Tend to raise the value of existing structures. I think that line of thought is a much more plausible one than the one that emphasizes some new, generalized unis earnty. So i think we have time for, like, one more question. Yes, you at the very back. Greetings, im thomas ward. Last week there was a program on innovation, what plays into the growth aspect, and one on infrastructure that id recommend everyone to look at. But my big question goes backing to the issue of underring lying growth. How do we get growth when weve got Third Quarter growth that just came out at 2. 9 , i think it is, overall we may not have, you know, 1 time is short. So ask the question quickly. Two things would come into play. One, weve got9 to look back at 2013 yes. That changed down 3 . The price, so was the gross really that numbersome but also in the question of the pricing, if we have these taxes and Everything Else taking money out, how do we ever get growth if were only going to be looking at taking money out of the economy will higher taxes hurt the longterm Growth Outlook . You know, im general im sympathetic to the idea that marginal tax rates, applying to individuals or businesses matter for things like investment and economic growth, so im very sympathetic to the idea that the kinds of tax cuts that particularly were in place in the 1980s actually worked and did encourage economic growth. Thats not to say that thats all that matters, and you certainly had growth in the 1990s without having those kinds of cuts in tax rates. But i think its certainly a part of the picture if youre thinking about growth and investment. Look, youre going to have a little bit of a tough time here, because youre basically making roberts youre basically reaching roberts kind of conclusion with my kind of argument, because sounds perfect. [laughter] youre basically making an argument in keynesian terms about the impact of tax increases. I dont think the imperative right now should be i think the imperative should be raising the growth rate. I do not think that fiscal restraint is plausibly a major growth promotion strategy at a moment when Interest Rates are effectively zero. And it was reasonable to think of fiscal restraint as a central Growth Strategy in 1993 when capital costs were high and plausibly were what was holding back investment. I think you can i think theres a very good debate to be had about the respective role of Public Investment and reduction of barriers to private investment. I think that, obviously, one has to Pay Attention to long run fiscal sustainability. But i would tell you that i think if we are successful as a country in raising the growth rate to anything like 3 , there will be a strong tendency for these fiscal problems to melt away as the economy grows out of them. Almost regardless of what we do in terms of fiscal packages. And if we are not successful and and the underlying growth rate of the economy remains in the 1, 1. 5 to 2 range, i think were likely to be preoccupied with questions of longrun Fiscal Health almost no heart what fiscal packages no matter what fiscal packages we are able to adopt. And so i think theres a need in washington which i think is substantially happening for the frame of big picture economic debate which has been about, has been for 15 or 20 years been framed in terms of longterm budget plans to be reframed in terms of growth acceleration. And i think that reframing from the long run budget issues to the question of growth ought to be something that people can agree on whether they come at it from from a more progressive and keynesian perspective or from a more conservative and incentiveoriented perspective. Well, thanks. We as a country and i personally tend to obsess way too much over the short term and never more so than four days before a president ial election. So i am very grateful to both of you for this wonderful interlude where we actually thought a lot about the long term. Thank you both, robert and larry, and thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] to try to put together a nation. By december 31. The second part of the question and then i will go to another. The kind of conversation we had in the last three weeks have been managed in methodology. If we work hard with all of the members, i think december 31 can be realistic. Realistic. Are their stubborn position. We expect them to have very clear substantial changes in something that will complicate any type of agreement. And the ceasefire. September 2 we have been very conscious that this also has a ramification on the National Security so you need to perform so they dont go back. Thats why we proposed to activate the concentration zones so they can be conducted on any penalty they would receive. And we need to move fast. So thats why we want to move forward at the right time. [inaudible] its the right way to escape the responsibility. Ive been respectfully trying to put some red lights on the Constitutional Court that there might be some way to maintain. Its my expectation as a citizen, the court shouldnt allow this to happen just because it was rejected october 2. Theres another option to say even though it was rejected, it is unconstitutional without the society deliberating on this. Its the type of refunds. We have literally two minut minutes. There are times you feel so much more comfortable doing it. He was dismissive and how can i say maybe he never thought that ideology could have the grounds to reach power. I think in colombia we need to be clear that in moments of economic social despair and lack of confidence the grounds for populism can happen, and we cannot be naive that that can happen. I saw some years ago who took hugo chavez to beta. He derailed the institutions completely. He had a style of governing we cannot be naive that those risks are there. Could it happen in the largescale or the local scale, we dont know yet that w but weo have the right ideological, political and institutional mechanisms to prevent that kind of populism can happen in colombia. Some people are more afraid than others. But if i dont use the term we cannot be naive but those could have been in colombia. With that, thanks again to charles for your support. Its meaningful, and it may also invite you back to the council of the americas. We enjoyed the opportunity to host hugh. This has been a tremendous [applause] learn more about the influence of americas president ial spouses from cspan first lady is now available in paperback giving their readers a look at the lives and impact of every first lady in American History the companion to the well regarded biography series. Each chapter offers brief biographies of the spouses and archival photos. Now available at your favorite bookseller. Former head of the Cyber Command general Keith Alexander discussed cybersecurity in the u. S. In an event hosted by the atlantic magazine. Hes interviewed by louise kel kelly. This is just under an hour. After the conversation we want to hear from you, so we are going to have time for questions and with that please welcome general Keith Alexander and to lead thme that the conversatione contributor who covers National Security for npr. The stage is yours. Welcome. [applause] good evening, everybody. Its a pleasure to be here seven days and counting. Its been a challenge to try to prepare to interview you because i got word a few weeks ago and as i went about my job covering National Security at npr i would get some ideas and jotted down n and then some new event would happen whether it was the word of another russian hack or word that the nsa had been breached or the reports just outside communications, maybe mysterious communications between a donald trump server and a big russian bank all of which is to say ive rewritten my nose to interview you about 17 times and it speaks to how quickly the landscape is changing and how big of a challenge i think we all realize as individuals we need to be careful but i didnt know i needed to be protecting my coffee and toaster maker until we as corporations should be doing to protect our data online. So, welcome. And i have to start with the timely question. I know we are seven days until the election and a question that has hung in the air, how worried should we be that it could be hacked. Overall the way theyve approached it i think is mostly accurate and that is i think its really hard to disrupt the electoral process. That doesnt mean i think that its all very difficult. That doesnt mean there wont be things that do occur and i think perhaps bigger than the actual event itself if they do something to one side is the perception versus the facts so when you hear about that, its one of those things that escapes many of us today and so much misinformation to get a piece of the fact and how many was it and they would say two out of three. Okay. Thats probably not going to change it. So i think the real issue that we are going to go through this time will be fine. I think the next election we should look for a process and with all of the digital capabilities that we have an identity management, you can imagine having a device that is somehow represented to you. The teambetween seven or 8 00 te will get on the phone to vote and you can go to the library and done. I think we have to get there. That means theres a lot of things we have to take us to make that happen. It represents the best of what we can do as a nation because if you do that imagine the ability to bring the power of the people into some of the decisions that are going on about health care and other things. Overall i voted this last weekend and that the process is difficult for someone to hack into. You throw out the circles and they tell you dont go outside of the lines. The scenario that you raised raises the specter. Youve got this tremendous technology out there thats our future with all these vulnerabilities. How do we as a nation secure that. There is many of you that have looked at these big problems with the day to decode data and you want to let the American People know that you are protecting Civil Liberties and privacy. The internet of things is converging and you mentioned it with your toaster. Did you see the story of the atlantic put out the virtual toaster, the writer trying to figure out the incident if i create an imaginary toaster and put it online how quickly would someone try to hack it. It poses an even greater problem for us as a country because many of the systems that were hacked you would normally think that isnt part of the network that these are having an impact. Its going to converge so that greatly increases the Cyber Security risk and we dont want to slow that down because it also things tremendous opportunity for healthcare. We were mentioning i have 16 grandchildren. I know i dont look that old, thank you. That fixed it they want to compete on who will get the most steps. And shes 300 miles away so these are tremendous opportunities. What do you think happened in that case d. Y. N. What do we think happened . They blamed it on the attacks posted on the web. Many people could use it, you could go out and grab it. [inaudible] i think that is his assessment and i dont have any reason to disagree with that. I would say its hard to know who conducted an attack and for what reason so i would step back and say whats the impact, why did they do it and what do we need to do to stop things like that in the future and if you look at it with the number of device and estimates about 620 gigabytes plus, what would that do to the nations infrastructure if Something Like that hits and why would they use that and who would use it and how do you stop and what kind of tools do you want the government to have and how do they Work Together. All of that is has to be debated if the government has to lead that. You think about the constitution and where we come from and we talk about the common defense and in this area here we dont have the common defense because past problems and other issues that put the nation was built on is we are working together for the common defense and we need that in cyberspace mark in any place else and weve got to figure out how we get that back. If somebody wants to do us harm, we no longer have the privilege of being isolated from an attack where someone wishes us harm. You can see people that disagree with this diplomatically can use cyber to do thalabor to do thato confront that. When you say we need to prevent this from happening again, what is your advice [inaudible] i would put it into categories, government and industry. Let me use sony as an example because thats when we put on the table to say who should have defended sony. The practical reality is that it has been a north Korean Military outfit the military would have stopped it. If they had the attributes to attack back now we have a company doing government responsibilities so you end up coming down on the position of the governments jo governmentsd the nation. Thats the governments job and so how is the government going to do that . You have three basic sets, the department of justice and what the fbi would do for Law Enforcement and criminal actors, you have the department of Homeland Security responsible for forensics and setting standards and the department of defense responsible for defending the nation. The department cant see or can the community see the attack until after the fact so what we are left with his forensics. But we are going to learn more until the plane crashed. We would say cant we learn something here and to stop it from happening and the answer is yes. Weve got to have a way for the government and industry to Work Together and i wouldve put on the table and d to do it in a wy to protect the privacy and make it transparent that we ought to do that and so we ought to practice it and set the standard up and as a nation say what about our allies is this a good model of how we could work with and the answer is i think everybody would agree with that. There will be subtleties, those that want to change that very fabric of the network to dictate what people listen to so we have to figure out how do we get the nation protected and then work with our allies who are likeminded. What does that mean when you talk about a company like sony working with the government . Think of it like a radar system. When a thread actor tries to get the company they say that guy hit me, tell the government. So it goes to the government and they have a decision is it criminal or nationstate. Now that standard would be like the National Institute of technology in the framework or another one in the International Standard but you would have the ability to see a company could install the nationstate attack but the government can only come if the attack is ongoing and by setting up the great particles to understand that. That is what i think we need to move forward. An alert system. We do it with planes and missiles. What about the pushback. Youve are in the private sector now and companies are being attacked regularly. You dont want them crawling around your servers every time. Im not advocating the governor crawling around the servers but a way of saying whats happening to the companies so the government can respond. If sony was being hit with this but the government never sees it they wont be able to stop it until its too late so we need a mechanism to share information and what type are we talking about sharing. We are talking about when a bad guy is trying to infiltrate our past malware into your site. The government should know and be able to stop or help stop it either by giving you advice on what to do or see if this is an attack trying to take down a sector. Let me take it one step further if you want to do the country harm you with laughter sectors like the energy or Financial Sector and will tell you could take down big portions of that. Now pou important to nationstate attack. The only one that has the capacity to do that is to government and Defense Department but they are not trained to do that, they dont have the authority and we havent allowed the industry and government to Work Together. The first thing people would jump to is we dont want them going around serving sweeney to come back to a system that does it with the date of everybody could agree to be shared and the way that they actually put it into the legislation is a good way. That way Everybody Knows they are doing the right job, Homeland Security can attest to it. If you dont do that then you are in the alternative. Wait for something to happen and then dictate how we are going to stop it. Im imagining that im the ceo of a company and there were systems that place, everybody in the Cyber Command, dhs, everybody is averted and the clients are running for the hills. How do you address that . Schenectady intention would be to do the opposite to say companies are going to have certain levels just like fiscal securities that we have the standard and if they meet the standard what they are able to do is see i can defend this but there are certain things we dont have the ability to defend and my experience is that hackers always when. That tells me the current process isnt working so you need a way to say im going to meet these standards and when i see these kind of things we are going to alert the government and appropriate authorities before it gets too far. We dont want it happening anywhere else so how do you do that. And its interesting. We started out with the toasters into the Internet Things makes us so much more complex that weve got to take that on. Im not advocating that the government is going to do everything for every company. What i am saying is Companies Already do an awful lot of investment and i think they spend a lot of money on cybersecurity and what will go oon in most boardrooms is im spending all this mon