But unfortunately, two of our panelists will not be able to attend tonight. Nonetheless, we are excited with todays discussion and excited with the panelists that will join us for the conversation. With that, we are glad to be joined by our panelists. We have greg, a Community Outreach coordinator in the office of u. S. Senator dick durbin. He serves as dick durbins liaison to elected officials and other constituencies throughout the chicago and metro region. We also have richard driggers, the Deputy Assistant of the office of Cyber Security communications at the department of Homeland Security. In his role, he supports the implementation of operational programs designed to strengthen the security of the nations Critical Infrastructure. We have ambassador doug lute, the senior fellow in the future of democracy project at the Harvard Kennedy school. A Senior Adviser at cambridge global advisors, and a former career army officer and former u. S. Permanent representative to nato. Our moderator today is jake braun, the ceo of cambridge global advisors. He is the faculty member of university of chicago where he teaches Cyber Security policy. Also, former white house liaison to the department of Homeland Security where he developed policies and programs related to National Security and Cyber Security. Our conversation, discussion will be followed by audience q a. With that, i would like to welcome our panelists. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] jake welcome. Thanks for having me. As was mentioned, im jake, i teach cyber policy of university of chicago and ceo of cambridge global advisors. First, i want to thank the counsel for having us here today. Just to put in a plug for the organization, i am in the president circle and it has a lot of benefit. I encourage everyone here and everyone watching to join. It is definitely worth every penny and all the time. With that, i think it is fitting we are having this event here in january in 2018 because the first event i did on Election Security last year was in january on this stage. When i think a lot of people were trying to figure out what is going on with hacking the elections and so one. That panel, which i think was one of the first in the country, was the first one saying what the heck just happened . Trying to get a sense of what was going on in the country, what did russia do. We have in many ways come full circle. We were talking about this coming in. I think this event today is relevant for several reasons. Let me walk you through what has happened since the first event we did in january of last year. Since then, defcon, the largest hacker conference in the world got their hands on a bunch of Voting Machines and was able to hack into them within minutes. The first one they got into within minutes remotely. They did not even have physical access to the machine. Every machine at the conference was taken down by the weekend and the hackers were so shocked at how vulnerable the machines were, they were playing tricks on them by the end, getting them to play cat cartoons. It was pretty scary. Subsequent to that, we did a report one of the best things about defcon is transparency. Myself and hackers at the conference put together a report of all the vulnerabilities we found and released that in october. At that event, we said somebody we were going to help it needs to come up with best practices on how folks, specifically Election Officials could secure our elections. Before any of these big think tanks, federal government institutions or anyone else was able to put out a best practice plan, the cook county Clerks Office in illinois, without my knowledge, put together what we believe is frankly one of the best Election Security programs in the entire country. And i think it was the first released. We at the university of chicago released that plan that was authored by noah prince, and his team, and they rolled that out at the end of the holidays. Now, after we have to be first here saying, what happened and then we went to what the vulnerabilities are. We released the vulnerabilities and some folks came out with impressive plans to tell us what we should do about them. We are back here today to talk about what is the federal government actually going to help locals and the rest of the country due to protect our votes and our democracy in this space. It is actually not an accident we are here having this conversation today. We did some looking into this and we think this is right. This is the first time we have had the legislative and executive branch together publicly talking about this issue, and what both sides are going to do to protect our elections. And on top of all of that, illinois is one of the first states in the country to vote in the primaries of 2018. They will vote starting in march. With that, i think our panelists were introduced so i will not make you listen to that. I will turn it over to former ambassador doug lute to talk about National Security implications of Election Security. Doug thanks to jake, but also to the council. Im not in the president s circle but i will find out how one goes into it sounds like a good thing. My main point is quite simple and that is that we are missing the main message of russian interference in our 2016 election campaign. I think, as someone who has spent 40 years of my adult life in the National Security arena, what happened in 2016 in our election process is as serious a National Security threat, as serious a threat as any i have seen in my 40 years in either active duty in the military or in the white house or in the diplomatic service. I say that because physical attacks on america depending on your age in the room, 9 11, pearl harbor you suffer tragic damage but it is physical damage, loss of life, property. We are Strong Enough to recover from that. It is still tragic but we can recover from physical attack. The attack i am worried about is the one in 2016 which could erode the confidence in our election system. The connection between the voting public, the individual voter, and the democratic process that has that voter contribute into an election result, election of an official. If you lose confidence as americans in that, i think that loss of confidence, that erosion of confidence is a more serious threat than any physical attack the United States has ever suffered. Now, i want to try to make that case in five quick points. Why is this so serious . First of all, it is a proven threat. What happened in 2016 has happened. All 16 National Intelligence agencies for the first time in my 40 year career agreed on something. This in itself is newsworthy. They agreed that not only were there hacking attempts and penetration attempts on our Voting System, right . But, that russia was responsible and the decision was taken at the head of state level, Vladimir Putin. That is unusual for the United StatesIntelligence Community to come together like that without dissenting views and agree on something. In the military, a threat is defined as a capability to do something and the intent to do it. A threat is capability plus intent. Putin passed that standard. He reached the definition of a threat, because he obviously has the capability. We know they attempted to interfere with 21 state Voter Registration systems. We know that he clearly has the intent. Putin has demonstrated, it is not academic. We are not talking about a theoretical problem, we are talking about something that actually happened. This is a proven threat. We would never accept this level of vulnerability in any of our other key National Security systems. Think about our nuclear capabilities. We would be outraged if they were as vulnerable as our election system just proved to be. Or our command of control systems or even our personnel security systems. Yet, we havent quite yet awakened to the vulnerability of our election system. The second reason this is a National Security threat is because russia is not going away. In march, illinois holds its primaries. Russia holds National President ial elections. This is not very suspenseful. We know putin is going to win. He will go from 2018 for another sixyear term. He is not going away. Even if he had an unfortunate physical accident in one of his heroic outdoorsman performances on horseback or hunting tigers, whatever he does in his free time because of the nature of the russian state, it would be very much like Vladimir Putin and would have to be like that in order to stay atop the suddenly declining state structure. We will have an autocrat in russia for the foreseeable future, probably the rest of our lives. Russia is not going away. I think the attacks in 2016 could be characterized as probing attacks. They were actually in some ways quite clumsy and elementary. They were kind of sophomoric. One thing about russia, they learn. He will have taken lessons from 2016 and will come back at us, because he is not going away, in 2018 and 2020. When he does come back, they will not be as clumsy, they will be more targeted and sophisticated. Not going away. Third, others are watching. It is not as though we have only one potential opponent in Vladimir Putin and russia. Iran, north korea, china, the socalled Islamic State all have cyber potential, and quite frankly, our election system proves to be so vulnerable we might have disaffected the mess disaffected domestic groups who attempt to weigh in on Election Security. Fourth, time is short. Jake has mentioned the beginning of the 2018 election season. 2020 is just behind that. We are way behind the power curve in terms of corrective defensive measures given the severity of the threat. My final point is we as americans tend to think this is all about us. There is a whole set of other democracies, our closest allies around the world, who also hold elections and also on vulnerable. And who are also overall normal vulnerable. European allies, asian allies whose democratic processes could be just as vulnerable as ours. This is a National Security threat for all of those reasons. , itslow on jakes intro really interesting tonight that we bring the executive branch, the department of Homeland Security to the panel, but also a representative of the legislative branch to really answer the fundamental question what is the u. S. Government if this is a National Security threat, if you are persuaded by my argument what is the branch of government, the level of government responsible for dealing with National Security . The federal government, what is it going to do about it . Analystsus to join my here tonight. Rick good evening, everyone. It is an honor to be here. Im the Deputy Assistant secretary at the Cyber Security office at the Homeland Security. Our department is responsible for eliminating threats to the nations Critical Infrastructure and with a designation of the election system. As was pointed out by both the ambassador and jake, we understand that russian activities to undermine the 2016 president ial election has been well documented. We know those threats are out there. We know they are going to continue and there are going to be other threat actors that will try to undermine future elections. The question is what we doing what are we doing now and Going Forward to preserve the confidence of our election system . Given the role that elections play in a democratic society, on january 6, 2017, the secretary of Homeland Security determined election infrastructure should be designated as Critical Infrastructure. The designation means the election infrastructure has become a priority on our planning and policy efforts, as well as how we allocate our resources. It enables the department to prioritize Cyber Security we provide to state and local officials. But only state and local officials that request support. Finally, the designation provides protection for sensitive vulnerability information for the federal government to share with Key Stakeholders which includes state and local officials. Since 2003, the department of Homeland Security has been working across all 16 Critical Infrastructure sectors outlined in the national and for such a National Infrastructure protection plan, as well as working with owners and operators of state and local officials to secure the nations Critical Infrastructure. Weve developed a joint exercises across communications, information technology, energy, Financial Services sectors to enhance our coordination procedures. We have also streamlined access to classified and unclassified information for critical structure operators and owners by partnering with analysis organizations. Now more than ever, our efforts to support state and local government officials is critically important. Elections, we see that as a Vital National interest. Cyber attacks on this country are becoming more complex and they range from not only nationstates, but also cyber criminals and activists. They are becoming more persistent, sophisticated and more dangerous. The digital and connected world has reshaped our lives. Common tasks have been streamlined, in the way we communicate has changed. The continuously evolving digital age has improved our lives, but also has changed the Threat Landscape and expanded the attack surface to do damage. We certainly have not been resting on our laurels. We have been engaged on the elections that took place last year, the special elections, and certainly the senate and Congressional Elections in alabama and utah. We are operationally posturing ourselves to support from an interagency perspective the state and local Elections OfficialsCyber Security efforts going into the primary, special and general elections in 2018. Our department has engaged local and state and private sector stakeholders across the infrastructure spectrum to increase and expand awareness and potential vulnerabilities and enhance security on the u. S. Election infrastructure. We continue to offer state and local governments our Cyber Security services which include cyber hygiene scans onsite risk , and vulnerability assessment, technical assessment, coordination resources. We participated with our own hackers at devcon 25. We remain interested in working with the Vendor Community and Community Researchers to understand vulnerabilities, share information and mitigation tactics. Dhs has over 130 Cyber Security and protective personnel throughout the state that are at the ready to provide information and connect Election Officials with tools and resources for Cyber Security preparedness for the election system, as well as physical site security, voting machine storage and polling places. In addition, dhs is sponsoring secret level security clearances for secretary of state as well as state and senior Election Officials to facilitate the passing of classified information. I referred to the national plan. That is referred to as the nip. The nip outlines or calls for a sector to have two councils. One of them is government focused. The other is a sector coordinated council which is private sector focused. We have established the government coordinated council that is made up of the department of Homeland Security, the u. S. Election assistance commission, the National Institute of standards and technology, the federal bureau of investigation, as well as the department of defense and key state and local Election Officials. They met late last year and established goals and objectives. They developed a plan for the election infrastructure partnership, as well as laid the groundwork for developing the election Infrastructure Sector specific plan. Dhs is working with the Election Assistance Commission to foster the development of the sector coordinating council, which will include representatives fr