Speaker. We are very fortunate in the current climate, in which all of this is happening, that we have perspectives from the Intelligence Community and from the department of defense. So it is a privilege and an honor to welcome to our to welcome our next two speakers who will do a talk with different points of view. Our next speaker is mad lynn madeleine. Principal director for several policy for the office of the secretary of defense. Without further ado, lets get the party started. [applause] i will apologize, a heads up that our colleague will go first, but i am happy is that ok . If that is all right. Ok, so it is not the program, but [laughter] my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce david porter, assistant section chief with the Foreign Influence Task , counterintelligence division. He is joining us today from fbis headquarters. Thank you. [applause] sorry about that. Good morning, everybody. I am david porter, i served as the assistant section chief of the f. B. I. s Foreign Influence Task force. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to represent the men and women of the f. B. I. , men and women who are working tirelessly on behalf of the American People to protect the integrity of our democracy, to include the 2020 elections. 10 minutes is not a lot of time,. O im going to get right to it what i want to do this morning is streaked to three different things. First i want to define what we in this space refer to as the malign foreign influence threat. Secondly, i want to articulate some of those objectives and p p tactics, techniques and procedures pertaining to the threat, and lastly, talk about what we do in this space and how we mitigate this threat. First, to defining the malign force influence threat. I think whats important to do is to draw a distinction between normal foreign influence activity and maligned foreign influence activity. So the former would be normal diplomatic activity carried out every country, usually conducted through diplomatic channels. The latter, maligned for the malign foreign influence activity, it is actions by a foreign power to influence u. S. Policy, distort Political Sentiment and Public Discourse undermine confidence in the , democratic processes and values and this is a fun for us because it is the focus of our investigative efforts at the bureau and with fitf. It is the subversive, undeclared criminal or coercive nature of these activities that serves the basis for our investigative interests. Our adversaries frequently use a whole of government approach year. The vectors, including the official awkwardfacing component of a Foreign Government intelligence , services, cyber actors, state businesses close to government officials, and social media actors. There is a Broad Spectrum of foreign influence activity. When a country moves from normal and official diplomatic thisement to conduct in subversive undeclared criminal or coercive conduct, that is when we see the malign foreign influence activity. It can show itself through economic coercion, bribery, honeypots, covert placement of media reports social media , exploitation, blackmail, to name a few. So to move on to the second point, objectives. Object objectives in ttps. There are two main objectives for foreign malign influence lets say china, use fwluns activities driven by priorities ssociated with their National Development or stability. For example, chinas primary to strengthen and perpetuate the rule of the communist party. Ensure also seeks to sustainable economic development, protect against statesed threats to its sovereignty, territory integrity stability of its system. Al second objective and one well talk more about is to dissession and muddy discorporation. We revolver to something called confrontation in this space. Operations seek to weaken an adversary from within. Countries like russia use confrontation to arget the perceptions of their adversarys population. In tz odds erode confidence and ratic values institutions to encourage negative sentiment and apathy and mistrust of government. Election interference is one of vectors in this and institutions space. Its designed to degrade very ence and the foundation of our Democratic Leaders ability to govern. Weaken theesigned to adversary from within by existing political and social issues and driving wedges into those fracture lines. O amplify them, through online manipulation and disinformation, n an effort to create an environment of permanent unrest conflict. Its also designed to undernine ublics confidence and the credibility of an established free and independent news media, create an environment of public mistrust in the narrative traditional news organizations. Then nvironment is exploited to push consumers oward alternative social news sources where, of course, its uch easier to introduce false narratives. Its also designed to sew doubt nd confusion about true narratives by exploiting the media landscape to introduce story lines, undermine credible sources of saturate the D Information space one reliable narratives. To be clear, the goal here is to to think r ability critically and to separate truth from falsehoods. Primary objective is not to create a particular version of but rather to cloud the truth and erode our ability it. Ind creating a sentiment that no be ative or news source can trusted at all. S in this space wont necessarily come as a surprise to you but were into thebout intrusion u. S. Government networks and political organizations. Operations k relating to compromising information, cyberattacks against our voting infrastructure. U. S. Persons or elected officials by social edia disinformation, suppression of voter turnout by spreading misinformation polling and voting. Manipulation of media through stories, ion of false and news reporting, and then subsequent amplification of to shape public discours discourse. Sorry about that. Here are a few overarching similarities regarding the manner in which our two principle adversaries, china and these two cute objectives. Of countries use a whole government approach. They use sophisticated and aggressive efforts to advance their national priorities. However, of government there are clear differences in the space as well. And russia vary in extent of their aggressiveness and risk tolerance. We see russia is willing to onduct more brazen and disruptive influence operations because of how it perceives its with the west. N some ways, however, china contains its maligned foreign influence operations to its developing a s of modern National Economy and building its geopolitical be respected as an equal, if not superior rival in eyes to that of the United States. In this space,y, ussia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart while it seems china, on the other hand, would rather manage our gradual economic decline over the course of generations. Rt in this space . O the director established the fitf for the Foreign Influence Task force in october 2017. To bring together the f. B. I. S National Security and raditional criminal investigative expertise under one umbrella. Counteract and maligned foreign influence perations targeting Democratic Institutions and values. At the time, we were primarily maligned the Russian Foreign influence operations. Expanded since then to address other global adversaries. Iran, and north korea. Bears some e resemblance to the f. B. I. s oint Terrorism Task force, which exists at f. B. I. Headquarters in very large of ion but also in all 56 our field offices. In this work side with details with other agencies, our infrastructure is little different. Instead of xwising from across specialists, ing professional staff, cyber, counterterrorism, and divisions, our multidivision task force has the mandate to bridge all f. B. I. Programs and equities threat. T this in addition to investigative intelligence broad sharing with our state and local fitf also works hard to build strong artnerships with the private sectors and academia. Fitf team meets regularly with social and media tech companies. F. B. I. Ropriate the provides actionable intelligence to social Media Companies to abuse of their foreign actors. Working in this area one thing thats very important to us ofticularly on the cyberside things is that attribution is key. We do not run around chasing addition to having a host of First Amendment issues, that approach would be and ineffective. On what the s actors say. Concentrating me on who they are. Attribution is key. Were able to identify and track foreign actors as they use their nd infrastructure and mature their online presence, fitf works with Media Companies to lluminate and disrupt our adversaries activities. Including at times through by the taken entirely companies themselves, to thattarily remove accounts violate their terms of service agreements. Out of time so ill just say that our adversaries engaged to influence Public Opinion and our electoral process. It is our responsibility to take evolve ourseriously, methods of disruption, and aintain our fierce determination and focus. Thank you for giving me the time to speak to you today. [applause] moderator ive already you. Oduced thank you so much. Good morning. Name is madeleine and im the principle director of the in the officefice of the secretary of defense. Were responsible for developing todance and providing advice the secretary of defense about what the department of defense and be capable of in cyberspace. Im here to speak to our federal government partners and the encountering foreign influence in supporting elections infrastructure as well as state and local partners. Viewpoint, we frequently talk about supported and supporting. N the context of defending elections, the department of defense is principally in a supporting role and that was why important for me, for you colleague from the f. B. I. First. Want to jump right in. Its been concluded for the past offset our military superiority, our adversaries are increasingly using actions below force to undermine our National Security and national interests. True than this more through cyberspace where we see coordinated, ing long term campaigns of malicious harm the United States, our allies and partners, undermine international order. Their objective is within is and in the ut war, end of conflict, to leverage heir access and capabilities prior to hostilities in order to achieve strategic advantage. Russia, iran and north korea are using and will our sicyber adversary is also seeking to influence our citizens and to Democratic Institutions in order to achieve that strategic advantage that allow them to win for their national interests. Intelligence community assesses that they are capable of and may seek to interfere in process. G the infrastructure that we use r to covertly influence our citizens in order to achieve an outcome. Department of defense has now determined, at the president s direction that elections in end an Enduring Mission but were art of a broader whole of government effort. An unprecedented level of oordination, and in that way the department of defense is playing a complementary and role to our domestic partners. To his way, were looking leverage our specific comparative advantage and to defend forward. Just as the department of defense projects power in the on land, sea ns and air, where we seek to adversarys r activities, to shape the environment and to address threats before they reach the homeland. Were seeking to do the same things in and through cyberspace in support of our election. Building on our activities in 2018 in defense of the 2018 election, the department of defense is conducting in lementary activities support of civilian led efforts defending forward in order to first e insights, generate insights about adversary intentions and activities in. This way, were collecting and analyzing data about foreign threats. This can take any number of methodologies. T includes things like identifying malware and networks, culvert influence to better and understand whats happening states. Of the united partners, with throughout the global environment. Second, were enabling our better partners to defend election. This includes sharing those insights that weve generated outside the United States with our domestic partners to enable their Network Defense activities. Example would be in 2018 we conducted what we call hunt operations but what is, in fact, partnered Network Defense operations with our allies and partners to gain insight about how our using their re malicious activities in other countries that can, in turn, be to better defend our own networks. When nally, thirdly, appropriate and authorized, the department of defense will to uct military operations degrade, disrupt, or defeat or culvert rference influence. This can take any number of forms but it includes operations that would seek to put the sand in the gears of our adversaries y attempting to accomplish their outcups. We can do this, for instance, malware xposing their or their Network Threats indicators. Date, u. S. Cybercommand has publicly exposed eight different are les of how adversaries seeking to conduct malicious cyberactivity against the united enhances our overall defense. We can also take other operations that seek to slow down. The department of defenses efforts to defend forward and to spearheadedions are by u. S. Cybercommand and the National Security agency. This enables us to combine our nique comparative advantage, expertise, capabilities and capacity. Their efforts are also the dod withacross india pacificu. S. Command, National Guard bureau, all prepared and ready to our dhs, f. B. I. , and appropriate state and local authorities. Thank you. Moderator thank you, madeleine, and thank you, david. Just listening to what we heard, it was really, i want to highlight a couple of things i say. D david that, you know this idea of mistrust of the government, and actors, threat malicious actors attempting to o this, pushing consumers sources,lternative news soeking doubt and confusion narrative. True how does that happen . Ill step back for a minute and tep away from elections and talk about data and the world we in. E we are surrounded by sensors everywhere. Everything we do, were carrying around. They are embedded with sensors. We have fit bits. Every environment in which we exist has sensors. Say, maurice dy talked about, hey, alexa, what are the news results . Employee sensors. We have health and fitness automobile sensors, smartphone sensors, they are all connected to satellites so were physically tracked. So much data is being aggregated us. T i just want to give you an example, a good perspective for audience. This is from an actual Patent Application from walmart for data, via sensors on a walmart shopping cart handle sensors would give heart rate, temperature, force against the handle, cart speed in your walmart shopping cart. Weisenberg anks to for alerting me to this. Intersects how this we know we have sensors that are us. Rding everybody has their fit bits on, their apple phones. How these sensors are interacting with all of our aps and that were downloading we have numerous companies, private companies, buying, selling, aggregating data and its intimate data. Im not just talking about who is in this room right now, which being aggregated, but really, can be used to manipulate our choices. Clouding mistrust. Foreign actors. Part of that is ourselves and part of that is all the content allows us to be so easily manipulated. Just a screen shot here of facebook. On facebook makes it easy to find the right people, capture their attention and get results. Do that on any budget. How does that happen . Is it effective . Because its use and sale of for microtargeting ads. E understand microtargeting advertising. Its an ad just tailored for you. The Technology Makes it cost ffective enough that literally one person in this room could receive only that version of an ad. This is right ff of facebook and facebook isnt alone here. They just happen to be always such a prominent user of your data, so audience insights, your audience like never isnt alone before. Aggregate information. Facebook is collecting information from all of our aps. An example is, some women to track use aps their cycles. Womens aps track cycles without letting them know. And so what does that matter . That be used politically and why do i have a picture up here were talking about periods . That information is shared with facebook, and so what does that mean . Where does that take us . Well, lets think about something weve heard about in or at least women have heard about and are aware of, on feminine hygiene. So lets think about microtargeting for a minute. In a particular period or time in your cycle, you might more strongly about seeing which states tax your period. Ou might be really much more susceptible to content like this, and this content can come ability to the manipulate you based upon very intimate details about what oure doing, what youre experiencing, where you are, and so again, were not just talking contacts are,your very intimate information. So we see politicians take right . Ge of this, we have one representative wantedg out about how he to be charged by the house administrators because he wanted feminine hygiene items for his staffers and people visiting his office. Taking political, you know, use of this as an advertisement. Yes, thats absurd. Thats not considered a necessity for women. But it raises this question. When youre getting messaging, real . S so we heard from david porter selling of now, the mistrust, and part of that is we question of how do determine whats real . We have so much information media, t us on social right . Our news feeds. Its even worse on your mobile phone. Shows youre going to scroll through your mobile feed much more quickly. Question of whats real, the techn