we're talking about. i don't think the united states has a real hold on how are we going to address influence operations in a country that is probably more divided than ever. if democrats don't want to talk to republicans and republicans are immediately suspicious of anything that comes from democrats, you know, that is just fertile ground for an influence operation. this goes all the way back to the cold war. that part is not new. it's just -- it's propaganda on steroids. i think that is the hardest part and that's not easily solved. >> hey, matt, sam stein here. i want to push something by seeing if you agree with it. but i want to use the word sophisticated cyber operations. one of the things that struck me about 2016 at least was how unsophisticated the operations were. pretty basic disinformation campaigns, email hacking. obviously they tried to gain access to some voter databases but the real disinformation stuff was not all that real