Washington, d. C. ■ intelligence, really one of the foremost experts i think up on the hill in the space consorted from a National Security perspective for specific as a this relates to cyber. It is an Important Role that he has. I have had the pleasure of chatting with hi■bm previously n a number of these issues, having been in front of the committee over no, im a little intimidated. In those crowds i can go to, i cane■2 pull off being the cyber guy. This is not the crowd i could pull off necessarily being the cyber guy but am looking forward to the conversation. I think its important to get your take. We got a lot of folks are from the executive branch, a lot of folks from the defense and social base. Een involved this space for such a long time. They certainly understand the risk but but a big believere holistic responsedes them having the authorities that legislative branch is able to provide. So having herus perspective i think its really, really important. I guess so far, congress has been still functioning for some reason. Are rig [laughing] that was not a new slash or anybody room. Lets talk about china. We will start with china. I know youve been vocal about china. Many of us here are focus on whats happening politically. Some of the geopolitical issues, some the intelligence that has come out. Weve done a lot of work there. Adams team identifying china we have. Almost all of the 39 and the impact that they had on companies. What do you see as the important steps of the u. S. Public sector in the defenseman dustin base in managing china relationship, especially given a lot of copies are doing bines with cha. First of all let me start by saying the obvious, china is a great nation. And enormously smart people here and yet they pose a level of competition with the United States that weve never really seen. The soviet union was a threat, and etiological threat. It was never really an economic threat the way china is. China has invested in technology at the level frankly the way americans invested in the post sputnik era. My background i was a telecom guy, a wireless guy and became a venture capitalist. One of the ways the call be with work was huawei. Not onl is china kind of running the table with an equipment vendor that we believe poses a national secury the zone of the tech to the standard around why was medication for it was a real. W s evolved dramatically. Back when i was governor i was all to this increased trade, increased educational collaboration with the kind of notion that the more reintegrat the more cnagoing tol world order. I just think with president xi took over in 20 to he made a conscious decision to say, heule growth and personal freedom to maintain the dominance of the communist party. What a 62017 timeframe to make clear that for any company in china, delusions why the Bytedance Tiktok issue, at the end of the the company has to be responsible to the ccp come back to shareholders and customers. Starting in about what 201t ssci is the last highnctionis classified rocha were good brief industry sector by industry sector about the challenges of doing business in china. But we did say beware. 500 the year of the large apartment that by china, china with strategic goal, by Technology Domains will get where they even write in china 2030. Documents would help t dominate and it was interesting to see the evolution. Precovid we got not entirely. I think then the aftermath of covid the aftermath the putins admission of the ukraine, the way treat inchoate and increasing amount of chinese aggressiveness. Companies areaking up. The interesting thing, shawn, every Interest Group or every Industry Group would come and at least take the brief precovid with exception, i s this with some concern because it was related to my old interest, i was a venture capitalist come the private equity would not bee too many large American PrivateEquity Company for making so much money the bytedance, we did want to the test again pose covid the starting to be willing to hear but this is an ongoing education process. It resulted in the case of huawei reified as they are no spending federal dollars to rip and replace while we equipment. It was the generation bween when john cornyn and i decide when you to try to bring the semiconductor back to the country with the chips built that motivates me and the concern i have about Bytedance Tiktok both in terms of data collection. Frankly i tiktok more just the power of the propaganda tool when youre 170 million americans 90 minutes a minutes a day on average tiktok a slight shift in the algorithm can mean, particully who get many young people get almost all of the news from tiktok, a slight shift in the algorithm can mean suddenly youre getting news that taiwan is part of china or putin should win in ukraine. So it has been an evolution. How we deal on the cyber side, china is very good. Make a blant statement that if we need to opposite collaborate with companies with crowdstrike and others, but we also need i thk to be more aggressive at taking down cyber criminals. I think we needed more aggressive in pushing back against influence operations. Within the realm of what we can talk about in this room. This was more visavis russia. We were very aggressive in 2018, United States at taking down some ira■ and other entities in russia. Showing some ways we were not going to sit back and so would a punching bag. Unfortunately, from cybercrime to the united healthce pk, were little bit what i think were not as prepared in march 2012 march 2012 for as we were in our chip 2020 since its hard to say since im a democrat and we often really need to pick up working as you talk about all these different domains where china has traded our Critical Infrastructure. Lets hold the election for a minute because want to talk about that in a moment, but continue with this concept here when your talk about Holding People accountable and how can we push back. I said for a long time that these are not computers attacking computers. Yes, yes. Were going to see that with ai, but with the human beings ■oday that are physically behind programming, identifying the target, they are collecting and analyzing intelligence, a lot of it with ai, but they areved. And what we can do on the private sector site is protect our infrastructure. Weve got to constantly play defense. Theres the offense from the private sector. What is it that the government can do, should be doing with these individuals that are hiding in russia and china and the world where Law Enforcement cant get access to them to take them off the field, therefore these attacks continue indefinitelytopped . What are the levers we can use it we get we can use sanctions. Efforts a few years backith chinese pla officers that at least we put sanctions on and we indicted. But it dont think again we have been nearly aggressive enough. I think there are both, theres formal Law Enforcement prosecuting here in america, even if youre not able to be touched. That puts to lock them in. You lock them in. But alsos■ come to strip some of their networks, our ability to disrupt some of the cybercrime of activities. And i think again, it was almost a week, it was a week plus after the change in unit healthcare hack before we were even on the path towards identify the bad guys pick we have to be again i a go alone. We have to work with you guys and others in the space of identifying and i get i■hink frankly more on offense rather than something on the defensive side. So i know i mean, i think one of the most important things from the government perspecve, as to somebody in the administration earlier today about the need to have more coordination across the entire how to bring together the authorities, the capabilities come the resources of all the different intelligence agencies to have a morey■i a more aggrese approach so that we can do for disruption and identification et cetera . There have been pockets of success but it dont know that its been as coordinated and as effective as it could be with all the resources. There is this constant someba formal decoupling begone could between ari con eds i think it would be a mess, that you would have our friends in the state he dont to have total eruption with china. So we have to be ripped up a thoughtful strategy and it needs to be coordinated. But the flip of the issue is, particularly comes to china, they have not stepped back any of their attempts to penetrate our Critical Infrastructure any of their attempts, theyve not been as all in a misinformation oriss been in past elections bui have that capability and theyre getting much, much better at it. So if you are not kind of cutting back efforts for us to kind im not saying we unilaterally disarm, but we do needling to be a little more aggressive. I oftentimes talked about this risk, thehr cyber, as having similarities with nuclear proliferation. Certainly a nle warhead going off in a major city would be catastrophic to the world. But is there an opportunity to have those types of discussions possibility. One of the things, comfortable expertise in the show and you can crawl but my understanding was in the late 90s whenwas an e level of International Cyber rules that say were going to attack our systems, it was actually the United States that did want to go ahead, go through that when china and russia did because we felt we were far enough ahead than the initial step might not be good for us. I think i mightve been short trumpism over longterm vision, number o the things that surprised me is that were not seeing any of the warp priority right now is that having walk away from ukraine. Would be a miske at histori proportions. But i think one of the things that ive been surprised at anything most people in usg have been apprised that was seen russians use the kind of type of attacks on on a grand scale e expected. Part of that is because ukraines a pretty darn good at defense, part of that is cup is that yours and microsoft end of the help of the cranes but it also think theres been a bit of reluctance from the russians to use their absolute a gain in the ukraine conflict. It still exists. And i do think we should be conscious of that and a little bit again whats more there appears to be more cyber criminals in the chain United Healthcare attack right now. But as you know, in russia in particular, you may by day and r threats america by night, but the level of attack that is basically stopp b hospital systr of weeks, that could be hugely palmitic. It was a year or so ago it took him the irish Healthcare System for aut a week. Of the road around whats on or off limits on what kind of, if■l y i could be lower attribution standards and we would not excuse if you are a daytime foreign government. Having some broader understand that i think would help all the parties involved. I think your right and i think theres going out to be more discussion of rules of the road as you call it but there has to be framework. Some of that is carrot and some of that is done with a stick. Thats the way it is and thats the way human nature is i think. If there is some understanding of what the requirements are and if you cross this line this is what the result is going to be. But defining those red light is clearly important. Lets talk about election because its a lot of peoples minds. We talked about earlier today. Adam■ was talking about it. I have been installed windows in the bureau back in 2008 and it wasnt publicized at the time. Its been publicized now actually president obama has talked about it, but when din center obamas campaign was targeted and senator mccains li chen which was a clue espionage, they were collecting to understand what each of the candidates positions were on anc issues et cetera. Then we look at crowdstrike identified the russian government in the dnc in 2016 wh the dnc. And it was our committee that did the most extensive bipartisan investigation of how much interference bylections. I read four mullions mac volumes. Four out of five. I read four cover to to cover and was incredibly bipartisan, which i appreciated, and opportunity to to speak to folks about that was critically important i think we as nhen whn 2018, we saw saw 2020, we saw 2022. Of the pieces of targeting by beyond russia, china, iran and others, criminal elements. When we look forward to 2024 being a hugen the United States but also broadly, democracies around the world, where do you see what the u. S. Can do in advance of the fica tax torotect u. S. Citizens . I appreciate you asking that. Ive said this in another forum and i know ive made some folks went into administration but, unfortunately, sitting right here i think were less prepared in 2024 that we were the golden time in 2020. Why do i say that . Because in 2020 i knew all the players were. Baraclude identified. I dont dont have that complete personal chefs and couples of the factors that i will not mention. Heres the reason why i think potentially a deeper pile of. Number one, countries have learned our adversaries and, frankly, even some that are closet alis, other countries because evidence we can talk about of wanting to interfere. This is remarkably effective and really cheap. A lot less cost than building a tanker or airplane or an Aircraft Carrier if you want us to throw massive in this information at a nation like ours. Secondly, unfortunately, just due to the kind of political environment we live in, theres a 2024 that dont trust anything in our system. Including our electoral system an the case in 2020 and that is just a fact of life. And application of crazy theories has a lot malked briefy behind the stage, the murphy versus missouri case argued before the supreme c yesterday which i think if the government is not successful, it scares the dickens out of me because this case basicallyaid■n social media platforms and the government should someone be precluded. This is coming on the heels of when markt back and forth an late for a when he said of course, warner, theres the russian activity on facebook. He sensibly said okay, if there is, show me and lets work together. That started a collaborative cooperation between most of the platforms and cis fbi, nsa on sharing of information. That was working very effectively as of 2020, we really from july when this case was put forward till at least midjanuary we had ncommuf the major platforms and the government about election misinformation and disinformation. Thats crazy. Weve shaken up the lawyers enough and that is starting i think again those channels of communication and not only with the social media platforms but frank with the outside researchers come with private sector entities like you guys for misinformation and disinformation and the election tactics, i dont think we are us and finally in the civic was out presentation, i will have him come back and talk to me talk to the ssci staff, you introduce and i a level of speed and scale due what used to be kind of almost misrepresentas that had a russian many believe that didnt use by kenneth english language. Thats all in the past with the ai tools out there. The only thing and a frankly were not going to get in place, legislatively. The closest were going to get on with some of our eu friends to get 20 of the Tech Companies, including twitter and tiktok, to a least agree to a voluntary set of ai protocols for election issues since half the world is going to election. This will not just apply tout we watermarking, it will require an invitation at the watermark is manipulated so that is an area y on that ive got a bill on. It would require a Tech Companies to guided takedown and help educate but done on a voluntary basis with no at least today major chord needing entity, is a public. Finally i think because of some of the figures because of some of the president ial candidates and for some of the figures in the house the top, i mean i never thought the Republican Party would be leading a jihadist against the part of the Republican Party. There was a reluctance from the white house to even name who the top Election Security official because of fear that that individual will become a target of harassment. So we are going, this is very much on my radar screen. We are going to do the committee will do some public hearings on it but i am all in because we got in the temperatures between our country amongst americans about to build fight that out in a fair way. Weeed foreign interference. And that doesnt even take discussion of the other half, which is the election machinery which were still in pretty good shape. But as you see,ta like mine leave some of the voluntary agreements that were put together, i get under President Trump like the eric system, sharing voter rolls you have dead people voting or get moving, people literally leaving. Understand is in certa counties leaving the system existence, the einstein systems at the voting prencotections bes about washington interference. That is the second, making sure the actual mechanics of our Voting System are protected. I feel better about that than to give up misinformation andon. I also feel the infrastructure piece because of the disparate system the way our systems with the thousands of counties and the 50 states, i ca single point of failure and likely not the type of attack from actual impact broadly but the misinformation peace and the sewing of decisiveness and the creation of device of this dash with the belief that our citizens cant be trusted or trusted, Law Enforcement can be trusted, our intel communities. We know the adversary are targeting all sides of the same issue, you know . They1 dont care if youre prosecond prosecond amendment or antisecond amendment. It okay if you are prowhite or proabortion. Didnt care c the care is the amplified a message so that you get into an argument with your neighbor and by sewing that device it is because were not united we are speedy in 2016, intact, there was in houston the was a group that was kind of a texas succession, pretty far right and theres a group of muslimamericans in texas who are trying to they created thro