Cspan2. Cspan2. Hi, everybody, im david, welcome to the National Book festival in the difficult time of the pandemic. One single they think we can do and i know youre loving it as i am, is to read good books. I wrote a book that was published this summer, the paladin, about a cia officer whos struggling with one of the central problems of our times, which is knowing whats true and what isnt. And its my great pleasure to have with me today two people who wrote two of the very best books of this summer about issues related to our new technologically sophisticated world and the dangers. First, i want to introduce bart gellman, my former colleague at the Washington Post who wrote an extraordinary memoirs and his dealings with Edward Snowden and the technology and surveillance and the title of the book says, the american surveillance state. And another outstanding office, thomas rid who teaches at Johns Hopkins and his accurate measure of history what weve come to call disinformation, the ways in which our elections systems, our politics, our very political fabric can be manipulated by foreign governments and the kind of operations going back decades. These are two extraordinary books and im delighted to have them with me this morning. And i want to ask you each to give a brief, oneminute summary what youd like readers to know about our books and well about to a well go to broader discussion. Bart, lead us off. Dark mirror, a combination of three books, edward snowed p, who he is, how he did what he did, why he did what he did and it takes you behind the scenes of our interactions, journalists and source. It is a story of the surveillance state and the content of the revelations that snowden made about the nsa, and the change of boundaries that it secretly put into effect after 9 11 so that there were, there were lines that were crossed after 9 11 the American People did not know about. And the third is a more personal memoir which i did not expect to write, but its the story of the investigation, the investigative reporting that went into this. It brings you into the news room, into moscow hotel rooms, in all the places. What i was doing in my reporting and the dilemmas and risks and in some cases, dangers that i faced. I should say, just in closing that opening the discussion of dark mirror that theres a way that youll find in barts book, a modern, highly technical version of the sorts of dilemmas and dramatic that we associate with all the president s men, the stakes are high and bart takes us inside the news room of the 21st century, not ben bradlees news room and thomas, early in his publication, an extraordinary book, review of the Washington Post and i asked you just to describe a little bit of what you were trying to do in this broad look at the history of active measures of disinformation over time. Yeah, i was in 2016 was the election interference here in the general election was Getting Started in mid june that year. The public side of it. I was investigating a russian hacking campaign, an older one. I was closely paying attention to a russian Computer Network operations at the time and quickly it became clear we were looking at a disinformation operation, literally within one day it was quite clear and while i was able to understand most of the technical forensic evidence, it quickly became clear, i was not equipped to understand the history. I was not equipped to understand the dynamics of what it means when large intelligence organizations developed a focus on disinforming, on shaping narratives, on interfering in public and sometimes in private conversations, either in a broadway or in a very targeted way. So that history was ultimately what allowed me to put into context what happened in 2016, and, yeah, spent about four years writing that history. And thomas, i think everyone in this summer, were now less than 100 days before the 2020 u. S. President ial election, would want to ask you is this effort to manipulate our politics from abroad and in particular, by russia, continuing in your judgment . It appears to be continuing, but look at the 2020 election from the perspective of Russian Military intelligence or indeed, another russian intelligence, anyway russian intelligence, they actually have a real problem because the expectation is a lot of people have, they will be aggressive, they will be effective and again, try to play this game of Political Warfare cia called it in the 1950s, so theyre delivering against extraordinary expectations and 2016 in many ways was the perfect storm for them. A highly polarized situation and we still have that obviously. And wills nobody expected election interference in 2016. Not everybody, but a lot of people are expecting it today, which to a degree, but only to a degree creates a certain amount of immunity or at least the defenses are up today. So, yes, theyre trying, but probably, its harder for them to succeed again. Bart, i want to turn this question to you, and ask you to assess the foreign threats to american citizens by a computer technology, versus the thing that you focused on with regard to Edward Snowden in your book, the american surveillance state. Is there a way for you to assess the relative danger external from the kind of people that thomas is focused on in moscow and internal in the continued efforts by nsa to collect information around the world that may target americans . Theyre very different kinds of threats. The external Threat Landscape is broad. A lot of it has to do with straight up espionage, whether its commercial or traditional american style defense, the National Security espionage. That you have many actors, some with criminal motivations, and some with commercial and some with security who are who are penetrating american computing devices, with phishing attacks and more sophisticated methods and so theyre breaking into defense contractors, theyre breaking into university research, theyre breaking into commercial processes, theyre breaking into covid research. In order to gain some sort of advantage and of course, there are a large number of hackers who are looking to steal personal information for identity theft, and for financial theft. There are blackmailers who are coming after americans who they think can pay and theyre using rans ransomware to lock up computers and threaten to destroy if a ransom is not paid. The threat from the nsa is more of a shifting of boundaries between the government and its own people in a democracy. Its a fact that in the course of its surveillance of foreigners, the nsa has moved into the large digital comment. It is surveilling large swaths of the internet itself and in so doing, it inevitably pulls in huge volumes of u. S. Citizen and traffic. And so, we are being asked to tolerate a level of surveillance over americans that we never had before. Address a question that you discussed some in your back, but to put it in the most direct way, do you worry that the revelation of all of the things that the nsa could do, all of the capabilities, may have weakened the United States ability to defend itself against very aggressive and increasingly sophisticated adversaries . I think theres no doubt that some of the snowden revelations must have reduced collections. Must have interfered with nsa operations. And not lease because of the opportunity caused, the time and personnel and money that was expended on mitigating against those risks. So if you have hundreds and hundreds of people in the Intelligence Community who are occupied fulltime with learning what risks there have been to collection and mitigating those and finding alternate paths to the same information that those people are not doing Something Else that they normally would have been doing. There are other ways in which snowden as revelations could be argued to have led to collection lawsuits, but i dont know that you could count that as damage under the way our systems operate. That is to say if the revelations led consumers to demand greater privacy, because they didnt like having their own data intercepted, and so then Internet Companies like google encrypted its connection from Google Service to your own servers that could say thats interfering with collections. Thats the marketplace working as its supposed to. If citizens didnt like what they were, and brought it to court thats the way the system is supposed to work. A lot of things that the Intelligence Community regards damaging about snowdens leaks is actually the system responding appropriately and according to our own Core Principles of how we govern ourselves. Yes, if i may quickly jump in here, i also have the privilege to review bartons book in the Washington Post and its truly an impressive book and in fact, changed my opinion and views on what Edward Snowden did, which in some ways is the highest compliment you can get on an author. If you read his book next to mine, theres a question that leaps out to that comparative read, and the question is, how can it be that the nsa has the incredible sing intelligence capabilities that barton talked about, yet, failed and i say failed here in reference to the entire u. S. Intelligence community, really significantly, if not spectacularly in 2016 in understanding an ongoing election interference before it happened and even in realtime. Lets remember, the people tracking it early on were private sector companies, dell secure works, outside experts, and not people in the Intelligence Community at least they didnt mention any of their early findings publicly and even in hindsight, im not convinced they actually had their eyes on the ball. So, what happened there . It is a great question. To some extent, i can speculate that this relates to, you dont find something that youre not looking for. I mean, the nsa and the whole Intelligence Community are governed by an expensive and prioritized list of questions and topics that there are meant to be, meant to be looking at. So, its proliferation of nuclear weapons, what exactly is happening with iran on any of the following subject areas and so on down the list. Were they tasked and did they think to look for outside interference in u. S. Elections . There could be some doubt about that. Bart, i think this might be a useful time to ask you to their with our viewers your sense of what Edward Snowden is like. This is a elusive personality for most of us, but he really has shaped the world that we live in. You had the unusual opportunity to talk with him, im guessing, as much as any other person except for his wife. Youve seen him in moscow. Just describe for our National Book festival viewers, what hes like as a person, what troubled you, what you admired, what your take away bass . Well, hes a fascinating character. Hes someone who follows his own rules, if hes not interested in something as a student, he doesnt pay any attention to it and gets terrible grades. He is hes tired of high school so after spending most of a year away because of illness, he never returns and takes the g. E. D. Instead, which he aces with flying colors. He teaches himself computer techniques because he enjoys the computer and he signs up to take Certification Courses for a bunch of advanced certifications in the computer field including certified hacker, one of my favorites. In many cases without even taking the course, he just takes the exam and hes got a sort of preternatural ability to get the answers to the questions. And he starts off as a nighttime Security Guard and finding his talents for computer work is accidentally discovered. Hes encouraged to get a microsoft certification and start applying for jobs, who doesnt care about certification, but what you can do. And sense of right and wrong and hes a zealot, in my experience many whistleblowers are, they see the same things that others see and judge them and say if no one else is going to do something about this, then i am. Hes capable of being funny. He will, every now and then, relax and shoot the breeze and talk about sort of offtopic things, but hes unusually focused and quite stubborn about what he will and wont say on the subjects that hes become best known for. So, i mean, i we had a fraught relationship and a lot of tension at the markins about what he would and wouldnt tell me. And there was one significant moment in which i believe he had misled me that led to another kind of confrontation. Bart, had we had a Different Administration come next year, a different attorney general, would you like to see snowden allowed to come back and face trial here in america . People i think would demand that in the National Security community, and what do you think the terms of that trial should be . Should he be allowed to make an argument that he really helped more than he hurt . How do you see that going . Well, first of all, i dont think its going to happen. It certainly wont happen voluntarily on his part. The charges he actually faces include espionage and you cant sort of make up how you would like a trial to go. I mean, it would be it would fit his own sense of justice and i think i agree with him here, if he were able to mount a public defense, try to persuade a jury he had done more good than harm, tried to advance the United States and its own citizens, but the way the law is written right now, the elements of the crime are that he had lawful access to classified material and he gave it to someone who did not have lawful access, thats it. Thats the whole crime. So, he cant say, well, it turns out that i exposed some legally doubtful operations, even if every Single Program he exposed had been found to be unconstitutional by the supreme court, he would still be guilty of espionage under the terms of the law. And so were not going to get the kind of trial in which he is allowed to offer evidence of his intentions or his actual effects on security. Turn to thomas and ask about the riddle that i found most haunting in your book, active measures. You go through a detailed and powerful description of all the things that russia over decades has done to try and manipulate other countries. But as you talk about recent events, the way america was turned upside down during the 2016 elections, and since, you talk about the way in which individual american citizens have been the carriers of this disinformation. Weve been the mules, if you think of how a drug cartel works, who carry the poisonous material back and forth. If it wasnt for us, for our amplifying, spreading, disseminating russian tidbits, it wouldnt have had much effect. Is that an accurate way to describe where you end up in the book and elaborate on that scene, the underlying body politics is crucial in how disinformation works. Disinformation is almost like a parasite, it lives off of an existing host body politic. What i mean by that, active measures would exacerbate existing tensions, existing frictions, existing contradictions in the old communist language that was emerged in the 1920s. The disinformation is designed to exacerbate something thats already existing, for example, highly polarized situation in the 1970s and in the context of the Peace Movement between those in favor, strong deterrents and those against nuclear weapons, soviets and east germany, for example, very much tried to help the Peace Movement because it ultimately was their interest to criticize American Force modernization plans. That creates a intellectually problem. Look at the point of view of someone running the operation, say the kgb in the cold war, if youre exacerbating an existing phenomenon how can you tell really whether you are the cause of a certain development or whether someone was already happening without you . So i think what were looking at today is this situation that theyre trying to, especially now in 2020, that the russian Intelligence Community continues to try to take advantage of existing debates and frictions in the United States. But if we fall into the trap of ascribing to their action too much power. For example, if you think or claim that the Russian Election interference was responsible for getting donald trump elected, theres simply not enough evidence to support that claim. We can in the say for a fact that they had an actual impact on the outcome of the 2016 election. But if you make that call of judgment. If you say, i believe the Russian Election interference is responsible for donald trump winning the election, at least part, then you are ultimately helping them to achieve that goal. So that in a nutshell, the risk is that the narrative about this information becomes part of disinformation. Were really in a constructivist nightmare here. So, let me ask each of you to think with all of us about what we can do about the threat that youve described so well in your book, your active measures, because our title, big brother is watching, a phrase that what can we do to help the modern day Winston Smith who is the hero of that book, resist, fight back, survive amidst all of these technological threats . Bart, let me start with you and ill name some of the people that could help winston and you can tell me if they will or wont. Obviously, Technology Companies, conceivably could help protect us, but were not sure whether thats a good idea or bad. Conceivably government could help us protect, protect its citizens, but again, terrible problems in that regard. What way do you see to get the citize