i richard: good afternoon, everyone: i am richard fontaine, ceo of the center for new american security. i would like to welcome everyone to the discussion on law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence on the biden administration. this session pulls together several critical issues, all of which are moving targets in the trump's administration's 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 nation's second-highest 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. let's 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 biden's choice to be the secretary of dhs. she had -- he has well-rounded experience with the department of homeland security. he was the deputy secretary years ago. he was u.s. attorney in southern california. i can't 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 what's 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? that's 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 sue's 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. it's 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 anti-defamation league has been tracking this for some time and has been pointing out that the principal terrorist threat to the homeland's 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 don't fully understand last week. over. richard: i think -- well, i guess we shouldn't 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 jeh's 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, high-impact 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 jeh's good new age focus for dhs, i would add pandemics. i would add wmd. what's 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 low-cost, 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 can't be confident in communications going from point a to point b in a protected fashion and can't 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 don't 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 cisa's 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, what's 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 counsel's 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 country's 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 biden-harris administration will be looking to do is take another look at what the whole of government's response is to addressing pervasive intellectual-property 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: let's 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 presidential 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. i've 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 flat-out 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 can enter questions in the chat like the one we got before or you can hit the "ask a question" button and drop a question for the q&a. doof course, every time we one of these public events, we have questions for you to help shape our discussion. the first question of today and it has just been opened in the chat. the first question is -- which country should the biden administration worry about most as the biggest national security threat to the united states? your options are china, russia, iran, and north korea. as the votes come in, i will be back but of course, i would love to know what the panel would vote if they were observing at home right now. and i will be back in a little while. back to you, richard. richard: thank you. great. let me go to you and you can answer that question but i want to pull something out of that sue -- andk jeh and that is how a variety of national security issues has been handled. saw through the obama administration into the trump administration is criminal prosecutions in particular, the indictment of chinese nationals. sense -- do we believe this deters the activity? are there other implications we should be aware of? is this a twill in our -- a tool in our toolkit? is it something we do on top of other more potentially consequential carrots and sticks? efficacyo you see the of that going forward into a biden administration? ms. cordero: the use of criminal prosecution and bringing these major indictments against individual officers or foreign in major involved cyber attacks against the united states is a through line from the obama in ministration into bashedmp administration obama administration into the trump administration. it is one line of activity that has been relatively consistent. it was under the obama administration that major indictments of chinese nationals were cyber attacks were brought. and more of those plus the russian indictment, the indictments of russian officers for 2016 election interference happened under this administration. it has been consistent. i expect it to continue as a twill. in terms of its value, the government does not really expect these individuals to sit for trial in the united states but what it does do is communicate to the world and the adversary and to the public what is going on behind the scenes. there really is a significant transparency value in addition to adjust the value of bringing or using our justice system in toer to bring consequence individuals. and there are some marginal effects and terms of the individuals affected and their ability to travel and things like that. i'm sure this is something that the biden-harris administration will be thinking about -- it cannot be one of the only things that we do. i've expect one thing we will see in the future is more effort to -- what is the overall, whole of government strategy to address these activities. a second onllow for the conversation you are having with sue and jeh on the institutions of dni and ones. having been out for a long time, one of the things we have to keep in mind is that these ittitutions are not set and forget it. attacks, september 11 it does not mean that we can let the legislation stand as it has been. i don't believe in going backwards. my first question is we need to build on the successes of these institutions but they also need to modernize and have a forward-looking vision. one of the most important things to that is for them to be able threatt to the changing environment. it is not like some of the old threats are going away but that they are compounded by new threats. and one of the things we have not talked about yet is the corona virus pandemic. these institutions we are talking about today were the institutions created in response to the september 11 attacks. having as many americans die each day as died in those attacks on that one day. i imagine one of the things we will be talking about in the future is how do we need to, not throw out and start over with our institutions that better protect americans from such a significant threat and international event, but how do we improve them so the public can be better protected? richard: that is a great point. it is striking to see how act if not just hhs is in the pandemic response but that dod has a role to play and the intelligence community has a role to play. let's find out the results of the poll. what are we looking at here? >> our results of the poll are in. country --na is the the biggest intel threat to the united states that the biden administration should worry about. think russia and 5% for iran and 1% for north korea. richard: i get a little worried when i see 1% for north korea. every time the north koreans see their number go to low, they want to do something about it. >> they do have a fan. richard: north korea, you are fine at 1%. keep it there. jeh, let me go to you on this question of prosecution, foreign also, maybe you could say a word given your role response and reopening commission or task force, about the role of various national security agencies in that -- in the next six months or so. mr. johnson: sure. i'm going to go back to what we were just talking about, the rankings. problems with doing that exercise is what you just pointed out, richard. , and ihe audience here have to believe it is a pretty sophisticated audience, only 1% believe north korea is the number one threat. each one of those countries on that list represents a threat of a different kind and character. and to put north korea at 1% suggests to the unsophisticated consumer, don't worry about them. that is obviously not the case. it is a little like saying there is an 85% probability that someone is going to be elected. each one of those represents a different type of threat. i know from personal experience that the chinese government, chinese government leaders in particular, get really upset when you indict chinese government officials. even if the defendant is indicted in absentia and never sees the inside of a federal courtroom in the u.s. it does have an impact, i believed to some extent, it has a deterrent impact because it is the u.s. government spelling out what we know in terms of the criminal behavior of a foreign government official and also how we know it. and it tells the public the story of the crime, the national security crime. i thought there was value in the mueller indictments laying out as extensively as they did the russian disinformation campaign from 2016 even though those who the indicted a never see inside of a federal courtroom. when you talk about the federal criminal justice process in national security, you have to always remember the number of al terrorists that have been indicted in our criminal justice system. they have been brought to justice and are serving long prison sentences. there is a role for federal criminal justice law enforcement in defending and protecting national security. i'm sorry -- covid. whenever anyone asks me about covid and dhs, it is a little like -- you cannot help but be an armchair quarterback. we are now very far along in addressing this pandemic. say i would've done it differently had i been back in the first inning. but it is clear to me from my own experience that fema should have been part of the government -- the national government's response to covid from the beginning. the agencymy view and our government best at deploying and marshaling resources like ppe, ventilators for example. this administration did not in my opinion make the best act.of the there is a lot more we could have done at the national level toh the resources we have shepherd resources and allocate them to the communities that needed them the most at that time they needed them. there has been an underutilization there. atope that our government the national level is thinking now about the vaccine and how the vaccine can most effectively places -- for the the people that need it most on the priority level. that is the next big challenge. along the way, it is a sick messaging to the american public about physical distancing, good -- after nineask months of dealing with this, we are all experiencing fatigue but we know what it takes to flatten the curve if people have the discipline to stick with what we know works. richard: great. sue, let me go to you on a question -- let me try to combine questions. this question is pretty broad. how do you expect new technology to affect intelligence and dhs activities? that could take 100 hours of discussion. maybe you could pick a little bit there -- there are technologies we want to protect networks and 5g technologies that the intelligence community would like to of choir and there are technologies you would like to keep out of the hands of others. down a bit, are their top technology issues you think will be on the front burner in the next year? enoughso, is there a technology fluency among the policymakers and the general leadership in the ic to make as informed decisions on what are pretty complicated questions? answer in: i will three. the first is -- listen, this is a technical world and so many .ssues go through technology for the intelligence community, it has got to win at being able to use the information that will help answer is questions more effectively. it has to deal with volume and draw good conclusions, integrate it through the human systems. it is not as much that we are it has to become integrated into the way that we do work. of machinetroduction learning and artificial intelligence into the craft of intelligence from collection processing and analysis is really important and has to be a focus. at the exact same time, there has to be national effort on ai insurance. if you cannot trust the data or the algorithms, you will have a hard time. that is one. the second thing is technology leadership in general and how we maintain that and how we protect it is going to be a huge national issue. it used to be that the secured technologies, the most important, were produced by the government and we knew how to control it. now, the most important technologies are being produced outside of the government and we are trying to shut the barn door after they are already out. we will have to balance this ut us down,we shoul that will not serve our purposes. if it is me, i'm going to emphasize leadership at d.o.t. of department of thing bringing them into the intelligence family in the same way that you brought in dhs and the fbi years ago. and to the third, your question about -- are our leaders and leadership and workforce technologically savvy enough? no. and where that comes into play at the leadership level is you cannot -- if you are not comfortable with technology, if you do not understand its limits and abilities, you will view the introduction of technology as adding risk and you will retard the introduction of new ideas. inwill have to invest technology leadership. we have the workforce with the ability but we have to work on the leadership. richard: great. thank you. let's go to our next poll question. >> the next whole question has been do with federal criminal prosecutions. are federal criminal prosecutions useful tools for deterring national security and intel threats -- for example, the indictment of chinese nationals for i.t. theft? and your options are -- yes, keep them up. no, fight fire with fire. a little of both. or none of the above. and we will be back in a little bit with those results. over to you, richard. richard: we will see how persuasive our previous question was. that,are waiting for let's go over to you, carrie. a question from the audience about the mastic -- about domestic extremism. is it a national security threat ? does that involve dod? or should it be kept as they law enforcement priority within dhs and doj? how do you think about that? first, justice set the table in terms of the way the government currently handles this. domestic terrorism, the primary responsibility for investigating that falls to the fbi. not on the national security site. generally, on the criminal investigative side. and the intelligence community is foreign locust. the entire enterprise of our intelligence is focused on foreign threats and not domestic threats. and that is important. we do not have an internal security system in the u.s. looking investigators at americans for domestic activities. and that is why traditionally we reside the investigations into domestic terrorism at the fbi and then we use dhs as a conduit for intelligence sharing through the department of homeland security to intersect with locals. the challenge is in changing that -- what we don't want to do internal some type of security service that is looking theirricans based on first amendment activities. and that is the historical reason why we split out the criminal investigative part on the domestic terrorism side. however, we currently are in an environment where we are starting to see greater and greater threats on the domestic side. one way to address that is to make sure that within the justice department, the investigation of domestic terrorism is adequately resourced and adequately made a priority under the umbrella of the existing, and if under that umbrella with attorney guidelines and appropriations and first amendment rights. >> you are nodding your head throughout at least some of those things. do you generally concur? >> yes. i couldn't say it any better myself. she nailed it. there's an impulse in this country, which we have seen, to label certain domestic groups or movements a terrorist organization. there is no legal mechanism for doing that. our government has the ability a foreign terrorist organization. there is no legal mechanism for designating a domestic group or movement to be a terrorist organization. it would have no legal effect. the laws under title 18 should withequate for dealing people, groups, conspiracies that turn criminal in nature. i think carrie is right. the department of justice, the fbi need to constantly whether the authorities they have, the tools they have are adequate in dealing with the threat of violent white nationalism that i talked about earlier. it it is against our values, is against who we are as a nation to start labeling people and groups domestically as somehow terrorist organizations and the like. we have to be really careful there. >> why don't you give us the results of the poll? and tee up our last question for the audience. >> most of the folks were in the middle on this. it will be interesting to see i'm our next poll question, going to bring up our next question where this will be really interesting to see the divisions on this one. this is, which of these activities poses the more significant threat to u.s. national security? intellectual property theft, cyber attacks, this information, disinformation or hacks and leaks? i will be back a little bit later with those results. okay, we will find out the results then come to you on that. one thing, maybe i will go to you and then jay on this, a question on climate and how that -- the question is about dhs, but it tells this community and really the broader national security enterprises. the question here, given that the upcoming administration is maybe one of the most made one of the most dramatic policy changes, all the way to today, john kerry a top foreign policy/ national security democratic community for the team. where is the intelligence community on this particular question? go?e does it >> the intelligence community will have to figure out their priorities, but three that emerged last year, pandemics, immigration, and climate are certainly national security challenges. they are. and the intelligence community in general has had a relatively light hand in terms of involvement. becausethat reason is that is not typically where our strength and collection strength is. if you agree that it's a national security threat and you understand what intelligence is about, the craft of being able -- to deal with widely dispersed information, putting it in a format that allows people to deal with that certainty, itth is hard to argue the intelligence community should not have more role in those three issues. strife increases in each one of those, it will have a ripple effect in an ecosystem of displaced persons, andomic strength, political military strategy. they will have to get more of a role. but it will be a question of figuring out what they will have to contribute and what other areas of focus will be. my bed is, they need to look at it pretty seriously, since those are pretty significant national security threats. >> will get the results from the -- we will get the results from the poll. >> every way, there's always one question that there's a real hot debate. here we have this week and that, cyber attacks and disinform ation, 44% and 43% respectively. forth photoand finish for cyber attacks and disinformation. back to you. we've got to get him a radio show. [laughter] jay, go ahead. disinformation, right up there, because it is one of the drivers of the polarization we see right now in our politics. given the polarized political for ourent, it is tough democracy to get stuff done. it is tough for our democracy to address all these other issues. we have been talking about this basic debate about whether the earth is flat or round. as long as we live in this environment where vast numbers of people in the american electorate are susceptible to disinformation, probleman underlying that affects our ability to solve these other problems that we face. on the issue of climate change, it is a homeland security matter, most immediately, because of the severe weather on agingffect infrastructure in this country, bridges, tunnels, railroad tunnels. we got a taste of this with hurricane sandy here in the new york area. specifically, is in a position to help evaluate our aging infrastructure, and what is it that is most vulnerable to the increasing number of severe weather events that we see. fact -- dhs gives on hundreds of millions of dollars every year in grants to bolster homeland security. i hope we are continually evaluating whether we are adequately addressing the threat picture with those grants, including the effects of severe weather events. comment on this question, you've done a lot of work in this area. democracying to run a effectively, you need at least two things, you need a shared understanding of reality, and some basic level of trust, and it looks like those are going up the window. to some degree. pressureis a gigantic point for our society and democracy. do you put the same priority on ass information as jed -- jeh did, and what do we do about this? >> i came to look at the four things as different sides of the same guide. they all pertain to the information environment, either theft of information or manipulation of it. but i will say, there's an aspect to this that i think is relevant to the intelligence community. what yould be curious think about this as well. traditionally, the intelligence community's role has been to provide information and warning to policymakers and the president being the primary consumer, the number one customer of that information. one of the questions that i have going forward that has been in some of my work has been the transparency, what the intelligence community's obligations are, as a something that is funded by taxpayers, to the public to provide warning. we have the congress and the intelligence communities that are supposed to be that proxy between the intelligence community and the public. but in some ways, particularly in the figures we have seen a breakdown of that oversight, hopefully that will change with the new congress. but when it comes to disinformation, one of the things i need -- i think we need to be thinking about is what is the intelligence community's obligations to get the ground truth? we also saw drawing on lessons from 2016 election interference. we saw a concerted effort on the part of multiple intelligence leaders the summer, and individuals -- this summer, and individuals in the odni office, the fbi director, etc., all engaging in public messaging. they appeared in a video together, they issued statements together talking about, here's what we know about foreign interference. some of those statements were criticized. some didn't go as far a some would like. but it really was a really big shift, in terms of the transparency, and with respect to the other threats, one of the things i think we will have to innk about going forward is, order to beat down some of this disinformation, what role is there for the intelligence community to play in it, or not? >> can i jump in on that one? >> i was going to say -- >> i think the way to think about it is, who are the decision-makers, and where is the threat surface? -- where has the threat surfaced? the threat surface is the private sector and our citizenry. you have to provide them the information, because they are also decision-makers. i think a move toward transparency is really important. since been really proud 2016 that the icy has done it with other elements. i will say, they are going to have to develop a little bit more craft around how you talk to -- you know, there is an are kennedy to intelligence and an arcanity to intelligence and analysis. more to thetalk public, more openly about it, they will have to develop some craft about how you give up information. we have to learn that about how we talk to companies and cybersecurity. asn we first started talking an intelligence community, we were giving the information we theed to give, but not information that was usual to them. i think it is a really important element going forward. >> then there's the other facet, that is goingng to have to get some attention, too. we are at time. thank you so much for spending an hour to talk over these issues. he covered -- we covered a lot of territory. thank you for the audience for tuning in, asking questions. we will continue to take opportunities to do discussions like these on what is to come, as the opportunity arises. thank you once again to our you, theand to audience, and of course to our craft technical team, including dj shy areited to doing everything you have done. >> here's our live coverage on c-span monday. two supreme court oral arguments. first, trump the new york on whether the president has the authority to prevent noncitizens from being counted in the census. followed by van buren for united states, dealing with computer fraud and the house begins the week with a pro forma session with no votes scheduled but later in the week, a measure on legalizing marijuana. on c-span two, the middle east institute hosts a forum on u.s. efforts to combat isis in syria and iraq. eastern, coverage of the secretary of state arizona's certification of the election results and the judicial nomination for the southern district of mississippi. >> the u.s. supreme court hears oral argument in trump the new york monday at 10:00 a.m. c-span.on the court will hear whether president trump has the authority to exclude undocumented individuals living in the u.s. from the census. listen to the oral argument live at 10:00 a.m. eastern monday on c-span.org/supremecourt, or the c-span radio app. next, "washington post" columnist george will talks about the trump presidency and the future of the republican party. mr. will is a former republican who changed his voter registration to unaffiliated in the first year of the trump administration. this is an hour. hour. >> we are thrilled tonight to welcome back the distinguished >> we are thrilled tonight to welcome back the distinguished george f. will, who will be in conversation with -- i am sorry, i am sure you have won many awards, i cannot be sure which ones. i welcome you on behalf of our leadership, caroline kelly, david layer, the leadership team of jews united for democracy of justice, and democracy advocates inc., the creators of this series. inc., the creators of this series. thank you to our many wonderful sponsors. temple isaiah, stephen weiss

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