Started a few months later, in spring of 2006. I felt like i still was having some restlessness having had thatster generals. Host we have been talking with dr. Dinah miller coauthor of some shrink rap. Booktv is on facebook. Like us to get publishing news scheduling update, behind the scenes pictures and videos author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. Facebook. Com booktv. Shane harris talks about the militarys use of cyber space to wage war. He discusses the involvement of private Companies Like google and microsoft in this fifth domain of warfare. This hourlong Program Starts now on booktv. Im pleased to welcome shane harris this evening to discuss his new book, war the rice of the bill tear internet complex. Hello ands how Government Agencies are teaming up with the likes of google and microsoft and finance companies to monitor cyber space and collect information and what that means for us as individuals and a nation. This is harris second book. The watchers the rise of americas surveillance state when the income public librarys book award for excellence in journalism. He is current lay Senior Writer covering intelligence and National Security at the daily beast. He is also worked as a Senior Writer for Foreign Policy and his worked has appeared in numerous publications, including the new york times, the wall street journal, and the washington post. Also a fellow at the new america foundation. Were pleased to welcome him back for his second appearance at politics and prose. Please hem me welcome shane harris. Thank you for the great introduction. Thank you all for coming out on a night like tonight. You could be sitting on a veranda and drinking wine and enjoy thing summer evening. Im glad you chose to come out here and spend it with me. Greet see so many people and friends and colleagues as well. We just talked before we began i have been touring around with the book, and speaking at a number of book stores around the country and this one real isy just prized for the way it brings people out in the community, and its so great to see such a large gathering. This is great for a book talk. So thank you very much. Youre making me very happy. So this book war is a story and youll find lat of stories but it is a narrative about how it is that cybersecurity became a fixation, a top priority for National Security in the ute right now. Cybersecurity, which we define as broadly speaking are threats in cyber space to include espionage, cybercrimes attacks over commuter networks that can disrupt power grids or disabling Water Utilities or affecting bank. The risk of these attacks for the past two years has topped the intelligence communitys list of global threats. Every year the Intelligent Community puts out the big thing that keeps people up at night and cyberthreats have been at the top of the last for two yankee. James comby the new fbi director, has said the risk of cyberattacks and relate risk in a rise in cybercrime will be the most significant National Security threat of the next decade that and is above terrorism. Just last week the director of the National Security agency, michael rodgers, testified before congress that Cyber Attacks were costing hundreds of billions of dollars to u. S. Companies and multiple foreign governments had already probed the systems that control and regulate our electric power grid. He said this is not theoretical, quote, it is truly significant, almost catastrophic failure will occur if we do not take action. So, how is it we got to this point where all of our top National Security officials are telling us that the risk of a catastrophic cyberattack espionage directed against u. S. Companies, is the thing we should be moats worried about and what does that mean for all of us who exist and use the exist in cyberspace and use the internet every day . That book tries to answer the questions. It starts with a story, and then for appropriate a scary story. This begins in the summer of 2007. And the ceos of the major defense contractors, the boeing, lockheed mart tons, raytheons north group grummans, are called to a meeting at the pentagon. They figure if they have been called here on short notice and seeing theyre competitors in one room, this cant be good news. Theyre ushered into a room called a skiff sensitive compartmented information facility. If youre a fan of homeland, the skip is the thing where you have to drop your cell phone outside before you go in this sound proof room that is actually impermeable to eavesdropping. The place you only receive the most secretive secrets. Executives are given what is called a threat briefing. A number of military officials describe to them how hackers believed to be in china, are accessing Computer Systems that contain some of the most classified information in the military, specifically things like plans for the joint strike fighter, the f35 which is to be our next generation military aircraft, as well as a number of other assorted classified military programs have all been overrun by cyberspies. That seems scary to these ceos. What is even more scary the spies did not access the information by getting into military networks. They got into the networks of these companies. The crowes candidate. Hackers head made an end round round the pentagons rather formidable cyberdefenses and attacked contractors who were work only the most sensitive military programs. As it was described to me by somebody who was familiar with the meeting executives went in with dark hair and when they came out it had turned white. They were verdict concerned that the spy gold their systems and they new little about it. The pentagon said to them you have a security problem therefore we have a security problem. We have to do something about this and if you want to continue being contractors for the department of defense youll take our help. What begins at this point is something that i think epitomizes our Current National approach to Cyber Security. The pentagon teamed up with these contractors in an information and intelligence sharing arrangement. The contractors agreed to report to the pentagon threats they were segue on their network, click when they had been breached. The pentagon agreed not to disclose thats publicly because companies could not like to say when they have had hackers in anywhere network in return the pentagon would provide these corporations with information that it was gathering from its own intelligence operations, effectively the fruit of espionage, that agencies like the nsa were gathering. So the partnership essentially sets up whereby private sector and public are coming together for the mutual purpose of defending these Computer Networks. The companies are essential in this arrangement and this is true across the board when we talk about defending Critical Systems in the u. S. Companies own roughly 85 of the Network Infrastructure in the United States. The government does not physically control it. The companies have to. Tis pate if were going to protect the internet. The evident that began after that pentagon meeting became something known as the Defense Industrial base initiative or the dib, which recurrs throughout my book. A hundred companies are in members today. There will only a dozen or so when it began in late 2007. The model has been expanded to other sectors of the economy beyond the Defense Industrial base. So today the National Security agency via the Homeland Security department shares this kind of Threat Intelligence that its monitoring from sayreous networks overseas with enter set Service Providers in the hopes theyll program the threat signatures into their own systems, scanning for Malicious Software and intrusions and then protect their customers downdream. Big Name Technology companies have struck up relationships with the intelligence community. One i write about is google. Going obviously has a privileged kind of peering into networks all over the world. They move much of our Communications Traffic that were all using every day. Google struck up a secret relationship with the nsa in 2010 after it was hacked by chinese spies where they agree to share information theyre seeing on their networks in term for the nsa providing information to them. So defending cyberspace and also spying in it and attacking in it has actually become a cooperative effort between the government and the intelligence community, its partners in the Technology Industry. Thats what im referring to when i write about the military internet complex coming together of two powerful forces. I am deliberately harkening back to president eisenhowers military Industrial Complex speech from 1961, which ill talk about later. So this arrangement begins at the tail end of the bush administration. It took a number of years for president bush and his senior National Security advisers to start taking the threat of cyberattacks and cyberappearsage seriously. Cyberespionage seriously. Thats been talked about at the highest levels for years cut but did not catch on until the end. President bush was not the most technology contractual inclined chief executive. He once said he used the going toll look at his ranch. President clinton only sent one email the entire time he was in office. The internet was a fairly nascent infrastructure at the time. Where thats really takes off and takes steam not surprisingly as far as National Security priority is under president obama, who of course used the internet masterfully in his campaign. Our are first internet president you might say. President obama actually got a firsthand experience with cyber enunable when he was on the campaign and his Campaign Email system was hacked by spies believed to be in china. As an equal opportunity offender here, they hocked john mccains email system as well. So obama comes into the office with a firsthand glimpse of this and a real appreciation for the vulnerabilities in cyber space, and from day one, when he is given his classified briefings about various National Security threats, cyber is placed very near the top. So not one to waste time he adds a whole new dimension to the governments approach for dealing with this threat. In may 2009 obama gives a speech in the east room of the white house, and east room, its a very very large room and reserved for only the most momentous of speeches when he president knows its going to be a big crowd. So he gives a speech stands up and unveils his plan for securing cyberspace. He says his Campaign Email was hacked. He actually acknowledges the electrical grid the systems that control the grid had been probed by outsiders. He doesnt say governments and doesnt name them. This is the president of the United States standing up and saying effectively our Critical Systems, the things that control the machinery we depend upon for our daily life are vulnerable and theyre wide open to attack, and he intends to do something about it. And again, harkening to this model that has developed this, internet military complex he said, quote, the vast majority of our critical information and infrastructure in the United States is owned and operated by the private sector. We will collaborate with industry to find technology and ensure and promote our prosperity. The internet is a Strategic National asset and we intend to protect it as such. So you have obama really defining cyberspace as a national asset, even though its largely privately owned. Theres a threatens as theres a tension there as well. He sets out on a very ambitious program, putting the government at the center of efforts to try to secure cyberspace. Not to try to control that but to try to influence that and i write more about this in the book. What is point here is that obama, just like bush before him, is starting to see and describe cyberspas as a battlefield. The mail tear now refers to cyberspace as the philadelphia define of after land air, sea andouter spays and views trying to achieve spremtyly as vital also the other four. To give you some sense how the military has prioritized this in particular its good to follow the money in washington, also we know. If you were to take a look at the Defense Budget for cyberprograms, in 2014 just in Cyber Defense programs mostly protecting government computers, the government allocated 13 billion on Cyber Defense programs. Doesnt even touch the offensive side of the ledger in 2014 they will spend 11. 6 billion on efforts to combat Climate Change which president obama called the greatest threat of our time. So 13 billion Cyber Defense 11. 6 billion on climb change. The 2012 pentagon budget had the word cyberin it 12 items elm 2014 budget has it in 127 times. So a 12fold increase. Its become the joke now in thing bus it is only part of the dod budget that its growing, psychber security. I you want to get money to your project, slap the word cyber on it whether it has anything to do with cyber at all. A couple weeks ago the senior dod official who runs Cyber Security policy joked he was starting to see things proposals such as cyber tank that cross his desk. Government officials are talking about our vulnerabilities and the way our companies were robbed by spies but theres a sin calculation in here. Playing the victim is a good way of focusing National Attention and drum us money for defense programs but tends to obscure the other side of the story, which is what this book is also about. Were quit to picture ourselves as victim but were doing many of the same things we blast other countries for do to us and our corporations. We have become masters in offense in cyberspace. We have become very good at wagele cyber warfare. Its going to become an integral component how we fight wars in the future. One story i like that i nell the beginning of the book, that i think really captures how cyber is being integrated into the physical realm how we fight wars, this tapes in 2007 a lot of 2007 activity in this book. The year things took off. That in 2007 you remember that pressure pressure ordered tens of thousands of additional combat troops to iraq as part of the summer which was inning part of the surge, inning cheered to quell violence spiraling out of control in iraq to prevent a civil war and in particular to do battle with an insurgent terrorist group knowned a al qaeda in iraq, which later morphed into isis which were hearing loot more about today. So those tens of thousands of troops go, we Form Alliance with sunni tribes to turn them against al qaeda and iraq. Two pillars of the surge strapping. Theres a third pillar that has never been explored and i report in the book. The nsa tapped into the telecommunications and internet infrastructure of the country of iraq and effectively owned the entire network of the country of iraq. It examiner sented every cell phone call, every email message, every text message. What was it doing with the information . Farly it was to try to understand the way these groups, terrorist networks, had organized themselves by studying the patterns of their communications. I bright bat guy named bob who as young Army Lieutenant who deployed to iraq and was working in the signals Intelligence Groups so gathering Electronic Communications for the army and working with the nsa. Bob was a fan of the series the wire. Theres a, which in the wire an old Police Detective named Lester Freeman who decided he is going to unlock the hierarchy of the drug rings in baltimore, who these shadowy players; not by walking the beat and tapping human sources but by monitoring aring their cell tone, particularly the disposable cell phones and lester starts mapping out the networks of who these people are and who is important in the hierarchy based on the calls. Well bob did that as well and a lot of people did this. This information was then handed off to ground forces, boots on the ground, who would then go out and find these insurgents and capture or kill them. This want the only thing wasnt the only thing the nsa and elite hackers were up to. Some of the more daring exploits, they started sending fake Text Messages to individual insurgeons posing at people they knew, and directing them to meet at a particular place where, when they got there, they fell into a trap. They penetrate web sites used by the grouped and implanted spay ware on them so when people would go to chat forums thinking nobody was watching actually their computers were being inticket witness viruses and spy wear that would home in on their location and give the nsa access to their emails and communications on their compu