Fbi director. He has not been questioned very much in public the last few weeks have been filled with fbirelated headline which is he has not discussed in Great Lengths in public including the devin nunes memo, the background check process in the white house which mark warner alluded to saying the security clearance in this country is broken. So a little bit of something for everybody, but certainly a focus on russia, not just looking backwards but also starting to look ahead now to 2018 and what is being done to protect americans elections system and the information we get about the people we are voting for. All of that expected to be on the table and a wideranging hearing were seeing get started right now. Garrett haake, i will let you get back to that. Well hear plenty from you today. As that hearing from the Senate Intelligence committee is under way, we wait for the questioning to begin by the members of that panel. Lets bring in Msnbc National Security analyst ned price, former special assistant to president barack obama and former nsc spokesman. My panel for the hour basil smikle, former director of the new York State Democratic Party and elise jordan, msnbc political analyst and former Senior Adviser to the rand paul campaign. Ned, let me start with you. The backdrop for this hairi ihe today, this is an annual assessment presented but obviously folks here very much interest interest interested, the question of russia and the 2018 elections. This is a public hearing, not all the Sensitive Information being produced here. How much valuable useful information is produced by a hearing like todays. The Intelligence Community goes to Great Lengths to ensure the prepared testimony that the dni put out this morning as well as the remarks that well hear from these top intelligence leaders, that they are all unclassified, that they are all distilled down to the most basic levels so that we are not in offering some transparency to the American People and offering our adversaries clues into how much insight we have into the challenges we face. These individuals are quite well trained, i doubt well see them go anywhere they shouldnt. Let me bring in elise jordan, off background in National Securi security. What are you looking for today . Im looking about the threat russia is posing to the Upcoming Elections and in general the questions that these representatives, that these officials receive about what is taking place. The members of the administration have shown they want to protect the integrity of these elections so thats what im watching. Basil, how about you . Election integrity is important in states like new york, the governor is already talking about finding ways to expand participation, early voting and such. As we try to push for more people to go to the polls, will their vote count . Thats a huge concern as we go into this year. And we are standing by here keeping an eye on that committee, the Senate Intelligence committee, down there in washington. They are hearing right now from the director of national intelligence, dan coates. Hes making an Opening Statement. Weve already heard from the chairman of the committee, richard burr, republican of north carolina, democratic cochairman mark warner from virginia. As soon as coates finishes, the other senators will get a chance to question not just him but the head of the fbi, the cia, the National Security agency so interesting topics may come up there. Let me bring ned price back in here, too. This is a somewhat unique committee. This is the Senate Select committee, a little different than most of the committees generally, at least traditionally. Theres a bit million bipartisanship. Theres a bit less of the polarization we see on capitol hill. How has this committee in particular, the Senate Select committee on intelligence been working on the question of russia, the question of threats not just from 2016 but looking forward . Well this committee has fared quite well, at least on a relative scale. I think we have to contrast it with whats gone on in the other Congressional Chamber in the house where you have devin nunes who is back in the saddle when it comes to the russia investigati investigation. It started with unmasking, its gone on to the memo he put out about the fisa process. So thats a case study in what not to do. In contrast to that, senator burr and senate or warner have have continued to operate with a great deal of comity. It sounds like there is not as much turbulence as there is in their partner committee. We expect the topic of russia to come up and loom large. Its open season for the senators on this committee. They can ask about anything they want and at least one of the other topics that may come up, we talk about chris wray, the head of the fbi will be there. You have to imagine one of these senators might ask about the issue of the fbi security clearance, the background check and security clearance and the issue of rob porter, the now former white house staff secretary there and exactly what it was that was holding up that process, who in the white house knew about it, a lot of these questions that have not been made clear in terms of responses from the white house that maybe wray will be asked about today. This is a touchy issue because the president s soninlaw Jared Kushner has not been granted a full clearance and you look at the issues surrounding rob porter and it has major moral implications in that just you shouldnt allow someone who is alleged to have beaten his wives to serve in a very senior position in the u. S. Government but more so than that, it also has National Security implications in that it shows the administration ignored the fbis recommendation to not give full clearance to the staff secretary rob porter because he was susceptible to blackmail as his exwives told them so this is sheds a lot of light on their judgment and how the Trump Administration is safeguarding the nation ice ts secrets. Weve been mentioning the opening secret from dan coates. Lets listen in and hear what he has to say. In the coming year, let me state first the continents center of gravity appears to be shifting to france where macron european and global challenges. Results of the recent german election i think enforce that assessment. Second, recent efforts by some governments in central and easte Eastern Europe to undermine Judicial Independence and parliamentary oversight and increase government control over public media are weakening the rules of law. These steps would presage further democratic decline and opportunities for chinese and russian influence. There are many more topics i could discuss, i havent even got on the the western hemisphere or africa but i would like to close with the discussion of one additional threat this one internal and somewhat personal. Im concerned that our increasing fractious political process, particularly with respect to federal spending is threatening our ability to properly defend our nation both in the short term and especially in the long term. The failure to address our longterm fiscal situation has increased the National Debt to over 20 trillion and growing. This represents a dire threat to our economic and National Security. Former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff mike mullen first identified the National Debt as the greatest threat to our National Security. Since then, he has been joined by numerous respected National Security leaders of both parties including former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger as well as former defense secretaries bob gates and leon panetta and our current defense secretary jim mattis agrees with this assessment. I have spent a lot of time in the Senate Working on this issue and unfortunately the problem continues to grow so i would urge all of us to recognize the need to address this challenge and to take action as soon as possible before a fiscal crisis occurs that undermines our ability to ensure our National Security. With that i and the rest of the panel are happy to take your questions. We appreciate the opportunity to be with you today. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you very much for that very thorough overview of the world and whats at play. Ill recognize members based on seniority for up to five minutes. The chair recognizes himself. Admiral rogers, according to the statement for the record, the Intelligence Community assesses that most detected chinese Cyber Operations against the United States private industry are focused on clear defense contractors or i. T. And Communications Firms whose products and Services Support government and private sect orneor networks nationwide. Rate the intelligence communities when it comes to identifying clear defense contractors and other private sector actors about malicious cyber activities. So youre asking me to rate a function for which i dont have responsibility or day to day execution so ill give you an opinion but its not informed by day to day experience. This is an issue at nsa and Cyber Command and i try to work aggressively because its tremendous concern for us as a department. Clearly i think we are not where we need to be. The challenge, i think, is weve got multiple areas of knowledge and insight across the federal government within the private sector and how do we bring this together and integrate a team with realtime flow back and forth . That is not where we are today. Thats where weve got to get to. In your estimation, are we doing enough to warn the private sector of the threat thats out there . I think we are informing them as we become aware of it but one of my concerns is were only going to see one slice of this picture. Im also interested from the private sectors perspective. Tell us what you are seeing. If we can bring these two together, well have such a broader perspective and much more indepth knowledge of whats happening. Thats part of it, not just one side needs to do a better job. I think its our ability to bring this together as a team. Given that youve seen the difficulty especially of this committee and the Intelligence Community had communicating with Tech Companies about a way forward that is in commonality are you concerned at how this is going to become an increasingly challenging landscape for both congress and for the Intelligence Community working as we see new tech firms emerge everyday . Yes, because i wonder how bad does this have to get before we realize we have to do some things fundamentally differently and i would argue if you look at the internet of things, you look at the security levels within those components, folks, this is going to order of magnitude. If we think the problem is a challenge now we just wait, it will get much more expo ten usually from a security perspective. Director pompeo, north korea is likely to promote tests noting that a test over the pacific may be under consideration by pyongyang. What haves the regional reaction this kind of test would be . Senator, thanks for your question and if i may take one minute to say, ive been doing this a year and i want to express my appreciation to this committee for helping the cia do the things it no eds to do providing us the resources. Youve been incredibly supportive of that so my team thanks you for that we think a test like that would unite the region. Having said that our sense is that we have built a Global Coalition pushing back against kim jongun and his terror regime. With respect to what each particular country might do, id prefer to keep that conversation to closed sthegs afternoon. Great. Whats the ics assessment of north koreas willingness to employ its expansive conventional military capabilities . Senator, one of the things that director coats referred to in his opening remarks is that kim jongun remains not only intent on staying in power, that the thing all dictators prefer to do, die in their sleep fully at the peak of their power, but he has this mission that is a longstanding north korean idea of reunification and their capacity to use a Nuclear Umbrella combined with their conventional forces to exert coercive behavior, certainly inside their countries, certainly against south korea but more broadly as something that our analysts are continuing to look at. We can see as they ratchet up their Nuclear Capability making a response more difficult, their capacity to do harm in the region as a result of their incredible conventional capabilities alone increases. Probably for general ashley and admiral rogers, according to statements for the record, the widespread proliferation of Artificial Intelligence is likely to prompt new National Security concerns. Hows the ic accounting for the possibility that these new national of these new National Security concerns . Are we seeing indications knew our adversaries are working to harness emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and is the ic looking to maximize the potential of emerging technologies in our own processing and analysis of data and intelligence . If i could take the first shot at that one. As you look at dia and thanks for the support the committee provides to the intelligence agency. So if you look at foreign militaries in the operational environment, this is central to looking at doctrine and what theyre developing. When you think about Artificial Intelligence, our near peer competitors are pursuing this and its a lot of commercial technology that is available. The ability to digest and pull that information in, Artificial Intelligence is needed. At the open source level, project maven. You look at full motion video, for example, social media fullmotion video, youll never afford the work force that can go through all the material whether its video, whether its what admiral rogers works in the way of signals intelligence, whats available in social media. So Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning which is kind of where we are right now, more Machine Learning than it is Artificial Intelligence, were seeing all of our near peer competitors invest in these technologies because it will get them to decision cycles faster, allow them to digest investigation in greater volumes and better understand whats happening in the battle space and whats happening in the strategic environment. I would agree. I would highlight every organization on this table is faced with the challenge of victims of our own success in some ways, the ability to access data brings its own set of challenges so we are attempting to deal with this. When i look at adversaries i see them going through the same set of challenges. When i look at the prc, there is a National Strategy designed to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence to generate strategic outcomes, many along the lines general ashley highlighted to generate positive outcomes for them. If you look at their research, how its affecting the amount of data they are going after, i can remember five, ten years ago looking at some data concentrations and thinking to myself, this is so large and has such a disparate amount of information, it would be difficult for an opponent to generate insider knowledge for it. Yo i dont have those conversations anymore. With the power of Machine Learning and big data analytics, theyre increasingly targets of attraction to a whole host of actors and you have watched the prc and others designed to access these concentrations. If i can follow up on that, this is one of those areas available in the commercial industry so you see investment in academia and others that are pursuing this. So theres a key piece worth addressing which is how do you operationalize it . You go back in if i could use a world war ii example. The fact that there were planes, radios and tanks was not unique to the germans in world war ii. They came up with an operational concept that allowed them to leverage that and peter singer, if everyones ever read ghost fleet is a futurist. We asked him as you look at the things emerging and the things coming out, what do you see in the way of break through that gives somebody a marks advantage . And his comment wasnt that i see someone give something a mark eed advantage but whos ab to put it into effect. A lot of that technology will be available globally. Thank you. If i could just ask you, weve taken very significant lead on this given the enormous volume of collection that theyve taken, the inability to process that through humans. Ive asked robert to answer that question because i think theyre taking leading efforts that might be help. Its important to note