House historian and first ladies who had the most impact. Sunday afternoon just before two, James Garfield who served almost two decades and was assassinated 200 days into his term as president. Get our complete schedule on cspan. Org. Benjamin wittes and gabriella bloom are the coauthors. It becomes available to private citizens. They talk about the book, this is an hour and 15 minutes. So just a few i think weve covered all the housekeeping app actually so were good to go. I will introduce our authors. So are two authors are gabriella bloom and benjamin wittes. She is slices in Public International law and negotiations of Armed Conflict and counterterrorism. Shes also on the brookings project. Benjamin witt is is a senior fellow. We also have the print professor of entrepreneurial studies and professor Jack Goldsmith a professor of law. Think you all for law. Thank you all for coming. I will handed over to benjamin. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and thank you all for turning out. I want to gabby and i started out writing a book about the government of catastrophic risk. Rather to my surprise anyway but im not sure to gabby we ended up writing a book that is as much of political theory which was surprising to me. I want to talk about how we got there a little bit and what we ended up talking about and some of this sort of head scratching questions of governance of what we call a world of too many threats and defenses. I dont know if we can reduce it to a world in which anyone can attack anyone anywhere. We might call it hypothetical but theyre not fully hypothetical. Theyre all real events that happened and each one illustrates some portion of the world and the security environment that were now talking about. Or if or not quite talking about it, we will be soon because its on the spectrum. The first is i want to change one fact about the anthrax that followed the september 11 attacks. The anthrax attack involved in individual later identified by the fbi but never brought to trial, who had anthrax in envelopes and mail them through direct mail. Along the way i was told a number of people who those were directed to and seven people were killed. Mail is a very inefficient way to use anthrax. Youre sending it to an individual. We thought what if doing that he had gotten himself one of these in small drones. What if he had flown it over a crowded stadium. Now this may sound improbable except if you look at the recent security, they actually impose a no drone fly zone for a hundred miles around the super bowl because they were afraid of that sort of attack. If that had happened you wouldve had 50000 people simultaneously infected. Many of them probably would have died. Then today, nobody would think a proposition we assert in the book, but a lot of people regard as an alarming proposition but its possible for anyone of you to have weapons of mass destruction and thats the first time that thats been possible in this world. Another hypothetical, not so hypothetical, imagine the oil disaster in 2010 had been caused by an intentional act. The same volume of oil spilled the same damage to the coast. Now this is not remotely an unrealistic scenario. The working assumption inside the u. S. Was that we are dealing with a terrorist attack. As one former official explained it to me when we finally got the all clear that this was an accident, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief, but that was not the working assumption at first. Now, i think a couple things would become immediately apparent if you imagined this was a terrorist attack or an individual attack. This would be the most successful attack on the United States, to kill 11 people and really spoiled a huge amount of Natural Resources and damage to the economic was immense. The second thing you noticed was the coast line dash they were egging on a form based organization that was responsible for plugging the well and pick about picking up the damage. Thats a pretty but remarkable thought. If you take anthrax of an example of distribution, the hypothetical bp example is a really powerful example of distribution and responsibility. They are currently considered the responsible party. It was also in very real terms a responsible actor who terms, a responsible actor who was responsible for preventing the damage that it had caused and cleaning it up. A third example is a real and i apologize in advance for the description its a quite awful individual level example out of south carolina. I guess the only word i know how to use for it is a mass online sexual assault. He wrote software which he distributed to young women and under age girls. The fbi confiscated 200 around southern california. As an afterthought its stole your credit card information. It also term your webcam against you. He would take pictures of people in various states of undress. He would then approach them with extortion and asked them to produce tapes. Their contacts database would be used to further distribute the malware. The fbi finally caught up with them and he spending time in prison. What if he was not within the territory of the United States . Thats where a lot of your spam comes from some other place where the jurisdiction reach of the fbi just doesnt go. So i would preclude from that you can actually be attacked at an individual level. Thats thats also the first time in the history of the world that thats true. So i think we started with the idea that we wanted to unpack some of the connective tissue that linked the debate over Cyber Security and bio security and drones and robotics. How are they linked. What we found is that there is a a Cyber Security debate which im sure many of you are very familiar with. Talks about the uniqueness of the cyber environment and its different than anything thats ever come before. You can attack remotely over great distances with limited capacity to diss to distribute. It has equalized in a way and the earth has got much flatter in a way. They say well this environment is so usual because you can act over great distances and almost anybody with a reasonable Grad School Level proficiency in lab testing can do some pretty awful things. Youre realizing that theyre describing the same set of attacks. So what we tried to do in this book is breakthrough to a Higher Ground and describe the effects of what we call technologies of mass power. Distributing the power and responsibility of the attack. We ended up with the puzzle that i have to say having cowritten this book, im still not remotely sure which is how do you govern a world in which so many of our working options about why we have governments and what the role of the state is. Im not going to sit here and say these arent true anymore. I think there was a lot of time saying the state is wrong and questioning whether the world is going to and. Im not going to do that. I am going to say a lot of our assumptions are that those are little bit less true than they used to be. It becomes a real head scratcher. Im going to turn it over to gabby who does the real thinking in this relationship. What i want to talk about is the relationship with security. We have this very crude dichotomy that we like to talk about security as pans and the scale of justice. If you add a little bit to one side the other side goes up. Somehow we have morphed privacy into this so there is a third fray or maybe the liberty and privacy go together. You see this route in the entire debate but a lot of these other modern security issues. People have this tone that we need to have a balance. We need to make sure that our pursuit of security is balance. Inevitably ben franklin is in this discussion. By the way we have a history in the book and that does not mean what people think it means. One of the things this Technological Developments has made us think about is the metaphor appropriate . Is that balance appropriate . Ive always had a problem with this metaphor because if you take it at face value, the freest place in the world should be somalia because it has the security. The most secure place in the world would be somewhere like north korea. So theres something deficient about the metaphor as a baseline preposition. As we started working in an area where where it is not at all clear where increased security does not produce more liberty. Im having a really hard time with the metaphor. Im in a say this at the risk of upsetting you. So we assume that marginal increase in surveillance is okay for liberty but we dont assume that in a lot of daytoday. So one of the ways we approach the problem is to use words other than surveillance. So communities will demand greater surveillance on their street corners but dont call it surveillance. Dont say come surveillance. They want more cameras. The police chief in washington describes how she went to an environment where she initially had communities hesitant to the installation of cameras and now they are asking where are the cameras. Think about the Airport Security screening. This is something we all hate. Yet do we think going through that Airport Security d our liberty . We know its very inconvenient but we dont think it affects our liberty. Most people actually accept it and accept it on grudgingly when other this relationship is extremely complicated. This relationship between liberty and security and privacy is not as simple as it seems. You have to worry about more more peoples use of technology and greater power. That might be arrayed against you. even a question of farm harm is from where you stand. We love the idea of a closet political dissidents from egypt or hong kong has access and wavelike it a little less of me have people for the koch as. This is the double ainge twice and his gets to do what but it is unjust individuals or groups or companies but the government is a major beneficiary of technology. Is not like it is stated or vulnerable after words and everybody is empowered but everybody becomes more powerful. We dont know who nc arms race but we do know that it is much more difficult if you have these obligations against billions which could be an exaggeration but it is a high number simultaneously some hour domestic and some are for and. Foreign. But a lot of those basic distinctions are dichotomies of how you organize governance with the line between National Security and personal safety versus 84 terrorism. With that threat how does a better matter . Who owes us security . This state is empowered with a duty to protect us from each other and the extra oil threat. And those who have technology in the market what it is the relationship between the government and five private sector to provide us to see what they could demand from the private sector. Also determine its laws and enforcement mechanism security and policies. The more they cross boundaries of the more they are not bound territorially but there is a huge pressure on governments with the cable or stronger government to reach beyond their borders to extend their power you can do that through legislation where about brazilian citizens could progress rich more aggressive means. We predict we will see more unilateral actions but has the check to prevent the world from running to the wild west we need an operation from largely symbolic to think about cooperation to police that allows forces and the much more global level not just how we manage liberty and security have we regulate individuals or intermediaries but also those difficult questions with his government of foreign citizens and how do you manage security . This is the great book i urge you all to read it. Because it explores how the technologies that we come to love with the power of individuals or small groups to do significant harm to us all. Then to describe briefly the idea that individuals have w. Attendees in the pockets this came from a political scientist 10 years ago rota short paper of the thought experiment that is part of the theme of. We are heading in the direction of the world which every individual has the capacity to blow up the entire planet will in his or her cellphone. We are not there yet but to explore in great detail if we continue certain trends with the ability of individuals around the globe to have significant harm to lead the ada as we head this direction to empower individuals everywhere. A the hard question is how close are we to everybody having the wmd button in their pocket but it it may just be yes they are risks but not so much that we ought to change anything the living with the risks and the possibility have a very low probability of a catastrophic risk is for all the benefits from modern society, but then for those to meet the threat. So we dont really know if there is of claim from the specter of to where we are today. Three quick comments about the book. We talked a lot about distributed threats and distributed defenses. They both nodded to this day and the continuing role i think it is skeptical to deal with the threat. Dont underestimate the state they had the enormous capacities we dont mistake the current restraint thatd say current set of values from what the stage is able to do if unleashed. It has also the all the territory that has the incentives. With distributive defense those individuals do not have the incentive to protect the entire community. Also with private intermediaries but the state does have that incentive with massive capacities especially to regulate to surveil and scrutinize the channels of distribution so the first is to vote under estimate the need for the state for if they are that serious in the state will have a much heavier role and it is slow to defend but very powerful. The second as the authors discussed surveillance to have more power in i mean on the scale we have not see get the kind of things we debate now will see like childs play if these threats are serious or if they start to happen. The demand is for the states to do much more with the scale of communications and activities that now seems impossible. Deal the way to defeat these threats is to stop them before they happen. Even though they heard the directors the only way i can protect the network is to be in the network they think this is what will happen. In the third is he started to write this before the snowden revelation. With this task to do these things then i think we will look back maybe even the government will look back that it hurts the government allot shortterm with collection capabilities and trust they made it look bad and silly to defend itself and one of the things we have learned and i think they truly learned this is they cannot be secretive like they used to be in the half to be more transparent. It is necessary for the same tools for the state how they cannot keep secrets of the more it is inevitable it will happen and if were going to give the state the power that i think are needed than that will only happen with conditions of radical transparency and the checks and balances knowing of what theyre doing that will change dramatically and edwards noted is a starting point for that conversation. So the thought that this is a dangerous book with the intellectually robust than engaging people so that is what i will try to do in a few minutes. We are at the end of the decade and a half of american response to the moment of 9 11 and in that panic the unleashing of the extremely powerful establishment from both reason and lock. Oh the torture program did not make us any more secure. Guantanamo did not make us more secure. Breaking into do senator feinstein staff working on the reports of torture does not make us any more secure and also held to account how others are put in prison. So offering an environment so if fear can justify not just the political theory but the organizations with their own groups think to identify the debut md of iraq in tried to work around it can be legitimate the explosion of power over what exist to a the most respected experts in National Security law right a piece that begin with 80 pages of utopians scifi. How so those that cloud our judgment. So those written from the end to the beginning because with the new wants to balance ha at least some of them with that issue did defense with that possibility. That goes into Route Software providers to distribute security and of the way that we understand it with the systems and private security. Also looking up the secure credit card number. And another of my concern Chapter Seven to justify platforms that is what i want to emphasize. If you believe that every person on the planet will have a clear what bin capable in their pocket anyone could kill millions of people tomorrow with the solution or the cost of embedded but to be plausible if you have the a charitable system what you want . The risk to be high enough and nondiscriminatory and to be accountable. Another of those revelations from the opinion of the corporate said to believe the opinions of the court why the whole thing let me throw it out the window. Which is remarkable for the court but it is also the limitations. So it is really problematic when the context of National Security but with nondiscrimination with the infiltration of those that do not exist with the first 80 pages of the book there raises a real concern. Because justin as the stories that you told how they are adapted versions so with the case todays but why not . It is in specific capabilities are not there yet but to poison the water. So how do we know what will a cloud judgment and what is not . How do understand the failure of real accountability. To bring anybody tears justice under oath doesnt those particular set of organization of gdp said jack about the militaryindustrial complex. In then to have a political theory question but i disagree on various issues. What makes it important and dangerous is the role that the players as the u. S. Tries to understand the power that is largely accountable of a National Security establishment to get more aggressive to get deeper into the space as we continue to route distinguish with the assets of crimefighting and the resilience we are willing to show. Were willing to absorb a certain kind of stake. To show the threat puts us in the direction to be less resilient to absorber. Thats is my primary worry about this book. There is a lot of the table. I had a heads up on none of this so i will we get. [laughter] but has a work of the book how legitimate is it with those hypothetical not the Factual Foundation of the book but it is the existence but then not to see these catastrophic events happen. But the question of why not . Where reusing hypothetical other there and did the . That is a legitimate question and i want to be candid about the answer. I dont know why yet. What i read in the bio literature i understand why they are effective rate in with a suicide bombings. It seems boring to me. And i thank you could get all lot more data for your buck if you read some of the literature and it is all out there and it is mystifying. Sova to be as the imaginative as they are. Why dont they do things that our more ambitious . Then it turns out the we are both understating that. So with the anthrax distribution but deadly like a juvenile theoretical and said that is a terrible over investment in technology what do you mean . If you just took the paper bag to release it into the wind you would have the same effect. You dont need the drone. So i do think part of the answer to that question is a mystery. And maybe the answer is that human beings are much less nasty than we think. And very few people who want to do truly awful things. Of those you want to retract individuals that is why we have in those said arrives. But those with the of mad but these results have been riveted. But a number of better capable, the percentage of those of who want to do awful things that our capable with the fbi or the violence entrepreneur to take these ideas to church a little wooden box into a bog. It requires a lot of imagination had to kill that may people with box cutters . It is a mind that is rare. That is one possibility the one that i favor that terrorists are not imaginative people a and the suicide bombing that caught on in the early 80s and 90s was at her death before that. So as to have a demonstration project could a third possibility is there is a huge amount of cyberattacks the of proliferation individuals and small groups to attack people that is what theyre doing. And what we have not seen is the truly catastrophic example. Budget were operating in the environment of watching it is equivalent of the massive street crime environment with highlevel actors. I want to say a few quick words, is the problem addressable and of what level of energy from the state . I would not say to be skeptical to address these issues so those adaptations what convinced me of the energy and power and specifically a single chapter of that and how all the people in the 90s never quite delusional how never presented the end of the states work quite long once started to do a search its authority in that jurisdiction and. Here is what i am skeptical of. The states ability within the con fines of the current set of expectations the way the state pays and to say what would the state have to do so it is not obvious that all. So that is the nature of the social of contract as it has developed. But we conclude by saying were not ready to bet against a the leviathans on it is a fierce beast. For the former astronomer of britain to boldly predicts italy has a 50 50 chance jews survive this century but and he is already past the point where we made these choices were just waiting to be wiped out. It just reminds me of the scene of annie hall where woody allen the singer is taken to the doctor because he will not do his homework because he learns the universe is expanding and the doctor says why . She says whats the point. So that is the attitude to govern this. But our attitude is different. Ours is the past to do his homework but the problem of how to govern a world that the dilemmas have gotten a lot harder cannot be to throw up your hands to say whats the point. But one last point is the question of alarm is some of alarmism the first one redid at brookings a couple weeks ago we asked the aclu of a libertarian spying partner of mine to cover talk about the book i fully expected him to give the talk that i did and did to my surprise he argued Something Else entirely which is first of all he did not regard any of the hypothetical is as unlikely he sat there all realistic. And number two, he felt the book was alarmed to but not alarmist but the real worry was not what it said the son of the discussion and not be as measured as we were. I take those that concern that we have stoked thats a little bit. But i do think if you believe if the examples are within the realm of technical probability and not very far from the things that have actually happened, asks the question when something seems like it is inevitable, it is. Whether there is some reason why the problem has stopped at the level that it has. Before we open, to be utterly correct to focus so much in our daily conversation is about terrorism talkedabout 20 per year so is the puzzle why we focus of much bonterre is a rather than ordinary crime. It didnt we know what it takes to kill people but our concern so you may think it takes a different kind of person rather than use of clicked on the keyboard so that distance makes it more possible to do more harm. I dont like focusing on the worst Case Scenario just like i did not like it when they invoked the debate for torture with the dirty bomb to file the real discussion dash you know, when you cannot think about resilience . It doesnt solve the problem it may not be nuclear but it does require more from the government refocused on hobbs but block got there right to be the source of the thread but talk about policing they get along often that does it mean we do away with the police how to adjust to make it better or adapt i will not defend post 9 11 and the very last point we tend to use say this date but we need the United States. So hearing is another way to take them even further we are concerned about the government response so those that would take the threat perception to use them with the oppression with this never security and the concerns. We are dealing in the world with 100 and 93 u. N. Members at least 45 are called to be high alert and we cant just think about what the United States can or will do we need to think about the world of the subcontractors that we have to lie on for governance also preventing those that no longer function in then does a discussion of the outside threats that look very different to think about the capability. So now we welcome your questions to wait for the microphone please. I have two related questions the first was the power of the state so one possibility is one could write a different book of the parallel structure that of these terrifying technologies and 80 pages of hypothetical as to create the huge argument what to do about that threat and it seems from the way you describe it that said dash is stacked because it is set up from one side and then the question is what is the appropriate response that comes to the government then what is that appropriate response and then the nature of surveillance but it seems the real threat and bens examples but mass surveillance with airport check Source Security cameras at is you walk past it seems the threats that they inhabit every element that those examples dont bring that out so could you speak to that . I fear we have slightly brought into much to the characterization of 80 pages of hypothetical. If it is true the of books starts with the two hypothetical suffers three are not the day are accounts of distribution of the attack capability and of defense that are not a hypothetical but that said it is focused on these technologies outside of government and there is day conceptual reason that at least since the advent of organized military they always had the ability to shoot deploy Massive Force and violence there is nothing especially new conceptually about that but there is something about the idea that individuals can now afford powers of violence that they associate with the global actor so to think is social contract terms the ability of the government to do awful things to lot again that social contract that some basic level to resist it to act like a state disrupt it so that is the reason to focus on that as the difference i am not making an argument for mass surveillance it treats its in passing the debates of the nsa but by the way i am not sure we even agree on that subject have never really had that conversation . Broadly speaking with certain caveat that isnt the subject of the book so with mass surveillance arises out of a different question which is lets say you have these new technologies that develop all sorts of platforms with the new operating system for the connecticut action is based. The ability to manipulate the human genome to build a genetic sequence but if you believe the threats will rise from the distribution of these technologies someday will want to conduct surveillance that is the issue that gave rise to these programs. Lot of people used facebook they feel the need to have surveillance on these types of activities so our question was when does such come into the sense of liberty . When is it a neutral or legitimate . I think the answer to that is the more these technologies develop the more space may have to do the unthinkable things the more pressure we will have for those activities so there really isnt an argument for the platform surveillance but when sugary think of that activity as constructive for non constructive . Vinik there is the a static element where every time we talk about surveillance or privacy but what big brother is doing to us. But as far as i am concerned that nsa can read all my emails i am pretty sure of my colleagues cannot hack my account to their teenage sons can. So then i have discussions about surveillance i feel it happen is not just because the government is watching me but i get tired of that adds john google and i have to tell you they can do whatever it wants corporations without david thinking about it because they have those market incentives that happens all the time not nearly enough. That the nsa is watching me. I assume everybody is watching me and i dont care if this is that government are fran have an aversion to the government. Can you step back from the up concrete discussions to put into a theoretical terms of a specific dichotomy that state power increase is liberty and we also know that state power can decrease liberties so what can you say about the nature of the state to increase power and liberty . I dont mean to suggest important but the more general political stereotypes that they might ask. The optimal amount of governance is not zero. This is the central insight of the theorist. It is still true in a liberal state. We all believe that we argue about the margins. But not since elements of the new left but since the turn of the last century has anarchism ben a big proposition. The nature of the state that maximizes liberty involves a lot of the elements and wine was transparency. The justification has to be reasonably understood and the individual citizen has to make the calculation the liberty she is giving up pays dividends with some other in the raid that the giving up to the authority to rule in abels greater liberty. This is why Police Presence in neighborhoods that have good relations from the police sought of as their pretty enhancement where it and ferguson, missouri to the assault was sought as the zero crescive presence presence, because when you look at the state to give and take away is essential to that question. So to put it into those terms if you have the states that we well disagree about a lot of things but the fundamental question is the state responding to real threats in a proportionate and reasonable fashion that is open about what it is doing . Is there the consent of the underlying politics and is it within those norms . There is a lot of give with a lot of that. I want to ask a question as you know, more than those there has been a robust debate on whether or not the distinction between war matters anymore. So how the book enters into that conversation with the legal distinction to come under pressure with greater pressure from 9 11 how bad does it need to be . But it is something self perpetuating soda power isnt just from the objective world from decision making. With the discussion about crime to be political a motivated though to talk about ordinary crime or the Second Amendment to enthusiasm so we think about these distinctions the question and to divide up the domestic and International Domain so what extent do those motivations matter with coercive activities but i dont know that we do give those answers at the end of the day but to show these conversations need to start happening when you have day debate over targetted killings it is a good debate to have to have paid much more popular drone for surveillance with all those purposes does that change to talk about those targeted killings to be a debate still neck i dont know. [laughter] with one of the copies thank you. She did not graduate from high school because their fathers said if they have an interesting project he said stay home to do that you dont have to go to school. But wilbur without question was a genius were filled was very bright and inventive and clever mechanically but he did not have the reach of mind of wilbur. Beloved music and books the said bill hawthorne was orvilles favor writer so he also love Sir Walter Scott and for a birthday they gave her a basket of Sir Walter Scott. No Running Water or indoor plumbing or electricity and they give a bust of a great literary giant to their sister for a birthday present. So with that sense of purpose it sounds like a bad pun but high purpose