Bill gurts im so excited to be with you today iwar, iwar, you are National Security columnist at the Washington Times and free beacon and in the introduction you talk about how this book is culmination of many years of experience following National Security, can you tell me a little bit why you published this book on the subject matter at this time . Sure, iwar is a look at the new form of warfare thats emerging in the 21st century. I covered National Security affairs for over 30 years in all over the world covering these and i think its a reflection of the Information Age that we are now looking at this form of warfare which i Call Information warfare and i define that as both the technical cyber that we have seen so much of in terms of cyberattacks from the russians and chinese as well as the content influence type of thing which really emerged in the last president ial election with the russian, cyber enabled operation. These two things, i believe, are going to be the dominant force of work fare. We are going to see that. Our adversaries are looking into this. A cheap way to achieve strategic goals out kinetic military in terms of resources and lives. Host you talk about how society typically when they think of warfare they think of it kinetic forms and this discusses nonkinetic forms. Do you think the media has an awareness of the warfare and the use of media and influence operation campaigns or is part of the goal of the book to raise awarns among the public . Yeah, the simple answer is no. This is the point i make in the book. Americans are largely in the dark. That includes our government as well as the public at large, as you might recall in raw recent hearing that you were the chair of the witnesses testified about the russian propaganda outlet rt, an official from rt told him that rt would have no audience in the United States if the u. S. Media were doing its job properly, in a sense what has traditionally been the role of the american media, that is to provide both education and information has really fallen out off. Theyre not really presenting the kind of news specially on internationally affairs and specially for our enemies. One of the things that i always tried to do in journalism career as well as as an author is highlight threats and the reason i do that is because if people dont have an understanding of the threat, then its really difficult to get the tools necessary to deal with the problems and so, again, this is a threat book, it deals with the main threats of Information Warfare and it tries to show that this is a serious strategic threat to the United States across a Broad Spectrum of areas from International Affairs to domestic affairs. So you talked about the increase of Information Operation and then Information Warfare as as strategic in the United States and one interesting part of this discussion that i think needs to be covered is the use of social media and you talk about that in the book, facebook users, you actually include this statistic 4. 75 billion pieces of content every day, so theres a lot of information out there. Theres a proliferation of information as we see in our facebook feeds, on twitter, on instagram, snapchat, you use choose the social network. Social media has changed the landscape of conflict. In the book, in fact, you talk about the Islamic States use of social media. You state, a distinct feature of isis media operation is agility and ability to respond quickly to events, often outperforming state media in the middle east. This has been enabled by the group use of social media and network of online supporters who will amplify the Islamic States message. What should the u. S. Do to combat that . Guest its a real challenge. I point out in the book that theres a conflicting approach to this problem. On the one hand, theres pressure to shut down the terrorist use of social media and on the other hand need to know what theyre doing. How do you balance the competing needs . Monitoring social media, much which is open source can produce valuable intelligence specially about people who are going to perpetrate attacks and this is really the problem that needs to be solved. Social media is been weponized and we need to figure out ways to be able to have the same kind of agility that the terrorists have demonstrated like, for instance, they will shut down twitter feeds or facebook sites from terrorists that are known to be using this to propaganda or recruit and rapidly they have their own private means of setting up new Communication Channels very quickly so its a series where you knock one site down and immediately they have three or four others that they can use and so theyre communicating. Now theyre getting even more sophisticated, they are going to encrypted communications, we saw this in the recent case of the terrorist in london who rammed a number of pedestrians on the bridge, that he was using telegram, a key tool, the Russian Software thats allowing terrorists to communicate in much more difficult ways for intelligence agencies in the west to detect them. Host does u. S. Law enforcement and as policy makers, do we have an adequate strategy ourselves to effectively use social media to combat misinformation with the truth and make sure that potential recruits of isis actually see information that we want them to see calling into question that this not the proper intrerpcion interpretation of islam, for example . Guest the main tool for this is a state Department Center for strategic counterterrorism communications. I spoke to a number of officials in researching the book and all of them agreed that they have a real challenge and the challenge is that theyre not really allowed to address the topic of islam itself. Theyve adopted at least under the Obama Administration and, of course, the Trump Administration is changing this now. Theyre talking openly about radical islamic terrorism, in the past there was violent extremism and i argued that this has made it very difficult for us to do counterideological operations so the state department under the center, they actually did a study and the study was based on some of experts, its a classified study, they wouldnt release it but had been reported on the press and the study said that because the u. S. Government has no credibility, that it shouldnt even attempt to try and do counterpropaganda efforts against isil and the terrorist groups online and that to me is a totally defeatist approach, you will never succeed if you dont even try and there are some new efforts just in december the latest congressional defense bill contained a new provision thats calling for counterdisinformation and propaganda which is mostly targeted against russia but it needs to be much broader and a much more targeted against all of the main adversaries and has the military, they love their acronyms, they have an acronym for them called cricket, china, russia, iran, korea and terrorism and so those are the main threats that we need to address and thing that im hoping that under the Trump Administration they will get more efforts, both resources people and leadership to tackle the tough problems. Host one of the most impressive parts of the books is you look at different case studies of different countries, you named, china, russia, north korea, iran and isis, Islamic State and i wanted to delve into some of the examples that we have seen of the u. S. Of Information Warfare by these specific countries, the first one i would like to go to is north korea. I think the general public is well aware of the sony hack because it got so much media coverage, thats, of course, the hack in response to the movie of the interview. Why was this such a significant event when it comes to Information Warfare because you spend a lot of time talking about that in this book . Guest i do a deep dive on the sony hack which took place in 2013 and based on the north korean government recognition that they were really opposed to this movie the interview, which was what i call a comedy, wasnt that god of a movie but an important thing in em posing the kind of problems that north korea poses. North korea needs to be understood and i dont think a lot of people understand that this is a crime against humanity regime. Un human rights commissions have exposed that and identified it and yet we are in the 21st century and we are still dealing with this regime that does horrible unspeakable things to its own people. Excuse me, the sony hack was the first time that a government had attacked a private industry for political gain and so the sony pictures, they went in and took information which was extrially damaging to the company as well as damaging attack, the software that was used destroyed the entire networks of these people. For research for the book, i actually interviewed a north korean defect or and he actually trained hackers in north korea, the u. S. And the west should take the threat seriously. What theyre going for ultimately is u. S. Infrastructure. The ability to turn out the lights to damage our infrastructure and prevent us from operating as a western society. Of course, everyone recognize that is the u. S. Is the most wired country in the world, everything is networked and so if you attack that infrastructure, you could cause strategic damage to the United States and thats the real danger. Now, the North Koreans are building on that capability. They are still considered a secondtier threat to the russians and chinese. Host in terms of north korea you are critical of the lack of response. Guest i think covering this issue for a long time and as far back as 2011, i learned from intelligence sources in the u. S. Government that senior officials of all the major agencies, the Intelligence Community, the pentagon, Law Enforcement had presented a series of options to the Obama White House and the options were basically they were saying, listen, we were under attack and other and unless we do something in a real way, these attacks are going to continue. Presented a range of options, whether that was government officials or hackers all the way to conducting offensive counterattacks that would actually go in and damage some of the infrastructure of these organizations, say, the chinese unit that was linked to the office of Personnel Management hack or some of the russians. White house rejected all of those options, so basically there hasnt been anything done. In the case of sony, they made some symbolic sanctions against some north korean officials that really would have no impact. It was things like blocking them from entering the United States or blocking them from access to the international financial, while those are okay, measures, they werent enough to really make an impact and as a result we are seen an escalating scale of cyber and influence operations. Its getting worse and not better. The reason is there needs to be a greater response. Admiral rogers, National Security agency chief has been one to have strongest advocates for a tougher deterrence response. In other words, hes been advocating that the cost of industry into that realm of Information Warfare whether its cyber or influence is so low that its irresistible for enemies to resist in that. Once the cost is raised, that would have a deterrent effect and say, hey, if you attack the United States, that will change the equation. I think the sony hack highlights an important question for policymakers that were grappling because sony is a nongovernment agency, what role to the department of defense play specifically when we are discussing admiral rogers, who real should be played in combating and making sure that we are sharing information with None Governmental Organization of Cyber Threats that are out there . Guest thats really the big problem right now. The lines of authority that allow the government to be be able to do things are being blurred. They have very modeled and not clear and the problem is that most of the infrastructure is in private hands. Privet are in charge of their own security. Theyre kind of constrained from using it and theres a lot of reasons for that, some are political, we saw some of the snowden disclosure really turned against the National Security agency which to me is the premier agency for cybersecurity. Other intelligence and Law Enforcement agencies in the pentagon have have good capabilities to counter this but theyre theyre constrained by law and by regulation about what they can do. Thats why i think we really need kind of a new entity. I call it information america where we would set up something that would be similar to the u. S. Information agency of the cold war era and would transcend various agencies because if its part of the Defense DepartmentInformation Warfare would be subordinated, it would be a support function. It would be impose by heavy secrecy which is their culture n. The state department, diplomacy impaired, in other words, the state department is oriented towards getting along with foreign nations. So if we had an individual agency that could do this kind of thing, i think it would help clarify those lines of authority and it could be, again, both a content counter and promotion thing as well as technical and cyber to be able to cross over these two things and perhaps interact better with the private sector. Host so that was an interesting proposal that i will get at tend of the interview. I also we wanted to highlight other countries who have utilized Information Warfare, we talked about north korea being in tier two, lets move onto tier one actors, adversaries when it comes to Information Warfare, china, and one of the examples that you touched upon, let me find the quote, you write, quote, no other nation today poses a greater danger to american National Security than china, a state engaged in an Unprecedented Campaign of Information Warfare using both massive Cyber Attacks and influence operations aimed at diminishing what beijing rewards as most strategic enemy, the u. S. , the example that ive experienced with china is the opm hacking, office of Personnel Management. I was one of the individuals that got the notification was part of the opm hacking, why was that such a significant event . Thats my first question, and second, talk about chinas broader capabilities and how they differ from the tier two actors . Guest sure, the chinese recognized early on that they do not have the physical capabilities to challenge the United States and right now china is challenging the United States and regards the United States as main enemy, the u. S. Has largely selfdeluded itself that china is a normal nation when in fact, it is a dictatorship, thats often lost in the debate over china and ive been covering that issue for over 30 years. The problem is the chinese, they are everyone talks about chinas rise but whats but what the chinese are also doing is trying to manage the decline of the United States. They have what they regard as the declineest theory of the United States. They see the United States as a diminishing power and that theyre a rising power and that theyre working to help diminish the United States, so thats the underpinnings of their Information Warfare operations against the United States. I highlight a number of areas where they do that. The opium act was unique in that 22 million federal records were attacked but that was just like actually one element of this broad thick that had been going on for at least a decade and the Intelligence Community had a code name for it, it was byzantine, Cyber Intelligence operation and they stole the records which included some of the most Sensitive Information that you could possibly have in the u. S. Government, things about security clearances, relatives and neighbors who were who were questioned about someone getting a security clearance, this information is extremely valuable for further cyberattacks, what the chinese can do with that information is using tools and be able to identify a systems administrator inside a defense contractor and with other intelligence they could target that official, learned his password credentials and used that to gain access to further Information Operations. A lot of times these attacks have been kind of diminished as somehow this is just intel