The infrastructure cyber agency to step down. He also talks about election security. This is held by the aspen institute. This is about 40 minutes. Thank you for having me here. I am excited to interview matt travis. Someone who i wanted to talk to a lot about cybersecurity and other issues. Welcome, matt, thank you for appearing here. Good to be here with you. Spinal tap thing behind you. Matt it is relegated to the basement and this was the lightest corner i could find. It gets a nine on room rater i want to talk about the walk up to the election, but i think everyone is most interested that you resigned after chris was fired at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure agency. Walk us through two weeks before the election before the firing and what it was like to be cisa. s eisa inside the election was four weeks ago today and we knew that the results process would be protracted because of the mailin voting. So we were gaming out some of the contingencies that we wanted to be prepared for. We get through the weekend and before it was called for biden, it was the day before when politico dropped a piece about a Government Agency that you have never heard of that is countering the president s lawyers claims about impropriety and fraud. That night, i saw at first. I saw it first. I said if this doesnt get you fired, nothing will. His response was essentially, this might do it. My texting wasnt the source of that. This was an Agency People were aware of that had been monitoring. But we were two years old, still technically the youngest federal agency. And most people that dont work with us probably had not had heard of us. I think we got more attention as the election date drew on. We generally tried to fly under the radar. The nontraditional way that the votes would be tabulated. Were you worried about the nontraditional way because of covid or the politicization by trump . He had been doing that on twitter and other places. Certainly. We tried to filter out that noise. We were concerned because of the heavy mailin ballot in that you would not have Election Night results. And we would say as much. It would take several days if not a week before we knew the winner. And we would inform the electorate about the process and what to expect to not get overly anxious about that. On, the rhetoric coming from the president s campaign continued to contradict what we saw and what we knew. That contention could grow. Inn politico called it out the open, that was the first straw. That is when white house ,ersonnel called chief of staff wanting brians resignation. The one who made Public Comments . Matt i dont know what it was, frankly. All the way through the vetting over the summer with white house and that is bryants story to tell. We certainly pressed it would be silly to change the system when we are running election security. And brian was the lead working on the Health Care Sector and vaccine suppliers. Asked on of staff wednesday, veterans day. , lets keepding was going. Kiara he resigned. He resigned that friday. Tremendous leaders of the new cybersecurity division. And so i think david sanger ran. Profile in the Washington Post Editorial Board on sunday. Each article that we are calling attention to, that rumor control might be continued difficulty navigating a narrow path. Whole point of rumor control and all of your efforts were to publicize the safety of the election and your assessment. Hiding under a rock isnt an option. Matt chris got the idea from fema. He thought that is a good idea. Againected it to be used with foreign adversaries, what we saw in russia in 2016, using fake personas online. And to educate voters about the electoral process. Transparency. How information. Kiara when the president was tweeting before and saying things publicly on twitter and in his rallies, did that worry you . Countered of what was on the website . Think it was our role to fact check the candidates. We would stay out of that political process and the candidates in the media can hold them to account or others. Once the election had been conducted and the electoral process of canvassing, accounting, and certifying was in place, it was our role to be articulating the truth of what the processes entail. To answer your question, it was it helpful, but we expected with how long it continued. ,ith the week that it was monday was very quiet. Tuesday was also pretty quiet. Its not just the cyber domain. We have responsibility for the physical protection. We also have an Emergency Communications role. We have a lot going on. It was business as usual. Tuesday night, the Washington Examiner put out a story that source. Me white house 7 00 or 715. I said, what . He said, he fired me on twitter. Kiara he was not called . Matt he was not called. He learned it on twitter. He did see it himself when he came across. Wanted med him if he to go with him and he said to stay behind, finish the fight with the team and get it done. A 45 secondbly phone call. Putting theed places. From the chief. Probably heard the news about chris. He said, they are not asking for your resignation. But they dont want you running cisa. Im paraphrasing. Kiara you were next in line. Matt i was. The secretary have signed and updated it. To his credit, he had not been consulted on this. Surprise on the white house decision on this. Said let me see if i can fix this. Exploding and he was working with white house personnel and others to see if he could get this turned around. He called me back and said he could not. I regrettably told him that i had to leave. And that was that. A pretty frenetic tuesday evening. It is still an experience i really cherish, being the deputy, working with chris. Kiara were you surprised by this level of politicization of an agency that just gives out practical and Accurate Information . Matt i was. Here was a surreal nature seeing chris is firing all over the news. When my resignation hit the press, i think don lemon broke it on his broadcast. In what does our world does the Deputy Director of a component hit prime time . It was an agency that was new and relatively unknown. In a bizarre way, i think it helped our profile because we were letting people know what we were doing. Our agency is entirely based on partnership. Kiara what about the people on the ground working within the agency . It was very dramatic what happened with chris and you. How many people in the agency . Matt about 200. Kiara how are they impacted . Matt we enjoyed real stability during this administration, which i think was unique for the trump administration. We did not have a lot of turnover. Kiara he might not have known you were there. Matt [laughter] that is true. The workforce i dont think ever saw this coming. To chriss credit, i think he was playing in his head how this could unfold. It would be a tremendous career senior executive. My resignation, to the end of that week, i had to unwind. I was in the office wednesday, thursday, friday. They told me about two months, but i think the way it happened kiara one of the things that you tweeted was that it must stay nonpartisan. God gave us a conscience, use it. Matt that was my farewell message to the staff and the workforce. I did not want to use an internally male. That, chriseant by and i were of the same mind. Our commission was somewhat unique. And it is complete we relied on a partnership model. Security standards and manufacturing standards. Everything else is a voluntary partnership model. No one has to work with cisa. But we have a mission of raising security across the 15 states in the executive and branch. If we are starting to play partisan politics with security, the First Principles of what a government should be doing,rotecting those systems driving the american way of life, that is not a political issue. Have legitimate political differences on a range of issues. Immigration is just one. I have yet to see a partisan issue with securing americas infrastructure that warrants politicizing what we do. And what we are hearing from the Trump Campaign is in fact politicizing the security of a substructure of the election. That was my message to the workforce. We have worked hard to establish this nonpartisan reputation. A number ofth governors from democrats and republicans. Governor pritzker, governor ducey, governor dewine, a bunch of folks that are really cyber if they think we are playing games with red state or blue state, we lose our credibility. Kiara only one of the things you do is election security. Let me go backwards a little bit there is a horror movie idea that the call is coming from inside the white house. I think the unexpected part of the election is that it went pretty smoothly. Cyber not see major attacks or attempts at foreign interference. At one point, it was called just another tuesday on the internet. Were we wrong about estimating the seriousness of the foreign threat . China, it is russia, iran, where there other things they were doing or was it that we were paying attention this time . One of the lessons we learn from 2016 is the threat landscape. And we have known vulnerability. We have tried to shored up vulnerabilities and working with thousands of election jurisdictions in this country to offer them and partner with them there are paper ballot backups. The vote was backed up by paper ballot last month. Vulnerabilities in the Voter Registration databases, working with election vendors. Working with campaigns, making sure that email hygiene and cyber it was a full court press. There was some proactive measure this government took in a think it may have had an effect on 2020s election day. But there were attempts and we are proud of the fact that all of the states had protections in place. We partnered with the secretary on their, the einstein monitors. Prepared. Tter i dont know why the adversaries attempts foreign or domestic . Matt i wont get into that here. Intrusion attempts and other types of mischief on lection day that proudly this was an all team effort. This was the coordinator of all of this. Election ly had an team out working with focus. When you look at what the n. S. A. , d. O. D. Personnel helping as partners, e. A. C. And the states and counties themselves. Kara and the states and the lucy, governors, governor Governor Kemp have been adamant here wasnt election interference or fraud. Its unusual statements given how close they had been to the administration, for example, in those two states. They seey called it as it. We spent all of this time people did american with the funds that Congress Gave us. Congress was extremely supportive of our election and that moneyes was put to good use. Won, i president had suspect that chris would have been parade down pennsylvania venue and we would be pointing to him saying this was a legitimate election. Ways. Ts both the president didnt win reelection, but the security was what it was. Kara lets talk about one of the things that you pushed for and not umor control just the foreign interference, but the uses of our own u. S. For domestic disinformation is much more complicated. Rumor control t and why you took it on. Obviously its not just security incursions, abuse of technologies and things but its actual just words and ways to influence. About that andit what role do you see the social edia companies having in combating domestic disinformation, they have sort f done a stutter step toward some action and i think low bar s what i think of most of the time. Matt well, go back to when i which was early 2018, the 2016 election was everyones minds and right then, the next target as protecting the 2018 midterms. A great lly deserved partnership with the platforms, i worked closely with them and government agencies. I think they recognized that heir systems were used for purposes that they didnt always anticipate visavis an election. Ultimately we at d. H. S. Dont want to be the arbitors of ruth, so it wasnt really for us to say, well, this persona is petersburg, its for them to determine what is the violation of their service there is a whole debate about section 230 and we wont i dont think cisa really has a role in that. We didnt want to take the pointing out what is came tonot, but when it the truth about the infrastructure and elections are felt very conduct that was our role to talk about the confidence in the election rumors related to that. Kara here is the preference less used to make people confident, in fact, to traffic continually and there are 10 today by the himself. What is the role of the government in dealing with that is the president of the United States is spewing lies on any of these platforms, is there a role of government to you just let it happen . So i am not one that is government republican, so generally my sensibility is not regulation. I dont likenessly like the way hat the platforms have applied some of the qualifiers and certain comments. It is tough. Its a challenge to have consistency in that. Is empower at cisa the public to know your sources to be a more enlightened citizen. Literacy is what youre talking about. Matt we had a campaign about pizza which was so educate the American People how threat actors can take any issue and divide americans lies and just sowing up discord. We used pineapple on pizza and that we le dont like showed the tactics that russia would use to try to divide america. Americans. S on if youre going to be a consumer media, its d incumbent upon us to know what the sources are. And age, what seems to be legitimate media often is troubling. Ts kara i hear that from a lot of people. Quantum level of difference between a bill board r a tv ad or a newspaper or anything else, its being flooded at you and very specifically targeted. Difficult in the way its hidden and its confusing it. The mass amount of say you suddenly became the head of facebook or twitter, either one. We talked about those designations they put on which are so confusing. Disputed. Instead of saying this is a lie, they dont seem to want to go that far. In that ould you go regard. We have to rely on these private ompanies owned by people who have no accountability to do something about this. Yeah, kara, its a hard problem. Lean my personal iews of not letting, not letting 100 flowers bloom ecessarily, but letting speech prevail. Let enlightened people point out are falsehoods and disinformation. I think we need more people in center to do that both in government, the media, and public life, but im just generally, my inclination is not owards more suppression of speech, not coming from the censorship and the platforms themselves. Kara you think what is there is disputed, i s is dont know what that means, nonsentence s a sentence. Matt it doesnt work for me. Ara you are putting out this is the truth, this is the information, which they could asily point to and saying this is not true. Is that too far . That t suppression to say a lie is not true . Matt its a fine line. Its a tough line to figure out going to draw it. We felt comfortable and confident that we could speak the factsrity on what are in terms of how elections what the election jurisdictions do, what the technology does. Ourselves, i know year not asking this question to moderating or arbitrary with other peoples speech online, but it is going a problem that is not going to go away. More become more and beholden to online communications, its going to be challenge in the next election. Kara the soft threats versus the hard threats. Can you assess the difference soft threats which i think are much more significant, do, than the hard threats, talk about the difference in in where we need to go terms of what we need to focus on. Matt in many ways, stepping the election mission, we look really at the three lanes there is protecting the working infrastructure, with the voting companies and machines and there is working with the candidates and the making sure their emails are protected so we dont have and the disinformation piece. Is a hybrid threat where you have both foreign actors who are looking to undermine western emocracies, and obviously as you alluded to there, there are voices within this country that we see the continuing polarization will use the same tactics and techniques to do the sow thing, which is to discord. And i dont have a good answer for that. When you think about the threats to the hardened stuff, he machines, there has been attacks on the dominion achines, todayed head of dominion wrote about death hreats and one of the most unconscionable things i have list, ately, a long threatened that execution, steve bannon was talking about beheadings. How do you deal with that when youre in that system, you want and this is ble nreasonable or beyond unreasonable, its unconscionable is what it is. Egregious, a loss of words, how absurd and offensive are. Comments one, i think that has to violate code of conduct for the d. C. Bar. Today sponded on the show. What te george constanza, happened to shame . Of this kind of language . A National Person on network should he say small a small mind and a bad mustache. Ons unfortunate that attacks chris or anyone kara have you felt under threat . Was is an area as you said a not well known area, you tarted it two years ago to put out basic information and work with all the different players. Felt under threat . Matt i have not, im also not same, the deputy is one running the agency day to day. Us. S is the one out leading he is going to have a difference experience. I wont speak for him, but comments last night are troubling. E certainly never expected cisa, its mission, its people to be under attack like this and i it ends soon. I hope he takes back those recognizesogizes and that he maybe, the hot lights of the studio got to him. Kara i doubt it. Im sorry to say that. They doubledown on these things constantly and get worse. When you created this two years to bring more tech people into government and work on these things. Intersects with everything. Can we talk a little bit about innging tech into government a more significant way . I know its through the Obama Administration, the bush dministration, this has been talked about, but it still seems separate. Or do look at it that way you feel as if the government has more experience and ability understand that tech should be at the center part of this . Matt no, there is work to be kara, let me just qualify i took what the congress and President Trump ave us and the credit for creating cisa not only goes to people like mike mccall from clarify mccaskill and the Obama Administration who tried suzanne is started, spaulding and her team prior to cisa really started it. Of we dont have enough tech people in government get bviously we need to more tech savvy in terms of right, we the cloud, protecting dot gov. Congress gave us some hiring talentedes to bring in Technology Workers at a lower evel to pay them more because right now the best coder out of california tech, she going to g. S. 9, she doesnt have experience, the team will be in place next year will be pay her more and get her into government quickly. The other thing i say, too, we eed a tech infusion at the state and local level. Hen you look at the problem of ransom wear, we need more i. T. Our cities andor our states. You look at some of the operating systems. Running windows 7, capitalization for tech is not there. E talked about the next infrastructure bill. The roads and the bridges and work, if that ed doesnt include a Technology Component for capital in the networks and the i. T. Systems of cities and missing an e opportunity. Kara why doesnt it happen from your perspective . Generally, the. I. O. S are not always, their constituencies are not as not as long as education, not taking away from the other important issues. When you talk about finite and fiscal austerity, this is not at the top of your list. The risk is here now shifting, thats one of the hings that we try to pride ourselves on is being Risk Advisors to america, you look at to aran some wear has done number of large cities, affects the chool systems and healthcare sector, you cant pay your parking tickets online, taking down a real major infrastructure older. Hat is matt if we reassess where our isk resides, i think then the case is pretty apparent that more investment needs to go into technology from government. Kara windows seven makes me nervous. From the e questions audience, im going to read them. This is from mary mcgrail. Going to try to get to it in eight or nine more minutes. Based on your experience at which industries or fields are most targeted or susceptible we have seen how vulnerable hospitals are, how about education, and this covid and at all times, but especially right now and lets try to keep the quick to get to as many questions as follow. The healthcare sector and Hospital Networks than we had tacks previously, the energy sector, those are ector, better funded than the other sectors, theyre better protected. Also depends on the threat actor. Youre a ransom wear criminal youre going after the weak links, places you know dont necessarily have modern i. T. School or defenses, systems and playses like that. Actors, theyre stealing more intellectual things. Y, those kind of kara a question for matt, are you concerned that donald trump and his Campaign Associates will use the data gathered through facebook and texting campaigns to target americans with disinformative information to their advantage . Seen no evidence that they are changing course. Fat yes, s a big correct . Matt i see no reason to think going to stop. Kara do you know, this is from was from last one anonymous. Do you know eric, how involved President Trump was by 20 d, was it driven somethings in the Personnel Office . About theyre talking mr. Mcatee . Matt i believe the president of chris, he was not aware of me. They put a piece of paper in that he signed that cessation order. Guy. and i dont know that are you in favor of digital for future Elections National online voting rolling out . Favor of that. N the integrity of the election should be paperbased. It works. About bitcoin, not itcoin, but essentially going to kind of a electronic protection, i think thats way future. The kara you think that is not mailin ballot already upset people more than enough, although unnecessarily. Question, just wanted to say that national achnology security coalition, coalition of sites across the support the get to private sector, and cisa remains competent hands. Were sad about the disruption leaders. Loss of the mary mcgrail, she already asked this one. For matt travis and youll have to answer for yourself, will you go back in the Biden Administration, what is going to to the agency under biden . Political a appointee, so im a private citizen now kind of assessing taking a xt for me, little bit of a break. For cisa and the congress nistration, is very supportive of cisa, i think it needs to be a 3 at a minimum. Right now the president s budget million, i hope the Biden Administration continues to help to reach full operational capability. Kara do you think its possible for a government or agency to combat disinformation that comes from officials in the United States or best left to social how do atforms, if yes, we step into the amok, there was domestic information that got amplified by foreign players. Like i just really dont it when the government is the rbitor of truth when it comes to just basic speech. Kara calvin westbrook, two or silence in the face of inaccurate disputed what ation which is twitter calls it be construed as mplicitly supporting such information, how should confusion be address ed . Matt you know, i think i go what i said before. Its not just one person on these platforms. There, of us are on too. We can counter argue and point out when things are false. Just think its up to our society to do a better job of ourselves. Kara just two more, nick, everyone. Nt get to even if you cant provide details of election day nterference, can you describe how significant the attempts were . Matt no. Thats easy. Big, small, little. Maurice turner, ill do this very quickly. State and local Election Officials come up with security requirements without consistent funding . Matt no, it needs to be a priority. There has been federal funding through the commission all of what cisa provides with assessments that we provide free. That model has worked. Its a national function to elections, were not putting money there and the bigger ing, there is trouble. Kara the last question, you ont have to answer this, from this is from kenya. Disinformation involved in dictators in africanamerican and across the world this is true. Utely the last question, who is the biggest threat to the u. S. , here . My final question matt from a cybersecurity perspective, its still the big russia, china, north korea and iran, they all have their what ent focus areas on they do and why they do it. Its those four and no one else is even close. One else is even close. And domestically . Att cyber criminals are both, you know, in terms of the ran aware. Its all ones and zeros. Ara thank you for your service. Its important that we have these voices of truth and accuracy. Not just truth. Loaded word. Really information is valuable to the continued robustness of our democracy. Thank you so much. Kara thank you, aspen and President Trump is questioning the results and has not conceded the november election. Q a, two oft on the most contentious elections, in 1961 and in 1930 read, with historians Susan Shelton and eric hosue. States didsouthern not recognize abraham lincolns election is legitimate, they considered him a sectional president and that by and large his support came from nonslave states. No sooner had he been elected than South Carolina makes good on its promise to cced from the union. To secede from the union. It was clear that he had lost the election, but hoover never conceded the substance of the argument. He continued to believe the new, as roosevelt frame it during the campaign and began to work towards it after the election, represented a fundamental front to the american way of life. So he devoted himself to preventing roosevelt from being able to enact it. Contentious president ial transitions, sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. L yourure watching cspan, unfiltered view of government. Cabled by americas Television Companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. In a First Campaign appearance since the election, President Trump spoke at a rally for senators Kelly Leffler and david perdue, who face a Runoff Election in january. At least one of them needs to win
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