Interference, but her confidence and defensive strategies in the 2020 election and beyond. Im carrie cordero, the center for a new american security. We have two sessions this morning. This session will run until 10 45 a. M. Eastern, and then i hope youll join us again at 11 30 a. M. Eastern for a session i will be moderating on foreign influence and voter attitudes. Todays conversations are part of a broader collaboration between the center for a new americanee security, the center for ethics and the rule of law, which is a part of pam law, at the end for public center, also of the university of pennsylvania. Before handed over to the moderator, this discussion is being live streamed and you can post your comments and questions on twitter using the hashtag protect democracy 2020. Our team will be monitoring the hashtag and will show your questions with our moderator. Foreign influence in our civic life was top of mine for the countries founders. America may have been caught offguard in 2016 but theres no reason that falling for the same tricks again twice. Were need to understand the influences around us, take collective steps to counter them, and work to strengthen our democracy. Our cnas and appc collaboration is our effort to do just that. I am not going to turn the mic over to the extraordinary professor claire finkelstein, my friend in fact, faculty director for ethics and the rule of law at the university of pennsylvania has Carey Law School who is a leading voice on the intersection of law, ethics and national security. Over to claire who introduce our guests for this session. Thank you so much. Its a pleasure to have this collaboration with cns and appc. There is no more important topic to do that Election Security as we approach the 2020s general election and look back at what is happened in the last four years and contemplate the lesson from the 2016 and the 2018 elections. It is critical that different stakeholders, experts, academics, practitioners come together to think hard about the security of our democracy and about where we need to be moving forward as we approach the election and beyond. I am delighted today to have two of the greatest experts on this topic and friends and colleagues as well. Kathleen jamieson who is at ise director of the annenberg Public Policy and the author of a very important book called cyber war, that dealt with the 2016 elections. Im delighted to have kathleen here. And director James Clapper was the director of the office of the director of National Intelligence from 20012006. Am also pleased to say he is an executive board member on the center of ethics and the rule of law of which i am the faculty director. I would like to jump right in to our conversation, and then going to moderate the conversation with director clapper and professor Kathleen Hall jamieson in an informal conversational manner, inviting them to jump in at any point back, if then we will field your questions. Im going to raise a few topics for discussion and in the first instance let me just pitching this to jim clapper. Jim, the general review of what we know about the 2016 election and the dangers that led up to it are something that you spoken about consistently, written about, discussed widely. But just give us a sense as we approach the topic of Election Securityan in 2020, what are the lessons we need to have learned from the 2016 election, and what should we be look at a particular from drawing fromul those questions for the upcoming general election . Thanks to you and cns and others for hosting this very timely session i Election Security. With respect to 2016 i think start with a premise that the russians have a long history come russians andio soviets befe longish of anything in elections, there is an other peoples. Ce the expectation i think was of course we expected sort of the ambient low some reconnaissance as well as perhaps active intervention. Normally not all that difficult to detect. 2016 though was, they took a tool to the new low and, of course, the capitalized on the technology and notably social media. So they had never experienced the depth, scope and aggressiveness of an attack on our fundamental system as we did in 2016. Multipronged which included a very sophisticated Propaganda Campaign on two principal networks, funded by thea, russin government. In addition toy of course the hacking, well known about that, and the timely dumping of emails. But to me the most disturbing thing which i think we are still unprepared for is the social media assault. Mueller report volume one cites the fact that the russians reached 420 million americans, i think that was the number one facebook alone. The russians exploited our polarization, divisiveness and very well and t had messages for everybody, black lives matter, white supremacists, whatever group there was, the exploited their grievances and helped, i believe, to suppress in certain cases voting. Bearing in mind the election came down to less than 80,000 votes in three key states that russians targeted. In looking back i wish we had been more aggressive about publicizing this. There were contemporaneously reasons for not doing that initially harbored by president obama at the time, was quite reasonable. One concerned about magnifying or amplifying with the russians were doing, and then i think the bigger point president obama was very concerned about the perception, the optic of his putting his hand on the scale in favor of one can against another against the backdrop of the accusations already been madet y then candidate trump that the election would be rigged. Of course now others have gone to school on what the russians did so we have chinese and iranians involved. But the primary threat to me continues to be the russians. The chinese and iranians i think have other ambitions. What concerns me is the problem of the russians who will have gone to school on the revelations that been made public about their activities in 2016. They are going to make every effort they can to hide their tracks, and so theyve are at it again i am convinced, but its going to be harder to detect,o i will stop there. Let me invite kathleen and say in your book cyber war, you try to analyze what the not social Media Campaign could actually have thrown the 2016 election as has been suggested since the victory was quite narrow, that may be the case. Do you agree that can you talk about whether or not, in fact, you think it did . I dont think the social Media Campaign did. What i know in the First Edition was the election was found, that is there engaging in activities consistent with the Trump Campaign sneads. There were time to mobilizee constituencies you need to mobilize like evangelical catholics for example. Theyre trying to demobilize black americans and theyre trying to shift votes where they could to thirdparty candidate jill stein. We knew that from early evidence available there but it on the edition came out, we had a complete block of all the twitter content of a facebook was much less revelatory. What we could tell from that and from the additional materials that it been disclosed by the platforms between First Edition and second edition, second edition just came out in june, we were able analyze the extensive content that was there, that very large multimillion number. Most of which is not direct electoral content. If you look at the amount of exposure that they had they would have had to have reached high levels of susceptible individuals in large numbers to have created a decisive impact. They didntnu have enough reachd and he didnt have enough electorally directed content and socially to do that. They created some of that on the margin. However, their hack released content was to much of effective and thats will be conducted at a clear effect on in the american electoral system because they change the agenda and that change in media agenda was across time for more visible to the american electorate overall than anything on social media. As we know when you send immediate agenda in the direction of disadvantages one candidate because you create tha message and balance against that candidate you increase likelihoodal influence voters wl change. 2016 was unusual in that high number of influence of all voters usually the electorate is pretty locked in by the conventions, wasnt in 2016. We had High Percentage of independence, a High Percentagew of people who didnt like either candidate and coming into the time which hacked content was most visible we had high level of early voting. As a result the likelihood the russian influence was to the hacked content that was released to wikileaks is much higher than a social media influence. Finally there may have been russian disinformation that may have influenced jim comeys decision made public indictment of Hillary Clinton although not charging and some in effect make public to reopen the investigation. That reopen laptop investigate strange immediate agenda again decisive against Hillary Clinton the voting patterns in the last week turned against her decisively. They couldve been a combination of a hacked media use of that and be hacked content. And the comey disclosure. If theres any rule, then the case becomes far more decisive. This represents a levit of the ship you were saying between the First Edition of the second edition of your book based on new information you obtained . The First Edition basically said when you socialnd media activity was based on sound three of the election, the content was persuasive, logical amplifying things are in the american electorate. There was enough to create a message and bows but the First Edition did know was how many people were reached by electoral relevant content. We didnt have enough relevant content. Once we saw all of what was there we didnt see all of what was there before the First Edition was out. We largest on the advertise content. Looking at everything we can, we can know anything about it but there wasnt enough of the intellect orally rather than reaching enough create the impact. The hacked content on the other hand, had incredible clear impact on Meeting Agenda which createing powerful and message in balance against clinton. Thats powerful. With evidence from our surveys that those people who were shifting the votes across time were shifting them consistent with the patterns of media change associate with the hacked content release. In the second and third debates hacked content issues in ways that takes it out of context. Its immediate problem as much as a russian intervention problemm but in the second and third debates the perception Hillary Clinton says one thing and public and another in private both inferences drawn from hacked content as used by debate moderated in the debates. Those people that that that come difference between those who watched the debate and didnt are less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. Thats a clear evidence of impact than anything we can say about the trolls. Jim, let me ask you about the hacking part of this. What did we know when did we know, what kathleen is saying right now, how influential the hacked content was and what it . Dve been done about we didnt know nearly, and we had a month to put together our ica so we didnt have the level detail that you just heard at the time. I wish we had but we didnt. Some of this, frankly, came from the sort of inmate instinctive reluctance to monitor Domestic Social media, and so we didnt have quite the inside. We knew about the hacking and all that but but i dont know t were able towe gauge in the shot time we had with the impact was. In my book i assert, which i wrote, published two years ago, that based on what i saw that i felt sure the russians really make the difference in swinging the election towards donald trump and away from Hillary Clinton. And i just heard some very specific imperial goal evidence that makes that case. But we didnt have the detail or specificity four is ago that looking back we knoww now. I would commend, for example, the first part of the Mueller Report which doesnt get a lot of attention, and the extensive technical detail that the decision was made to publish. We were as intelligence people traditionally are concerned about sources and methods. The mold report when the toothpicks into detail about the technical basis and the evidentiary basis for extended russian interference. So allll these things, this is a good thing, that have come out since the assessment we did which we put together in one month. Jim, could i have one follow up with you, jim and i will come back to you kathleen. The hacking that took place, there were supposedly hacking of the rnc, not just the dnc. But we never saw an email dump from the rnc. What exactly were d think the russians thinking when they hacked the dnc and then released them on to wikileaks, as far s wewe know . I dont know what they were thinking. Im not a mind reader of the russians i assume they felt there was political hay to be made here, since they clearly, and this starts with putin himself had aa very strong animus for both clintons but specifically hillary since he held responsible for attempting a full revolution against him in their elections in 2011. I guess they just made a strategic decision that whatever they could do that wouldnt in any way embarrass her and damage her candidacy, they would do. But i cant tell you what they were actually thinking. The timing i think, kathleen, this is what you are saying, the tiny was a big part of the impact with media amplifying that content and having to assure, ironically, that it had the impact the russians were seeking. I would ask this question of mr. Clapper. On october 7 did the Intelligence Community mean to convey that the russians were behind the hacking of the dnc only and not behind the podesta hacking . Because what happened on octobes Hollywood Tape being released on that day, your Intelligence Report comes out, then, you get the access Hollywood Tape and in the same day the podesta hacked content is done. The question of journalistic standpoint is whether journalists to understand on the intelligence briefing that morning that that briefing in compass back at the podesta content, or was it only focus on the earlier dnc hack . It was only focus on the earlier hack. And so a journalist without necessarily have having able ty dan at the podesta hacked content was russian in origin when it was used in the media cycle to counterbalance the access Hollywood Tape and that story . Well, we didnt factor in all the stuff att the time, you kno, the access Hollywood Tape obviously caught us by surprise. A week or two at least before it was actually released because we did have to haggle over the language again, protecting source putin personally and all of those kinds of things and ran it through the interagency. And just was happenstance that we got all of that done and publicly released that statement on the 7th of october and of course, as i said, the message was emasculated by the access Hollywood Tape. Well, and thats the first clear evidence of the russians changing the media agenda because had you had that announcement by the Intelligence Community and the access Hollywood Tape, remember the second debate is october 9th two days later would have been an antitrump media agenda with examined on television, what do you know about these russians. For practical purposes, the Intelligence Community reports dropped below the first page and out of the media agenda on the sunday news shows and as a result was not seen featured prominently by the media as it began to cover the rest of the hacked content dropped week by week throughout the rest of the election. Thes first clear electoral effective of the russians through Julian Assange is to create an equivalence media, that results in the down playing of the intelligence media report and a parallel between what does donald trump say in private and do in public. And what does Hillary Clinton say in public and in private, stay in private. And you have a counter balancing of the hacked content against the access Hollywood Tape and the Intelligence Community, donald trump could have lost his place at the top of the ticket, but not only the counter balancing which is why its so important to know whether the reporters could reasonably surmise the russians were behind the hacking of the p podesta content was hacked or not and when did they tell the press that. I dont i do not recall specifically the date and time that we realiz realized, we were aware of the pod desta tapes, i dont remember the sequence there. My how were the social media platforms treated not as important as protecting our infrastructure, but extremely important. But the press could not know that the podesta was hacked and you couldnt say all through october and november, russia hacked every time they had the podesta content and why werent you saying to the Intelligence Community why wasnt it russian hacked. Lets go on to what we can anticipate in the next 50 days. We havent seen that kind of hacking, dumping, this time around, and maybe its yet to come. But lets stick, since youve highlighted that ckathleen, with the hacking side of things. Jim, what have we done from what you know, obviously youre not in office anymore, but from public reports or anything else that you know, what have we done to protect ourselve