Cyber and Artificial Intelligence and two days genius, that would be ben buchanan as our go two guy. Ive been the repeater at one of the schools. Im getting it but i have an analog brain and i thank him for his patients. He is a global fellow and he will discuss his latest book right now called the hacker and the state. Spoiler alert, theyve changed the world. How . He says Cyber Operations are now indelibly part of International Relations and the gap between the United States and other countries has narrowed considerably. From north koreas efforts to hack for cash a Million Dollars worth against the bank of bangladesh to be maligned activity for disinformation to the electric blackouts in ukraine, theres plenty to talk about. Hes a marshall scholar and received his phd from Kings College and he knows everything. Even more important for as a former member of congress, that would be me who try to ensure the Technical Intelligence collection tools were not cumbersome were legal and regularly reviewed by experts to prevent abuses for those who come here not doing enough about the subject and not knowing each other and the contribution hes made his chest colossal. A bigger analog are problems that are digital and at the Wilson Center is trying to change that. Here to moderate a conversation with him is courtney of nbc ne news. Correspondent covering National Security and the military and has spent a lot of time reporting on the intelligence into digital interest we are discussing today especially election interference. Did you know there is election interference and it means a lot to us that she would come here and do this and take a little time away from the endless conversation about our ongoing primary election. Courtney, thank you so much and over to you. Enjoy, everybody. Thank you. Hopefully we will all learn a bit buabout but i do have one tg and that is i got an early copy of this, so im one of the few that have the luxury of being able to read the fascinating read. Im lucky to have ben here to talk about it. Can you give us an overview of the pieces of the book . Too often we talk about hacking between agents as if it is identical like nuclear war, something that is often the distance from the cyber of pearl harbor, cyber 9 11. The pieces of the book is that is the wrong way to look at it. In fact between the nations it happens every single day. It isnt an area of activity but it is a daily one and it is part of the way in which its the modern era of statecraft to protect power so what i wanted to do is take the discussion that is very often academic and hypothetical, very theoretical and make it very real and say these are the stories of how they had one another and this is what it means for the International Systems of every chapter in the book is a different way in which they protect power from fiberoptic cables to placing encryption backdoors to hacking the banks to steal cash and blackouts and beyond. So basically you are looking at many people americans across the world seeing Cyber Attacks and Cyber Espionage for casualties, chaos that you are looking at the space between us, it is a gray matter o what happens betwn every single day. We will get into some of the specifics in the fascinating cases you tell in the buck. But how would you characterize what a cyber attack on the nations nation, how did that generally look to a . If you are waiting for a cyber attack in a plane is crashing in the city is burning, you missed the activities that matter the most and that actually happened. And what we do see between the nations is persistent pervasive espionage, the United States, china, russia, all of these nations use the capabilities as tools for espionage. In some circumstances we have seen blackouts caused by Russian Hackers and ukraine we are going to use these to interfere the adversarys election. Very little in false casualties. Usa today usa todays Cyber Attacks are more pervasive and potentially less disruptive than in the past . Its closer to Climate Change and it is to a forest fire. You also explain in th explan enddoublequote of the major reasons the nations hack one another is this endless struggle to dominate, domination over other countries and domination over the world. This is a study of whats happened in the last 20 or so years. If you look at russia as this case go back ten or 15 years they are an actor in contrast for the chinese. They would hide below the radar and what we have seen since then is a russia that has gone much more aggressive as well as which are capable. I mentioned the blackouts in ukraine and everyone here knows about the election interference in 2016 but theres other cases, too. Probably the most destructive cyber attack did Something Like 10 billion in damage around the world and that is the lowest estimate is perpetrated not only are they Getting Better but more aggressive. He. What do you believe russias goal was in that . Wasnt messaging the world but they had enough capability . If it were for the destructive measures they fell short of their role in. It leaves the question what were they trying to do. The first is the system kind of test refining the capability down the line and secon second e system signaled that this is bradshaw saying they ukraine or to the world we have this capability. What is remarkable about the 2016 blackout is the tool they deployed to carry out the attack is automated and more scalable and it seems to. This is now a kid ability in our arsenal we are not afraid to use it. Did that allow the United States or other nations the ability to put in some sort of a preventative measure. It showed how they were going to carry this out. One hopes when we see the hypothetical peter blackouts become real one hopes it is caused to up the defenses and certainly election Grid Security is something that gets a lot of attention in the United States. Its not all doom and gloom we are making progress on the electric security. It involved a large financial implication. Can you tell us a little bit about that case because their t cells in the book that ive never heard about it to an isolated distinction country on earth and one of the ways they aimed to fix thaaim to fix thate regime is to hack other banks and the most fans is that a bangladesh for that country where they aspired to steal upwards of a billion dollars the interact in the International Banking system and initiate transfers from the new york fed and what is a little bit funny the transfers were blocked and the only got 81 million to what i show in about as this is a much Broader Campaign that north korea had with less success. They had crypto currency exchanges and other very valuable crypto currency is and the operation hacked atms all over the world and withdrew the money. So the characteristic of the observations that continue to evolve and nowhere in the pink observations. When you talk about the operation you mean this is something that is state run sanctioned funded. Directed by the government. This is a priority to raise the currency and one way in which they do it. Another thing i was surprised that in that case is you wrote in the operators are risk tolerant. What can they do next. One hypothetical thing that has been raised as if they are comfortable deleting the transaction while interacting with the integrity of the Financial System to get cash, would they be comfortable deleting or manipulating the transaction law and the integrity of the Financial System in order to do damage. Damage. Any banker will tell you that these transaction records are at the core of our modern Financial System and at this point it is a hypotheticahypothetical worry ts that north korea might come back to the hacking not for the purpose of the regime but for the purpose to push back against the west. You also talked extensively about Cyber Espionage and there was one specific case again i found fascinating so illustrative of the cat and mouse game that exists in Cyber Espionage and it was a kid was a chinese group. Into the essentially in the early two thousands. Can you tell us how it started in a vault overtime fax it is a broad set of operations being the code name for this. What was striking about the candor is the reach that they were striking many targets around the United States. They have the Broad Network that was trying out these operations and the Internet Company that was selling the chinese there service so they could look at the billing records to confirm who was behind these activities and they got advanced information on the chinese operations to come and they use this to defend against the attacks and the chinese showed up and it shows the cat and mouse game. All of this was out of the public view and secret. There was a stretch of how many years between the time they were able to counterspy and how many years its unfolded for years. Its a much Broader Campaign so this is one in which the United States did very well and appears to have stopped the chinese activity but there were many others in which the activity went uninhabited. They gained the plans for the warplane and the chinese hackers pulled off reams of information about this claim. The information is so expensive they cant transport even digitally back to china so they just make a list of the names. There are thousands of pages and they take the names and say. To give the extensive reach. One thing i also found that t interesting in the example is the points the chinese used. Can you explain how that worked and how they were able to intercede or intervene. What is so fascinating about these operations is that its all cat and mouse. Its all about spy versus spy and one way in which they are carrying out his big attack computers an and the thirdparty countries and then they would hack the United States from those computers. Then they went upstream and made their way to the chinese networks. Its not just the chinese to do this. Its when they are carrying out the Cyber Espionage and the russians had an extensive thing they were doing for a period of time with satellite communicationcommunications ando africa because they thought western intelligence agencies might be looking so it is a constant game of trying to hide your hand to give more freedom of operation. Another thing that i found fascinating is not only is this an example of the offensive role and it paid off in the end. If you would indulge me for a second they were sloppy at times demonstrating the lack of discipline and Operational Security and they sometimes even walled in on their personal email accounts and check their stock portfolios and watched pornography. There are two reasons why someone would be sloppy in this business. The first is everyone has a boss and a budget. They want them to hit more targethave moretargets faster ae going to take shortcuts. The second is they get bored and lazy and the odds are exceptionally low. That shows the human side of the business. The chinese were also checking facebook. You also focus quite a bit on the shadow brokers. Tell us a little bit about that and what youve learned. The shadow brokers are probably the single biggest mystery in the world of Cyber Operations and every author has the one story that is as well. The shadow brokers are mine. I got pieces of the story, its a fascinating story but we dont know all the details. What we do know is at some point beginning in august of 2016, the nsa tools, incredibly powerful hacking tools started appearing and one of them are so powerful that they operated and told the Washington Post was like fishing with dynamite. We dont know where this came from and it came from the Mysterious Group on twitter and other platforms called the shadow brokers and it proceeded from about 11 months or so and continually posting and burning these tools and then stopped. There are theories about who did it and why. Many people guess that it was russian intelligence but this was the way of taking air rose and handing it to others but what is remarkable about this case that led to devastating Cyber Attacks. To attack the next year, won byn the North Koreans and one by the russians used with other capabilities. And one of these attacks was the most destructive fire attack in historcyber attack inhistory wif damage. And it seems to have its root at least at some level in an operation that even now to this day three or four years later we cannot condemn. We dont know who did it despite it being one of the week leaks. Was this just nothing more than a criminal enterprise . The shadow brokers talk all the time about how. One theory of the case is a former insider or contractor who decided that this is something they would do to try to get money and disappear. Its if the masquerade and an intelligence operation. Its remarkable that we still dont know. It opens up another interesting idea when it comes to hacking and Cyber Espionage. It cost 100 million from 2015 to 2019 but it produced only two unique leads and its based off of the report whether this was an inefficient use of money come ,significant amount of taxpayer dollars but we have quite a few congressional staffers. Is there enough oversight of the u. S. Government Cyber Espionage. For the programs even that was hard to oversee and that was entirely secret for long period of time so the challenge in overseeing the program is often just an understanding and the world of Cyber Operations is a tricky business. Whats significant in one place we should be asking questions and congress should be asking more questions is what happens with the change in the strategy that we have seen in the last couple of years. For the military purposes its been clear the last few years that it wants to be more aggressive they want to take the fight to the adversary but to keep the adversary from doing what they want to do and the question the scholars raised is that going to lead to escalation and these are all questions that were hard to answer in public but that the congress should be asking in classified settings where its appropriate to ask and answer them. You are someone that is provided with governance to members on the hill. Do you think at this point it is adequate or theres enough attention . Find someone that always wants more attention and informed oversight. Do you think it is a standard rule of practice that exists specifically with hacking that needs to be adhered to. They would agree to some sort of standard and have norms and other categories of warfare in the way we have seen technologies emerge in the past and try to counteract them. Im very skeptical of that and i think that this is an opportunity that serves the interest of al all nations are t preceded intereswerethat precedl nations to compete in cyberspa cyberspace. Those that outlined like the un have been very high level in a very general and i dont think they are constraining a public safety. You have some of the nations that conduct the most also on the west and iran, north korea, china and russia that dont seem to adhere to any kind of Ethical Practices were norms. Because of that or they Getting Better, have they surpassed the United States and their capabilities . The United States has the nicest rocks but we still live in a glassy house so when it comes to the intricate beautiful cyber offense the capabilities are truly extraordinary. I talk about the extraordinary intricate operation against the Iranian Nuclear program, but just because we can do that doesnt mean that we should defend very well. We have the adversaries that have not been shy at all probably a better example of that know better than the recent indictment from the department of justice when they basically because they could probably almost everyone here. They are not getting government protection. They are not defending chinese adequately but it is information about Many Americans into the chinese are happy to say we will take that and that is the glasshouse helme how much of th. At what point do these attacks talking about something more of the gray areas are not destructive or mass chaos in the streets at what point do these attacks begin actual cyber war. Whatever we thought the point was because pushing it back. The russians carry out an Espionage Campaign called moonlight maze against Unclassified Networks in the United States, Unclassified Networks. They didnt go to wa war but thy got ready for pushback it must be something along the billion dollars of damage. Its at least closer to the peace side and one of the biggest policy questions is where is the line and what is the cost we are going to bear and thus far in the administration on both parties theyve been willing to say whats with this competition play out and keep this short of war. Is this something they need to try to pr