I should him in the interest of full disclosure, acknowledge that she happens to be my wife. But let me reassure you. [applause] there will be no softball questions. I want to begin with a quotation. , theis a first, actually first time we ever appeared on stage they put it off and put it off. , where the two sons of hoover fellows to be bred in captivity. [laughter] i want to begin on a more serious note the quoting from one of the grandmasters of strategic thought and american foreignpolicy. Kissinger, who for a man who just turned 96, has an astonishingly acute grasp of the issues we will be discussing this afternoon. He has written on Artificial Intelligence and made the following observation. The pervasiveness of Network Communications and the social, financial, and military sectors has revolutionized vulnerabilities. Outpacing most rules and regulations from and indeed about the technical complication of regulators has created the state of nature, the escape from which provided the motivation for creating a political order. Cogenial world disorder are built into relations between cyber powers both in the plant diplomacy and strategy. Arise from the inner dynamics of the system. A couple more quotes just afraid the subject. Rodgers, former head of the National Security agency and u. S. Cyber command said a couple of years ago that we are at a tipping point. Finally, i watched quote from an nsa cryptographer, his famous rules of computer security. You may want to make a note of these because everybody has to be concerned about computer security. Rule one, do not own a computer. Rule two, do not pirate on. Rule three, do not use it. With that to set the scene i want to turn to h. R. Mcmaster. The strategy really did radically change the u. S. Posture on a range of issues, of which the most noteworthy was our stance towards china. They had interesting things to theybout cyber warfare offered lowcost and deniable opportunities to damage or disrupt critical infrastructure, cripple american businesses, we can our federal networks, and attack with tools and devices americans use every day. The United States will impose swift and costly consequences on foreign governments and other actors to undertake malicious cyber activities. Can there be affected deterrence in cyberspace . Asking what motivated this dramatic shift in policy that you saw broadly in the december 2017, just in time for the beach , 2018 was when we were able to put all this in place. There was a sense that we were at the end of the beginning of a ,ew era, but we are behind largely because we were not competing effectively gives adversaries and rivals. ,he reasons we were behind is due in large measure, to overconfidence in the 90s, associated with trying from the cold war and the collapse of the soviet union. The lopsided victory over the six largest army in the world. Sustained Economic Growth through 90s, with some people call the revolution in military affairs associated with these technologies. The first big. Com boom here in the valley, we were flushed by this overconfidence that led to complacency. And then we confronted difficulties, so obviously, the mass murder attack against our nation. An anticipated length and difficulty of wars in iraq and afghanistan. Of course, the 2008 financial crisis. I think that jolted confidence in a way that we became passive and did not engage competitively for reasons of pessimism. So we made a conscious choice to figure out how to reenter arenas of competition from which we had been absent. , and to one of those answer the question, yes, we can deter certain attacks in cyberspace. One, which was alluded to in the paragraph, and to impose costs on a cyber actor or make clear that you cant impose costs which the cyber actor factored in at the outset of decision to but also, capabilities outside of cyberspace that you can bring to bear emerging power and physical space through sanctions and Law Enforcement actions. When you have the authority to do so, military action as well. The other aspect of deterrence to go back to thomas schelling, deterrence by denial. We have to recognize that our enthusiasm for technologies also make us more vulnerable and prone to credit traffic collapse. I was reminded of a book from the 1960s entitled men of machines in modern times in it, they say that men and women have expended a great deal of effort in trying to tame his National Natural environment, but in so doing, has created an artificial environment that is much more complex. So i think we are on the right track in terms of recognizing this is a competitive domain. We have seen a lot of critical it easieren to make to use of offensive capabilities as a part of deterrence and defense. The certainly a long way to go. I want to pursue this further. We have the opportunity to learn from somebody who has been there in the room where it happens, remaking american policy we , the a recent article turns in cyberspace is like imperfect prevention, it is not like deterrence in the age of the cold war we had to deter sovereign union. This was in world war iii and armageddon. This was a slightly different kind of deterrence. Youre going to have Cyber Attacks and cyber warfare. A question of keeping the level down to not suffer serious disruption. I think cyber actors are trying to avoid the imposition upon them. And cyber is a way where we have seen rivals and competitors such as russia and china, north korea as well, trying to accomplish objectives below the threshold that would elicit a response against them. So i think we have to do a number of things and develop a range of capabilities. It will see it in the midterm elections. More and more will be known overtime, but we did act much more aggressively than we did in the past. There are other actions we can take that are not of the defensive. We will talk more about influence operation and cyberenabled Information Warfare. We will take a lot of tasks like educating ourselves in public so we are less susceptible to manipulation. Or we should figure out a way to present credible information. To be able to access that routinely in a way that sort of locks out some of that attempts. Can we draw that distinction out . To bere is a distinction john between cyber warfare and information war. The United States spent much more time that he let cyber warfare prior to 2016, maybe because we invented it. Our assumption was that if we do certain things to iran, sooner or later, some people do them to us, so we should be worried about computer viruses that controls our critical infrastructure. But in fact, with the russian did was something quite different from Information Warfare. It gets back to this complacency problem. A corollary to this overconfidence, we believe there was an arc of history that guarantee the privacy of our it wasd open societies our confidence that came under attack attack. Our common identity. We know that 80 of the messaging and bought traffic was aimed atedia dividing americans along lines of race. They were on immigration and gun can be an issue that could pull our society apart and pick us up against each other to attack our election to that we also dont have faith in our democratic processes. To theink we came late game on this and it was again because we were overconfident in just the inherent strength of our society and our system. Im glad you observe a moment ago that we did up our game. Was not moreere coverage, it has to be done the way the administration hit back at the internet search agency. So you could say that we didnt learn and. Learn quickly from 2016. We didnt learn and learn quickly from 2016. It is Public Knowledge that if you develop a cyber tool it has a shelf life of 96 hours until there is a countermeasure. Have is a continuous nteraction that is happening at electron speed internationally in this new form of competition. We had to do is align the authorities for those who are operating to defend us from these actors and to employ combinations of offense and defense of capabilities. Turnis is a good moment to and remind ourselves that there will not be a major islamist terrorist attack in the United States for some time, it has not stopped around the world. And just to remind the audience, these are numbers from the u. S. Studyal consortium, the of terrorism. The most recent report from 2017 reports 10,900 terrorist attacks around the world. Filling 6000, 400 people. The top perpetrators were Islamic States, the taliban, overwhelmingly, terrorist incidents around the world that numbers arein large driven or perpetrated by radical islamist groups. I wanted to begin with a question about those groups, the ways in which they have used the Technology Developed in the west. It will organize and mobilize to build far Bigger Networks them al qaeda has back in 2001. Talk about those educators and how they currently operate. I was listening intently to my colleague hr and thinking to my here we are talking about operations. This is cyber, are these adversaries using cyber. And in the 15 years ive been in the United States, maybe even since 1989, the one thing we ideas,talk about our ideologies, and grounding principles. When hr said the very core of our identity, i assumed very subjectively that the call of our identity are these classical, liberal ideas. That the United States is established upon. Forget is that there are people who organize and have political and social framework that are radically different it is a political and social philosophy with a religious underpinning. But the agents who believe in this ideology, i think we look at islam is him and you see a tree with two main branches. One of main branch is the use of violence to achieve their aim, to achieve what they think of as something of a utopian idea. The ideal is to establish a society on a local level, maybe on a global level, to achieve an end goal that society is based on the rule of god. Interpretation, their organizing philosophy. Or most it as a treaty americans, everywhere i go, i asked them to raise their hand if you think you know of the concept of jihad. Just raise your hand. Thats exactly it. Maybe 80 or 90 will say i have heard of the concept and read about it, i am familiar with it. I asked people to raise your hand if you have ever heard of another concept. 3, is always a minority. That is the other main branch of the islamist tree. What does that mean . It makes believers in this particular philosophy that has its underpinnings in religion efforts in engaging in campaigns and arguments, propaganda. In short, it is the effort to promote the ideas, the effort to persuade. That is where cyber comes into. I know that when it comes to jihad and we are focusing on ,hat and these Big Companies there are focusing on the jihadi aspect. Where are they plotting an attack, where will that attack the . Be . That is all under the branch of jihad. Otherwise, you have to ask yourself how are they using cyber to raise awareness . How are they using cyber to organize, strategize, to Exchange Tips and tactics. How are they using cyber to raise money . And Information Warfare how are they using it to propagate conspiracy theories . United states of america is out to gave to get all muslims, that is one theory. They are colluding with israel, that is another. I put that under the realm of this Information Warfare, and that is how it is used. Everything my colleague hr said is absolutely true. We are used to fighting these operational wars. ,he two things you mentioned making sure you impose costs on niall. D defense by that is on the operational level, but the question remains, are we really engaged . And are we not really wasting the opportunity to use the internet, to use cyber to . Upport a counter ideology i think that is where we are failing. One of the things that most struck me when i was writing a book related to all of this is how different state wars are too al qaeda. These attacksut partly because it was so caught off and closed as a tiny, conspiratorial network that it was undetected by our security forces, whereas the Islamic State is quite a different. It is a very open and rapidly changing network that uses social media at all kinds of platform to disseminate its ideology when you look at work that has been done by National Security that grasps the network , it is absolutely mind blowing how big this thing is and how sophisticated. Is it writes to say the Islamic State may have been defeated on the ground in syria but it is still very much alive in cyberspace . Think of the Islamic State is only one brand of the global phenomenon of islamist. Failed because they put all of their money on the jihadist branch. They thought they would shock the world into submitting, and that did not happen. They almost obliterated, and obviously, they adapt they learn from their mistakes like we learn from our mistakes. They will redevelop a focus on that dour branch, on getting into the minds of human beings to persuade them into our viewpoint. That is to schools, families, neighborhoods, and obviously, through the internet. And they are making use of all of these various tools that are available to all of us. Now, i want to say, we in the , we try to draw the Straight Lines of qaeda,tion between al between Islamic States, the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations. Works. T is not how it you have to think of them as a global tree. They have disagreements on how to get to the end goal, but remember, they agree on the end goal. A lot of communication and collaboration takes place, a lot of exchange of money, a lot of commitment. Much of it happens through cyber, but that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that, while we refocus on brands like the Islamic State, we are missing the big picture. Reconfigurations between the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood. Others, if you read any of the newspapers youll be told the sunnis and shiites are killing one another. That is the case, but is only part of the story. And a lot of the communication takes us through cyber and the but when our government describes making it is difficult with some turned back to the old it isommunicated difficult, they turned back to the old message communicated. Thing is how important the internet is on the process one oftenization reads that the perpetrator was radicalized online. Happens . Ctually what there is a school of thought, a number of people who believe shut offe set off all the social beginning accounts, radicalization would disappear. I tend to disagree, because by the time an individual goes to his smart phone or laptop to access any of the social media , they have already at least been inspired. At the minimum, inspired to think things. Most young people are looking for some kind of model. When you think about the rowdy, very often outside of the west, 90 of people will think about going to religion. Will go to your life , but most ofam those places are displaced. They put a lot of money into messages and own infrastructure in place that have not displaced that get along islam that was established in most places. So you are a young person, you live here in the u k in bangladesh or sri lanka, thinking about the difference between right and wrong. Youre to the mosque and listen to a ceremony they tell you about this worldview that is and it ist, so clear only then, because it is so complex that many individuals think. You references like i did he references. At the end of my talk, i say why dont you go to the Hoover Institution of site, what an ego to a Classical Liberal website, they do the same thing. Thats what you see on cyber. People come on, thinking they will get more information and they get sucked in. But cyber is only part of the story when used that way. I will come back to a bigger question i want to ask about the society. Open its in the title of our event and i know you are a devoted reader. Back to larry. We have talked about russia, talked about islam, lets talk about china. Your information report talk a bit about Technology Theft but it struck me that it said relatively little about chinas online activity. I like to ask you to talk a bit about that. I wonder if we aint seen nothing yet. Russians, thee chinese have not begun Information Warfare. Should we be bracing ourselves for that . Thank you for that question. To begin, since we are talking about china, by noting today, thers ago chinese come in a state ordered the Liberation Army into Tiananmen Square and he is a massive and brutal military force to suppress what was probably the most important democracy uprising since the nationalist revolution. We dont know how many people , the estimates are somewhere between 2500 and 10,000 people. It was a seminal moment in the history of modern china and marked, as the brilliant essay by my coeditor noted in his , a really decisive pit away from reform pit pivot away from reform and the orwellian aggressive state that the peoples republic of china has become. I think that before we talk about the cyber element of this, we need to talk about, generally, what they are doing. In the world has a more dedicated international and institutionalized, the communist party apparatus. We have got a whole chart that just unveils and maps of the bureaucracy has a more dedicated infrastructure for propaganda and the promotion of influence. It is in the subterranean and illicit fashion. We just said, you do not have to be doing this online in order impact. Tremendous they have gathered all of their communications channels, China Global Television and radio internati