Host bill gertz im excited to be with you today to discuss your book with you, iwar war and peace in the Information Age as a National Security columnist anthony introduction you talk about how this is a culmination of your many years of experience on National Security can you tell me why you publish this book of the subject matter at this time . Go was looking at what i feel is a new forum of warfare emerging in the 24 century i have bad all over the world covering issues and reflection of the Information Age looking at this new form of warfare i define that as of the technical cyberfrom the russians and the chinese that really emerged with what has been called that cyberenable the influence operation. To be the dominant form of warfare to dominate our lives and our adversaries are looking into this says said cheap way to choose strategic goals. If that is us good point thinking of committing terms list discusses noncandidate forms of warfare. This set have the awareness with the use of media and the influence or is the goal to raise Awareness Among the public . This is the point i make that we are under an information assaults. And you may recall hearing one of the of witnesses testified to say he would have no audience if the media was doing its job properly. So what traditionally has been the role of American Media has really fallen off. We see that balkanization of the media general lee liberal and conservative camps they are not presenting especially are in international affairs. One of the things i have always tried to do my career is highlight that because of people dont understand the threat than it is difficult to get to the of tools and resources necessary to do with the problem. With the main threat of a Information Warfare of strategic a serious in a strategic threat across a Broad Spectrum of various from international to domestic affairs. Talk about that to the United States ended interesting parts of this discussion is the use of social media. Facebook users for. 755 billion pieces of content as we see on our tweeting it are feed and water and instagram and social media has changed the landscape of conflict you talk about the Islamic State use of media to say a distinct feature of the operation is the utility to respond quickly to events. This is ben unable by social media with online supporters what should the west do to combat that . It is a challenge i point out that there is a conflicting approach. On the one hand and this pressure from u. S. Government to shut down the u. S. Use of media me yet there is a need to find out what they are doing. How do you balance these two . Monitoring social media can produce valuable intelligence pdf and this is the problem that needs to be solved. I think it is being weapon highest we need to figure out ways to have the same tie of agility. For instance they will shut down twitter or facebook from the terrorist known to be used in this propaganda. Behalf their own way to set up their own challenge very quickly if you knock one side down and immediately they have three or four others to communicate now is even more sophisticated they go to recruit did communication those that random number of pedestrians on the bridge with the Russian Software that allows a terrorist to communicate and much more difficult ways does u. S. Lawenforcement and policy makers have a way to use social media to combat information with the truth that they actually see the information calling into question is long . So basically what i found the main tool is the state Department Center for strategic counterterrorism communication. In researching the of book all of them agreed they have a real challenge there arent allowed to address the topic of islam itself. Canal they talk openly with violent extremists some this is made of very difficult to counter ideological all operations they actually did a study based on some experts. It was classified pet its said the u. S. Government has no credibility issue have no attempt to take propaganda efforts against the group saw mine. You will never succeed if you dont even try. There are some new efforts with the congressional defense bill to have a new provision calling for propaganda up. It needs to be much broader and targeted against the mainadversaries. Below their acronyms so those are the main threats im hoping and the trump in the illustration to tackle the tough problems. Host one of the most impressive parts of the book looking at the case studies with china russia north korea and diocese of the Islamic State with the use of Information Warfare the firstever the to look at is north korea. The general public is well aware of the sony hack because it got so much media coverage. Why was this such a significant even to . I do spend time on the sony pact that took place 2014 based on the north korean governments recognition that they were opposed to a comedy was not negative for movie bed exposing of what north korea exposes. This is crimes against humanity regime. They have exposed at and identified it pieta still dealing with this regime that does more unspeakable things to its people. But the sony had was really the first time a government had attacked for political gain. So with the Sony Pictures they took information the was extremely damaging with the software that was used to destroy the entire network it was a harbinger of things to come. For research for the book i interviewed a north Korean Defector he actually trained hacker said north korea and issued a dire warning you should definitely take this threat is serious. Ultimately theyre going for the infrastructure with the ability to turn off lights and damaged infrastructure to prevent us from operating as a society and of course, everybody recognizes the u. S. And everything is networked you should cause strategic damage and that is the real danger to build on the capability there is still a secondtier threat to from the rush the and and chinese. You are critical of the wests lack of response. Can you unpacked that so the of the worst kind understand what happened afterwards . I have been covering this for a long time and as far back as 2011 i learned from intelligence sources in the u. S. Government that senior of vessels of all major agencies had presented a series of options to the obama what house that basically said we are under attack from these various places and unless we do something in the very real way these will continue so let was a range of options with the offending entities whether government officials or hackers than with those cyberattacks with the chinese unit from part personnel management. Hasnt been anything done but to say it is a symbolic sanctions that would have no impact blocking them from the United States while those are okay measures it is not enough to make impact so to see that escalating scale it is getting worse and not Getting Better admiral rogers the National SecurityAgency Looking for a tougher deterrence response advocating the cost of entry is so low it is irresistible for our enemies so there is the greater cost will have a deterrence effect if you attack will be attacked back. The sony had highlights the important question for policymakers because sony is a nongovernment agency what role will the department of defense play to combat to make sure were sharing information with the Nongovernmental Organization . Period that is the big problem right now. And what allows the government to do things that are very blurred and it is not clear most of the infrastructure is in the hands of private companies. The government has agreed to resources they are constrained from using it there is a lot of reasons for that and those that turned against the National Security agency which is the premier agency for savers security. Other intelligence and lawenforcement agencies have good capabilities but they are constrained by law what they can do so we need a new entity where we was set up something similar and wooded transeven various agencies because part of the Defense Department would be subordinated to kinetic mottola military it would be imposed by have be secrecy or what i called diplomacy impaired the state department is oriented getting along with foreign nations so with that individual agency that would help to clarify those lines of authority as well as technical and cyberor perhaps interact better with the private sector. Also want to highlight the of their countries to review the lightest Information Warfare talk about north korea moving to the other actors. Tie nine and one of the examples that you touch upon you write no other nation poses a greater threat to the angina using masses cyberattacks diminishing whatd sea says the biggest enemy what i see was the office of personnel management. I was one of the individuals the got confirmation as part of a the hacking. So talk about to the of broader capabilities. Chinese recognized early they do not have that capability to challenge the United States and u. S. Says it did in itself that china is a normal nation when it is a Nuclear Armed communist dictatorship. That is often lost and i have cover that issue over many years. Everyone talks about what the chinese are doing is to manage the decline of the United States lazy the United States as a diminishing power and working to help diminish the United States that is the underpinning but the opm mac was unique that was just one element and then to have a code name for it to be systematically ebro into whiff the cyberespionage and they stole these records that included some of the most sensitive reformation you could possibly have than those that were questioned this is extremely viable for further cyberattacks. With the chinese can do to identify the systems administrator with other intelligence can target the unofficial and use that to gain access with Information Operation for call lot of times these attacks have been diminished as intelligence gathering but that is a misnomer that these are attacks the reason you cannot say it is simple intelligence is there are two things that happened is they steal massive amounts of data but they plant the sleeper Agent Software that communicates with beijing but almost impossible to detect maybe once a year it is mixed with those millions of lines of code. Is a real problem. In a crisis they can use that to shut down networks to shut down the of sabotage efforts so that is why we are having trouble with the terminology. It is a combination of both. It is the astounding the nsa estimates the amount of data amounts to an extraordinary 50 terabytes of data five times all the information contained in the nearly one had to 61 million books in the of library of congress. That is astounding and demonstrates how far behind the United States is to make sure we have a strategy to comeback to this cyberwarfare. The use of that data is what is critical when interviewed person from a Data Mining Company basically said in china there are 60,000 data of Mining Companies that our either merging those for useful intelligence to conduct teachers cyber operations. Another actor in is russia spending a fair amount of time of my committee in congress has also spent a great deal of time but is this significant went to a conference with the National Security agency giving a speech in the director of National Intelligence said russia had eclipse china as a major threat so whos the bigger threat . Russia or china . But the reason is they are building their cybercapabilities as a Major Nuclear power lot of those that were involved in the soviet Defense Industry with the private sector as well as the Intelligence Services to use the cybercapabilities under Vladimir Putin that this something putin is using to whip up hysteria and that is becoming known as recently as two weeks ago as hackers in Intelligence Officers that were involved. We have talked about cyberwarfare but in the case of russia with the Information Warfare and with uh chief of staff but in 2013 he said the very rules of war have changed to achieve political and strategic goals did in many cases, were looking at rushes increasing alliance to see a unique wayto use that Information Warfare so can be talk about that in terms of operations of ukraine . First the strategic threat is extremely dangerous. So i have been covering National Security alone time that over the last several years of as frightened me to what is happening there. And to develop Nuclear Weapons of missiles and bombers and submarines so as i mentioned in the book the pentagon did the study of the low yield Nuclear Weapons. To the point it was called the escalade to use the weapon in the conflict because there were so outmoded they needed Nuclear Weapons so combine that with a hair trigger with the use of the Information Warfare. That is like a case study known as i read Warfare Centers takeover that industrial region of the ukraine with special forces troops what became known as little green man. And then to have a Large Russian population that people in an crimea wanted them to and fade with the industrial heartland. With a wakeup call to the west. Looking now what is motivating fathom letter putin. And the biggest catastrophe for russia. To reestablish a russian supremacist state from the pacific to move the atlantics. And this is a very dangerous situation under the regime than the apologist have dismissed this to say what little section of a country like crimea . If aggression is allowed unless this is reversed we will see more problems with russia down the road. Coming to crimea to sea shaping media coverage. What is media aware that they are a tool for the information campaigns . , this is the need to do to incur rich members of the media. How can we do that . I want to ensure what i am reading this fact based and not shaped by adversaries. It is a real challenge the news media is in turmoil those that had huge Profit Margins are now struggling to survive but as ive mentioned there is a certain political visitation of the media the liberal media is dominated by three issues of gender identity, racism and Global Warming and on the conservative side you have a focus on Security Issues penetration and concerns of government. They have created a Division Within our society. If you watch network news you will see it is incredibly biased it is obvious people dont get a real sense in this domestically focused loss of coverage overseas unless they major even to were not covering overseas or the threats but to identify these threats in the liberal media today there was the postmodern philosophy that the only threats are from the terrorists that ron the fringe of course, our enemies dont agree with that view metal to focus on understanding these threats more. And other notable fact that the russians conducted the first cyberattack with the electrical power period it also demonstrated the russians are leading the way against the electrical power grid so from my a perspective that is deeply concerning with the fact that these attacks can happen to Critical Infrastructure around the world or the United States what can we do to ensure we have the defense mechanism in place . This the big in july that and with u. S. Intelligence and Law Enforcement has already detected russian and chinese cyberintruders to get into the networks that control the electrical grid so that means theyre doing reconnaissance so with a future conflict or crisis they could shut down the power supply present that fictional scenario the results as a crisis of the South China Sea where a plane sinks the chinese warship that rather than conducting uh counterattack a dispatch covert commandos were they can make it look like it was a Natural Disaster like a tree falling on a power line than they use cyberattack to investigate that power failure. That is exactly the thing people are worried about. Thinks the observing taken to strengthen and hardened the grid pet it will not be easy. And has been shown that through the transformers you can cause that to explode that would take a long time to replace because they are made in germany are south korea. Misses the kind of thing to having more comprehensive approach to all blood Critical Infrastructure everything runs on electricity. Host there is one additional country that you cover and that is the rand. What type of threats and do they face . It is definitely in the emerging power. I highlight in the rain and chapter that it has gone from low level to cyberespionage to denial of service attacks to the upper tier that flooded the ability to create damage and espionage unfocused on backing of the marcions casino in las vegas which was very sophisticated cyber attack aimed begins be casino owner who made some comments so basically they shutdown to damage the computers but more recently we have seen the infrastructure from upstate new york and had this been enacted it could have created a Natural Disaster that would have flooded a local community in upstate new york and to me that is for they are headed it is a very serious threat. The government has done a little bit they indicted hackers but we have got to identify this threat. If we dont we dont how to counteract them. Absolutely is deeply concerning to me. Bellmore importantly to highlight they are non governmental organizations the u. S. Needs to do a much better Job Information sharing with Critical Infrastructure to have the tools to invest in cybersecurity so these institutions dont have been some notes to look more broadly to preface to say where do we go from here . We have an opportunity to put forth the strategy and i found it quite compelling in the book you talk about a 2012 study that found qsr lacked a strategic understanding with the war on terror u. S. Was slow to recognize importance of information with the battle of the narrative and was often ineffective tool line the goals to the desired end steady. You talk about the new Information Agency how to read go from here . ,. Is has been a feature of my books to highlight the threats ended paints a dark picture but it tried to present those proposals how to fix those problems in behalf of the liars on a number of issues basically how it could be structured is up for debate it could be a Government Entity are private sector funded by a philanthropist orate a combination of the two supported by intelligence agencies but really focused to set up programs. Obviously there is room for debate to identify these problems and come up with solutions. I have a pretty canadian if we dont try to do this we are in bigger trouble down the road. , clearly that was a new step to say that was part of uh Critical Infrastructure andy fbi the job was to counteract the soviet influence and it was very pontifical to do but we need a public debate to come up with their real solution. I am confident did ministration will look at this congress is also looking at solutions as well. I love that they look critically of those challenges you talk about a number of projects that piqued my interest and the viewers if i could get a . Summary of what is the big data project . Will ready the government is interesting in using big data is open source material puts it together to identify patterns and use that in a constructive way to counteract the false emeritus and mention the company that is doing that is a complicated area involving the ability to make sense of the data to find out what is going on but again you have to develop new Language Skills so that is a growth area to use big data. Another project is the hollywood project . I thought that was interesting. This is the idea to promote america the freedom and liberty and democracy. American Film Industry was one reason people of round the world loved america. But in hollywood today you have a narrative that portrays the United States in the worst light possible it is almost a cliche anticorporate antigovernment the bag guy is is to use to be the good guys i know there is of big market for those with the different narrative so lets go for the proamerican film studio lino clan back as talkedabout it fight think there would be a commercial market it could be dismissed as propaganda but we need to get over that we need to promote democracy against uh chinese socialist and fascist model and that is one way to do it. Commission to the adm of the hamilton project that is in response to the musical the we have seen beyond all other plays per karzai hamilton but you talk about how the Founding Fathers contrasted the importance of Information Warfare. I said i think every member of congress should go sea hamilton it highlights our government and the challenges that they faced. Is an offshoot of the hollywood project but i do think it does show you can use artistic venues in we should not apologize for that. Again with the liberal left that america is an evil country but my view is the opposite america is hope for the world many to promote that view. What is your recommendation for members of congress . We have oversight that the Defense Department what did your recommendation for elected officials and the process to go through when it comes to Information Warfare . Spirit the biggest thing congress can do is help the American People understand the threats retracing. That is key because if they dont see there is a threat to or they think it is just a reflection of the government then congress can be a valuable resource to promote things like understanding the chinese warfare threat with the Intelligence Community as well they have the information but we can let anybody know this but that information explosion troubles that light speed we cannot get information out when it comes to light so to better inform and educate the American Public congress can play a key role the best things i have seen in my career have come as a result of Congressional Action Congress mandated the pentagon produce and the annual report on the Chinese Military they hated and they complain about it every time but it is one of the most important baselines to our understanding what is going on. Lets get the information out there so we can take steps to fix the of problem. One of the policy questions is the importance of u. S. Cybercommand admiral rogers with the commander of u. S. Cybercommand should be looked at splitting . Finicky s that is one of the key questions in is the chicken and the a problem if it is complicated with cybercommand those capabilities are focused on intelligence gathering. Cybercommand is to know the threats then be ready when needed or in the warfare since to wage cyberwarfare in the future but the lines of authority remain a boiler and in fact, the Pacific Command commander testified that the lawyers are controlling things so we change the system or get better lawyers because right now they are constricted by legal constraints. Cybercommand will be separated from nsa but until they can figure out those legal differences that nsa can directly support Cyber Command it will stay that way probably another year. Diane the big believer in an Publicprivate Partnership whether the big data project so how can you work with bob private sector with Technology Companies and Big Data Analytics . It is that the industrial heart of america right now and i point out a lot of people have been coopted by the left there is a great article talking about San Francisco values and it has coopted many of the people in Silicon Valley they could be much more developed but instead it leans in the of libertarian directive were they dont want to interact with the government the government has too many problems and is too bureaucratic there needs to be some of reach i know what has the Innovation Center the challenges really to try to get them to contribute to the battle of foreign information. If the leaders of Silicon Valley were educated to what i am right thing about it would change their view on how to deal with these problems. But if you invite members that leading away to bring in the best and brightest there are so Many Companies that need to wonder sea and the importance of cybersecurity that warfare is an increasing threat would you say that is an opportunity . Absolutely that is the first up that should be taken with the Blue Ribbon Commission of experts, they could be oriented buying the people that you pick to create real policy proposals is a good first up get former Government People and get them working together a feel it is an urgent necessity because this problem will get a lot worse it will not stop. The fbi director said it will be there so this is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed right away. Now lets turn to some fund prospect of breaking the buck will so from start to finish to publication part. Good question i began work on the book april 2016 my deadline was august 1st so i rely on my reporting that i had done and i took some of these stories by did further research and interviews and i tried to identify without knowing the government identified the Major Players play did chapters on each and everyone with inside information because this is the first book ahead written since 2008 and back then there was in the same level of access of information now we have some misinformation that are fingertips when there are incredible resources i found a report for nato on russian Information Warfare with a fascinating look how the russians orchestrated the takeover of crimea so i could get that and put it together we changed the chapters around and i think it came out very well there are a number of parts of the book the rfa great example what is your feedback . One of the solutions to the north korea problem is theres a way to change the regime in north korea and realize we need to change that regime it is a crimes against humanity regime mentioned not be allowed to torture my solution was to get the Nongovernment Organization sending soulful as San Computers into north korea. Lets get them wired for casino they can control the technology but the people are innovative enough the will find ways around it and break through the information wall once information to start flowing it will change very rapidly. One of the tools is to set up a government in exile so to use that as the tool to change the regime but as we have seen the North Koreans conducted a clandestine assassination walking through the airport to women went up to him to read his eyes and within minutes killed him. In order to understand the north korean regime to have three generations of dictators so to target the senator of gravity. I had the opportunity to travel to south korea for the new members in the cover of the newspaper was todays after the assassination of the half brother it is a significant National Security challenge and incredibly important for policy makers with the north korean challenges significant to have a strategy to shed light with that population to have access will undermine the regime to have a Better Future for north korea was eye opening to visit their. We have reached the end of our ta