One of them because and in my script but im going to call her out is megan came some of you may not know her but she runs a Science Technology and Innovation Program and is responsible for the schools we have on friday to teach the staff about cyber and Artificial Intelligence and todays genius would be ben buchanan is our go to guy when we teach those and been trying to teach me for a while. I think that ive been a repeater at all times. I am getting i getting is that n analog brain and i thank them for his patience. He is a global fellow and he will discuss his latest books right now called the hacker and the state. Spoiler alert, theyve changed the world. He says of cyber obligation thee now indelibly part of the operations and the gap between the United States and other countries has narrowednd abconsiderably. To hack a Million Dollars worth against the bank to the maligned activities from the disinformation to electric in ukraine. As a former member of congress, that would be me, who tried to ensure our Technical Intelligence collection tools were legal and regularly reviewed by experts to prevent abuses. I salute him for the kind of teaching that he is doing to office staffers. The contribution that he has madeine is colossal. My theory problems are digital and the Wilson Center is trying to change that. Here to moderate a conversation is Courtney Kube of nbc news. A correspondent covering National Security and the military and spend a lot of time reporting on the intelligence into digital issues we are discussing today especially interference. It means a lot that she would come here to talk about the ongoing primary election. Thank you so much. I have one thing that involves the rest of you and that is i got an early copy and im one of the few that have the luxury of being able to read and we are lucky to have him here t to tell us a little bit more about it. Since most people in the room havent had the chance to breed can you give an overview of the thesis of the book . Is from the blue, cyber 9 11 and the thesis is the wrong way to look b at it. It is daily and part of the way in which the nations compete and project power so what i want to do is take the discussion that is very academic and medical theoreticalde and say these are the stories of combination pack one another and this is what it means for the International Intl systems of every chapter is a different way that they protect power in cyberspace from the fiberoptic cables to encryption to hacking banks iner cash and blackouts and beyond and i want to tell the story of what happensha every day. Mass casualties, chaos. You are looking at the space in between. We will get into some of the specific cases but how would you characterize how did that generally with today . If you are waiting with planes crashing into cities 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 United States, china, russia. We see the blackouts caused and what i call the destabilization being the primary example of the nation saying we are going to use these tools to interfere in the adversaries and these are the three sort of categories of activity espionage, attack and almost everything we see fit into one of those buckets and very little of it involves casualties. Usyou would say they are more pervasive and less restrictive than in the past. Guest they are insidious harm that happens and it is closer to the Climate Change than it is to a forest fire. He also explaineyou also expe book one of the major reasons is sort of an endless struggle to dominate, for domination over other countries and potentially even over the world. Do you still believe that is true and has just become harder to prevent than it was in the past . Venetians are getting more aggressive so this is the study of whats has happened between te nations and let me see if they are Getting Better and if we look at russia you can go back ten or 15 years and they were in contrast russia was the one that would be methodical and slow and hide behind the radar and what we have seen since the then as theyve gotten much more aggressive and capable. Capable. I mentioned the blackout in ukraine andve Everybody Knows about the interference but theres other cases, too. The attack probably the most destructive cyber attack in history Something Like 10 million in damage around the world and that is the lowend estimate also perpetrated by russia is so not only are they Getting Better but they are also more aggressive. You mentioned ukraine in 2015 and 2 2016. What do you believe after this research what do you believe the goal was and was it for the destructive measures . The firstever publicly known caused by the cyber attack is it avpears they did less damage than they could have and this leaves the question what were they trying to do if it wasnt an allout attack what are they trying to do and there are two possibilities. We are finding the capabilities thacapabilitiesfor the usecapabd second is this the kind of signal but this is shown saying to ukraine or to the world we have this capability. R the thing that you have long feared a and what is remarkable rlespecially about the 2016 blackout is it was automated and more scalable and seems it could workan against the american powr systems as well with modifications and that maybe a suggestion this is now a capability in the arsenal we are not afraid to use it. Did not allow the United States or others the ability to put in some sort of a preventative measure so that it couldnt happen in the u. S. . It certainly showed some of how they were going to carry this out, could be different coa different capability certainly. Could the United States learn from it, also certainly possible. One hopes that when you see a hypothetical fear certainly its something that gets a lot of attention in the United States. It isnt perfect but its not all doom and gloom. Another thing that gets a lot of attention, the congresswoman mentioned bank packing. Can you tell us about that case because there are details i neverr heard about. It is a remarkable ambition which is this is a country that is the most isolated sanctioned country on earth and one of the ways is to hack other banks. To initiate the transfer is from the new york fed to those North Koreans controlled and what is a little bit funny about this is that made some typos so some of the transfers are blocked and they got 81 million instead of the almost 1 billion. I thought it might be the most expensive type of industry the North Koreans made. What is significant about the case is that it showed the ambition of north korea and sometimes the discussion stops there. I show in the book as it is a much Broader Campaign often with less success with a great deal of success with other very valuable crypto currency they also hacked atms all over the world and withdrew the money in a decentralized way silly characteristic of these operations as they continue to evolve and nowhere is that more true than in these operations. Host debate could you mean this is something that is a state sanctioned. The priority is one way they do it. This opens up the next question if they are risk tolerant today of a regime that doesnt seem to care about the International Norms and all what do you think they could do next . This is only a question and i dont want to say that its real but one hypotheticals thing that has been raised if they are comfortable deleting the transaction logs into the integrity of theeg Financial System to get cash, would they be comfortable manipulating the transaction and interfering in the integrity of the Financial System to do damage and i think anything is how you these transaction records are at the core of the modern Financial System and at this point it is a hypothetical that one worry is they might come back not for the purpose of funding the regime but for the purpose of trying to punch back against the west in some kind of crisis. You also talk about Cyber Espionage and there was one specific case i foundia fascinating can you tell us a little bit about how it started in evolve over time. Being the codename for this what was striking is there were many targets against the establishment. They were using spearfishing to get access to the computers of american officials and calling the information back and what is striking is that the nsa did. They said we have to stop this into the essentially figured out from which the chinese operatives that were part of the Peoples Liberation army. The hack to those computers and the network and develop network that was carrying out these operations and the Internet Company that was selling the Internet Service to look at the record and confirm who was behind these activities and they got advanced information in the obligations to come. Its the cat and mouse that happens. Its a daily competition. All of this was out of the public view. There was a stretch of how many years between the time the u. S. Was able to sort of count counter. Its worth saying this was much debate co one battle in april a campaign so this is one case in which the United States did very well and appears to have stopped the activity but there are any others that were uninhabited. Getting the plans for the warplane which was a cuttingedge plane being built in the u. S. And the hackers pulled out reams of information aboutt this plane. The information is so extensive they cant transport it even digitally back to china so they make the lists of the names and they go to thousands of pages and they take the names of the file fro from these experts are missing out of all of these files wfiles we could pull backe could read which ones are important and that gives a sense of theiv extensive reach of the espionage efforts. One thing i also found interesting in the example is these planes can you explain how that works and how the nsa was able to intervene . What is fascinating is its old cat and mouse and spy versus spy deception and one way they work to reading ouwere agreeingn is that they would hack the thirdparty countries and in the United States from those computers and what they had to do they had no idea that it was happening. Every nation takes precaution when its carrying out the Cyber Espionage and its allies as well. The russians had a thing that they were doing for a period of time where they would pack the communications and then they moved out of africa because they thought that it might not be looking. Western intelligence agencies were looking so it is a constant game of trying to hide your hand eo you get more freedom of observations. Another thing i found very fascinating not only was this an example of the nsa taking in offensive role and it paid off in the end. It was successful. And if you could indulge me for just a second and is short section when he describes the piecthepieces they were sloppy s demonstrating discipline and operational security. And they sometimes even involved in to check their stock portfolios. There are reasons that some of them are sloppy in this business. First is everyone has a boss and a budget. You can imagine that they want them to get more targets faster and they are going to be sloppy and take shortcuts. Second, they get bored and lazy and they decide the odds are exceptionally low. Why not see how the market is doing or other activities. And that sort of shows the human side of the business that we think of the person with a hoodie behind the keyboard they are alsbutthey are also checkinr facebook profiles. You focus quite a bit on the shadow brokers. Tell us about that and what you learned. Its probably the single biggest mystery in the world of cyber obligations and i thinknk every author has their onestory onestory. The shadow brokers are mine. I got pieces of a stor the stort we dont know all the details. What we do know is that some point in 2016 beginning in august of 2016 these incredibly powerful hacking tools started appearing and one was so powerful that the operator told the Washington Post that was like fishing with dynamite. And we dont know where it came from. It just came from a Mysterious Group and other platforms. It proceeded for about 11 months or so and continually posting into burning these tools and then it stopped and their theories about who did it and why they did it. Many people guessed that it was russian intelligence. It was a way of taking arrows held and handing itf to others. But what is remarkable about the case ithecases that led to devag cyber attacks. When the North Koreans, one by thee russian along with other capabilities and one was the most descriptive insider history withiv 10 billion of damage and it seems to have its roots even now to this day we dont know twho did it. Was this nothing more than a criminal enterprise . If they got paid enough money they would stop. One theory of the case as a former insider or contractor who decided this iss something they would do to try to get money and then disappear, and other theory of the case the masquerading of the criminal element is actually an intelligence operation. It is remarkable that we still dont know. It opens up another interesting idea when it comes to Cyber Espionage. It produced unique leads and it is based off of the ig report to question whether this was an efficient use of money and taxpayer dollars but i think we have quite a few congressional staffers to biscuits to the larger issue of the policy. And oversight of this. Is there enough oversight of u. S. Government Cyber Espionage and hacking . This is an activity that is complex. The world of cyber obligations as a particularly tricky business. Whats significant Cyber Command and military arm carries out american hacking operations also from integrating perspective keeping the adversary from doing whatsp they want to do and the question disc offers raises is that going to lead to escalation, is it going to work. These are hard to answer in publipublic that they are quests congress should be asking in the classified settings where it is more appropriate to ask and answer them. In your experience, and you do provide a lot of guidance to members, do you think that oversight at t this point is adequate and dors you think that theres enough attention and so much going on i always want attention and oversight. I think it is a question not just of the amount of oversight but how it can be complex given how the programs are and how complex some of the jurisdiction is and what makes intelligence activity overseen by the committee versus the armed service. We actually worked that out with withthe one thing that wask. Tht discussion of who oversees what. Does there need to be some sort of a standard rule of ethical practiceds that exists n specifically with hacking that needs to be adhered to . The broad question that is more pessimistic as can we get other nations to agree and have norms that way we have another 2 degrees of warfare and the way we have seen technologies emerge in the past and then we build up in arms tthe norms to try to coe them. I am skeptical of them and i think this is an opportunity where it serves the interests of all nations or the perceived to compete in cyberspace and the norms that have been outlined before by the un have been very high level in a very general. And i dont think they are constraining a part of the behavior. You have some of the nations that do the most destructive attacks on the u. S. And the west from iran to north korea, china, russia they dont seem to adhere oto the practices or norms. I think that is fair, yes. Because of that or they Getting Better and have they surpassed the United States in their capabilities . This is a p phrase you hear a lot the United States has the nicest rocks the place to live in a glossy house, so when it comes to intricate i dont use the word often, beautiful offense american capabilities are truly extraordinary. Talking about extraordinary intricate operations against the Iranian Nuclear program but that doesnt mean we can defend very well and we have a long vulnerability our adversaries havent been shybe in all. No better example than the recent indictment from the department of justice where they could hack the personal information of 140 million americans. This is a casefa in which most dont know the company exists. They are clearly not defending adequately but its reams of information about Many American adults into the chinese are more than happy to say we will just take that and that is the glasshouse element of this. I know this is more of a military side if we are talking of something inre one of the gry area at what point is the beginning of an actual cyber w war . Whatever we thought the point was we kept pushing attacks in 1999 the russian russians carri. And Espionage Campaign called9 moonlight maze Unclassified Networks and the deputy secretary of defense at the time came to congress with a classified briefing and said we are in the middle of a cyber war. This is what a cyber war was at the time and they really spun up the apparatus to figure out how toe respond. They didnt go to war but they got ready to push back. Now that seems almost passe. All along