So is the trump tax plan help or hurt you . It probably helps me more than it needs to. Im missing that part where nobody on the high end was going to benefit and this was going to benefit middle class folks. So thats fake news. That would not fall into the fact checkable news. Lets get down to the serious things that you have been investigating. Some of the platforms that many in the audience and even myself love, facebook, twitter, using Search Engines like google are now all wrapped up into your committee, Intelligence Committee coming in. Do you feel that these platforms are undermining our democracy . First of all, i know this feels like its a story that never ends. Lets look at what we do know. What 99. 9 of everyone in washington believes, democrat or republican, with the exception of one individual. We know that russia using its services massively intervened in our election by hacking into both Political Parties and releasing information that helped one candidate at the detriment of hillary clinton. Second thing we know is is russia intervened and attacked, didnt fully break into voter files, but literally attacked 21 states Electoral Systems. That hearing when you raise ed that hearing, you had a representative from dhs that you were hammering on this months and months ago and you were pretty fe roers. Have taken all this time for dhs to do this. I have sources that tell me the chief of staff john kelly, then secretary of homeland security, wasnt pleased with you. We had a frank and candid exchange. It just seemed to me that dhs would say we cant tell the states because the state secretary of state or other top Election Officials didnt have a high enough clearance level to be told. That made no sense. Come last friday, they did reveal to the 21 states. This is part of the challenge that the president doesnt acknowledge this problem so we have no whole of government approach on how we procollude this from happening the next election cycle. In my state, we have elections this year. Our board took out one of the machines and desert if ied it because we were concerned about the ability of russians and or others to hack into it. Hacking into the machine itself. Hacking into the ability that was a conference in las vegas a number of months back where they brought in a lot of Voting Machines and e showed how quickly hackers could penetrate the machines. We have no evidence they penetrated in 2016. But they were rattling the door and we need to be careful going forward. Third thing we know is we have seen and again ive been in the technology field, the social Media Companies. Facebook, twitter, were asking google as well. At first were dismissive of the fact that their platforms were used both as vehicles for paid advertising, but also as places where russians were able to create fake accounts and those fake accounts put like certain groups and stories and that would drive those stories higher on your news feeds. And that would mean their propaganda so in chaos i think had a pretty dramatic effect. When we get to the social media platforms in a moment, heres what i worry about at times. It you take if russias goal was to sew chaos, to show how our system sometimes dont function, and help mr. Trump, they had a pretty good rate of return. If if you add up what russia spent in american elections, if you add up what they spent in the French Election where is they took down 50,000 accounts, if you add up what they spent in the dutch elections where the dutch hand counted the ballots and double that, youre still talking about less than half the cost of one new f35. From a macrostandpoint, i think what we may have seen is the first not shots fired, but the first tools of 21st century disinformation and i worry as a big advocate for our military, we may have an america the best 20th century military that money can buy, but were increasingly in a world where fiber vulnerability, misinformation and disinformation may be the tools of conflict. How forthcoming are the platforms right now . Facebook denied having had any russian ads bought and overnight were learning more and more about more accounts. Now we see the news about twitter. The Million Dollar question is how do they know where to deploy these ads. There was a period of time there was just nothing that had come forward. Does facebook have a lot of accounts . Lets put it this way. I think facebook in many ways knows more about each of us than the United States government. And the notion that somehow they werent aware of what was happening on their platforms strains my credibility. You think they were lying . Im not saying that. I want to see the materials. They came and showed the staff, they took the materials back. Not a good thing to do to a senate committee. Now they are coming forth. They promised us the information this week. We want to get it out to the public because at the end of the day, americans should have the right to know at least a couple things. One, if youre reading a political ad on facebook or any of the platforms, you ought to know the source of that ad whether its foreign based or not. If a story is being driven to the top of your news feed because thousands of individuals have liked it, we ought to know whether those individuals who are liking it are actually individuals who are represented. In many cases, they say its Steven Clemmons from washington, d. C. , when it might have been someone from moscow. What facebook has said is they have identified one of the troll farms in st. Petersburg. They havent identified the rest. One of the reasons ien dont believe they have actually done a thorough examination is the only accounts they identified were those ads that were paid for in rubles. I think the Russian Services know how to use dollars, euros, so we have a lot more questions. My hope is i talked to Mark Zuckerberg last week. Hes built an extraordinary Iconic Company, but i think that Iconic Company that more than half of americans look to every day is based upon a level of trust. I think they need to be extremely forthcoming. Were going to add twitter in today and ask goog toll testify as well. They need to come forward. This is important in terms of americas confidence in the information we receive. So much of this story is behind classified. You mentioned the 21 states that are just now telling their citizens they had been penetrated by the russians because they had been informed formally by the department of homeland security. You were on this months ago. What is the gap between what we all know publicly and what you know because you get classified information. This seems to e me to be right at the core of democracy. I would love to tell you, but is it a big gap or a little gap . This story keeps going on. I have been amazed that theres not a week that goes by that a new name or threat doesnt appear. And we both have challenges here. Theres democrats that think everybody is guilty from day one. Theres republicans that want it to go away. Our job is to get the truth out. Our job is to figure out whether there was collaboration or collusion, but more important, how to prevent this from happening going forward. The fact that the white house, everybody in the intel community, most of the president s appointees have acknowledged this. The fact that theres no single point of contact in the white house that says, hey, my job is to make sure that our Electoral Systems that are information that we are protected from foreign entities in a way that has a whole of government approach is a real challenge. It means its more incumbent upon us that we get the truth out. I want to talk to you in the r runway. But what you see as high crimes. We now see your comments about evidence of kcollusion. We have seen intent to collude. So of these things that we keep reading about the creation of the document for eric trump jr. , all of these things have come out. So which of this drama constitutes high crimes . I have not reached any conclusion. My job is not to reach that conclusion until e we get to the end. Which way are you tilting . Towards the truth. I think there are series of interactions. Michael cohen who wanted to pull a fast one. Were going to have him come back. Hes been so there are those kind of questions about was there shared information. Clearly the russians were trying to offer, you know, information that was hurtful to hillary clinton. You know, did the trump people accept it or not, we dont know the answer to that. The other piece that i think is one of them, the big unanswered questions, and i really hope the social Media Companies will be very forthcoming, the trump social media operation was much, much better than democrats realized. And weve seen lots of use of facebook. Weve seen some level it appears of coordination with some of the altright groups. The question i have is i know the russians have the technical ability to plant fake news, to create fake accounts. But their level it appears of geotargeting on a demographic basis in certain key areas where even the democrats were too asleep at the switch, how do they figure that out to that level . Maybe it was just the theres been some evidence that the Trump Campaign put a lot of their data bases in effect out and some of their targets out for public and then people who wanted to, you know, not directly work with could use that information. But i still think one of the milliondollar questions is this was a level of sophistication that i think was unprecedented, and we have got to figure out what happened. Have you read josh greens book on steve bannon . No. Might be interesting. Might be interesting. Hes on a little bit of a high this week. Yeah. Let me just shift gears for a minute. I interviewed senator chris coons yesterday and we were talking a bit about health care. I asked him in terms of bipartisan, constructive, working together, how many United States senators did you think would be open to the notion of a vehicle that came on this, solves a lot of problems of the Affordable Care act that came in, and chris said 50, which is a disappointing number. Im interested in just you and richard burr have a deep relationship and a good effective relationship. Does that go on is there a chance that were going to be able to tilt from this period of extremism in both parties being unable to kind of work yes. The truth is there is a lot more interpersonal working relationships in the senate than you guys in the press represent. Do you guys hide them from us . No, we dont there are plenty of secret spots where we have a glass of wine and share ideas. And i think health care give me a call. There was a path, and i think patty murray and lamar alexander, theres a way we can do some shortterm market stabilization as well as taking on some of the options, a reinsurance pool. You know, ive been open for a long time the idea of cheaper plans to get younger people in. I call them the popper plans. Theres a lot of agreement. We just need the runway to play that out and i think youll see that happen in health care. I worry you know, ive spent years as a former business guy and some of the audience may recall i was part of the socalled gang of six. I again think its a little weird i work in the only place in america where being in a gang is a good thing. Im part of every gang there is. But im fascinated with our debt every deficit issues, macroeconomic trends. I think i could add some value to a tax reform debate, but if the operating premise is that the republicans are going to try to do this with their team only and get 50 or 51 out of 52 votes i actually think that would be harder in tax reform than to get 65 or 70 votes out of 100. And my hope would be they will learn as the democrats should have learned before, if you try to do major policy with one party only, youre never going to get it to the point because youre never going to get it 100 right. Youre never going to get it to the point where the American People accept that policy as being in effect vetted by both teams. You have written, senator, about your worry that our incentives in the economy are designed the wrong way. That the average worker is screwed in the Current Situation because were seeing less and less investment in the economy, less and less longterm orientation. What are the two or three things you think need to be done to change the course of the economy so its more in a healthy way, more sustainable than it is today . In 1 43, ill give you a whole new economic theory. Heres my feeling. I did extraordinary well and very blessed to d well by our Free Enterprise system. I worry that modern american capitalism is not working for enough people. I believe that that is driven by the fact that longterm Value Creation is too often trumped by shorttermism. And let me cite three examples that i think that dont fall neatly into democrat and republican. The whole notion of traditional social contract around work has changed. People no longer work like my dad did for the same company for 38 years. A third of the workforce in America Today is in some form of contingent work, parttime, temp, independent contractors, the gig workers. Those folks, even if theyre doing well, they have no social insurance. So we have to experiment with a portable benefit system. The same corollary of that nonlongterm employment means theres really no business reason for a company to invest in upscaling low and modern income people. The government does a pretty crummy job on that. A tax reform plan ought to include major tax credits for companies who train up low and moderate income workers and i would offer a lower repatriated tax rate for those company who is put in place that kind of meaningful training. And third, i think we really need to have and this would be a debate that would be fulsome a question whether the Capital Markets are so focused on short termism that the longterm great post world war ii companies could even be created today. We do point to the facebooks and the amazons and the others, but those are companies where the founders still control an unusually large block of stock. How can we move away so that companies no longer, you know, 30 years ago 50 of Company Profits were reinvested in companies, now 95 of corporate profits are spent on share buybacks and dividends. Thats not the kind of capital ism thats going to grow and make everybody have a feeling of inclusiveness. Thank you. [ applause ] finally, i just want to ask you a question about the Trump Administration and President Trump. Given everything we know, given the concerns that youve laid out, how willing are you, given everything youve seen, to go and become engaged with President Trump and to work with him on these issues . I want the president to succeed. Can he succeed . Listen, i a little less tweetage, a little more policy might help. I want him to succeed. Hes our president. But hes got to recognize that the role of the president , the role of any leader i was a governor in a state where it was 21 republican the role of a leader is to actually get folks to find some Common Ground and not to try to find every issue and simply reinforce your base. Our country has done best and its policy has done best when you actually build policy out from the center rather than driving it from the extremes. Ladies and gentlemen, senator mark warner. [ applause ] please welcome the ceo of aetna, Mark Bertolini and the atlantics executive editor, matt thompson. Good morning. How are you . Im good, thanks. How about yourself . I was a little worried because i hear you never express any opinions on health care. You have a reputation of playing it very close to the vest. Very close to the vest, yeah. Got my talking points right here. And theres nothing happening on health care right now. No. Apparently the latest lastditch effort to replace, repeal and replace obamacare, the Affordable Care act, is seemingly dead. Yes. Although theres two more days. Anything could happen. Is it really dead . Yes. Yes. [ applause ] how do you feel about the demise of the various efforts . And Graham Cassidy in particular. I think senator warner, who i have a great degree of respect for, he and i have talked a lot about this and conscious capitalism. And i think as we think about what gets done in this country of any major social import, its always done bipartisan. Because no sooner is the bill passed and put into place than it needs to be fixed. Yeah. Medicare gets tweaked every year. Social security gets tweaked every year. Medicaid gets tweaked every year. And you have to have a bipartisan agreement that we need to fix these things as they go along because nothings perfect out of the box. Thats what real innovation is. But it would seem from the number of plans that have been floated and failed over the past couple of months, it would seem that theres actually a wide area of give on health care. What has been and there have been bipartisan plans hanging out there for since the nixon era, right . So if you took the politics out of the situation, wed have a bipartisan solution already. Okay. This is about election promises and an 18 election. And if we really want to fix the thing, there are very simple straightforward things we can do to fit it. The Affordable Care act. Which by the way touches really, you know, 18 Million People out of 330 Million People. So if we want to fix it we can. We just need to get people in a room that can do it. There are people who have been in the room do it. We just need to get it to the forefront and have it done. And i think once we get past, you know, the bewitching hour of september 30th, i think we have an opportunity to actually do so