018 and well talk a little bit about his contribution to that. To my far left Larry Diamond whose recent role as editor of a major report on clienz influence operations has caused a major stir all around the world, both sides of the pacific, and sitting on my immediate left pb ayon heresy ali has been the leading critic of islamic extremism and fundamentalism. And i should in the interest of full disclosure acknowledge that she also happens to be my wife. But let me reassure you [ applause ] there will be no softball questions on this panel. I want to begin with a quotation from this is a first, actually, i think the first time we appeared on stage together. We put it off and put it off. And finally hoover talked us flew it. Incidentally our two sons are the first hoover fellows to be bred in captivity. I want to begin on a serious note by quoting from one of the grand masters of strategic thoughts and American Foreign policy. Henry kissinger for a man who just turned 96 has an astonishingly acute grasp of the issues that we are going to be discussing this afternoon. He has written on Artificial Intelligence and in his book world order, he made the following observation. And i quote. The pervasiveness of Network Communications in the social, financial abindustrial and military sectors has revolutionized vulnerabilities. Outpacing most rules and regulationsen indeed the technical comprehension of being regulators it has in some speculates created the state of nature, the escape from which according to hobbs providing the motivating force for creating a political order. Asymmetriy and a kind of conjentle world disorder are built into relations between cyberpowers both in diplomacy and strategy. Absent articulatation of rules of international conduct, a crisis will arise from the inner dynamics of the system. A couple more kwo quotes just to frame the subject. Admiral michael rogers, former head of the National Security agency and u. S. Cyber kpand said a kwum of years ago, we are at a tipping point. And finally i want to quote from nsa crypt graver Robert Morris senior his famous rules of computer security. You want to make note of these, ladies and gentlemen, because everybody these days has to be concerned about computer security. Rule one, do not own a computer. Rule two, do not pirate on. Rule through, do not use it. With that to set the scene, i want to turn to h. R. Mcmaster. General, i want to ask you about the National Security strategy to begin with. Because it really did radically change the u. S. Posture on a range of issues of which probably the most noteworthy was our stance towards china. But it had some interesting things to say about cyber warfare. And ill briefly remind you of something you said. Cyber attacks offer opportunities to low cost opportunities to damage or disrupt critical infrastructure, cripple american businesses, weaken or federal networks and attack the tools and devices that americans use every day to communicate and conduct business. The United States will impose swift and costly consequences on foreign governments, criminals and other actors who undertake significant malicious cyber activities. So let me begin with a question. Can there be effective deterrence in cyberspace . Thanks. Thank you, neil. You asked overall, too, what motivated in dramatic shift in policy that you saw broadly in the december 2017, highry readable just in time for the beach for all of you National Security strategy. Does december, 2018 is when we were able to put it all in place. And and i think it was really a sense that we were at the end of the beginning of a new era. But we were behind, behind behind largely because we were no the competing effectively against adversaries and rivals. And the reasons that we were behind is due fl large measure to overconfidence, overconfidence in the 90s associated with your oh triumph in the cold war, the collapse of the soviet you know yn, the lop sided victory over the sixth largest army in the world during the 19919 gulf war and sustained Economic Growth through the 90s. What some people called the rulings in military affairs associated with the technologies. The first big dot come boom in the valley as weapon pep we were flushed with overservice that led to complacency. Then we confronted difficulties arrive ov i the mass murder attack against our nation upon september 11, 2001. And unanticipated length and difficulty of wars in iraq and afghanistan. And of course the 2008 financial crisis. And i think that jolted our confidence fl a way that we actually became, i think, passive and didnt engage competitively for reasons of pessimism, rather than overoptimism. We made a conscious choice to figure out how to reenter arenas of competition from which we had been absent. Cyber is one of those. And to answer your question more succinctly at this point is that, yes, i think you can deter certain attacks in cyberspace. Really by two fundamental means. One allowed to in the appraise which is to impose costs on a cyber actor or make clear that you can impose costs far beyond those which the cyber actor factored in at the outet set of the decision to attack you. Now those are cyber offensive capabilities. But also capabilities outside of cyberspace that you can bring to bear American Power in physical space, through sanctions, and Law Enforcement actions, but when you when you have the authority to do so military action as well. But the other aspect of deterrence is really to go back to thomas shelling in the 60s. Ke terrence by defile. Convincing potential adversaries that they can not accomplish their object he was through the use of the capability that involves some defensive measures. In fact, making our infrastructure more resilient. And ensuring that any systems, any of our systems can degrade gracefully rather than fail catastrophically. We have a reminder of the ran some ware attack on the city of bullet. These are problems with us right now. I think we have to recognize that our enthusiasm for technologies that made our life so much easier have made us more vulnerable. And maybe prone to catastrophic collapse. I mean, im reminded of elton morrisons book from the 60s as well. Entitled men, machine and modern times. In it he said that man and woman he is writing in the 60s have expended a great deal of effort in trying to tame his Natural Environment. But in so doing has created an artificial environment that is much more complex than the Natural Environment ever was. And so i think were on the right track in terms of recognizing this as a competitive domain. I think you have seen a lot of critical actions taken to make it easier to use, for example, offensive capabilities as a part of deterrence and defense. But i think there is certainly a long way to go. Both on deterrence by defile and the ability to impose costs. Before i turn to the ayon and larry you want i want to pursue that. We have an opportunity to learn from somebody who was there the in the room making and remaking policy. Joe nye of harvard wrote a recent article on this subject. Ill quote from it. Process deterrence is is cyberspace is more like crying governments can only imperfectly prevent it. Its not like deterrence in the age of the cold war where you had to deter the soviet union from firing a missile, because if they fired a missile that is it it we were in armageddon. In some way cyber warfare is a permanent state. Its just keeping the level down so you dont suffer serious disruption. Is that the right way to think about it. I think that is. Because i think cyber actors are trying to avoid the imposition of costs back on them as well. And cyber is a way where we have seen rivals, competitors, such as russia, china, but north korea as well, and iran, try to accomplish objectives below the threshold that would elicit a concerted response back against them. We have to do a number of things. One is to develop a range of capabilities that can be ploid against the actors. I think you have seen that in the last election for example. In the in the midterm elections. I think more and more will be known overtime. But we can did act much more aggressively than we in the past against those trying to disrupt our elections. And there are other actions we can take as well that arent purely defensive but in many ways innoculate ourselves against the effects. I know that larry and ayon are going to talk about influence provision operations and cyber enabled information warfare. But we can can educate ourselves and the public so we are less susceptible to manipulation by the actors. Or we can figure out a way to present credible Information Base the on, you know, verifiable sources and be able to access that routinely in a way that sort of blocks out some of that attempts at disinformation and propaganda. Can we draw that distinction out a little bit more . Because i think there is a distinction between drawn between cyberwarfare and information war. Process and in some whiches the United States spent much more time thinking about cyber warfare prior to 2016, maybe because we kind of invented it. And our assumption was well if we can do certain things to iran sooner or later someone will do that to us. We should worry about computer virus z and malware that might disrupt our software that controls infrastructure. But in fact what the russians did in 2016 was something different, which was information warfare. Can you help us understand the difference. I think it goes back to this complacency problem. I think we believed in the 1990, the corollary to the overconfidence we believed there was a arc of historiry gaerning the froh and open societies over closed authoritiarian systems our privacy from them. It was our confidence that came under attack, our confidence in who we are as a people, our common identity. We no he that 80 of the of the messaging and bot traffic and so forth on social media from the Internet Research agency, the the gru, the russian intelligence arm was aimed as dividing americans along lines of race. The second highest distant second was on immigration. And then gun control. Whatever could be a polarizing issue that can pull our politty and society from each other and pit us against each other and then attack our election so we also dont have have faith in our democratic processes and institutions. And so i think that we came late to the game on this. We certainly did. I think it was again because we were overconfident in just the inherent strength of our society and our system. And im glad you observed the moments ago that we did up our gim and although it didnt get much coverage, the fact that there wasnt effective disruption of 2018 midterms has to be down to the way the administration hit back the Internet Research agency and actually disrupted its communications. So you could i think say that we did learn and learn pretty quickly from 2016. I think one of the lessons overall to get back to your point on deterrence is you cant separate in cyberspace offensive and defensive. We know its Public Knowledge that you know if you develop a cybertool and you use it it has a shelf life of about 96 hours until there is a countermeasure deployed against it. What you have is what cloud warfare isright is a tinnous interaction of op sits. Thats happening now at electron speed, internationally, in in new form of competition. And so what we had to do is align the authorities for knows who are operating to defend us, to defend us from these these actors, to employ combinations of offensive and defensive capabilities. This is a good moment to turn from you to ayon and remind ourselves that although there has not been a major islamist terrorist attack in the United States for some time it hasnt stopped around the world. And just to remind the audience, these are numbers from the u. S. National consortium for the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism, that their most recent report data for 2017 records 10900 terrorist attacks of all kinds around the world which killed more than 26,400 people. The top three perpetrators were Islamic State, the taliban and alshabab. Overwhelmingly the terrorism is driven by radical Islamist Groups. I wanted to begin with a question about those groups. The ways in which they have used the Technology Developed in the west. Yes. To organize, to mobilize and build far Bigger Networks than al qaeda had back in 2001. Talk a bit about that, educate us about how the networks currently operate. Well, thanks. I wanted to start by, you know i was listening intently to my colleague, h. R. And thinking here we are talking about operations. This is cyber. Here are the people our adversaries using cyber. And in the 15 years that ive been in the United States, the one thing maybe even since 1989, the one thing we rarely talk about, ideas, ideologies and grounding principles. So when h. R. Said the core of our identity, i automatically assumed very subjectively that the core of our identity is are these Classical Liberal ideas that the United States is established upon. And what we then forget is that there are in fact people who organize, who have political and social frameworks that are radically different from ours. So when you think about islamism, it is a political and social philosophy with a religious underpinning. And when the agents of these or the poem who believe in these ideology i think you look at islamism and you see a tree with two main branchs. And one branch is the use of violence to achieve their aims, to achieve what they think of as their utopian idea. And the utopian ideal is to establish a society on a local level, regional level and maybe global level to achieve an end goal, that society is based on the rule of god. Thats their interpretation. Thats their organizing philosophy. Now, does this think of it as a true. One branch is the use of violence to reach that goal. And thats called jihad. And i think most americans everywhere i go i ask people ask raise your hand if you think you know of the concept of jihad. Just raise your hand. And thats exactly it. A lot of people, maybe 80 to 90 of a room like this will say ive heard of the concept of jihad, read about it, im familiar with it. And then i asked people raise your hand if youve ever heard of the concept of dawa. Sorry. Its one, two, three, four its always a minority. But that is the other main branch of the islamist tree. And what does that mean . It means that the believers in in particular political and social philosophy that has the underpinning in religionouses or puts together an effort in engaging in campaigns, afrgts, thinking, propaganda, in short it is the effort to promote the ideas its the effort to persuade. And thats where cyber comes into. I know that when it comes to jihad and we are focusing on that, and you know these big companies, google, twitter, whatever, they focus on the jihadi aspect. When are they plotting a terrorist attack . Where is the attack going to be . What kind of medium is that going to use . Thats all under the branch of jihad. But when it comes to dawa you have to ask yourself, how are they using cyber to raise awareness to recruit people to their cause . How are they using sieber to organize, strategize, Exchange Tips and tactics . How are they using cyber to raise money . And yes, information warfare. How are they using to propagate conspiracy theories. The United States of america is out to get all muslims. That is one Conspiracy Theory. They are colluding with the state of israel to destroy islam. Thats another Conspiracy Theory. If you ask me i will say the concept of islamaphobia, i put it under that realm of disinformation and information warfare. And thats how its used. And i think everything that my colleague h. R. Said is absolutely true. We are used to fighting these operational wars, you know, the two things that you mentioned, make sure that, you know, you impose cost on them, and denial sorry what did you say, defense by denial. That works on the operational level. But the question remains, are we really engaged in terms of these ideological confrontation . And are we not really wasting the opportunity to use the internet, to use cyber, to protect a counterideology . And a counteridea and a countersystem of ideas . And i think thats where we are failing. One of the things that most struck me when i was writing a book related to all this, the square in the tie was how different United States was from al qaeda. Because al qaeda carried out the 9 11 attacks partly because it was so cut off and closed as a tiny conspiratorial network that it pretty much was undetected by our security forces. Whereas Islamic State is quite different. Its a very open though rapidly changing network that uses social media, uses all kinds of different platforms to disseminate its ideology. You look at some of the work thats been done by people in National Security and the u. S. , that grafts the network of Islamic State activity online and its absolutely mind blowing how big this thing is. And how sophisticated. So is it the right to say that Islamic State may have been defeated on the ground in syria. Umhum. But still very much alive in cyberspace. Think of Islamic State as only one brand of this global phenomenon of islamists, al qaeda is just another brand of islamists. And al qaeda failed because they put all their money on the jihadist branch. They thought we are just going to shock the world into submitting to our view. And that didnt happen. They were obliterated or almost obliterated. And obviously they adapt like we adapt they earn from their mistakes like we learn from our mistakes. They have always gone back to well lets redevelop or refocus on that dawa branch, on persuading individuals dsh getting into the minds of human beings to persuade them to our viewpoint. And the way to do that is through schools. Its through families. Its through neighborhoods, communities. And obviously its through the internet. And they are making use of all these various tools that are available to all of us. Now, i want to say we in the United States or people who try and study because we are academics, we try to draw the Straight Lines of distinction between al qaeda, between Islamic State, between the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations. But thats not how it works. You have to think of them. If the global tree if the tree is islamism, they have disagreements on tactics, they have disagreements on how to get to the end goal, with you remember they agree on the end goal. So a lot of communication takes place, a lot of collaboration, a lot of exchange of money, a lot of, you know, commitments, all of that happens. And much of it happens through cyber. But thats not the most important thing. The most important thing is that while we focus on brands like Islamic State we are missing the big picture. I see right now reconfigurations, reunions between the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood, al qaeda and some of the iranian s shchlt ia islamists. But you read the newspapers you are told the sunnis and shyia are killing one another. Thats the case but only part of the story. A lot of the communication takes place through cyber, through the internet. But then when our government as h. R. Described makes it very difficult for them to use cyber, they use they turn back to the old methods of communicating and carrying out one question i wanted to ask you specifically about dawa, nonviolent extremism. Right. Is how important the internet is in the process of radicalization often one reads after a terrorist attack in europe or somewhere else, the perpetrator was radicalized online. Yeah. Is that actually what happens . Yes there is a school of thought a number of people who believe if we shut off all of their social media accounts and internets then radicalization would be minimized and disappear. And i tend to disagree with that. And i think that by the time the individual goes to his smartphone or laptop or whatever to access any of these social media tools, they have already at least been inspired. That is at a minimum theyve been inspired to rethink things. Now think mostly of young people. They are looking for some kind of moral guideline. And when you think about morality and you are 15, 16, 17, i think very often outside of the west about 90 of people will think about going to their religion. Now, you can go to your local imam but most of those have have been displaced saudi arabia and yemen a have put in their own imams in place that have displaced that local, get along islam that was established in most places in the world. So youre a young person, live here in the uk, live in bangladesh or sri lanka. You are thinking about the difference between right and wrong. You think you are going to the local imam. You go to the mosque and listen to the sermon. And they told you about the world view so coherent and so chlorwith the rewards in the here after and the sfroiss you have to make. Its only then because its so complex that i think many individualing think well because they give you references, like we give references at the end of my talk i say why dont you go to the Hoover Institution website. Or why dont you go to the Classical Liberal website, this, that and the other. They do the same thing. Thats what you seeyou see happ on cyber. People coming to these services thinking im going to get more information and they get sucked in the cyber is only part of the story. When it is used that way. Im going to come back to a bigger question i want to ask you about the open society and its enemies. It is in the title of our event. I know you are a devoted reader of karl popper but i want to turn that to larry. We have talked about russia, we have talked about islam, lets talk about china. Your influence Operations Report talks quite a bit about technology theft. Relatively little about chinas underlying activity. And would like to ask you to talk a bit about that. I wonder if we aint seeing nothing yet because in ways compared with the russians, the chinese havent really begun information warfare. Should we be bracing ourselves to that . Thank you, neil, for that question. I want to begin since we are now talking about china by noting that 30 years ago today the Chinese Communist party state ordered the Peoples Liberation army into Tiananmen Square. And used in massive mbu brutal military force to suppress what was probably the most important democracy uprising since the nationalist revolution. We dont know how many people died in Tiananmen Square. Estimates are between 2,510,000 people. But it was a seminole moment in the history of modern china and marked, as the brilliant essay by my coeditor of the report, noted in his superb article in the wall street journal on saturday, a really decisive pivot away from reform and towards the neo totalitarian orwellian and now i would say increasingly aggressive state that the peoples republic of china has become. I think that before we talk about the cyber element of this in china, which i will come to, we need to talk about generally what they are doing. And no state in the world has a more dedicated international and institutionalized, within the communist party apparatus, we have all complicated chart in our report that unveils and maps the bureaucracy that has a more dentist graded infrastructure for the propaganda and promotion of influence around the world in subterranean and illicit fashion than the peoples republic of china has. And does she just said you dont have to be doing this online in order to have tremendous impact. They have got now, they have gathered all of their communications channels, China Global Television, china radio international, the news agency and Everything Else theyve got into something they called the original title the voice of china. This is increasingly centrally direct did as part of a Massive Campaign to propagate their narrative around the world to suppress other narratives to buy up newspapers and inserts in newspapers and Radio Stations to propagate a dominant line. One of the most disturbing things that our report found, again not yet coming to the online element, is that if you look at the chinese language media, in australia, in the United States, in canada, in europe, in the major democracies of the world, forget about africa and latin america for the moment, it is now predominantly parroting a pro beijing light. In our democracies we have lost freedom and pluralism of information. What we have is Chinese State communist Party Propaganda and chinese direct intimidation within our country alternative voices to the point where i was just informed yesterday of the city councilmember, i wont name the city, but lets say it is in california, who was told, by an official of the chinese consulate, the if he met with a representative of the taiwan representative office, the chinese overseas community would mobilize their power to defeat this person in the next election. This is happening in the United States of america. Not in some asian semi democracy or latin america or Something Like that. So we have a very serious problem. And, when youand of course look at what they are doing to penetrate the universities of the United States, not just the confucius institutes, more than 150 of them in the United States, where the Chinese Communist Party Ministry of education is write in the curriculum and appointing the instructors to teach chinese language in the United States. Something that i find inexplicable that we are letting happen in the United States of america. And that i think we could end very simply, by simply adding a new, National Defense education act that provides federal government funding of chinese language instruction in the United States which is an important National Security object that. Let me add, neil, that we engaged to build on hrs point about overconfidence and complacency. We engaged in the late 1990s, in a bipartisan act of unilateral disarmament. Jesse helms wanted to shrink the International Affairs budget. The Clinton Administration wasnt ready to fight it and had a number of other priorities. Basically give me your left arm u. S. A. Or your right arm, and so the Clinton Administration surrendered and close down the u. S. Information agency which was our instrument for fighting communist and terrorist illiberal authoritarian propaganda around the world. That got merged into the state department into a new bureau of Public Diplomacy that has had on average one undersecretary every 18 months and never been effective. Fortunately a bipartisan initiative, we have seen the creation of undersecretary pompeo didnt happen under the previous secretary, a serious effort to stand up a Global Engagement center to which this battle of ideas. It is going to have, it must have a digital counter narrative and counter messaging component. But that isnt enough. A lot of the ways people get news and information is not digital, it is the oldfashioned way by reading newspapers, listening to the radio and so on and so forth. Lets say we are talking about a closed society which we need to penetrate in iran or north korea in particular, how are we going to get through their . In north korea is not going to be by digital means. We could take the entire, maybe not the entire, but quite a large swath of the classic canon of liberal ideas i think ayaan was referring to, put it on thumb drives and try quite a large number of them at very low cost into the peoples republic of china, into the north korea and a lot of non permissive societies. These arent even expensive initiatives. We are not thinking creatively enough. We really arent yet can even now, when we are getting more serious, i dont think we are matched and resolved for the error we are in is there a structural problem . Chinese have an authoritarian system. They have a great foreign rule to keep content out they dont like. They have a golden shield for online surveillance. They have a great canon which they can point anybody to, they want to take down. It seems to me it has become a very asymmetrical contest, even if we do as you are saying, we have an open society. It is hard for us to do to them what they can do to us that is absolutely true. We note that in the report. That is why we stress in the report they need, which whatever your opinion may be of other policies of the Trump Administration, the Trump Administration is pursuing vigorously, i would say with some considerable effectiveness, to get more reciprocity in the relationship. We cant just sit back passively and say we will wage this battle with one arm tied behind our back when they have all four limbs to run with. That means if our media companies, television companies, this is my own opinion. Actually i will concede i couldnt sell it to my working group, but nevertheless i feel it very strongly. If we cant get our Cable Television channels to be able to broadcast, whether in english or chinese to the chinese public, why should China Global Television have access to our Cable Television airwaves . That is not obvious to me. If our scholars and journalists are increasingly being threatened with visa denials, if they say or write something critical of the Chinese Communist party leadership, why should they continue to have unfettered access in the other direction . These are some of the ways i think we will never eliminate the asymmetry. But i think we can narrow it and fight back. I want to say one other thing, niall. It is asymmetrical in both directions. Because we have an intrinsic advantage here that they dont have. And that is, i feel this very very deeply, the truth is on our side. If we can mobilize it and broadcast it and penetrated and counter the lying narratives against it around the world. Edward r. Murrow, john f. Kennedys i think founding director of the u. S. Information agency had a very good line. He said the truth is the best propaganda. Lies of the worst. Because lies eventually can be exposed. But we need to expose them. And that means in africa, and latin america, we have to show people the truth about the society. What are people going to decide about the relative value of the two systems when they really get around exposure to the United States with all our divisions with all of swarts with all our flaws and see 2 Million People of the Muslim Minority ethnicity sitting in concentration camps purely because of their ethnicity. Most people dont know that and we need to make sure they do. And we have evidence to show them the echoes of the cold war and you harking back to your word not mine. If youre citing the kennedy registration efforts to take us back there. I want to turn this back to hr. There is a sense we are moving towards, if not already in cold war to. In cold war 2. We will be having to do just the kind of things larry is talking about. You have to have a much more coherent sense of the need to combat the other sides propaganda. When you were in government how headed to think about this and has your view changed since you came here to hoover and civilian life . Niall, as a fellow historian, you know we are skeptical about uses of historical analogies. It is important to look at every situation on its own terms while learning from observations about past experience in the cold war. I think what everybody recognizes what is fundamentally different about this competition with china is we are intertwined with what the peoples republic of china economically and this is part of a Global Economic system in which you know far better than i do as an economic historian as well that it is far different from the isolated economies of the cold war period. Whereas we must compete, we may have to compete in different ways. This competition gives us more opportunities. I think larrys comment about is we have the truth on our side is borne out by the Chinese Communist partys failure in any way to deal with not only the tiananmen men square massacre but Tiananmen Square massacre, but democratic governance and rule of law within china. There are colleagues, a great essay about that today about the repression of historical memory within china. I think we can mobilize in some ways, history to counter those the Chinese People really like to be oppressed by authoritarian regime or what i would characterize as bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity, among those who say the chinese are just kind of, they are really differential to that hierarchical, confucian think that they can be preyed upon by their own government. And of course taiwan is an example. To counter that as well. We have to compete in different ways from an ideological perspective, but also from an economic perspective. Do see opportunities now, obviously. I think what you are going to see following what has been a really concerted effort to call china out on unfair trade and economic practices, as well as a sustained campaign of industrial espionage, in the form of december 20 last year, conventional wisdom the United States is on the simone we dont work with anybody. December20th last year, 60 nation simultaneously called out the chinese Hacking Organization apt ten, for their industrial espionage activities, sanction that organization and announced a number of indictments in multiple countries with multiple individuals associated with the. The next step is, would you call not a trade war but a tech war with china, i think you are going to see, can i quote one of, Gwyneth Paltrow with conscious decoupling, a coupling of our economies such that companies are no longer going to accept the risk of operating in china for shortterm profits because their intellectual property is stolen and transferred to the state and used by, in many cases, state run enterprises, to overproduce at low cost and damp goods back into those economies and drive those companies out of business. That were attracted initially by shortterm profits. I think what is going to happen economically, commercially, will in some ways and mirror what we have seen happen with the internet. There is now, i think, a divergence, and secretary rice made this comment as well, a diversion toward two separate systems. Have to manage that carefully and try to mitigate the downside of that. That i think we are entering a fundamentally new phase in the relationship between the United States and likeminded countries and the peoples republic of china. It is interesting i think europeans increasingly share that view. I was in europe over the weekend at a conference of essentially transatlantic participants. This conference has been going on many years all the way back to the 1950s. It is interesting to see how attitudes have shifted. At the same conference in 2015 the view that President Donald Trump could never be elected of the United States, mexico never happened. Same conference 2017 which i believe your outcome of the worst possible situation we could be in, what an utter him like mayor wheeler living here. 2010 i guess we are going to have to get used to this. And last weekend, they are now so on board with the Trump Administrations policy in china there is almost no daylight between the europeans in the United States. It has been an amazing transformation. But i have not seeing the same transformation in attitudes toward islamic extremism. The europeans dont seem at all interested in the way in which the administration is thinking about this problem. And i am particularly struck by the fact, going back to something you said, that if there is going to be a fight upon a cultural fight to come back to combat dua, to combat extremism, the europeans are not going to be in that fight on the right side. I think what we see behind the scenes is there is a hope that the country of saudi arabia with this new vision 2030 if we gave them a chance. If only we collaborate with oil rich countries of the middle east. Divert the attention away from spending money. Lots and lots of money and lots of propaganda and instead diversify the economy. Their population will somehow come to live by the principles of freedom and tolerance and equality. Just like us. Tell us what we thought would happen with china if we engaged economically with them, that they would become more i think when we talk about other confidence, after 1989, that sentiment in the west has been very, very strong. We defeated the soviet union, not only on military grounds but we defeated them in the battlefield of ideas. Communism, marxism, socialism. It doesnt work. They gave up, we won. This sense of it is the end of history everybody is going to come to our way of thinking and way of doing things. But then, at the same time, that overconfidence went along with an insecurity about our basic principles. The founding principles of this country. People are promoting, in colleges, we are in the grip of the terrible, terrible nonsensical idea summarized in the word woke. You hear things like toxic panic solidity, White Privilege. What you heres the history of of this country is all about exploitation. All about slavery. To bring down the statues of the people who established our history. On the one hand the overconfidence, 1989, everyone will become with ideas like our principles that inhibited work when it comes to propagating our principles because our principles are evil, White Privilege and all that nonsense. I think at some point we have to come to a place where we shed this identity politics hr was talking about. How they can come in and exploit our weaknesses and where we are polarized. If we amplify confrontations, polarization between men and women, between children and their parents or level of authority, transgender, lbgta queue, you carry on. You start to fragment our society along these then, narrow lines knows, mostly based on it is very easy to persuade the population, the middle east, latin america, africa, that basic principles of Classical Liberalism are superior to the basic principles of radical islam. It is very easy for us to do that. We can prove it if only we propagated. So we have to marry out everything everybody is going to become like us to actually promoting the ideas. Not just the material goods. People want cars, they want smart phones, that is all true. But, a forget what are the underlying basic things. And we sell the idea of capitalism, can we sell the idea of free enterprise, can we sell the idea of political freedom. If we cant do that, we end up becoming like them instead of them becoming like us and i see a bit of that happening in europe. Larry, before we go to the audience and we are going to go to audience shortly, you have to think up some difficult questions for the panel. If you dont i will cold call some people just to get things started. Larry, you have written about a democratic recession. If you take a step back and consider the global picture, do you feel like ayaan, there is a fundamental disadvantage as far as democracy is concerned . It is an open society and therefore cant have great firewalls. Partly because of our internal divisions which do feel worse than they were in the cold war. Talk about the democratic recession you have written about and are there ways of combating it . Because it is one thing to observe it, but the real challenge is to decide how to turn the tide back in favor of democracy you are really asking me too summarize the whole book i just published. You can do that i want to carry on with the theme ayaan just sounded. Let me say these bullet points. First of all if you look at the data from Freedom House or the economist magazine or most other ratings agencies on the democracy and freedom from we have been in a 1012 your stagnation. And now i think increase and lease laged in terms of democracy in the world. Its been getting worse for a lot of reasons. Rising income inequality is part of it, the divisions we have inflicted on ourselves, i agree with ayaan is part of it, the Immigration Crisis and the lack of sensitivity and effectiveness in many ways i would say liberal and wellintentioned government leaders, but nevertheless ineffective i think. Angela merkel very naive and the way she handled this in germany. And the election of President Donald Trump shows you have to have your ear to the ground in terms of peoples concerns about this. I think there have been a lot of drivers of democratic dysfunction, polarization, cultural backlash, whatever you want to call it and then youve got the big factor i think many people have not been paying attention to until recently and i would say the december, 2017 National Security strategy that h. R. , led to the drafting of, was a big factor in helping to educate americans and really the world that we are in a new era. An era of return to great power competition. We have resourceful, dedicated and to some extent narratively if not ideologically driven powerful, authoritarian adversaries trying to dirty up, slowly, discredit and reverse the very idea of freedom and democracy. We really just have to push back. We have to do so i dont use the term cold where, niall, i think there are striking number of parallels between where we were at the peak of the cold war particular i would say around 1960, and where we are now. And one of them was around 1960, we got back a sense of purpose and selfconfidence and energy in waging this ideological struggle. It is that and it is a struggle for freedom, for the open society, for the equal worth of every human being. Against all the sources of illiberal ideas whether radical islam slips, whether the kremlin version of a white, christian, conservative, nationalist, european stand against the rest of the world or whether they come in the form of it is not communism in the china model of authoritarian capitalism being superior. I just want to close with two points and one, also i think builds on what ayaan said. There are a number of reasons to be more hopeful about the opportunity we have. Not the ability but the opportunity than most people realize and what is if you look at the Public Opinion data, particularly from subsaharan africa, you find that even though there has been, the barometers is now 20 years old even though there has been modest erosion in public support for democracy and liberal values, it remains overwhelming. Two thirds of people in africa and Northern Africa say they would like to have a democratic system of government. Up in the Political Science skeptics say will if you peel it back theres not much there it is very superficial, they say they want independent courts. They say they want checks and balances. They say they want their president s not to serve more than two terms and they say in various responses to questions, more or less, they want to be secure in their rights and they want to have an open society. That doesnt sound shallow to me. That sounds to me, and you see it, a little more equivocal now in latin america and parts of asia, but we have got a lot to work with. People actually do not want to live in an authoritarian, or will he and where they have no freedom, no privacy, and can be sent to a concentration camp at any point. If we cant make that work for us in this next round of global competition, we are doing something deeply wrong or ill conceived. Inspiring words, larry. I want to actually almost worthy of a round of applause [ applause ] that sounds to me like [ applause ] i want to invite you if you have questions to take advantage of the microphone standing right there on either side of the auditorium. I want to remind you that mcquesten is a relatively short thing with a question market the end of it [ laughter ] and if you decide to give a speech, the demand will appear from the side of the auditorium and escort you out thank you so much for your courage and bravery and being the voice of women in the islamic world. You are a real hero and i am so happy [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Mcquesten, as a matter fact, i am looking for advice from you, for women like me, or for me, as a matter fact. Because i am in like a critical situation. I would like to ask you, because this is the point i am going to start to do something about my life. Some years ago, the advisor to Gerald Mcmillan from carnegie was here. I, as a public never got a chance to ask the question but afterward i could tell her my idea about what we should have done or should do in afghanistan. And she encouraged me very strongly to seek out, speak up and all those things. I have lived 35 years in fear of islam and Political Correctness and all of those things because i experienced a revival of islam and what islam can do and is doing with societies. But she encouraged me very much and told me one thing. She said people in this room need to hear from you. And she said to me so it takes ten years to understand what you are saying. I dont think it means my accent. I have tried to talk about this that i am coming to a crashing point right now. I feel i am hitting my head to the wall because i feel i am trade by the society of intellectuals that are supposed to support me. My new, beautiful country of the u. S. That should support me, but i feel that everywhere i go is this Political Correctness and many other things. It is very easy to us, and i can show you what is happening. Youve got to get to the question. My question is, i speak up against islam and im thinking the islam is the enemy pedophile ideology we should tell the truth. I am crashed because people say dont say they kill you we need a question, we really do. I think she got it question is i am crashing and i want to ask you honestly give me advice what should i do . Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I will be very short and say maybe at this stage it is better to stop talking about islam and Start Talking about freedom. Again we are here today to talk about how we can use online and cyber. It is now become technologically possible to connect a lot of people and see the ideas of afghani women from afghanistan. I know a number of them, attracted to the ideas of freedom and equality in raising their children, especially their sons to be different and embrace these ideas. I think that is where to go. Stop talking, talk less about what it is that has driven us out of the ideology of radical islam and talk about what has driven us to the principles of freedom gentlemen, please keep it brief or others will have a chance. Thank you very much for wonderful insights. You dont read this in the new york times, unfortunately, these days. Thank you. I was trying to think of a difficult question and i have come up with one. I would like to get two perspectives from h. R. , from the government and from ayaan, the question is this, Muslim Brotherhood is kind of the reason says they drive a lot of these violent jihad if you will. Sorry for using the word. At the same time we have failed so far to declare them a terrorist organization in United States. I was reading in the news we tried again but it is still happening. Why is that . Why have we failed to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization . Even the saudis did the Muslim Brotherhood organization should we identify as such . Back to ayaans point sometimes we try too card to disconnect dots with these group because they are overlapping. And mutually reinforcing. We have to be cognizant of the fact that not all of these groups are the same, especially within the Muslim Brotherhood that has different chapters that has different philosophies. Some are actually active and useful participants of political processes. If you were, for example, to make a blanket designation against all Muslim Brotherhood organizations and encourage other countries to do that, you have to recognize what we are going to do is drive those organizations underground in a way that set conditions for post barbaric echip. I think there has to be a distinction made between those who advocate for violence against innocents and those who advocate to be able to determine , with sharia law, the nature of the government at the exclusion of the parties. I think that is the way to think about it. And there is not going to be a simple solution to the problem of Islamist Groups that want to restrict human freedom. I dont think a blanket designation of Muslim Brotherhood does it for you. Ayaan . I agree with h. R. , everything he said is absolutely true. But i think we could go one step further and designate them an adversary, just like we are confronting china, what china is doing. It doesnt hurt to say Muslim Brotherhood, with all your branches in chapters we know what you are up to and heres the answer. It is not exactly a terrorist organization, but having them come to the white house and having them come in our institutions of education, institutions of information, i think in that sense, that is a mistake. Quickly if i make the point that maybe for the first two questions is the way to think about this is to really make sure we understand that terrorists are using a perverted interpretation of islam to justify criminal acts. Today is eid al fitr. Who are the greatest victims of these organizations . Other muslims. Not play into terrorist hands to try to Conspiracy Theory it is really the crusader conspiracy against them, what this is is a fight between all civilized people of all religions against those who are perverting islam will said. Question from the righthand microphone . Governments enjoyed the protection of the bill of rights, defined when it comes to ownership of media and newspapers, television stations, etc. Do you want to take the question . The answer is no. Indeed we have blocked chinese interests from buying Radio Stations in the United States. You know what they did . They bought the largest wattage Radio Station in north america, in tijuana. From there, started broadcasting over the border to southern california. In any case, i do not think that foreign governments have, and i dont think any court has ever established or even suggested that foreign governments have protection of freedom of speech or freedom of ownership inside the United States. Particularly when they are pursuing ideological objectives that are hostile to our bill of rights. I think it would be perverse to suggest otherwise. The lady in the black dress, please. I am honored to be, it is a great pledge to be in your courageous presence. Thank you so much. Today youve talked about islam as, russia, china as the greatest tyrannical threats. But i believe we are surrounded by people who think that the greatest threats to their lives are plastic straws, singlesex restrooms and personality. What are the organizations we can support, where is the greatest hope, where are the sparks of light people in this room can get behind when they leave here, to fight the battle you are describing today . [ applause ] that is an easy one, the Hoover Institution. That is what we are for. Freethinking and principles of open society in american academia. I think also what we do in open and free societies we have our internal disputes. We have conservatives, liberals, republicans, democrats and others. Sometimes we use an exaggerated language to describe and analyze these differences when really it is not that exaggerated. The adversity we are facing from china, from radical islam, from russia is very, very different from republicans and democrats accuse one another of. At times, i think we really need to mind our language and to sober up a bit. Maybe that will one day get us through the idea of bipartisan cooperation. We shouldnt confuse our external enemies that wish us existential harm with our domestic one peculiarity of the period of complacency that followed 1989, and our mistake in reading 1989 as being all about Eastern Europe rather than beijing, was i think in the absence of external threats we fell upon ourselves. We divided ourselves more deeply than i think had been true and there was a clear, external threat. It seems to me one hopeful prospect of our wakening up to these different threats is we begin to see a return to bipartisanship on precisely these issues. What is the one thing that democrats do not criticize President Trump for . Standing up to china. Because in fact they were all quicker than republicans to endorse the position of tariffs on chinese imports last year. This may be one of the unintended promising consequences of this discussion we are having. The lady at the microphone on the right. Thank you. For the brilliant conversation. It is a big discussion nowadays whether moderate to elegy, block chain, a. I. , Artificial Intelligence, can really contribute to inclusion, decentralization of power and helping open societies. I believe these technologies, you see this going on and maybe they can even be used against the free society. What is your opinion . Your thinking a lot about this right now. You are organizing a really important conference just last week at stanford, on the subject. What is your take . I think any Technological Development is going to have tremendous possibilities associated with it, but also dangerous. We learned from our most recent expenses with the internet which many people saw as unmitigated good can be used for nefarious purposes especially within social media, which is also supposed to be an unmitigated good. I think what is really important is to understand the implications of these technologies for our own security and preservation of our way of life. If there are dangers to put into place mitigating measures from the beginning but to also accentuate the positive aspects of Block Chain Technology for example which has empowered people in a way that has led to Economic Growth by being able to formalize land for example in ways that cant be corrupted. And also, enables may be a flattening of Financial Transactions in a way that is more democratic. There are positive aspects of the technology. Of course as you know, encryption is a great example right now of a benefit in terms of privacy. But also, a disadvantage in terms of how it can empower terrorist organizations to coordinate efforts without connection detection. On the stage last year, peter peel observed that may be a. I. Was communist and crypto or block chain was libertarian. And i thought long and hard about that, but it does seem as if Artificial Intelligence is going to be the basis of this new cold war, china may have certain advantages, precisely because there are no constraints on individual privacy when it comes to the chinese platform mining big data. The gentleman in the pink t shirt . This question is mostly for niall and ayaan. The most recent european parliamentary elections proved that no matter what brexit has not lost much popularity. And in ayaans former country, the netherlands. Im curious about what the possibility is of his move moving to the continent and what a Young American like me can do to help ensure the collapse of brussels . [ laughter ] [ applause ] ayaan kevin juette stick the question . I really want to find out some of the remarks made earlier which was in a free society, the leadership, the people we elect, they have their ears to the ground and listen to the concerns of the people. The European Union was a project that started, in my view, very positive, and started with a great deal of good intentions. But other times seriously, that there are people feel they are not being heard. Their concerns are not being taken seriously. There are people, bureaucrats at a bureaucratic level making decisions that have farreaching consequences for people in their neighborhoods, in their schools and day to day life and they are not being listened to. What i saw in the parliament in the netherlands, i felt that was a constant thing. We would go to members of parliament, and to her constituents and try to persuade them in a certain direction or listen to them, they would persuade us we would start to get a majority for certain legislation and we would be told you can have that because it is against eu laws. More more citizens would ask who the hector they. Are we now from belgian or for the matt hague . I think as long as europeans answer that with it is brussels, there going to have a lot of disaffection. Brexit, expression of disaffection have not listening to, i think in a Free Democratic society the leadership stop listening to constituents is not a democracy anymore. It must be said if you wanted to do an advertisement for how to leave the European Union, you would not have done british politics the way british politics has been run the last three years. They have rather the opposite effect on most continental europeans. Thanks for the question. The gentleman in the tshirt at the other microphone. Thank you wonderful conversation. You partially answered the question as chinas right to broadcast news as a foreign government. More generally how do we decide what discourse is appropriate for a free and open society . Where do we draw the line and who decides . Larry, do you want to give us a quick primer on free speech . I think you always err on the side of freedom of speech. I am not in favor of censoring chinese speech, russian speech and so on, but i think, giving them access to airwaves or the right to buy a Radio Station is a different thing. If they want to spend a half Million Dollars to buy an answer in the washington post, i guess that is their right, im not too worried about that. I dont think many people are reading it. In washington. I would say always err on the side of freedom of speech. And, we have i dont need, i think, to get into here, i think niall could give us a real dissertation on this. Weve got a problem with freedom of speech on college campuses. It is really, if we cant bridge the polarization in a University Campus and really look at all points a view, with something of an open mind and willingness to debate, we are in real trouble as an open society, as a liberal society. We have got to turn the question back on ourselves and the university environment. I think we also need to bear in mind as the Network Platforms come under increasing pressure from the woke left to restrict hate speech. We run the risk there is systematic censorship practiced in the most dynamic part of our public sphere. Biases should clearly be in favor of his free speech, although they are not bound by the First Amendment, Something Like First Amendment rights, that doesnt mean hate speech and it does mean we hear arguments from the Chinese Government and from that matter the Muslim Brotherhood but that is what every society is like. The most important thing, there should be free and open society and not least on University Campuses. Weve got time for one more question and then im afraid im going to have to disappoint those with the microphones because we only have 4 minutes left. Two boys running amok not far from here and one of us has to get back. The gentleman in the blue shirt concerns chinese influence in africa. The west has a long history of ignoring global trends. I do a lot of business in china and i. T. And licensing. I worked in china for many years. Now we have seen the trade imbalance grow and grow and grow. Is a growing influence of china in africa. An imperialism. They are confiscating resources, influencing governments. Places like congo. What does the panel and what, if anything, can the west do to reverse that influence . Im going to ask each of you to respond. You have a minute each. We will end with the word african on the panel. But lets start with h. R. The new vanguard of the Chinese Communist Party Brigade is a Party Official in a suit carrying a duffel bag of cash. What they are using is corruption and working with corrupt governments in particular to coop those governments and ultimately once they are they are they create conditions of pendency, often under the rubric of one bill one road to change that to a corrosive relationship in which the country is used, as you alluded to, may be is a place from which to extract what china needs, but also to get this country to align with chinas Foreign Policy as well. There is pushback against the significantly across the world now. The curtain has been pulled back. You have small countries like sri lanka and maldives who have changed governments because of the exposure of the corruption of their own government officials. It is happening in our hemisphere, and ecuador as well. Alicia is an important case with one mbd but also related to chinese influence. There is a problem here but also opportunity in the context of competing effectively. The first step of which i think is to pull the curtain back on chinese activity and expose it to sunlight. Larry you spoke eloquently about the africans positive attitude to democracy. Is china undermining that . Of course. I think increasingly president xi jingping sees democracy anywhere in the model of democracy on open society and the rule of law is a threat to the china model. They have an increasingly global sense of this. This is where the truth is on our side. We need. What is going on can only be described as gross neocolonialism most of the construction coming through loans at commercial rates really exploded. China calls it, i think this is , if it is 80 it is a very perverse kind. And then of course the classic instance of the sri lankan port, you get yourself 8 billion in debt and the chinese neo colonialist come along and say we can write atby 1 billion if you give us your strategic port for 99 years. And in australia you have a little experience with this yourselves. I think we have to aggressively expose this. That it cant be all negative. We have a lot of work to do, i would say, to revise, maybe with a different kind of logic, but reenergize western aid flows and capital flows in particular. Capital investment flows and Infrastructure Development in africa, if we dont want china being, by default, the major actor here. I think the facts are on our side. The Natural Inclination of africans is on our side, we just need to organize our upper and our story. Ayaan . I want to use my one minute to Say Something about free speech and debate and intellectual honestly because we know that there are a lot of problems going on in University Campuses. I want to give you a demonstration. My colleague care, h. R. , has said a few things about the Muslim Brotherhood. And, i hold a different view. I have a great deal of respect for him and a great deal of affection for him, but the thing i disagree with him, i think the problems were seeing, the man is spacious of isis, violence, subjugation of women, homophobic, radical islamic antisemitism, that is big to the islamic cake. It has been perverted by bad people using it for other things. It is possible to sit on the same stage, as grownups, and disagree and share empirical material with one another. You dont have to hate one another. If we can do this, we can demonstrate this, then i think we have things great. Thank you. [ applause ] the remains to me too go see my colleagues for the brilliance contributions and to point out that something very like Tiananmen Square might be going on right now in an african country and china, backed by russia, blocked a bit of the United Security council to condemn the killing of civilians in that country. Ladies and gentlemen, that is where we are in 2019. It may not be a cold war, but it certainly doesnt feel like piece. [ applause ] i want to thank our excellent panelist as for. What a wonderful discussion. Thank you so much. I want to thank for coming. I hope you can stay with us. We will have a reception in the pavilion. If you cannot stay for that, i look forward to seeing you at our next event. Good evening. [ applause ] this month marks the 50th anniversary of apollo 11. Mans first landing on the moon and the newly released cspan survey on space exploration, finds that apollo 11 crew members, Neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin, still have widespread name recognition. Also, nearly 60 of 1834 yearolds have watched the 1969 lunar landing. The number increases with each generation to 90 among those over 65. Nasa itself also continues to be very popular among americans, with a 77 Approval Rating over ten time those who dont see nasa favorably. We will discuss the survey tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspans washington journal with cliff young, president of u. S. Public affairs. Be sure to read the complete results of cspan ipsos survey online at cspan. Org. Cspan 3 president ial Leadership Survey taken between 2017, Woodrow Wilson dropped from 611 place and bill clinton rises from 21st to 15th spot. It is your favorite president ring . Rain . Learn the end more about the lives and leadership skills of the 44 chief executives in c spans the president s. Great vacation reading available wherever books are sold or at c span. Org the president s. Now, the discussion with House Democratic freshman women, hosted by the is hosting this discussion without democratic women. Speakers include michigan, we will be getting underway shortly