Our first speaker that we have is madeleine, are you over there . Im going to let you stand up here at the mic if thats good four. Shes the principal director for cyber policy for the office of the secretary of defense. Without further ado lets get the party started. [ applause ] so ill apologize, we actually had thought our colleague from the fbi would go first, but im happy is that okay . If thats all right. Okay. Its not the program, but so it is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce david kay porter who is the assistant section chief with the Foreign Influence Task force, counterintelligence division, joining us from fbis headquarters. Thank you. [ applause ] sorry about that. So good morning, everybody. My name is david porter. As anne said, i serve as the assistant section chief of the fbis Foreign Influence Task force. Or fitf as we are more broadly referred to within the Intelligence Community. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to represent the men and women of the fbi. 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. Ten minutes is not a lot of time. Im going to get right to it. What i want to do this morning with my time with you is to speak to three different things. First, i want to define what we in this space refer to as the malign foreign influence threat. Secondly, i need to articulate some of those objectives and ttps or tactics, techniques, and procedures, pertaining to the threat. Lastly ill describe a little bit about what we do in this space and how we mitigate this threat. First, to defining the malign foreign influence threat, i think whats important to do here is draw a distinction between normal foreign influence activity and malign foreign influence activity. So the former would be, you know, normal diplomatic activity carried out by every country, usually conducted through diplomatic channels. The latter, though, malign foreign influence activity, its operations are actions by a foreign power to influence u. S. Policy, distort Political Sentiment and public discourse, undermine confidence in democratic processes and values, and this is important for us because this is the focus of our investigative efforts at the bureau and with ftif, it is the subversive, undeclared, criminal, or coercive nature of these activities that serve as the basis to have our investigative interest. Our adversaries frequently use a whole of government approach here. The vectors, including the official, outwardfacing component of a foreign government, intelligence services, cyber actors, staterun media, 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 engagement to conduct in this subversive, undeclared, criminal or coercive conduct, that is when we see the malign foreign influence activity. It can show itself through economic coercion, bribery, honey pots, covert media reports, social media exploitation, blackmail, to name a few. So to move on to the second point, objectives and ttps. There are two main objectives for malign foreign influence actors. The first is to push foreign goals and policies at the expense of the United States. Some countries, lets say china, use influence activities driven by priorities associated with their National Development or stability. For example, chinas primary objective is to strengthen and perpetuate the rule of the Chinese Communist party. Beijing also seeks to ensure sustainable economic development, protect against perceived threats to its states sovereignty, territorial integrity, and maintain the stability of its political system. Second objective, and one that well talk a little bit more about, is create division and muddy public discourse. We refer to something called information confrontation in this space. These operations seek to weaken an adversary from within. Countries like russia use information confrontation to target the perceptions of their adversarys population. These methods erode confidence in Democratic Values and institutions, to encourage negative sentiment, apathy and mistrust of government. Election interference is one of the vectors in this space. Its designed to degrade confidence in the very foundation of our democratic system, in our leaders ability to govern. Its also designed to weaken the adversary from within by identifying existing dissonant political and social issues and driving wedges into those fracture lines, and amplify them through online disinformation in an effort to create an environment of permanent cacophony, unrest, and conflict. Its also designed to undermine the publics confidence in the credibility of an established free and Independent News Media to create an environment of public mistrust in the narrative reported by traditional news organizations. This environment is then exploited to push consumers toward alternative news sources on social media where of course it is much easier to introduce false narratives. Its also designed to sow doubt and confusion about true narratives, by exploiting the media landscape to introduce conflicting storylines, undermine credible sources of information and saturate the Information Space with unreliable narratives. To be clear, the goal here is to exhaust our ability to think critically and to separate truth from falsehoods. The primary objective is not to create a particular version of the truth but rather to cloud the truth and erode our ability to find it, creating a sentiment that no narrative or news source can be trusted at all. Some of the ttps in this space wont necessarily come as a surprise to you, but were talked about intrusion into u. S. Government networks and political organizations, hack and leak operations relating to compromising or embarrassing information, Cyber Attacks against our voting infrastructure, the targeting of u. S. Persons or elected officials by social media and disinformation, suppression of voter turnout by spreading misinformation regarding polling and voting, manipulation of media through the injection of false stories and news reporting, and then subsequent amplification of disinformation to shape public discourse. Sorry about that. There are a few overarching similarities regarding the manner in which our two principal adversaries, china and russia, execute these two objectives. Both countries use a whole of government approach. And they use sophisticated and aggressive efforts to advance their national priorities. However there are clear differences in this space as well. China and russia vary in the extent of their aggressiveness and risk tolerance. We see russia is willing to conduct more brazen and disruptive influence operations because of how it perceives its conflict with the west. In some ways, however, china contains its malign foreign influence operations to its strategic goals of developing a modern National Economy and building its geopolitical prestige to be respected as an equal if not superior rival in its eyes to that of the United States. To put it simply, in this space russia 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. So what do we do in this space . The director established the ftfa, Foreign Influence Task force, in october of 2017 to bring together the fbis National Security and traditional criminal investigative expertise under one umbrella, to identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations. At the time we were primarily focused on the russian malign foreign influence operations. However, the scope has expanded since then to address other global adversaries. China, iran, north korea. Our structure bears some resemblance to the fbis joint terrific task force which exists at fbi headquarters in very large fashion but also in all 56 of our field offices. However, while we do work side by side with detailees from various agencies in the fitf, our structure is different. Fitf combines expertise from across the enterprise, including analysts and other professional staff from the fbis counterintelligence, cyber, count terrorism, and criminal divisions. Our multidivision task force has the authority and mandate to bridge all fbi programs and equities to combat this threat. In addition to investigative operations and broad intelligence sharing across the usc and with our state and local partners, the fitf also works hard to build strong partnerships with the private sectors and academia. The fitf Management Team meets regularly with social media and tech companies. When appropriate, the fbi provides actionable intelligence to social Media Companies to help them fight abuse of their platforms by foreign actors. And work in this area, one thing that is very important to us, particularly on the cyber side of things, is that attribution is key. We do not run around chasing content, in addition to having a host of First Amendment issues, that approach would be inefficient and ineffective. We dont focus on what the actors say. We spend our time concentrating on who they are. Attribution is key. When were able to identify and track foreign actors as they establish and use their infrastructure and mature their online presence, the fitf works with social Media Companies to illuminate and disrupt our adversaries activities, including at times through actions taken entirely by the companies themselves to voluntarily remove accounts that violate their terms of service agreements. Ive run out of time, so ill just say that our adversaries are actively engaged to influence Public Opinion and our electoral processes. It is our responsibility to take the threat seriously, evolve our methods of disruption, and maintain our fierce determination and focus. Thank you for giving me the time to speak to you today. [ applause ] ive already introduced you. Yes, thank you so much. So good morning. My name is madeleine wartelmans. Were responsible for developing guidance and providing advice to the secretary of defense about what the department of defense must be capable of. Im here to talk about dods role in defending elections and in support of and complementary to our federal government partners and the fbi in countering foreign influence and the department of Homeland Security in supporting elections infrastructure security, as well as state and local partners. From my viewpoint, in dod speak, we frequently talk about supported and supporting. In the context of defending elections the department of defense is principally in a supporting role. That was why it was important for you to hear from my colleague from the fbi first. So in that, i want to just jump right in and try to get to the gist. The National Defense strategy concludes that for the past decade, to offset our military superiority, our adversaries are increasingly using actions below the use of force to undermine our National Security and national interests. Nowhere is this more true than in and through cyberspace where we see adversaries using coordinated, long term campaigns of malicious cyber activity to harm the United States, our allies and partners, and to undermine international order. Their objective is within is to win without war. And in the event of conflict, to leverage their accesses and capabilities priority hostilities in order to achieve strategic advantageous. China, russia, iran, and north korea are using and will continue to use cyber to steal information and to prepare to disrupt Critical National infrastructure. But duties interest is not limited to military operations. Our adversary is also seeking to influence our citizens and to undermine Democratic Institutions in order to achieve that strategic advantage that will allow them to win for their national interests. The Intelligence Community assessed that they are capable of and may seek to interfere in our voting process, the infrastructure that we use, or to covertly influence our citizens in order to achieve an outcome. The department of defense has now determined at the president s direction that helping to defend elections is an enduring mission. But we are part of a broader whole of government effort, an unprecedented level of coordination. And in that way the department of defense is playing a complementary and supporting role to our domestic partners. In this way, we are looking to leverage our specific comparative advantage and authorities to defend forward. Just as the department of defense projects power in the physical domains, land, sea, and air, where we seek to understand our adversaries 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 elections. Building on our activities in 2018 in defense of the 2018 midterm elections, the department of defense is conducting complementary activities in support of civilianled efforts defending forward in order to generate insights, first generate insights about adversary intentions and activities. In this way, were collecting and analyzing data about foreign threats. It includes things like identifying malware and networks, covert influence identities, and to better understand whats happening outside of the United States. We do this with partners and throughout the global environment. Second, were enabling our domestic partners to better defend elections. This includes sharing those insights that we generated from outside of the United States with our domestic partners to enable their Network Defense activities. An example would be in 2018, we conducted what we call hunt forward operations, but what is in fact partnered Network Defense operations with our traditional allies and partners to gain insight about how our variations are using their malicious activities in other countries that can in turn be used to better defend our own networks. And finally, thirdly, when appropriate and authorized, the department of defense will conduct military operations to degrade, disrupt, or defeat foreign interference or covert influence. This can take any number of forms. It includes operations that would seek to put the sand in the gears of our adversaries attempting to accomplish their outcomes. We can do this for instance through exposing their malware or their Network Threats indicators. To date, u. S. Cyber command has publicly exposed eight different examples of how adversaries are seeking to conduct malicious cyber activity against the United States, which enhances our overall defense. We can also take other operations that seek to slow them down. The department of defenses efforts to defend forward and to defend elections are spearheaded by u. S. Cyber command and the National Security agency. This enables us to combine our unique comparative advantage, expertise, capabilities, and capacity. Their efforts are also complemented across the dod with u. S. Northeastern command, u. S. India pacific command, National Guard bureau, all prepared and ready to support our dhs and fbi and appropriate state and local authorities. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, madeleine, and thank you, david. So in listening to what we just heard, it was really i want to highlight a couple of things i heard david say, this idea of mistrust to the government, and these are threat actors, malicious actors doing this, pushing consumers toward alternative news sources, sowing doubt and confusion about true narratives, destroying our ability to think critically, clouding the truth, well, how does that happen . Im going to step back for a minute and step away from elections and talk for a minute just about data and the world we live in, right . We are surrounded by censors everywhere. Everything we do, were all carrying these around, theyre embedded with sensors, we have fitbits. Every environment in which we exist has sevnsors. Hey, alexa, what are the news results . We have health and fitness sens sensors, automobile sensors, theyre all connected to satellites. Were physically tracked. So much data is being aggregated about us. I always like to give an example, it gives a good perspective for the audience. This is from an actual Patent Application from walmart for biometric data via sensors in a walmart shopping cart handle. These sensors would give heart rate, temperature, force against the handle, cart speed and location in your walmart shopping cart. Shoutout and thanks to r. A. Wisenberg for alerting me to this. We have sensors that are recording us, everybody has their fitbits on, their apple phones. What happens is how these sensors are interacting with all of these apps that we download and are using on our phones, right, we have numerous companies, private companies, buying, selling, aggregating this data, and its intimate data. Im not just talking about who is in this room right now, which is being aggregated, but really, data that can be used to manipulate our choices. If we think about that idea, clouding mistrust, part of that is foreign actors, but part of that is ourselves. And part of that is, all of this content we create allows us to be so easily manipulated. So just a screenshot here of facebook, advertising on facebook makes it easy to find the right people, capture their attention, and get results. You can do that on any budget. How does that happen . How is it effective . Its effective because its use and sale of your data for microtargeting ads. So we understand microtargeted advertising. Microtargeting enabl