President trump and his views on professional athletes. [applause] [laughter] my bad. Im sorry. I just checked twitter and i thought i am happy to say this panel is sponsored by the obj school of school of public affairs. That sponsorship. Im dutybound to say my sponsors i love them but they do not get to choose the questions or answers. With that caveat out of the way, a your host and moderator professor here at ut austin. I am the cofounder of a blog that is the nations leading commentary on National Security the curator of National Security law podcast which is mixed up with crossfire and the National Security news. We have one hour. Into 40be divided minutes of discussion with panelists and 20 minutes of discussion with you. So as you are sitting there reacting, there are topics will not get to because of limits of time, you can i will remind you at the time i will remind you to keep your comments brief, or keep the questions brief. Lastly, please silence your phones but dont necessarily put them away. We will be thrilled if you would join the conversation online, on , and i will trust you are not checking your email, youre just commenting and reacting to what we have said. That return you to our fabulous panelists. Representativeh , representing my hometown of san antonio, the 20th district. He went on to harvard law and after a successful run in private rectus injured the Texas Legislature and now hes serving on the House Select Committee on intelligence and the House Foreign Affairs committee. Great to have you here in austin. Dr. Dr. Kathleen hicks, Senior Vice President for the senior for Strategic International studies in washington where she holds that Henry Kissinger chair. She has been principal undersecretary of defense for policy, welcome to campus. [applause] thank you very much. To my left on the edge, representative will heard from the 23rd district. [applause] [laughter] and the student body president , which we all know is it tremendous accomplishment. He joined the cia and her from winning years overseas. He served as Senior Advisor at a Cyber Security firm and serves alwaysse permanent nice to have young campus. Least, mr. Malcolm nance, who as the gunman had an amazing capacity for language and decided to hurt his country and realize both those talents navy. Bitions in our after his time in service, hes continued to serve in the private sector due to variety of training and other forms of service to the cap intelligence and military throughy and emerging his media appearances and his 2016, a book on the Islamic State and the struggle against i. S. And a book on the russian hacking of the election. If you stick around in the Texas Union Building just behind us, after the panel, he will be there signing his book, so i highly recommend that to you. [applause] in. S die right we have identified a series of topics, that will not be comprehensive but will touch on many of the problems challenging our nation at this time and i want to begin with north rea. Its programs or to thought evolving rapidly. Sanctions from our system in the human system have increasingly tighten, including over the past week or so and most notably colorful threats, military threats, exchanging back and forth, its a frightening time in many respects. Ae possibility is it simply bad hand that musty played as well as it can. Perhaps it is a bad hand and its being mishandled. We will get everyone involved. What is your perspective on the north korea situation . Is obviously the most volatile National Security situation where dealing with right now. Given the administration and the president a lot of credit for marshaling the world to place the tightest sanctions on north korea that north korea has ever dealt with. Best courseat the for cutting short their nuclear program, if there is one, is to basically do everything we can to bring them to the table, to choke their economy is much as possible. We have signaled to china that we expect their cooperation. S toink the president need take the fight off of twitter. We see a lot of backandforth between a young dictator in his 30s and the president of the United States. I dont think that is getting us anywhere. Some folks argue for a military strike but realize at this point, if youre arguing for military strike, your arguing that strike in a country that has Nuclear Weapons. The only thing we are not sure about is how are they can fire those Nuclear Weapons. That makes cynics especially tricky. Despite the failure of the six party talks, and for years our strategy with north korea was not diplomacy, it was isolation. Weve got to figure out a way to get them to the table. Ollanta underscore the point about the of Nuclear Chicken on twitter. I dont think that is helpful for either party, in terms of the impact it can have, not just because of the Nuclear Weapons, north korea is already quite dangerous. The not worth it for manliness show thats going on between these two gentlemen, shall we say. That is not helpful, i think the president prides himself on unpredictability is a centerpiece of how he ends of his foreignpolicy and how he thought of himself as a businessman. If you look at foreignpolicy unpredictability, its extremely destabilizing. Could there be a small chance of success, i suppose there could be, but the Downside Risk are tremendous for the american , for those stationed in south korea and the hundreds of thousands of americans who live in south korea. I am a war fighter and ive been involved in every military operation since 1983. And every war that we have fought. Ive been under sustained artillery bombardment. Let me understand, make people understand that this game of chicken thats being played in words as the doctor said has human consequences, realworld consequences. Both in the Intelligence Community, we understand that when you say and do something, your opponent has a opportunity to respond. Right now we are responding with trolling. Donald trump is trolling a company that puts which is their64 years perfecting commentary. This could quickly escalate out of control. The problem we have now is that this year, and i was on a panel earlier this year, and i cannot actually believe the people were discussing viability of attacking north korea potentially with atomic weapons or even conventional weapons. If that were to happen, first off, we become a global pariah. 14,000 artillery have been buried in the ground for over six decades, will rain high explosives nerve gas and mustard gas all over the demilitarized the city of seoul with 10 Million People, endangering over 40 Million People instantly. And thats if we find out that the United States doesnt choose to use what i call the 35 minute solution. Thats when the president decides to launch a minuteman missile that missile, 35 minute from go, it will impact in north korea and decimate however many Million People. These are options we should not be discussing right now. We should be discussing sixmonth fade pet hey family leave for having a baby. An intelligence war fighter in the media, its being discussed as if its possible. The use of Nuclear Weapons is off the table. Every president since truman has understood that these are not toys, and that when we now have a situation where we need deterrents, because north korea is a nuclear player, no matter how you slice it. If it the pushing them, they may have to make a demonstration of their power. Im afraid of something i predicted three months ago, that they would surface detonate an atomic bomb video cameras running to prove to the world that they are a Nuclear Power and not to be messed with. Two days ago, the foreign minister of north korea threatened that. We are in a situation where war fighters are out on the front in the5 Million People immediate 1000 mile area of north korea, we are betting their lives on this dangerous tweeting rhetoric and the president needs to ratcheted back and the generals need to gain control of that telephone. [applause] first and foremost, i think everyone will agree that a diplomatic solution to this is the way to go. President s ago, no would have thought that russia would agree with the United States. The fact that we had sanctions on two separate occasions is a major diplomatic victory, the fact that this week china has directed its central bank to stop doing business with any chinese entity that is working with the North Koreans, significant diplomatic achievement in order to openly resolved this. Ive always said tweets are not policy. The the rhetoric is not whats kim jongun to develop Nuclear Weapons. Hes been on this path for a long time. He is interested in staying in power and he believes only way he can stay in power is by doing what his father and grandfather, the first leader, could not do. And that is getting Nuclear Weapons. Kim jongun also has illegitimacy issues. His mother was not his fathers wife. But again, its like a monarchy. Thats why he killed his uncle, because he had more of a direct first leaders. He used a public place to kill his half rather in order to solidify his position. We have to change his calculation that the pursuit of Nuclear Weapons will prevent him from staying in power. Thats the only way we get him to stop doing that. Its hard to do, but we also have to be prepared and one of the things ive learned in my 9. 5 years in the back alleys is to be tough with tough guys and nice with nice guys. We have to be prepared when there is another test to shoot it down. We have to be prepared to use our allies. There are other things we could be doing in order to take thensive measures against global threat. This is an opportunity for us to potentially do military exercises with china, because of something happens in north korea, there will be 3 million north Korean Refugees on chinas order in the chinese dont want to see that happen. This could be opportunity for us to have the chinese realize that a u. S. South korea, Japan Alliance is not as threatening to them as a destabilize north korea. ,his is a difficult situation but i think when you look at every individual in the administration from secretary mattis to mcmasters talking about this needs to be solved diplomatically, but we have to be prepared to defend our allies , and not just the millions of folks in seoul, but hundreds of thousands of u. S. Men and women to. Lets pivot over to the u. S. Chinese relationship. Clearly at the moment the mutual interest in china are essential to that elation, but is much more than that. Web, someply complex complementary, some competitive. Mutual security interest but clear military and security tensions including the physical space and cyberspace. President has repeatedly pointed china to the where hes talking about president xi and their relationship more than any other world leader. How is the president doing . I dont know that you noticed on the pivot to china, thats been the basic approach of the administrations under that name or for multiple past administrations. Onthere has been an emphasis china, the recognition that china is the worlds secondlargest economy and it has great economic potential both as a market and a traitor with much of the world. Administration that could ignore china and to treat china is a key to how you deal with the evolving world order is very important itself. To the extent that President Trump is done that, its a good thing to take seriously the role that china can play. The administration is really struggling internally between those who have been in the steve bannon camp, and theyre still folks there now who look at greatthrough a lens of threat that needs to be stamped out through any means necessary. I dont believe war within the United States and china is inevitable, but we have to carefully manage that relationship, and again, ratcheting up the rhetoric unnecessarily on the economic front is not helpful, given the strong role china can play in areas like north korea, Climate Change and beyond. On the security front, theres no question china is the United States greatest challenge. By and large, china is the biggest challenge for the United States. This is going to the point where they can credibly threaten to u. S. Or allied access to areas in and around china. Its a military problem in terms of taking our allies and if any are interests. To develop her own capabilities to deter that, and to fight credibly through it, but want to work with chinese to make sure those security tensions, that are very real, dont overextend beyond the larger nation to nation and economic goals that we share. Can you weigh in on the china policy that we seen on display the first part of the term . The only thing i really wanted to comment on is how the United States january decided all just going to cede former u. S. Power, all leverage we have had, whether its the Transpacific Partnership or trade agreements with china. In the guise of protecting american interest, making america great, doing america first. China will be the principal economic player for every nation in the pacific rim and that the United States will try and do oneonone trade agreement with all of these nations. It was bad enough that we turned over are manufacturing to china over the last two decades, but now by giving them this power over us, this is not good business. It just doesnt make sense that the United States would yield this last bit of leverage, which u. S. He bulk of manufacturing, u. S. Foodstuffs, and the ability to sell lower and cheaper on the market than china did. So that we would get that up, i just on understand that at all. I look at this relationship that we are friendly. Its such a broad and deep relationship that you cannot look at one topic does not define entire relationship. Trying to look at the broader bilateral relationship through one individual lens, you cant do it. Numbers, idone the feel like President Trump and the chinese president have talked more in the last nine at any other point in time. My point earlier about the fact had taken steps in their own economy to deal with north korea, these are sign of the importance of that relationship. But we have broader economic troubles with china, economic espionage by the chinese here in the United States is significant in that needs to stop. Amazon, allien of , in the United States was treated as an american company, but amazon in china is not treated as a chinese company. Problem,ltimately a and when you look at how china is doing investments in emerging technology in the United States, ader to get a total toehold in important industries, that is a significant problem. The relationship is Strong Enough to deal with his individual problems while working together on major issues like north korea. I think we are going to see this play out in the nafta renegotiations. Ottawa we gotd in her next. The chinese are taking advantage of nafta and especially the automotive industry. Its hurting mexico and its hurting the United States. The neville tighten that is a way we should be looking at how to be strong against china. I dont think of physical confrontation between the u. S. And china is ever going to happen, but it is a complicated relationship that we have to make sure we are at every individual aspect of it. Administration in many ways has been a godsend for xi. It allows them to be seen as a leader among nations. , and in his presidency realize its only been nine months, but it seems like four years. Early on, when he was starting to alienate some of our longstanding allies, take the case of mexico, for example. Its one of the large United States largest trading partners. When you start to alienate some of your longstanding allies, they can go do their trade with other countries. Get all theave to goods they get from the United States from us. The note to china, brazil, or somewhere else. I believe that a longerterm threat to alienating countries with whom we do a great deal of trade, that we have longstanding ties with is that youre essentially creating an opening. In the case of mexico youre creating an opening in latin america for china. Thatal months ago i said if the United States through the Trump Administration takes away eight from mexico, im sure that xi will be glad to give mexico whatever we take away. Just as china has gone into african nations and done Many Development projects, they have started to and will continue to go to latin america to do the same thing. Davos earlier this year and did a speech talking about Climate Change. You see him trying to take on the mantle of future leadership to have china be seen as the theer among nations of world, which the United States has occupied for generations now. But china is never going to be a leader on Climate Change. Their carboneasing emissions over the next 10 years, not decreasing that. Agree, when there is a void, a void will be filled. We cannot let that avoid being filled by that you have the president of the United States saying i want out of the paris accords, and the president of china saying i want to stay in. Thats a very stark contrast. Something china cares at all if theyre going to be a leader on Climate Change. I think they are more interested in dominating the growth of the Global Global solar sales industry. 10 years ago, china was not in the market of solar power. In upstate new york we have a small place called sunbelt solar which is one of the only manufactures in the northeast United States. China has flooded the entirety of this country with cheap solar panels, and thats what they want to dominate. I think we got around to what i was going to say. I think it is a very complicated relationship. ,ut no doubt the United States one of its strongest advantages is the Alliance Network are putting that at risk every day. Andway the president speaks tweets about allies and partners at how he treats them. That agency, to have , buttunities, they like us theyre not going to stick with us necessarily through thick and thin if they have alternatives. We talk a lot about russias labor. The chinese have their own playbook and they buy up infrastructure and pay off politicians, and they are investing in southeast asia. If you talk to australians are japanese, they are very worried about the degree to which the did agree to which the chinese will live their way into the good graces of the rest of asia. X before you switch over to russia, i will remind the audience, the chinese are about to have their periodic common is party conference. This is a big deal of events in china. Its the moment when president xi is going to further consolidate his power. Accomplished, and my senses he probably will accomplish the transition, he will have a much freer and stronger hand to play going into 2018, so be watching the space. You mentioned a moment that a moment ago that the particular mix of advantages and disadvantages they havent how they strongly play against them. , they have playbook are problematic economy but they have certain things they do well. Vladimir putin has exploited those comparative strength. Weve seen this with the groin influence of russia over its neighbors, the literal conquest of territory, taking the crimea from ukrainians, and we see it course in the combination of information operations, hacking, the leveraging of social media, the hold linda things that affect many countries internal political process is, but especially in 2016, dr. Nance, youve literally written a book about this. How well is the administration responding to this strong and aggressive poker playing by Vladimir Putin . Next i think the Obama Administration is making a great response. [laughter] how has america responded . In the past couple of years, poorly. There has been no response. All of the strategy for confronting russia, so to speak, today, is coming down to words that russia, discounts completely. They do not care what we are doing. Vladimir putin has a strategy for where he wants to bring the Russian Federation in the future, and i really believe this, when i did my intelligence analysis, it became very clear that this is the man who was. Aised in the soviet era he is a former kgb officer. But he is managed to do was transition russia away from the communist ideology, but keeping the goal goals that the russian state had to discount american democracy. When he was a young kgb officer, he was stealing computers from the wall and bringing them to the east stealing computers from the west. A very lowlevel human intelligence officer, that is what he was, and harnessing the propaganda, Political Warfare strength of the soviet union, transitioning that into a nation with now billions of dollars that they can apply for that, he has implemented an ideology in his head that he thinks will lessen and degrade the United States and allow the Russian Federation to ascend to the number two superpower in the world. As opposed to chinas strength and economic power. It, and i has done think he has not as off the box. Operation, it was not just to create chaos, it would have created chaos if Hillary Clinton had won and become president , but i think she wouldve had a much stronger response to it. She herself said last year that she wouldve considered the operation equal to a terrorist attack. Donald trump does not believe in it at all, no matter what anyone tells him consumer if the Intelligence Community health and. Continue andons you cannot turn off your phone for five minutes without learning some new travesty that the russian Intelligence Community, which obviously created a very deep integrated operation to influence the United States election. But if you look back on it, this is just oldschool kgb operations with lots of money. They do not have to buy a trade union or Printing Press anymore and hand out leaflets on the street. They can pretend to be american citizens by the millions like they did last year. I had an operation carried out against myself where they pretended they were an american citizen from denver at a conference two months ago, and they said they were going to assassinate me on stage at event posted it amongst the altright in southern california. To be an not going assassination, they wanted people to come to the conference to see a spectacle. Detract it back to st. Petersburg and russia retracted back there. This is how they undermine democracy in our own information sphere. That longs to the. M. [applause] a operationsrs as officer, i chased them all over the world. The russians are not our allies, their our adversaries, h peroid. Us because he cannot stop economically, Vladimir Putin is trying to erode trust in nato, the eu and rep. Welch driveby west between the white house and the American People. That was the purpose. Gru, the Russian Military , whatigence organization the Intelligence Committee refers to the russians attempt elections, it will go down as the greatest covert actions campaigns in the history of modern russia because it created that wedge. Now, what are we doing about it . We do not have a countercovert strategy. Disinformation is a part of covert action. In the United States, the cia is responsible for covert action but because of the National Security act of 1947, they cannot operate in america. Still who should be responsible to solve the problem . Secretary clinton will not be able to deal with this her twitter feed alone. So we need to have the private sector and privat Public Sector working together. We need to arm the ukrainian. ,he russians invaded ukraine and they created this narrative in the past couple of years that it is a separatist movement. 920,000t, it is russians and tanks in Eastern Ukraine. There are more military in Eastern Ukraine and there are ukrainians. And now they are saying that they do not want you and peacekeepers to come in and solve the conflict. Just leave, you are the ones who invaded a sovereign country. In a bipartisan way, we know that there are not a lot of bipartisan things that happen in washington but three years and narrow, the congress, senate and legislationuggested that says the u. S. Should be arming our allies in ukraine, because of Vladimir Putin is not care. He just sold weapons to turkey, a nato country who would give that she would not give weapons to an adversary if you do not think they were going to use them against you. Have to show them we are willing to push back and we have to make sure our allies know that we have their back. We can do this today, because the president has the authority to arm our friends. Justtate department has that they do it, the secretary of defense has adjusted it, and hope President Trump changes u. S. Policy and hopefully arms our friends in the ukraine. Castro . Essman i think part of what makes the relationship with Russia Hotels as it is china, russia so tough as it is with china, is has a seat at the un security council. [laughter] [laughter]is that position of the united nations, whatever the united keep peacerying to in the world in other places, for example taking Nuclear Weapons out of syria in 2013, when it was clear that the congress did not want the u. S. Military to go in, who was cooperative and helpful in that instance . Russia, right . When you talk about north korea, there in a position to veto things like that. With the around deal, the same thing, russia is instrumental in helping with the solution there the iran deal. Abouto the point basically the there disinformation and propaganda, their message was tailormade for a social media europe that is now in fullblown. 30 years ago in the 1980s it would have it hard for them to achieve it, in fact they never achieved it during the cold war, because our media and how we receive information was much more filtered. In other words, they were not going to be able to do a that these fake ads on abs, nbc, and abc one people were getting their information from just a handful of sources. Of, lest year, the polarity the majority of folks got there information from. Majority of folks got their information from facebook. Cnn, nbc, whatever, they got it from reading their friends. Feeds on facebook. The media is relatively unfiltered. Now, it looks like that will change hopefully, as we cooperate more with twitter, facebook and other platforms to try to weed out robots that are automated to repeat messages Facebook Accounts that were apparently recording people to go to trumps rallies in florida. But their message and the way that they do things is in a perfect fit for the media scene, you are that has fairly been unfiltered. And if you think about it, president obama and the years that we just lived through was the first president that existed in an year where social media was in full bloom. So when you see facebook talking about coming to the Intelligence Committees in the house and senate, what i think is that for them, this was really a problem of first impression. This was the first time with their technology, it has really at a senate for the first few years, they have endured a foreign assault from a foreign governments trying to influence the election. Story will become sequential in interesting to watch how the challenges result. It will take public and private cooperation as well mentioned, both at the private sector and government working together. But it is incredibly consequential. I was very surprised to hear when all ofrn that this broke, when i came on the Intelligence Committee, there is not a single federal law, and not a state law, as far as i know, but i could be wrong, a law that requires even a basic or minimum level of ever Security Protection from our voting system. Countiese and administrators of elections are not required to have any kind of Cyber Security protections for our Voting Machines. In virginia for example, they are trying to get rid of those types been putting machine touchscreen Voting Machines and go back to paper ballots. A few countries have done the same thing. That is a challenge that the United States congress and the American People have to take on. Because the russians will come back in 2020 and 2024 and it could be someone else, china, or a nonstate actor who works to influence the elections. [applause] let me say going from the reference to Cyber Security. And a conversation about our National Security and 2017 is always a conversation about Cyber Security. , sony,ords for us opm target, home depot, equifax, indeed, it goes on and on. Hurd, you haveard experience in this. We all recognize that there was a problem with multidimensional it is military, political, social and economic as you mentioned earlier. What more could we do be doing what more could we be doing in terms of solutions . We have not had these conversations. There are different pockets that do. Let us start with what the u. N. Considers an act of war. They say that if you manipulate or do something to the store a aries he utility countrys utility grid, that is an act of war. But there was no response. Establishing what we consider an act of war and then what is the response to that, is important. Sometimes the response is not going to be a digital response to a digital act. When the russians, two years ago were trying to influence our elections, i wouldve said kick the Russian Ambassador out of the country. We can take nondigital responses. Sometimes it can say, we are not going to tell you what we do, but we will do something. We have to have those conversations within the framework of the government. If you look at the federal v space, we the dotgo are not following basic principles of good digital hygiene on protecting peoples information. Opm is a perfect example of that. There were little things, i have arrays in mybly 35 2. 5 years in congress, and nobody has ever held up as wind that says i. T. Procurement [laughter] the way that we purchased i. T. Business services is a problem. There is a bipartisan piece of passed the that house and the senate that changed the way that we purchased i. T. Business services in the federal government. To make sure were introducing the latest technology to defend our infrastructure in the government space. Theeed to make sure that federal government is sharing information with the private sector. Keith alexander, the former head of the nsa always says, if the government think they can protect the infrastructure alone, and the private sector does, it is the equivalent of the french thinking that they can defend the maginot lines from the german. S. Of whereis a good idea the russians are going to try to attack them again. Let us get that into the federal government, to the veterans that do what are used to do, they can collect the information and get it back into the hands of the private sector so they can defend against the nation state hackers from vendors like the North Koreans and the chinese. These are there is so much more that we should be doing. It starts with elected officials recognizing the threat. When it comes to our voting systems, like working side, i was at a premier hacking Conference Call black hat. Day had 26 machines, no one had ever seen them before. They put them in a room, and told everyone to hack the machine. Within like, seven hours, every single one of them was hacked. When you have access to something, it is a lot easier, the fact that it could happen in such a short few word of time as short timeframe, we need to start working on this. This is one of the truly bipartisan issues in washington. Obama under the administration and has continued to be so joined the Trump Administration. Mr. Nance . I think the single most important factor, we can talk about legislation all that we want to we have a serious problem right now with validating information as it comes into the information battle states, as it comes onto the web. You have no idea what you are reading, whether it is true or not. This has been weaponize i a by anstate weaponize nationstate, improvised by Political Party in the united tape. We have the president of the United States who flat out validates every point that would defeated, recalling the russian hacking a hoax. Hoax, the president of the united is actually saying that this considered opinion of the entirety of the u. S. Intelligence community is fake, right . That is straight from in for wars or breitbart. Infow or breitbartars. Organizers that have a sketchy truth. Nship with the what we are seeing now with the investigation, is not a matter of determining whether the president of the United States worth with the russians. That will come out in a legal investigation. To public is just trying find out that their perception of reality, can be bent. They can be influenced in such a way that they believe that black is white and up is down. , that ifat this year anyone out there at any time ever believed that hillary corruptwas absolutely on the basis of the word emai l. It actually happened. Drives that she had to destroy, she destroyed in accordance with u. S. Department of defense and the state department and National Security agency policy. You run it through a burner which means that the new smash the hard drive with a hammer so that none of the plates are running. That was turned into evil. I have been order to do that throughout my whole career, you have, i am sure, done emergency destruction. But that was how information was turned into a weapon. I am afraid we might be able to turn it back . You cannot legislate this out of existence we have a saying in the Intelligence Community common sense is the least used intelligence and hours will. [laughter] and we really need to get that back. In 1968, we have organizations that are not trying to create a food label that will go on determining whether our website is primarily a propaganda website or whether they like, or whether aliens really do control people by living in human skin. This is what we are up against. It, trying to regain the role of Ground Troops , as we in the Intelligence Community know it. I see it, it is empirical, i counted, i can determine his ears on the basis of its action and what the art going to do next i can determine its behaviors on the basis of its action and what theyre going to do next. [applause] one dimension of the Cyber Security challenge is the computing in the private sector with the dod, in general, what is your reaction to this. You are driving me down a very narrow lane. We will start their then go back out. I will start out then go back in, how about that . I agree with malcolm that the information environment in which we live now, it is not fundamentally going to change. The information revolution, just like the Industrial Revolution people will not give up their smartphones. Do we think is, how about our National Security in that environment, and that is what we are so woefully behind. I mentioned before that our allies, every good smart nation state or actor internationally is looking for an asymmetric advantage. Should we surprise is that countries look to weaponize and russia most particularly with weaponize information . We should expect and anticipate that as we evolve and improve societally and have these innovations, people will look for ways to weaponize it. That comes in this is like drones and ai which is the next thing. What i would say there is as a federal government, a National Security community, we are illequipped today to deal with the next threat. We still think in national 7, bigty act of 194 difference state to state abroad, it economic treasury areas, what adversaries are finding is that they can increasingly come below that threshold because the threshold has not been defined effectively or we do not want to act. We are very bad at this bite bite bite approach. It is happening all over the world. I think that we face the challenge of how we equip ourselves in the middle of the 21st century, in terms of our National Security toolkit. One area that i think we have actually done very well is in the personal side. There are still americans committed to keeping their country face which is what draws people ultimately into working either for the military itself or a presence in the National Security agency. And on the civilian side. People in the Cyber Security round, that is what they tell you. Yes, they can make a lot of money elsewhere and were not going to change that although we can make it better, but what they cannot do anywhere else, we hope, is the type of work they are doing on behalf of the u. S. Government to protect it. The types of offense if several activity that they can learn and they can do with a sense of national purpose. We need to continue to validate and value that. Aboutgree, when we talk Going Forward in the cyber age, this really is a brave new world for all of us, because, as i mentioned earlier, social media has only been around for a decade. We do not know if we have hit the zenith. Reality, artificial intelligence, we know that we are just going to keep moving further in this world. So, how do you keep off the threats of other nations and not the actor nonstate actors. We have been able to keep up with technology but it has provided a platform or a way for russia and potentially other countries, to hone their methods and exploit this newness. The fact that we have not come up with all of the definitions that we need to, update all the firewalls that we need to update, regulations on Cyber Security protections of our Voting Machines as malcolm mentioned, you cannot in the end of legislative what people think or how they perceive things. Remember, we know of russia put things, as they into the social media bloodstream through facebook, but after that, the message is amplified in politics away it is always amplified, rather americans who shared the me mes and so forth. So it becomes very difficult to pass legislation to deal with that. I would like to get to i would like to touch on that, dr. Harris. Only 5 of High School Students in the United States have Computer Science in their classes. That is terrible. We do not teach how the internet actually works. We do not teach helen issue gets propagated and leveraged through social media, to talk about understanding sources and things. Internal combustion but where we not teaching how the internet works . Alone, two years ago, there were 42,000 jobs that require some kind of Computer Science that went unfilled. The tech sector the university has only produced about 1000 Computer Science graduates. Of the 5000 kids in Computer Science classes, only 120 africanamericans and only 900 we need to make sure that more of our population becomes computer literate. Coding will become required in any job you get in the future because of the technical change we will see in the next 20 years ohmic the nex last 20 look insignificant. Sure that we make are educating our kids, our grandkids in this concept. I strongly agree. [applause] we do not have a lot of time left but we have some time. I encourage the audience to come forward. To give the first question to this gentleman. I plead, keep the questions as short as possible and we will keep our responses brief. Good morning. My name is david raced, i am a u. S. Veteran and i serve in the military for six years. National security is a big interest to me. One of the topics are covered was immigration, and with the recent views on daca and at the same time went, i wanted to know, specifically congressman hurd, what is your opinion on this and is there a possibility that you would sponsor a bill it is very simple, these are people who have only known america as their home. Let us make sure they have legal status to stay here. Now it is up to congress to put our money where our mouth is and actually get something done so that those 800,000 folks are able to continue to contribute to our economy, our history and to our culture. Thank you. [applause] next . I have a question for you representative castro. Russia is potentially a dangerous situation with the hacking and does creating a standoff with russia over cyber hacking have the potential to reignite cold war tensions . How do you hold russia accountable will not escalating tensions to an unhealthy level . That is a great question. We certainly no one wants another cold war, right . We spent many years after the fall of the soviet union trying to help bring pressure along into the fold of the nations of the world. During trade with western europe, trying to become democratized, and as Vladimir Putin ascended in power and took more control of the country, the country seemed to fall away into an autocratic leadership. That is where we are now. Whorong autocratic leader potentially wants to expand his empire and his trying to do that. With these sanctions placed on russia for example, and our allies will obsess with that who have helped us with that. I think we are slow to respond to the election violations last year, and i think the it with russian last year should have let the word out. I understand where they did have, i understand it was a risk. They did not look like they were disadvantaging the democratic candidate. Of course have beenit would better to speak out back then and let the United States and the americans know about the threat russia poses. We have entered the lightning round. Spent six years as a Cyber Intelligence analyst in the air force and now going into cyber law. I have long thought that there needs to be an equivalent of a , digitalrl harbor cyber attack for us to get serious and galvanized. It washink that necessary but not necessarily sufficient for that to happen. My question is what do you think would be a sufficient cause to galvanized us to make the serious investments needed. Aliens of billions of dollars to shore up our cyber defenses, what does that look like . I can spend scenarios all day long but none are good. A severe attack on our Banking System would be sufficient but i could think of many such catalysts. One of the hard things, when you work in u. S. National security, as a democracy, we are unpredictable and what would get the public behind the politicians to push in a particular area at a given time is not necessarily something we can pick up in advance. The japanese learned that after pearl harbor. Hopefully, it will not take a major, catastrophic event like 9 11 or pearl harbor to create that energy. I hate to say it, sometimes it takes a big significant to do it at to date we have not seen that kind of energy. There is a significant budget backdrop for that that makes it difficult to throw money at it. I will abuse my privileges and moderator for one last question with apologies to those who waited. I am a student at the university of texas at a doctor recipient. Determination daca recipient. Congressman castro, thank you for cosponsoring the dream act. I wanted to ask you, what are you doing to reach down the aisle to make sure that the dream act is given time and consideration . And the ability for this legislation to be voted on . The only way that daca release will happen is if it is bipartisan, democrats are in the minority and we can have every democrat sign on the dream act but it is not enough to pass it in the house of representatives or senate. We had been reaching out to our republican colleagues. Few dozen republicans to join us and passing the dream act. We have a certain window of time to make it happen and this is an issue that has strong support among the American People and across party lines, it is not a republican or democrat. Since the president announced president s announcement, this has been the top issue many of us are working on. On the intelligence side, north korea, working on that but, in terms of getting legislation passed, this is the top priority for me. Thank our panelists. [applause] washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. 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