On full display. Its also a moment where the resiliency of our institutions will be tested, as one that highlights the critical importance of medical sciencebased guidance and research. 7. 3 million infected americans and those who have lost their lives, i spent some time every morning in contemplation and prayer for all of them. I turned to the entire first family. They are in my thoughts and prayers this morning and i hope you will join me in wishing them a quick and full recovery in the midst of these challenging moments. And now today gathering, as part of our brookings series, this conference is part of a greater effort to empower voters with factbased, datadriven nonpartisan information to better understand the policy matters discussed by candidates running for office in 2020. The importance cannot be overstated, especially considering the theme of todays event. As witnessed in the lead up to the 2016 election when russian agents launched a Misinformation Campaign against americans, information can be easily weaponized to great effect. Cane types of operations rob individuals of their confidence and desire to exercise their own sacred democratic rate, to vote democratic right, to vote. Especially as the election day draws nearer. Recent reports indicate the kremlin has begun to deploy Artificial Intelligence systems to create false social media accounts and that adds to the urgency of the issue. For those of us who have been following the topic, we know this has been happening for years. Technologies such as bigficial intelligence and Data Analytics have matured and become interconnected. Ifernments must catch up they are to not be left behind. There is also an overwhelming need for a whole of Society Approach to protect everyones right to a fair and democratic process. So i am pleased to welcome an excellent set of panelists who join us today. They will speak across three separate panels and we are honored to have such a distinguished group. Welcomeeeply honored to Lieutenant General h. R. Mcmaster from the United States army as our keynote speaker. A visionary leader by any standard, and a dear friend. He has dedicated his life to Public Service again and again. He has tirelessly demonstrated his unique brilliance as a soldier, scholar, and one of the best officers to come out of west point. I know him to be a gallant and heroic leader in combat and he has translated that into the moral leadership which has defined him since. His reputation as an academic has earned him a high praise for , dereliction of duty. A book of lessons still relevant. I have little doubt his second will rise tolished the same pedigree. Share when we were together, he was instrumental in supporting our efforts via leadership of counter Corruption Task force which was all about transparency. He demonstrated without fail his Core Principles of ethics and integrity. I was proud to stand alongside you then and it is a pleasure to honor you this morning in this crucial conversation. Iserating this discussion dr. Fiona hill, a person of great integrity. Dr. Hill is an expert on european and Russian Affairs and most recently served as the senior director for European Russian affairs in the National Security council. This will be an excellent panel and i hope you listen closely to what they have to say and the views they will express. Reminder we are on the record and streaming live. Please submit your questions via twitter. On thank you again, it is wonderful to see you. Thank you for your commitment and getting up early in the vital issues you will express today to help us express our democracy. Fiona, the floor is yours. Dr. Hill thank you. The reference about getting up early is the fact that he is in a. M. Ornia so this is 6 30 although he has probably already been up for hours, paddle boarding which he used to do back in the day. It is wonderful to see you. We are delighted you are willing to join us. Your book frames the discussion we are hoping to have today. In the book, you take on all of the challenges facing the United States and the National Security arena. I was wondering if you could kick us off with thoughts on how we have to tackle the battle graham in the the battleground in the information sphere. You tried to tackle headon during your service in the military the issue of russian Information Warfare and what you russiaolleagues would use psychological operations as part of their campaign. Should start thinking about this issue as we move on today. Thank you for joining us. Mr. Mcmaster thank you. What a privilege it is to be with you. You are such a great example of service to our country and what a privilege it was to serve with you back then on staff. And to be with john allen, my former commander and someone who leads by example. Thank you to brookings. What this conference is doing is part of the answer to the of Information Warfare so much has to be a whole of society response, which begins with education. It is a privilege to be with all of you. I would like to try to be brief. I thought i would tell the story i tell in the book. Friday before columbus day timend in 2017, about this in 2017, i was walking down onnut street in philadelphia my way to the Foreign Policy research and just to Research Institute to give a briefing. I was charged with designing the future army and i commissioned a study 18 months prior on russia and the invasion of ukraine. Of expertsinations from all different field psychologists,ng engineers, historians. It was an excellent story excellent study and i wanted to share the findings and get some wayback on as i was on my to the think tank in philadelphia, my phone rang and it was the white house asking me to go to maralago the next day. I was there the next tuesday afternoon. Because russia sustained campaign against ukraine was part of the study and it struck me as i came into the white house that we should have seen 2016 coming. This is not a threat that came out of the blue. I thought what i might begin with is what we did in the first year after the 2016 election to respond to this threat of Information Warfare which is designed to drag us down. Even from this speech you gave new years day in 2000, restore russia to National Great this. Greatness. I think probably around 2005, decided, iprobably will not be able to take on the eu and United States headon. Toelieve a prudent approach the west has been to drag everyone else down under this theory theyd be the last man standing. One of the personal ways he is isng this in his campaign misinformation and denial and one way to do it is to conduct Information Warfare with the purpose of polarizing our society, hitting us against each r, reducing debt obtain pitting us against each other. As we look back at 2016 and place the election in context of this much longer and sustained campaign against us, what i believe is the case is that around elections, especially in large countries like ours which would be very difficult to influence the outcome in a direct way, that what the kremlin tries to do is sow doubts about the result of the election. 2016, i think the kremlin was as surprised as trump was that he won the election. And there was a Campaign Ready to go and that they actually initiated prematurely, Hillary Clinton won the election but it was rated. Rigged. Then they shifted it too if the election had been fair, donald trump would have won the popular vote. This is what we are encountering today. Tookmmarize the actions we to protect ourselves better this is we had to identify the problem more fully. Dramaticallyre toward collecting and analyzing not just against us but also our allies and breaking apart our alliances and rendering the transatlantic relationship. Is the ira and as we would counter certain elements of the effort, a sustained effort, it is not going to go away and they are not going to stop. So understanding the nation the nature was important. Related to it was the necessity to pull back the curtain on this and show it to the country. Inoculating ourselves against this Information Warfare. Theere impeded by president s unwillingness to call out putin directly. We talked about this a lot. Why is this . What i determined is the president , and i mentioned this and write about it in the book, he conflates three separate questions. Did russia intervene in the election . Yes, they did. Did they care who will win . I dont think so. Effort is to divide on immigrationce and and gun, for example. And to reduce our confidence in the process. Third, if they wanted trump to win, did they put their finger on the scale and did it have an impact . The third question is what the president s worries about president worries about. So he conflates all three. That is unfortunate because education is important. , think we made progress, fiona on protecting election infrastructure. The president and others so doubts about it. Sow doubts about it. The kremlin wins. Andsecurity office stood up they are doing effective work. These are very competent people. They understand what is at stake and are working with a decentralized process. Federal standards are established and they are working diligently to protect the infrastructure itself. And then what i think is also extremely important is the Cyber Warriors is less encumbered than they were in the past. I will not go into details but there was some reporting about this in connection with the difference between the 2016 election and the 2018 election. Fiona, i will stop there. A final observation. It is important to focus on the election and the Information Warfare around it. But it is also important to understand this is a sustained campaign and we are extremely vulnerable to it. New tools are available to the russians that the soviets did not have when they began this sort of activity in the 1920s against the United States. Principal among those is social media, which is having a destructive effect on our particular these companies and Business Models that are essentially making you the commodity. Moneyso the advertising and drive to get more clicks by showing us more extreme content that reinforces our predilections and political leanings and stance on issues. That is magnified even further by the pseudomedia and the toxic atmosphere around that, as well as now Mainstream Media and cable news in particular, because of this phenomenon in which it now americans go to a particular station that is associated with their political leanings, so we do not have a common, authoritative source of information either. So i am looking forward to this conversation and i am so glad brookings is taking this on at this critical time in our country and the free world. It is great to be with you, fiona. Thanks. Mr. Mcmaster dr. Hill thank you so much. You managed to cover the entitle the entire battlefield we will cover today. In the first panel, we will try to unpack the history of the sustained campaign. You are right. This has been going on for a long time and it is not going to go away. In the second panel we will try to talk about the domestic information you have touched on. Because i think this is the dilemma we face and i would like to get back with you on this that when we were in government, we were the National Security team. Everyone was reluctant for all the right reasons to call it a battleground and we have seen how that has played out in negative fashion when it is referred to by colleagues in the pentagon. People do not want to see the National Security techniques bleed over into home although we know the russians hold a lot of the techniques they deployed against us at home in dealing with their own domestic opposition. So that is the real challenge for us and i would like to get back with you about how did we tackle the issue of what is happening on the domestic front while also producing an incredible amount of information. And then on the third panel we what we have to do ourselves to tackle this beyond what the government has done. But i have some questions already from the off from the audience. Have to put on my glasses because they are small. The audience wants to ask about do different actions and how we basically disentangle the domestic front from the International Front . Russians, colleagues created fake news sites, and in fact in some cases, they have managed to recruit american freelance journalist right for them and theyve targeted both the left and the right. Weve seen other countries do that in regional arenas as well, not just targeted against the United States but targeted against enemies. Its a broader phenomenon right now. Media, asbout social Kellyanne Conway put it, everyone has their own alternative facts and we dont have anything to pull them all together. And the idea of click bake that everyone talks about. Many news and Information Industries come up with splashy headlines to put on the messaging and pass on to others. Toy want you and others click on it to pass things on. Youve been out of the government now and also out of since Stanford University has an incredible amount of senior staff and specialist working on these topics. How have you started to recognize the problem that we face in the nsc about how do we put the domestic and foreign battlefield together . Mr. Mcmaster they have to be completely integrated. Its not only this challenge to our security, but its many other challenges. They dont obviously respect borders, and the move rapidly. An overseas challenge is one we have to cope with domestically. Once these threats penetrate our counter themve to at extraordinary at high cost. Terrorism, we have to remain engaged abroad and understand better the threats that will affect us at home. I think theres some organizational implications for this as well. I think one of the organizational impediments is the bifurcation of the National Security council between it and the Homeland Security council. I dont think that makes any sense. I think the senior director is there, the weight is structured, ought to be some self synchronization that works across each of those offices, from understanding better the threats overseas or to a country that areia, and those currently coping with more Homeland Security related issues , not only affecting the elections, but countering russian disinformation and denial. So there are structural i think changes that have to be made. Think it worked ok, but there are some structural aspects of this that we need to work on. You need an organization that has the tools to understand better what the threats are from cyber disInformation Warfare and also have the tools available to address it. Those tools are not just cyber tools. Those tools are other informational tools, also sanctions, Law Enforcement actions that can be taken, and the effort is to be able to mobilize all elements of likemindeder and partners. This is in the private sector, it is extremely important, for example, for government to have a trusted relationship with investigative journalist, for example, who probably our best equipped to uncover if you look at the track record, most of the best stories, the best reporting on how russia does this come a what their objectives are, how they are infusing these false personas insights and thought control has been from investigative journalism. Are organizational changes that need to be improved. Mainu are alluding to, the effort has to be on trying to convince everyone, but also in the media, dont be our own worst enemy. We talked about how russia is trying to divide us on certain issues. Dividee also trying to us in this vitriolic, political environment we find ourselves in. We make ourselves susceptible to it, i think, the president says something that is offensive and divisive, the reaction on the others is equally offensive and divisive, and we pull ourselves apart from each other. Withrsations that begin what we agree on, we immediately go to what we disagree on. I think a lot of this example setting, in our media, i think journalists as a profession have to ramp up our standards. In part because of the new information environment, and also because of the vitriolic parts of the environment. Ofrnalism is in a phase selfdestruction right now. This now more than ever, to be of the highest standards. We americans need to up their thectations and go to authoritative sources of information, rather than be drug down to the morass of the pseudomedia and the less responsible elements. How do you restore trust . In a lot of these institutions . In many of the other institutions of the government. Obviously weve been thinking about that a great deal as well. Weve had the politicized nation all of in many cases the governments National Security approach to dealing with an external threat, and in the time that we were there and the time after you left, its actually gotten much worse as well. We had a lot of mastic actors not really wanting us to get our act together, the deep state working against the interest of individual politicians, believe trying to push back against National Security threats. Obviously writing your book, getting out and speaking to as many audience as possible as part of doing this kind of event, but how can we penetrate the noise domestically to get all of the audience that we have to re