Trumps administrations final weeks and as we head into this new political era. Great group. Jeh johnson, the former secretary of Homeland Security and serves as general counsel of the department of defense. He also represents new jersey in a seven state counsel that coordinates covid related reopening. Sue gordon is the former Principal Deputy director of national intelligence, the nations secondhighest intelligence post. She served in the Intelligence Community for over three decades in senior positions. Carrie cordero is the robert gates senior fellow and general counsel. She served at the department of justice and in the office of the director of it is a great group. We are going to start with a conversation among us, then move to some audience questions, which you can enter in the q a box on your screen, and we will also have a couple of polling questions we will weave in throughout so we can get a sense of what the audience thinks about some of the topics. Lets start with Homeland Security. You first. Go to broad arrayreally of responsibilities that dhs has , the Trump Administration has focused heavily on Border Security and enforcement as the signature policy. In your mind, what will or what should the Biden Administration do to recalibrate the policy focus of the department . Are there areas that have been overweighted, neglected that need calibration . Mr. Johnson thanks for having me on. Thanks for including me in this program. Member ofud board cnes, a terrific organization. I have to begin by saying i was very pleased with the news a few years ago that the former deputy secretary of dhs is president elect bidens choice to be the secretary of dhs. She had he has wellrounded experience with the department of Homeland Security. He was the deputy secretary years ago. He was u. S. Attorney in southern california. I cant think of anyone more qualified to take on the leadership of dhs. When i was in office for three years, i constantly sought to remind the public and the congress that dhs is much more than immigration enforcement. Dhs is aviation security, cybersecurity, port security, maritime security. It is essentially protecting the American People and the homeland on the one yard line. People inside the beltway very often overlook the fact that whats on the mind of most americans is, is it safe for me to travel . Is it safe for my daughter or son on spring break to travel someplace . Thats what americans really care about. So they care about aviation security, they care about maritime security, they care about the full range of things dhs does to protect the American Public. Next Leadership Team does the same i think the more the next Leadership Team does the same, the more it will restore the credibility of dhs, which has taken a battering over the last four years. As you pointed out, immigration has been the signature issue of the Trump Administration and dhs has been used as the hammer for driving that mission. There is a way to enforce our immigration laws in a sensible, compassionate way while pursuing Immigration Reform in this country. Ollie knows how to do that. I am confident he will take on that mission in a competent way. Created washs was in the wake of 9 11 for counterterrorism. [phone ringing] sorry about that. Richard let me follow up on that and i want to get sues take on that as well. As you said, dhs created after 9 11 to prevent another 9 11. Two decades later, where do you place terrorism in the array of security threats facing the United States . It is striking that in washington we are focused on great power competition, the rise of china, foreign interference in elections a variety of things. If you look at the polls, Americans Still put terrorism quite high in the list of concerns they care about. Where do you place terrorism now 20 years after the creation of dhs . Mr. Johnson good question. Its important when Ranking National security threats to remember that something may be a secondary level threat until it is not. Terrorism, the threat of terrorism to this country, has evolved greatly since 9 11. I saw it on my watch at the department of defense and dhs, from what we referred to as terrorist directed attacks on the homeland, to terrorist inspired attacks through the internet and so forth. The principal Terror Threat right now in the United States, frankly, is domestic based, domestic inspired terrorism. That is what we have been seeing of late. The Antidefamation League has been tracking this for some time and has been pointing out that the principal terrorist threat to the homelands right wing, violent inspired terrorism, domestic in nature. In was created by congress 2002 on the assumption that terrorism was an extraterritorial threat, and therefore if you consolidate into one Cabinet Level Department all the different ways somebody can enter our , youry, land, sea, and air are effectively dealing with terrorism. That model is somewhat outdated and it is why i, while i was in office, spent so much time on the mission of countering violent extremism at home. Also, iwas in office quickly came to the realization that if counterterrorism is the cornerstone of the mission, the other cornerstone needs to be cybersecurity. We have done a lot both on my dhsh and after on improving and cybersecurity mission. Proudery a proud very with what chris krebs has done to strengthen our election infrastructure cybersecurity, although he was fired for reasons i dont fully understand last week. Over. Richard i think well, i guess we shouldnt speculate on intent of why he was fired, but seemed like he said the wrong things about the integrity of the election. Sue, let me go to you. Andou have a view about dhs its responsibilities, but i also wanted to ask you this question about where you rank terrorism as a threat and drill down on jehs point. You have the terrorists over there, isis, al qaeda, all the groups we have been tracking for a couple of decades, and the domestic problem at home, and how you think about what the responsibilities of the government should be Going Forward. Ms. Gordon great question, and thanks for having me. Everything jeh said, i support. Perspectivelligence , i will start with terrorism and a particular kind, which is that associated with wmd, weapons of mass destruction, whether that is Nuclear Weapons or biological or chemical. I think those are low probability, highimpact events. , from myink of dhs Vantage Point as an intelligence , weighing the transition from a threat to an action to protect. I think if you look at the cisaook a little bit that affected with Election Security, they reached all the way to state and local, reached all the way to the private sector. They exercised the heck out of it so you could see there was prepared resilience. My question is, have we done the same thing with the risk of wmd in the hands of terrorists and are we equally prepared . Pandemics taught us the same thing. We knew the pandemic was a strategic threat. Where are we prepared all the way to the locality . Prepared all the way to the locality . Point on ad to jehs good new age focus for dhs, i would add pandemics. I would add wmd. Whats the connection with state and local and preparedness if you have that kind of event . I would certainly keep going with cybersecurity because this is a Digital World and that is a lowcost, effective way to go. Richard carol, i will go to you in a minute. I just want to bring in a question from the audience about the threat of disinformation activities that seemed to be super focused before the election, and now we have our own problems with a president who does not want to concede. It seems like it makes it a little hard to evaluate all those people to evaluate, if all else was equal, what the disinformation effect would have been ahead of the election and how it has compared to 2016. What is your sense of how the government is doing in dealing with this information, at least the kind coming from foreign actors . Ms. Gordon we are aware it is real. Trust and truth is the foundation of free and open societies. If you cant be confident in Communications Going from point a to point b in a protected fashion and cant count on what you hear to be true, you run the risk of undermining the basic tenets of democracies. I think we know that is something we need to deal with. Certainly our adversaries have watched this and see they can open up rifts or create opportunities for themselves through disinformation, whether that is disinformation about the covid vaccine, disinformation about societal behaviors, i think they certainly know it. Here a heartening moment and that it is not just the government who is going to be expected to protect against information. A lot of the transparency around the issue was to get the citizenry involved in critical thinking. I dont know whether twitter and facebook has it quite right in terms of what they are doing to ensure authenticity of information, but i like that they are making the attempt. I think it is an incredibly powerful tool of our adversary, or any adversary, against an open society. I think we have a moment where everyone sees it and we have to bear down and create more rules around it and get the citizenry involved in critical thinking. Richard great. Carrie, let me go to you. Cisa has come up twice now. You have done a lot of work on Election Security during your time at cnes and you were also issuesrnment when other that fall into cisas valley wake came about, including some of the major leagues and hacks. Isant to ask what your sense on the Election Security front, but also federal and cybersecurity, whats left to be done there given how consequential some of these leaks have been thus far . You are on mute, carrie. Ms. Cordero sorry, got it. Richard it would not be a Virtual Event without saying you are on mute at least once or twice. Ms. Cordero great to be with this very distinguished panel here. All withfirst of respect to director krebs being fired last week, i think it is fairly apparent why he was fired. He stood up a webpage called rumor control, which was intended to back down originally foreign disinformation about threats to the election. Of e disinformation from domestic sources continued to provide wrong information to americans, cisa used that capacity used that capacity to back down rumors. Rumors specifically about inadequate voting systems and technology about voting systems that were not true. It was that truth telling that got the cisa director fired by the president. What cisa was able to do was remarkable. They took the foreign threat to the election that we all know through bipartisan reviews in 2016 and the special counsels review and they worked with state and local partners. And that state and local partner part is so important. It is not the federal government that runs elections. It is run by professionals. Them,elped to coordinate get them resources, and educate them in order to harden the countrys defenses when it came to the functioning of elections and voting systems. Was a really smooth running of election as specially given all of the challenges of the pandemic and coronavirus and Peoples Health and safety and running elections in that environment. The actual mechanics of the election went extraordinarily well. In thew if any problems administration of the actual election. I think that was a real success story. Was created as a component of dhs but was formalized through legislation during the Trump Administration. A bright spot in the Homeland Security department in which, as jehears johnson was describing earlier, has otherwise been consumed with immigration and Border Security issue. On your question with respect to hacks and lakes that and leaks, that takes us in a different direction that we really have been in a pervasive era of hacks and leaks. One of the things that the Bidenharris Administration will be looking to do is take another look at what the whole of governments response is to addressing pervasive intellectualproperty theft, the continuation of criminal hacking activity. They can build on the successes that cisa has brought but there is still more work that can be done. Of the lets go to some questions about the Intelligence Community. We saw just a little while ago today that admiral haynes, another board member of cnes along with jeh and others, has been named the nominee designate for a position. Dni is about to enter its 16th anniversary. It is safe to say that we will enter an administration that the president has a very different approach to intelligence use both personally and with policy matters than the current one. Reportedly, the president elect is an avid consumer of intelligence including briefings, including in person types of briefings. Go a number of different ways leaning heavily towards the aspect of being the president ial briefer or the role of managing the budget or potentially other roles as well. How do you see the superstructure that now exists over the Intelligence Community and the best possible direction it should go as we go forward . First, he is an extraordinary human being. Ive spent hundreds if not thousands of hours working with her during the Obama Administration. Dnill confess that when the bureaucracy was first created in 2002 by congress, i was not a big fan of it. Having been at the pentagon once at that point. As i thought it was an added layer of unnecessary bureaucracy. I have to say now that i have become a fan of the way it works. I think jim clapper really did inng it a long way coordinating all of the different intelligence agencies and the alphabets soup. And as a consumer of intelligence for a number of years in National Security, i see now the virtue of doing it the way we do it. It got to the point that i also am a big fan of briefings. It was the most important part of my day to read the daily intelligence and get the verbal briefing later on. It would all be correlated through dni. Every once in a while, you would get a dissenting opinion out of the alphabet soup. And it would say dissenting opinion. Comeld have the analysts to explain their differing views and the process works well now. I cannot emphasize the importance of enough if you are in National Security of consuming intelligence on a daily basis. It really is your eyes and ears for doing your job. And people that worked with me when i was at Homeland Security will tell you that it was a first thing i did when i got to work. I would spend an hour or a half of an hour getting the verbal daily intel and that is if i had time left over. Then i would turn to the washington post, the new york times, and others to see how the press was covering what i knew to be reality. And so, i cannot stress enough the importance of a well ,unning, functional, bipartisan credible Intelligence Community. Suspect you may have a thought or two on this. Ms. Gordon what i am smiling at is jeh saying that initially he was not a fan of the dni. I was at the cia. I will tell you in the years instrumental been the fbi and dhs and the domestic agencies to be a part of the whole thing so that we can receive a whole of government response. I am a huge fan. The ark of the position of the inception itits was kind of oversight and policy adherence. In the middle years, it was about integration. I could not agree more that it is a fantastic choice for so many reasons. I think her challenges going to yes, about the production and conveyance of integrated, relevant intelligence but there is also a leadership job that the the and i will have to do for the Intelligence Community. There are a lot of things that need to be addressed in terms of changed priorities. The introduction of much more Information Technology to do what the data that is now available. In fact, this is a world where this information is and just making sure that the community is not dragging its past of the cold war and counterterrorism to such an extent that it is trying to deal with great power competition, Global Competitiveness with what is left over. I think there is also a leadership job that she will have the opportunity and there is, one of the great powers of the office of the bni in addition to being the single voice that can share the wisdom of the community with the president and the administration, it is budget control. You are trying to shape towards a new future. You do need that in order to help make some of the decisions rather than just carrying the past. Great human. Great time. That allowsce intelligence to be brought to issues but there will be a leadership job in terms of bringing the community into the dynamic environment that we have right now. And to add my two cents. F praise to this she is one of the hardest working and flatout kind of ms. Gordon she is such a decent human being. Richard she has a unique combination of skills and is an exceptional leader. Communications over tothis format and you. A polling question. First of all, thank you so much to the hundreds of folks on andlive stream right now thank you for your questions. Scroll right below your video box and you