He is currently a Senior Writer at the daily beast. He is also worked as a Senior Writer for Foreign Policy and his work as appeared in numerous publications including the new york times, the wall street journal, and the washington post. Also a fellow at the new america foundation. Were pleased to welcome him back for his second appearance at politics and prose. Hell me welcome shane hairs. Shane harris. Thank you for coming out. On a night like tonight you could be sitting on a veranda, drinking wine and enjoying this summer evening. So im glad you chose to spend the evening with me. Great to see so many people and friends and colleagues as well. We were just talking before we began, ive been touring with the book, and speaking at a number of book stores around the country, and this one really is just prized for the way it brings people out in the community and its so great to see such a large gathering. This is great for a book talk. Youre making me very happy. So this book, war is a story, really, and youll find a lot of stories but its a narrative how it is that cybersecurity became a fixation, a top priority for National Security in the United States right now. Cyber security, which we define as threats in cyberspace to include espionage cybercrime, attacks over Computer Networks that can damage physical infrastructure, like disrupting power grids or disabling Water Utilities or affecting banks. But the risk of these attacks for the past two years has topped the Intelligence Communitys list of global threats. Every year the Intelligence Community puts out the big things that keep people up at night and cyberthreats have been at the top of the list. James combie the new fbi director, the former Deputy Attorney general said the risk of Cyber Attacks and related risks in a rise in cybercrime will be the most significant National Security threat over the next decade and this is above terrorism. Last week the director of the National Security agency, Michael Rodgers testified about congress that cyberattacks were costing how much billions of dollars to u. S. Companies and multiple foreign governments had already probed the systems that control and regulate our electric power grid. He said this is not theoretical, quote, it is truly significant, almost catastrophic failure will occur if we do not take action. How is it we got this point where our top National Security officials are telling us that the risk of a catastrophic cyberattack, espionage directed against u. S. Companies,er is the thing we should be most worried about, and what does that mean for all of us who exist in cyberspace and use the internet every day. That book tries to answer those questions. It starts with a story, and for a book like this, rather scary story, which ill relate to you now. This begins in the summer of 2007. The ceos of the major defense contractors, boeing, lockheed martin, are called over to a might at the pentagon they dont exactly know why theyre there but they figure if they have been called here on short notice this cant be good news, all their competitors in the room. Theyre ushered into a room called a sense stiff compartmented facility its the thingy you have to drop your cell phone outside before you go in this sound proof room that is actually impermanentable to eavesdropping player, where you only receive the most secretive secretes, and the executives brothering in and sat down and given what is called a threat briefing. Military officials describe to them how hackers believed to be in china are accessing Computer Systems that contain some of the most classified information in the military specifically things like plans for the joint Strike Fighter the f35 our next generation military aircraft, as well as a number of other started classified military programs have been overrun by cyberspies. And that seems pretty scary to this ceos. What is even more scary the spies did not access the information by getting getting into military networks. They got into networks of the companies the ceos companies. The hackers made an end run around the pentagons rather formidable and attacked contractors working on military propers. Some described to me who is familiar with this meeting. A lot of executives went in with dark hair and when it came out turned white. They were very disturbed to find out not only the spies had gotten in the their systems but they knew very little about it. The pentagon said you have a security problem, therefore we have a security problem. We have to too something about this and if you want to continue being contractors for the department of defense youre going to take our help. What begins at this point is something that i think really epitomizes our Current National approach to cybersecurity. The pentagon teamed up with these contractors and in an information and intelligence sharing arrangement. The contractors agreed to report to the pentagon threats they were seeing on their network, including when they had been breached. The pentagon agreed not to disclose this publicly because companies do not like to say when they have had hackers, and in return the pentagon was going to provide these corporations with information that it was gathering from its own intelligence operations, effectively the fruit of espionage that agencies like the nsa were gathering about these threats in china and how they might affect american businesses. So this partnership essentially sets up whereby private sector and public are coming together for the mutual purpose of defending Computer Networks. The companies are essential in this arrangement and this is true across the board when we talk about defending Critical Systems in the u. S. Companies own roughly 85 of the Network Infrastructure in the United States. The government does not physically control it. So companies have to participate with the government in this intelligencesharing and mutual security arrangement if were actually going protect the internet. The effort that began after that pentagon meeting became something known as the Defense Industrial base initiative, or the dib, which kind of recurrs throughout in my book. 100 companies are members in this today. There were only a dozen or so when it ghana late 2007. The model has been expanded to other seconders of the economy beyond the Defense Industrial base. So today the National Security agency via the Homeland Security department, shares this kind of Threat Intelligence that its monitoring from various networks overseas particularly with Internet Service providers, and the hopes they will then program the threat signatures into their own systems scanning for malicious soft square intrusions and then protect the people who are their customers downstream. Bigname Technology Companies have struck up relationships with the Intelligence Community. One day i write about in the book is google. Google obviously has a privileged kind of peering into networks all over the world. They move much of our Communications Traffic that were all using every day. Google struck up a secret relationship with the nsa in 2010 after it was hacked by chinese spies where they agree, like the defense contractors to share information theyre seeing on networks and in turn for the nsa providing information to them. So defending cyberspace and also spying in it and attacking in it has actually become a cooperative effort between the government and the Intelligence Community, and its partner inches the Technology Industry. That is what im referring to when i write about the military internet complex the coming together of two powerful forces. And i am deliberately harkening back to president eisenhowers military Industrial Complex speech which ill talk about later. This arrangement glynns at the tail end of the bush administration, and it took a number of years for president bush and some of his senior National Security advisers to start taking the threat of cyberattacks and cyberespionage seriously. There have been talk about this at the highest levels in government for many years but really did not catch on until the end. Pressure pressure was fame newsily not most technological inclined chief executive. He once said he used the going toll look at satellite images of his ranch in texas. Not to pick of president bush president clinton only sent one email in the entire time he was in office. The internet was a fair live nascent infrastructure at the time. Where thats really takes off as far as the National Security priority is under president obama, who, of course, used the internet masterfully in his campaign, very much our first internet president , you might say. President obama actually got a firsthand experience with cyberespionage when he was on the campaign and his Campaign Email system was hacked by spies believed to be in china. As an equal opportunity offender here they hacked john mccains Campaign Email system as well. So obama comes into office with the firsthand kind of glimpse of this and a real appreciation for the vulnerabilities in cyber space, and from day one, when he is given his briefings his classified briefings about various National Security threats, cyber is placed very near the top. So not one to waste time he adds a whole new dimension to the governments approach for dealing with the threat in may 2009 obama gives a speech in the east room of the white house. Its a very very large room and reservedded for only the most moment to us speeches the president wants to give when theres going to be a big crowd. So he gives a speech stands up, and unveils his plan for securing cyber space. He says that his Campaign Email was hacked home actually acknowledges the electrical grid, the systems that control the grid had been probed by outsiders. He doesnt say governments and doesnt name them. This is the profit the United States standing up and saying effectively, our Critical Systems, the things that control the machinery that we depend upon for our daily life are vulnerable and theyre wide open to attack and he intends to do something about it. And again, harkening to model developed this internet military complex, he says quote, the vast majority of our Critical Infrastructure in the United States is owned and operated by the private sector. We will collaborate with industry to find technology to ensure and secure and promote our prosperity. The enter northwest is a Strategic National asset and we intend to protect it as such. So you obama really defining cyber space as national asset, even though it is something that is largely privately owned. Theres a tension there as well. He sets out on a very ambitious program, putting the government at the center of efforts to try to secure cyber space to try to influence it, not control it, and i write more about this in the book. What is important here is that obama, just like bush before him, is starting to see and to describe cyberpace as a battlefield. The military refers it also the fifth domain of warfare, are land air, sea and outer space and views trying to achieve supremacy there as vital as it is on the other four. To give you some sense of how the military has prioritized this, its always good to follow the money in washington as we know, so if you were to take a look at the Defense Budget for cyberprograms, in 2014, just in cyberdefense programs, mostly on protecting Government Computers and sharing intelligence with industry, the government allocated 13 billion on cyberdefense programs. This doesnt touch the offensive side of the ledger or Intelligence Agency programs. So 13 billion on defense. Putting that in perspective in 2014 the government plans to spend 11. 6 billion on direct efforts to combat climate change, which president obama called in his speech quote the greatest threat of our time. So 13 billion on cyber defense, 11. 6 billion on climate change. The 2012 pentagon budget had the word cyber in it 12 times. The 2014 budget had the word cyberin it 147 times. A 12fold increase in just in mention of the word. Its become a joke within the pentagon that because it is really the only part of the dod budget that is growing, sayinger security, if you want to get money for your project, slap the word cyber on it whether it has anything to do with cyber at all. In fact 0 couple of weeks ago the senior dod official who runs cybersecurity policy joked he was starting to see a lot of proposals for thinks like cyber tank crossing his desk. No such thing as a cyber tank. So government officials have really taken to talking publicly about are you vulnerabilities and the way our companies are being robbed by spies, which i true but i think theyre theres a bit of a cynical application here playing the victim is a good way of focusing National Attention and drumming up money for defense programs. But it tends to obscure the other side of the story, which is what this book is also about. Were pick to picture ourselves as a victim but were doing many of the same things we blast other countries for doing to us, and to our corporations. We really have become masters in offense in cyberspace. We have become very good at waging cyber warfare. Its going to become an integral component how we fight wars in the the future. One story i like that i tell in the beginning of the book that i think really cap tours how cyber is being entity integrate ited into lou we fight wars. Theres a lot of 2007 activity in this book. The year things took off. That was the in 2007 youll remember that president bush ordered tens of thousands of additional combat troops to iraq as part of the surge, which was engineered to quell violence out of from iraq to prevent a civil war, in particular to do battle with an insurgent terror grist group known as al qaeda in iraq which later morphed into isis. So the tens of thousands of troop goes. We form aligns with sunni tribes to turn them against al qaeda in iraq. Two pilfers the surge strategy. Theres a third pillar that has never been explored. The nsa tapped into the telecommunications and internet infrastructure of the country of iraq and effectively owned the entire network of the country of iraq. It intercepted every cell phone call. Every email message, every text message. What was it doing with the information . Part i it was to try to understand the way that these groups, these terrorist networks had organized themselves by studying the patterns of their communications. Write about a guy in the book who is a young Army Lieutenant at the time, who had deployed to iraq and was work neglect signals Intelligence Group to getting electronic communicatings for the army and working with the nsa. Bob was fan of the hbo series the wire. So theres a character in the wire an old Police Detective named lester freeman, who decides he is going to unlock the hierarchy of the drug rings in baltimore who these shadowy players are, not by walking the beat and trying to tap human sources but by monitoring their cell phones and particular live the disposable cell phones they use for a couple of calls and throw away. And lester starts mapping out the networks of who these people are and who is important in the hierarchy based on these calls. Well bob did that as well a lot of people did this. This information was handed off to Ground Forces boots on the ground, who would then go out and find these insurgents and capture or kill them. This isnt the only thing the nsa and the elite hackers working are for them were up to. Some more or the daring exploits i write about, they started second fake Text Messages to individual insurgents posing at people they knew and directing them to meet at a particular place where, when they got there, they fell into a trap. They pain treated websites that were used by these groups and implanted spy ware on them so when people would go to the chat forums thinking nobody was watching actually their computers were being infected with viruses and spay ware that would home in on their location and give the nsa access to emails and communications on their computers. This i engenius hacking with a physical goal. This wasnt just to steal information it it was to locate people, and to help a war effort on the ground. Cyber was being integrated into the conventional military conflict. People i interviewed faux for the book that said an sent this dimension of the summer, the surge does not stop violence in iraq, does not become a temporary victory we all know now where we did prevent a civil war and managed to bring some stability back to the country. The is this secret weapon, the surge was won by a cyber war campaign. David petraeus said publicly that this intelligence gathering operation was quote, a prime reason for the significant progress m