Im a columnist at the washington post. Thank you for joining us this morning for a panel entitled Homeland Security challenges. We have a very distinguished panel with us today in first we have the former secretary of Homeland Security the honorable jeh johnson and mr. Frank cilluffo the director of the center for cyber and Homeland Security at the George Washington university my alma mater. We have congressman Kathleen Rice representing the Fourth District of new york and also the ranking democrat on the subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence and last but certainly not least the honorable Kenneth Wainstein who served served as the home and security adviser to president george w. Bush. Now i have prepared an extensive introduction for todays panel but those plans were tossed in the garbage when President Trump issued a series of official statements this morning that are extremely relevant to this panel. You might also call them tweets and the tweets are directed at one of our panelists secretary johnson. I couldnt resist the opportunity to give secretary johnson a chance to respond to these tweets one by one so let me go ahead and read these three tweets before the house intelligence committee. First of all, are they accurate, if not why not and what is your response . Tweet number one, former home and security adviser jeh johnson is the latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between trump and russia. Secretary johnson. Well he spelled my name right and as we speak i am sure there are members of the press comparing the tweets to what i actually said yesterday in my testimony which was public and i will leave that to journalists. Lets go ahead and read two and three and i love a product comment or a cynic is a journalist who was the hearing my impression until me im wrong you did not say in any way shape or form that there was no grand scheme between trump and russia. Is that right . My testimony speaks for itself. Im not going to go down that road. Read the other two and ill have a broader comment. The next tweet by the way of her shows working so hard on the 2016 election that happened during the obama why didnt they stop them . Look, heres my point. You can read the third one too but heres my point. There is a much broader issue here that we as a government need to address beyond whether the latest tweet from our president is a accurate or inaccurate, beyond you know whether the dnc should have given up a server or not or who knew what, when and how early was it and could we have done it a little differently . That is the famous preoccupation in this town on this hill and in your profession frankly. The larger question that we need to address is now that we know what happened last year, what are we going to do about it in the future to prevent a foreign superpower from intervening in our democracy . What are we doing . And so as we sit here we remain exposed to this kind of attack, six months after the event, nine months after the dni and i publicly said this is what happened and this is who is doing it and as we speak, my concern is that we have still not done much to harden our cybersecurity defenses around state election systems at the time though we have made public what happened in frankly the way to get superpowers to stop doing this kind of thing is to make it cost prohibitive for them. They are all human beings and they behave like human beings and if you make it too costly for someone to engage in a certain behavior they will stop. I know that from personal experience negotiating certain types of removal of other superpowers however my concern is that the Current Administration in power is sending the signals basically that this wont be tolerated if we do this. That is the current message. We have yet to see any strong statement from the Current Administration condemning what the russians did and warning them not to do it again so if you are a member of the russian government or some other government your calculations about whether we should do that in 2018 or 2020 or beyond so thats the problem. Thats the larger problem that we must address them i am concerned that we are not addressing it as we are so preoccupied with the daily tweets and who did what when and how soon could you have done it differently . Thank you and lets read that third tweet. The reason is because part of what you just said is that the administration is sending the wrong message and of course when the president issues tweets that is the administrations message so of course there is a vicious cycle where the media follows the tweets and i would like to look forward and not backward before we do that. The last tweet was wide of the Democratic National committee turned down the dhs offers or protect against tax long prior to the election . Its all a big hoax. I would add quickly there are members of the administration have been very clear about the russian involvement in the interference of our election, just not the president. Is it a big dim hoax . I think the Intelligence Community last year said it was not. Do we seriously need to relitigate that again or should we address the problem for the future . One of the other problems frankly as i pointed out yesterday my testimony when we issued that statement on friday october 7, that was an unprecedented statement accusing a russian superpower, a foreign superpower of intervening in our democracy which i thought was going to be above the fold news that day, full banner perhaps but what happened was that was the same day the release of the excess Hollywood Video and so while the cattle in the pasture went to the other corner of the pasture because the press was preoccupied with 11yearold statements about sex and lust and so forth and so our statement in the news york times and i believe the russia post was below the fold news that day. Thats true. Its also true that the administrations deliberations over releasing that statement were delayed. No, i did not say that josh. What i said was that we spent considerable time thinking through all of the considerations that should go into attribution including the fact that we would be perceived as injecting ourselves into an ongoing Political Campaign and perhaps taking sides, the one of the candidates was saying the election result was going to be rigged. You have to think her of course whether we would be compromising sources and methods. We did that very carefully and we came to the statement on friday, october 7. I would not characterize it as delayed. I and others felt it was very important that we inform the American Public in advance of the election when renewal was going on and we did. That was the overriding consideration. Looking back is there anything you would have done differently . As i said about six times yesterday, hindsight is 2020. Its brilliant. At the time i will tell you that this was a front runner item for me and many other very senior members of the administration. Thank you. Lets go to frank. I would like you to address both the technical challenges preparing for what we have all expects continued and her parents and what secretary johnson talked about the deterrence challenge. How do we fix our system but also what do we need to do to communicate to these Foreign Government actors that this wont be tolerated . Thank you josh and let me start with the bottom line up front. The truth is we have got close to unlimited vulnerability, limited resources and a thinking predator an adversary that will constantly probe their actions and our actions so its not as if we are ever going to get to the point where we are 100 secured its a fools errand to suggest that potential outcome. My bottom line on some of this is we have got 16 infrastructures that have been designated critical and i think every one of those is very important but i think we have got to really start focusing in on those that are the most critical and i would define those as financial services, telecommunications, transportation, energy and the grid and water systems. Not to suggest that these other systems arent important but when we start looking at the limited resources and an enterprise approach we have to start spending those dollars as smartly as we can. From this straight up security standpoint yes we need to do more but i think everything is critical and the most Critical Infrastructures and get our arms around those first three secondly, and this is where the Electoral Systems comment and they have been designated a Critical Infrastructure and government facilities which is appropriate but to me ultimately we need to get to the point secretary johnson just brought up, that we need to articulate a more importantly demonstrate a cyber deterrence strategy and if we dont deter cyber we deter actors from the gauging and cyber activity so ultimately you are talking about what you really want to do is induce changes in behavior. You want to raise the pain of the adversary and right now we have been blaming the gun. Its a hack occurs we blame the hospital and that the hack happens we blame the bank. Imagine we are never going to be able to lie or wall are red of this problem so we need to start looking at the cybersecurity related issues beyond the technology. Let me underscore one thing. The reality is our adversaries didnt get a strong message from how we responded in the past and i understand they are all sorts of complicating factors but its not just russia. Other actors who are obviously sitting up and paying attention and noticing precisely how we respond so i do think, and this isnt a blame, its not a political question. Its actually a policy question. How do we start getting a little more comfortable and transparent to discuss how our Computer Network attacks capabilities because i would argue it the best capabilities in the world. I read an article frank that you wrote last year that called for joint special Operations Command for cyber. Is that where you are attacking about . We need to operationalize . I do feel we have to operationalize and i do feel, sort of like looking at a soccer team. You can just have a goalie and he cant just have defenders and you can just set midfielders. You need to get all the players on the heals and the jsoc concept was to me to be able to get to the point where if you look at post9 11 the greatest lesson i have learned us just how significant intelligence is and its a lifeblood for a campaign against terrorism and lets not relitigate and we learned the hard lessons we learned the hard way and start applying those to cyber into me title x in title l authority. Defense authority and intel authorities. Thank you congresswoman same question from the congressional side. What do we need to do in terms of fixing our bureaucracy in and their systems but also how does Congress Play a role in increasing the cost of attacking the United States . Believe it or not switches went through a markup in homeland and by the way we have a great chairman named Michael Mccaul a republican from texas who is hyperfocused on the Cybersecurity Issue and it was shocking to me that we are in year 2017 and this markup we went there is the first time that we had actually reauthorized dhs until was stood up in the aftermath of 9 11. We made critical changes to ensure more Agency Information sharing empowering resources and there is a focus obviously on cybersecurity and this might sound like im speaking as not just someone who works here but as a voter as an american. If we cant get an acknowledgment from the president of the United States that russia interfered with this election, now im a democrat, you all probably know that. I sit here and argue did their interference have an effect on the election . Point is actually ancillary to the issue we have to address as the secretary said. We have to do we have to have the president say if this happened and i acknowledge all 17 intel agencies have confirmed and most people acknowledge and know and im going to let all of the experts figure out how we find out how it happened, how they did it and how we prevent it from happening again. This is not a clinical issue. Its not a republican issue or democratic issue. The chairman of homeland mike mccaul says this all the time. This is an american issue. Do we want foreign powers and in this case a foreign power to affect the outcomes of our elections . The answer is no so my hope is and i think from home and the approaches from a bipartisan view. We want there to be a study. I personally called for an independent commission to do the study so that we could actually look in a transparent way but the American People deserve which is give you chapter and verse of how this happened and how we will prevent it from happening again. We just took a swing through some countries who have seen and who have been to the dems of statesponsored cyber attacks. Everyone from estonia, poland, ukraine and they are looking at us going this is a real. What is taking a people so long to realize that this is real so there is a lot that we can learn from other people. Estonia, the system they have put up in the aftermath of there being the victims of the first statesponsored hack back in 20007 has improved. We have to be talking to people like that and experts like the ones that are on this panel up we are going to get to the bottom of this. At the heart of this, this is not about rededicating the 2016 election. We are done with that. President trumps the president. We need to acknowledge that this happened and come to, figure out how we are going to prevent it from happening again. A perfect set up for you. How do we do that . Thanks. A couple of things. First i want to echo something that the congresswoman just said that i had a case to testify on the threat from russia and other countries to our election process and the former president of estonia testified. I was really struck by the depth to which he had thought through these issues in the country thought through these issues and how far ahead they were from us. Typical of americans centric view of the world we should be thinking those things through before the rest of the world could i was taken aback and we have a lot learn from them. In general terms i want to talk to something that frank said about having to inflict pain and thats the case here. State actors were doing this and doing this very effectively, they dont respond to shame. In fact i think the russians are celebrating and the more chaos they see over here the more they are excited and clinking their classes and having a great alltime because thats exactly what they want to do. They want to undermine the credibility of the whole process but they want to cause us to be fighting each other as opposed to be doing something constructive with their government and they have been successful. So they are not at all ashamed by us calling them out publicly for having done this. I think they are proud of it frankly. The only thing i think they will listen to his retaliation and make them understand that they do this to us we under International Conventions can do some things back and then use the whole array of tools that we have, sanctions and the like, whatever. I feel that way you were going to get them to even think twice about it. So you have the deterrence and youve also got hardening up front are doubtlessly the past three administrations really wrestle with that. Ive got to say tom bosworth of home in security adviser announced an executive order in cybersecurity. I think that is great in this framework of federal agencies kicking up the expectations and particularly the energy or out of concern. We saw a recently i think it was the youth creamy and sector taken down massive numbers of people by what was apparently a russian effort and the same tool that was used there can be used against us so i was happy to see them doing something very permanent on that end. I want to lastly take one more step back into the election issue. Jeh very accurately captured the challenge that they were dealing with and i had occasions to dissect how the government and the Intelligence Community responded last fall to the whole russian interference effort. One of the problems is we hardened vents try to prevent it on the front in. We can talk deterrence to prevent and scale it back once their opponents the russians whoever undertake a similar effort in the future but that still doesnt avoid what is a really fundamental problem which is how does an administration of a particular party talk about this kind of thing publicly in the course of an election process . You think about how difficult that was and im not going to ask jeh to speak to personally but how difficult was wrestling with this question. Boy if you look at the assessment that came out in january, it said the russians wanted to disrupt the elections and they also wanted to beat up on Hillary Clinton and the Intelligence Community did know that while earlier than that during the course of election. Think about the implications of putting that out as a Public Statement from a sitting government that the russians are doing that and the implications it has for the electorate. How do you deal with that in future . I have talked to some smart people about this. They legislate now than before the next midterm in every election there is a reporting period from the Intelligence Community nine months out, six months out, three months out. This is going to happen every time. That way that report isnt looked at as some sort of opportunistic effort by the frustration to somehow benefit the candidate or candidates of their own party. That is the kind of thing we need to be thinking about right now because 16 months in the runup to the midterms