Change that would have allowed for people in hong kong to be extradited to china to face the famously opaque chinese legal system. There is about seven Million People in hong kong. If you get a million or more people protesting that out of seven Million People, that is a statistically significant sample of the population of that territory. I cant get over these images. We will have more on these scenes out of hong kong late or this hour. But the basic bottom line is that this huge display, huge display of people power over the past week culminating this weekend with the huge members of people in the streets, the basic bottom line about what we have seen out of hong kong is what they are doing in the images worked. We will have more on the remarkable story coming up. For sheer fatal drama today, there was this shocking news. This man, the former president of egypt, he dropped dead today in an egyptian courtroom where he was being tried on espionage charges. Mohamed morsy was briefly elected pedestrian egypt in that count countrys first democratic elections in 2012 after the uprising in egypt with the long time dictatorial leader. Morsi was elected and the year after, he too was overthrown and removed from office by force, this time in a military coup that locked morsi up and subjected him to a long series of trials. The culmination of which had him in court today. The leader of the coup that seized power in 2013, incidentally he holds power in egypt to this day. He is making chitchat with a beaming President Trump earlier this year. This was the headline that day. Egypts president basks in trumps embrace. Hoping to be allowed to stay in office until 2034. Basks in trumps embrace. Trump bestows it upon him. Mohamed morsi, the former president ousted by the military coup was known to suffer from a bunch of health problems, including diabetes and liver disease. He was not getting any medical care in prison under the u jiptian regime. He dropped dead in a cairo military courtroom at age 67. Today we are seeing rapid escalation of whatever it is that is going inside the Trump Administration with regard to iran. We got this announcement from the president last month that he was going to dispatch an additional 1500 u. S. Troops to the middle east to somehow vaguely counter some vague new threat from iran. Now the acting defense secretary has just o nounsed a thousand more troops are going to the middle east, somehow in response to something going on on with iran. 1,000 u. S. Troops heading over there follows a series of accusations from the Trump Administration that will seemed to be intended to put us on a war footing with iran. We talked on the show late last week about the list of violent acts the Trump Administration is attributing including one attack in afghanistan in which four Service Members were wounded. An attack for which someone else entirely, the taliban claimed responsibility. The Trump Administration is nervous saying no, we think that was iran, too. Secretary of state mike pompeo was questioned about this that weekend by Margaret Brennan and she said the taliban claimed responsibility and there was no evidence put forward to back up the new assertion that secretly was really iran who did that and thats one of the reasons we need to be on this newly aggressive footing towards iran. He insisted that he cant share the evidence and any intelligence that gives him such confidence that iran is responsible for that attack. Not to mention all of the other attacks they put on the list to bolster the perception that we are on a march to war with iran that they are starting. But the prospect of war with iran became a much more concreedly advanconcreed ly dispatched, iran upping the stakes of whatever is going on with their announcement that i that are going back to enriching nuclear fuel the way they were before they entered into the nuclear deal they signed in 2015 with the major european powers and the u. S. Government under barack obama. Trump of course and all the republican president ial candidates in 2016 campaigned against obamas Iran Nuclear Deal and promised they would end it. Well, now we are seeing what that looks like. Perhaps inevitably, pulling out of that deal with iran, iran today announced they will stop abiding by the terms of the deal. Why should they if the u. S. Pulled out and if they are now facing all of these sanctions that they were otherwise in a deal with the United States about before the Trump Administration pulled out. So big picture is a fullblown semi pro sport in washington and has been for a long time. Whatever is going on with the Trump Administration towards iran, their combination of chest pounding and taking action to make sure the confrontation is as acute and heated as possible here and high stakes as possible, that is getting us closer by the day to all hell breaking loose. It will not go unnoticed in iran or around the world or here at home that the cool, calm, rational actors managing this high stakes Nuclear Escalation are the calming figures like john bolton and mike pompeo and the evenkeeled rational donald trump, they are deciding to ride this bronco this way. We are going get advice from someone who is in a better position to understand than i am, but the reason people are rattled at what the Trump Administration is trying to do, whatever they are aiming for. But there is one other thing in todays news that i think i also want to get help about. I want to make sure whether it should make us feel more rattled or calm. This is something we covered on and off over the past couple of years on this show. The basic story is that we started to feel about during the start of the 2016 president ial campaign in december of 2015, right before christmas. There was a huge power blackout in the nation of ukraine. It was christmastime and freezing told in ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power without any warning. The u. S. Government investigators assessed that that outage may well have been the first power blackout triggered by a cyber attack. Ukrainian officials were already claiming at that time and the assessment would back them up that it was actually a russian cyber attack that caused that blackout. Russia hacked into control systems for the ukrainian power grid and shut the lights off in that country. At well as a way to punish the country and scare the leaders. In december of 2016, Senior Administration officials raised the alarm that Russian Hackers were targeting infrastructure in the United States. Just as they had done when they shut off the lights in ukraine the year before. By the following summer, in july of 2017, the New York Times obtained a copy of an urgent joint report that had been issued by the fbi and the department of Homeland Security, warning that hackers have been penetrating the Security Networks of companies that operate Nuclear Power stations and other Energy Facilities as well as manufacturing plants in the United States. The urgent joint report issued by the security and the fbi carried a warning, the second highest rating for the sensitivity of the threat. It was a few months later in march of 2018, the Homeland Security department and the fbi issued publicly a joint technical alert. This alert provides information on the actions targeting Government Entities and the water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors and contact dhs or Law Enforcement immediately to interpret an intrusion and request Incident Response resources or tension cal assistance. The first warning that had been reported on by the New York Times was not a public warning. The second one, the technical bulletin was effectively a public warning although full of Technical Information including specific mal wear, specific computer code lines that they wanted operators of the critical elements of the infrastructure to look for in their systems. By that point, by march of last year, the threat and the warnings from the u. S. Government were getting more specific in terms of the potential damage that could be caused by the type of Cyber Attacks and the specificity with which the u. S. Government was identifying the perpetrators. Cyber attacks put russian fingers on the power plants, the u. S. Said march 15th of last year in the New York Times. The administration accused russia this week of engineering a series of Cyber Attacks that targeted water plants and water and electric systems and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. That was march of last year. Within a few months, by last summer, july of last year, the threats and the description of the intrusions were getting more and more concrete. This is from the wall street journal. Russian hackers reach utility control rooms say Homeland Security officials. Hackers working for russia claim hundreds of victims in a giant and long Running Campaign that put them inside the control rooms of u. S. Electric utilities where they could have caused blackouts according to federal officials. The Officials Say the campaign likely is continuing. That was as of last summer, july 2018. By this year, january 2019, the office of the director of National Intelligence released the unclassified public facing document called the worldwide threat assessment. The worldwide threat assessment in january of this year included this short public facing warning is that russias government was not just looking at the capacity or threatening to amass that kind of power in our country, but the warning as of january of this year is that russia has that power. This was the exact quote from the worldwide threat assessment released by the dni in january. Russia has the ability to execute Cyber Attacks in the United States that generate localized temporary disruptive effects on Critical Infrastructure such as disrupting a Distribution Network for a few hours. That was the public warning as of january from the director of National Intelligence. Russia, we have seen the warnings coming. Russia now has the ability to turn off the lights in the United States if they want to. That statement from the dni in january, if you see it in context, thats the culmination of a few years of open source reporting and government documents to reporters and urgent and specific warnings from Homeland Security and intelligence about russia developing the capacity to target us in that way. When you stack up all those reports over the past few years, given the crescendo of that public reporting and the piling up of that evidence and incre e increasing urgency of the story as just pulled by the u. S. Government starting christmas 2015, 2016, 2017, 18, and into this year, if you look at the urgency and specificity of the warnings we had over the past few years, now, today, at the end of that long string of news stories and warnings, it shouldnt have come as a surprise to get this report. The u. S. Is doing the same thing back. That the u. S. Developed the same capacity. U. S. Escalates online attacks on russias power grid. What david sanger and nicole describe as a previously unreported deployment of american computer code inside russias grid, the New York Times is citing multiple officials who are describing the placement of potentially crippling mal wear inside the russian systems at a depth and with an aggressiveness that has never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning and partly to be poised to conduct cyber strikes if a major conflict broke out between the u. S. And moscow. They have been carried out by Cyber Command. Thanks to a president ial directive and thanks to a little notice Legal Authority that was slipped into the military authorization bill last year, those new legal authorities allowed these kinds of actions that are described in this time space. They allowed these actions apparently to be carried out by Cyber Command on their own say so without having to get specific permission from the fot do it. Also without having to get specific permission from congress. According tolt times, there is no evidence that the u. S. Has turned off the power inside russia as the russians have not turned off power inside the United States. The placement of malicious code inside both systems revives the question of whether a nations power grid or the infrastructure that keeps homes, factories and hospitals running constitutes a target for online attack. First of all, thats ray super interesting and sort of rattling question in terms of what capacity we have to other countries and they have towards us. In a way that we may not previously understand. There is a couple of things that are weird about i guess first i should say i think its not weird that the u. S. Developed this capacity. Given how acutely focused we know the government is on russia developing this capacity, this revelation that the u. S. Decided to develop the same capacity back at them. We have mutually assures destruction and its not that surprising. The revelation that the u. S. Developed this capacity is not what is weird here even though that rattles me. The weird things here are two things about the way the story has broken and both have to do with President Trump. The first really strange thing about the reaction is President Trumps response to it online. This story apparently sort of made him flip out. This is what he posted online in response. Do you believe that the failing New York Times just did a story stating that the u. S. Is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on russia. This is a virtual act of treason for a great fireplace desperate for a story. Also not true. Is it bad if its not true . Also not true. Anything goes with our corrupt news media. They will do or say whatever it takes with not even the slightest thought of consequence. Without doubt, the enemy of the people. I realize the president types things and says things. Why is the president so freaked out by this news article . First of all, if the times is report being something that is not true and the u. S. Doesnt have this capacity, why would it be treason for the New York Times to report that the u. S. Has done this . Treason . Really . Also, why are you so flipped out about the potential consequence . They doll or say whatever it takes without the slightest thought of consequence. What do you think the consequence might be of russia thinking we upped our Cyber Command . Whats the scary consequence . The president acted like this is the worst thing in the world to have a new offensive capacity towards russia. Why is that so scary to you that thats in the paper . Its a weird response from the president. What is he worried is going to happen now that thats public news . What do you think the consequence is going to be . The other weird part is the president might have freaked out about this news. He might have first learned it from the New York Times. The Cyber Command may have been doing this and developing this offensive capacity in russia without ever telling him that is what they were doing. Quoting from the times, two Administration Officials said they believed mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place these implants, Software Code that can be used for surveillance or attack inside the russian grid. Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with trump after operations with russia for concern over his reaction and the possibility that he might counter mabd it or discuss it with foreign officials as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a r it to the foreign minster. There is a lot going on in the world. What we have just learned from the New York Times is that the u. S. Government has developed a new offensive capacity against russia in the cyber field. The president is publicly freaking out that that has been publicly reported. He is both denying its happening and saying its terrible that it has been reported and we should worry about the consequences of this. Also, u. S. Officials are willing to tell the New York Times that they do stuff particularly when it comes to russia without telling the president about it all the time. Because they think he might counter manned those actions and tell them not to do it or tell the russians what we are doing in a way th