people of gaza and the struggle for a free palestine. who are my people in this crucible moment of war and genocide? as we witness the dirty process of ethnic cleansingen unfold before the eyes of the world. who areld my people as tiny bron children are bombed in southern gaza as they flee their homes following the evacuation route prescribed by their bombers? who are my if people as my friend's cousin gives birth in total darkness in gaza city and incubators are shut down as the power is cut off in hospitals throughout the strip? no food, no water, no fuel, just bombs. and -- [inaudible] whole buildings are leveled. apartments where panel finish families cook meals, lovers made love, w children played games ad girls dance with their friends . there is a hole in the heart of a refugee camp, a bomb crater

beneath which unknown and unnamed bodies -- >> we're going to leave the last few minuteses of this booktv program. you can watch it in its entirety at our web with site, k span.org. as we take you live now to the u.s. capitol where the senate is ready to gale in. the senate will continue working on executive and judicial nominations and is expected to finish all senate business before adjourning for the year. you watching live coverage on c-span2. >> and this is expected to be the finish

the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer.

the chaplain: let us pray. sovereign god, you see all that happens in our nation and world, as you lead us by your mercies and grace. continue to shower our planet with your blessings, protecting us from the forces that hinder freedom. in this season of cheer, inspire our lawmakers with wisdom to express their gratitude for the gifts you have given this great nation. may this gratitude also be expressed by their reverence for you and their willingness to

obey your precepts. help them to keep their promises to you and to one another, no matter how great the challenges may be. lord, enable them to walk securely in the path of your will. we pray in the name of the prince of peace. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c, december 20, 2023. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable john w. hickenlooper a senator from the state of colorado, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business for debate with senators permitted to speak for senators permitted to speak for

with the jamestown foundation who to talk about point cyber attacks on critical euros u.s. infrastructure. what is the jamestown foundation? >> it's a national security d.c. that deals with a lot of the largest threats and challenges facing the united states of america, whether that china's rising military power or russian power projection around the world,

terrorism, counterterrorism. so the jamestown foundation, it's a classic national security think tank. >> host: describe the threat, cyber threat, to our u.s. infrastructure. >> guest: so the threats, i think the best way to describe the threat is these days military power national security power and civilian critical infrastructure are deeply linked in ways that they might not have been going back half a a centy or something like that. and as a result, if you are someone, if you're a nationstate that is opposing the united states and in the potential military conflict, and you're trying to prevent us from prevailing in that conflict, you are interested in targeting our critical infrastructure including critical infrastructure used primarily or partly by civilians, and that's

just the modern reality of national power. and so the threat is that in the event of a conflict, our critical infrastructure is targeted and not just, it's not just a contest of militaries. and even in peacetime you have spies getting into critical infrastructure trying to collect information that will be useful any military conflict or other acts of espionage. you also have ransomware attacks. that's been huge rise in critical infrastructure targeting over the past couple of years, and for those watching and might not have heard the term ransomware, basically to break into your systems and they say that until you pay a certain amount of money with crypto currency or something like that, then you're not getting access to your data.

that is something that protecting against it is a little bit different than protecting against previous forms of infrastructure intrusion and if they're often used transnational criminal networks around the world as a way to target say hospitals or schools were things like that and even have no real relevance to the military, national security, but if you can get them to pay up, that is a serious payday, especially if you're if you are based somewhere else in the world where a bitcoin goes a lot farther even that it does in america. >> host: what types of information are you talking about? >> guest: so when talking about, well, the u.s. government has a definition of critical infrastructure that's very broad, everything from schools and hospitals to ports, logistics, the subtleties. essentially all of the facilities that, undergird our

daily life, and we might not necessary think about how critical they are to our lifestyle as americans until they are disrupted. there was a hospital earlier this year, i believe in texas, where because of the ransomware attack they had to divert ambulances from their emergency rooms to other hospitals that were not affected. so these attacks, information systems are underlying every aspect of modern life now, these attacks can potentially disrupt daily life for civilians, and not just for military or other kind of national security planning. >> host: where talking with joe mcreynolds. he will take your questions or comments about cyber threats to critical u.s. infrastructure. here's how you can join the conversation.

republican style in at 202-748-8001. democrats 202-748-8000. and a dependence 202-748-8002. textus with your questions are comets include your first then, city and state, 202-748-8003 or on facebook.com/c-span and on x with vandal @cspanwj. i want to show our viewers what recently of the national press club the general nationals could agency director had to say, he's ahead of cyber command, had to say about protecting the u.s. infrastructure. here he is. >> so how would industries that wouldn't necessarily have the same level of cyber securities are not connected international defense, however as perforated -- the mighty backdoor some . what do they need to do to

better defend themselves, their own companies to be able to not create vulnerability? >> i think the fact were responsible for, the sector, probably outside of the other 13 sectors, with our companies like this, being able to work with cisa, the element of department homeland security, to get their advisories is really important. if i might everything is as important piece. we stood up the cybersecurity collaboration center nsa in 2020. that's three years ago. one of the things we said is we want to be able to work with that fits the database. but we found up initially the way we have to work is we have to work in their medium. their medium is not in a classified medium. being able to meet with them and talk with them on on a serief different channels, the english information and unclassified meant is what we doing. the other part is why do we provide a series of products that ensure a higher degree of cybersecurity so being able to

provide scanning to the defense industrial base to see what vulnerabilities and they have or some of the ways were looking at this equation a bit differently. >> host: what did you hear? >> guest: so that's actually a critical piece of this is when you're working with the defense industrial base, if you are the u.s. government, cyber threat information oftentimes that may be, that sort of information may be sensitive or restricted and there's been a push over the last several years to take those categories of information and be bored easily able to push them out to industry. because industry can often react rapidly if they are given information rapidly, but this is something the government accountability office has actually been pushing government on for a matter of years now. and the biden administration has been quite responsive on this, the idea that government was not moving fast enough to get cyber

threat information to industry, and that government classification rules which are of course very important for protecting our nation secrets, are not necessarily, were not designed with this kind of cyber threat information sharing in mind. so organizations like the nsa, he also mention cisa, the cybersecurity and if researchers could administration. these organizations are working hard now to create more optimized information sharing mechanisms with industry, and especially an issue also when you are dealing with regional critical infrastructure around america where realistically these small infrastructure management agencies or utility

companies, things like that, they will never be as invested in the own cybersecurity at the local level as an nationstate that sees them as critical for some national security objective, penetrating that, seeing that has critical. nationstate will always have more resources a more focused to bring to bear than some local utility company. so that's where it's really important to bring the resources of the federal government to bear. back back in the early 2000,g back to the bush administration, you saw an emphasis on well, that's the private sector's problem. we're going to talk a big game about how the private sector in their infinite dynamism will be taking care of this. but the incentives just are not aligned to make this something

we say, oh, the private sector's going to handle it, they can take care of everything, we don't have to worry about it. no, we have to have real ongoing public private partnership on this, and that something that you see reflected heavily in say the biden administration's national cybersecurity strategy from earlier this year. >> host: we will get to calls here. brand is in arizona, and independent. question or comment. >> caller: yes. if i have my own power generator and solar power, and there's a cyber attack on the internet, is the government going to have a backup communication system that i can connect to to get the information? >> guest: that is a great question that i do not know the answer to. national emergency preparedness

is not my forte, but that is an excellent question, and i would assume that if you go on fema's website they would probably have some kind of information. it used to be back in the day growing up watching broadcast tv, there would be the test of the emergency broadcast system. i assume people who have devoted their entire careers to this have been looking at what a system like that for the modern digital age looks like, but that's just not my field, but thank you for calling. really appreciate it. >> host: tom is in baltimore, democratic caller. >> caller: good morning, mr. reynolds. my name is tom and i'm looking an article from april 2015 from "the baltimore sun" papers the said there's some clown decide to shoot at a substation with a

gun picky not the substation out and consequently power was lost for several blocks are in the white house including the white house. in addition to that, outside power was lost to the nuclear power plant. things cascaded after that. emergency generator shut off after 11 seconds. they got it back on but when they got back on some of the posted and start and had a real -- with that nuclear power plant. my question is, a rifle shot cannot get a substation, get a cyber attack to the same thing? >> guest: it's a fun thing out i do when watching today takes away from the segment is please don't shoot at your local power substation. everyone would prefer you didn't. i would say the potential for cyber attacks to shut down or interfere with power stations is

a huge potential threat vector as power station management becomes networked and industrial control systems become networked. but that's something that thankfully there are an entire subfield of information security professionals and infrastructure security professionals working to prevent. but the reality of critical infrastructure resilience and then on the other hand, attack from nationstate actors, from criminal groups looking to get a pay day the ransomware things like that, is that this will forever be an ongoing push pull, that there will always be groups looking to find new threat vectors into our critical infrastructure, including power

systems, and there will always be professionals looking to find new ways of making our critical infrastructure resilience, whether that is through network resiliency through segmentation of access controls and things like that and making it, making it hard to penetrate. now in the new era of generative ai, both attackers and defenders have new tools for testing network intrusion and network defense factors. so that's something that we're just going to continue to see in the future with i think no just neat and easy resolution of all, that was a fold delete of the past but months of delay and finally an end on a positive note. the senate confirmed the last of the military nominees held up by senator tuberville.

military leaders and their families who have lived their -- who have had their lives put on hold for months can finally breathe a sigh of relief because the wait is over. it was a very good outcome, one that should not have been necessary, but now that the holds have been lifted and these nominees confirmed i hope this never happens again. let the experience of the past ten months be a warning -- no senator, no senator should use our military officers and their families as political pawns to push a political a agenda, no matter how strongly they believe in that agenda. this was a long and painful ordeal for our armed formses, but it ended on -- armed forces but it ended on a positive note for them and our country because senator tuberville didn't get one bit of what he asked for. only a lot of pain to military families. let's make sure this never happens again no matter how strongly any one of the 100 senators feels op any one issue. don't hold military families

hostage. mr. president, there will be no more roll call votes this year. but make no mistake, the winter recess will be a busy and important few weeks for the u.s. senate. negotiations will continue around the clock, reaching an agreement on a critical national security supplemental. as i speak, right now, the negotiators are in this -- in a room down the hall trying to make more progress. i came by a few minutes ago to thank all of them for their hard work and encourage them to continue. the future, not only of ukraine but of our country and the western world, depends on it. challenging issues remain, but we in this caucus are committed to addressing needs at the southern border and to helping our partners and allies confront and deter serious threats in israel, ukraine and the indo-pacific. the senate will not let these national security challenges go unanswered. now, when we return in the new year we hope to take swift

action on the national security supplemental. passing a national security supplemental is not going to be easy. it's one of the hardest things this senator has undertaken in a very long time. it will take compromise, good faith, and recognition from both sides that nobody is going to get everything they want. democrats will continue to work in good faith with our republican counterparts to get things done. we will not abandon our principles on border, but we will work to find common ground wherever we can. let me be clear -- it will take cooperation from serious-minded republicans to get this done. again, it will take cooperation from serious minded republicans to pass a national security supplemental. i know some on the other side will never vote for it, but there are many who understand the need, to both give ukraine,

israel humanitarian aid for the civilians in gaza, and the indo-pacific, the help it needs, and to help fix our border, doing it in ways that are consistent with our principles. democrats will continue to take these negotiations seriously, and we urge the majority of republicans on the senate side who understand this is real and very important to join with us in helping get this done, doing it together. leader mcconnell and i issued a statement last night that showed we both hope to get this done. if we fail in this moment, if the united states abandons our friends in ukraine to vladimir putin, history will cast a shameful and permanent shadow upon all of us. it's a matter of the highest urgency we get this right, and that's precisely what we'll work towards in the new year, as soon as we return. now, mr. president, the first

year of the 118th congress has come to a close. it's time to look ahead to the many challenges we face in the year ahead. but never in recent memory has the contrast between the two parties been more obvious than the past three years. under democratic majorities, we saw the most productive congress in modern history, but under republican house majority this year we saw a year marked by chaos, extremism and paralysis. there's no question that divided government and maga extremism made legislating in 2023 very difficult. for much of the year it was as if donald trump himself were running the show over in the house, making it exceedingly hard to get anything done. but in a difficult year, democrats did not abandon our promise to work to make life better for the american people. this year democrats protected the historic wins we've gotten done in the 117th congress,

climate change, prescription drug reform, chips and science and so much more. i would remind the country that all but one of these major bills we passed and led in the senate was done with bipartisan support. you need bipartisanship to get so much done. but we protected those historic wins. second, we worked all year to implement those wins effectively. new infrastructure projects, new factories, new good-paying jobs, across the country manufacturing and job creation is surging, communities long overlooked are getting a second chance. seniors will be paying less for health care and prescription drugs. rural people will be able to get broadband internet service for the first time. and after years of high costs, inflation has dramatically slowed down in the year since we passed the inflation reduction a act. third, third word, we have

protected, we have implement, and third word is prevented. even with the maga republican right wing majority running so much of the house, we prevented the worst things from happening. we prevented the country from defaulting, which would have been a disaster. we prevented in both september and november the government from shutting down. in each case, the keyword was bipartisanship. we can't do any of these things without both parties cooperating. it's a path to nowhere, for not only the republican party but for the house and country. finally, in a difficult year, democrats persevered. we protected, we implemented, we

prevented and we persevered. we percent received at every turn, to work to get things done. we began our critical work on artificial intelligence. we pushed to outcompete the chinese government, even more historic and -- even adding, as we added more historic and diverse judges to the federal bench. this work will continue this year. there will be no easing in 2024. we will hit the ground running. there's a lot we must do. we must not only pass the supplemental and finish the job of properly funding our federal government, but we've made large progress in a bipartisan way on agenda. insulin reform, artificial intelligence with the bipartisan gang of four held some very, very elucidating insight forums

and now we're ready to start looking at legislation. outcompeting the chinese government, passing safe banking, and cannabis reform. getting something done on railway safety, on child, on online child privacy, and so much more. in each of these, we have laid some groundwork with bipartisan support. it won't be easy, but we want to get these things done in 2024. the only way, though, we will get them done, just like with the supplemental, just like with the government shutdown, is through bipartisan cooperation. it was the very first thing i said at the beginning of this congress. bipartisanship is essential in divided government. we saw that play out all year long. only through bipartisanship were we able to avoid a catastrophic default, avoid a shutdown, make any progress on xropgss or anything of import.

what we import. we also saw when one party particularly in the house, not so much in the senate, refuses to embrace bipartisanship. the unproductive and dysfunctional house majority is the most unproductive and dysfunctional in modern history. and what happened in the house, because of that dysfunctional majority, can be boiled down to three words -- chaos, extremism, pral assessments donald trump may not be in office but his influence drove practically every major decision for house republicans at great cost to our country. we saw maga extremists take the debt ceiling hostage to push an agenda that would have crashed the economy, raised costs and killed millions of jobs. we saw maga extremists hijack the appropriations process by adding poison pills, restricting a woman's right to choose, and so much else. we saw, even saw maga extremists

bring all of congress to ago grinding halt for morning a month by expelling their own speaker, even as crises raged in europe and middle east. shameful. unfortunately, the dark cloud of the trump administration hovers, looms over senate and house republicans, and it's something i hope they will resist because he is no good for the country, no good for their party. mr. president, maga republicans are incapable of governing, plain and simple. americans will not forget that when they head to the polls next year. so in conclusion, as we look to a new year, i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work together. i urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to resist maga extremism that led their side to so much catastrophe. i urge speaker johnson not to let the 30 or so hard-right extremists keep running the show

in the house as they did for too much of this year. it's not going to get any easier. the challenges we face remain great. but it is my hope, my earnest and fervent hope because i love this country, i love this country, that the experience of this year shows our colleagues on the other side that embracing maga is a recipe for failure. there will be a lot at stake when we return in 2024. if we embrace bipartisanship, i'm confident we will succeed. i yield the floor.

>> and then it's central to everyone. >> host: joe mcreynolds is is that chinese security fellow at jamestown foundation and also cofounder of the china cyber and intelligent studies institute and wrote a book called china's evolving military strategy. we have a little bit less than ten minutes left our guest. how much information does the chinese blew of the u.s. for a week potential to affect cybersecurity? >> guest: that is a question that i have no way of answering. other than to say, to simply guess, i would guess not very much simple because that balloon was, balloons are not the hardest thing in the world to track. it was clearly, if you read all the u.s. government public pronouncements from when the

balloon was floating into our airspace, the government was very aware and responsive to it. my sense just on the outside looking in is, is that it seemed like we responded appropriately. i don't have any particular concerns regarding the balloon. the timing was a little odd with the chinese government overtures to the u.s. government that time, which makes me wonder on the chinese side did the left hand know what the right hand was doing? so yeah, i have no particular knowledge or insight on that other than to say that it appears to been handled correctly. >> host: j in new hampshire, independent. >> caller: good morning, everyone. i am really horrified to find out that when people say

critical infrastructure, we all think roads, bridges, ports, electrical grid, correctly. also included in that is perception management of national myths and the narratives the need to be supported by controlling what we think and what access, information with access to. in other words, who's running this covid response that was absolutely horrific that is just being slaughtered? that's an national myth that is being supported as critical infrastructure so thank you very much and happy holidays, everyone. >> host: we will go to eric in dayton, ohio, independent. >> caller: yes, thank you for this opportunity. my biggest concern is the apparent collapse of the border and chinese, across. the physical presence of bad actors, not necessarily

infrastructure attacks, but just in general howe do you perceive that? >> guest: i'm happy to talk about that actually. there is often a mistaken perception that if physical in person espionage is being committed against the united states on behalf of china, that it would be a person of chinese origin or chinese ethnicity committing that espionage. but when you look at the cases, and i've actually testified as an expert witness in a trial of a chinese spin i case -- espionage case less your side done some homework on this. when you look at the cases, it's every bit as likely if not more likely to be a random, you know, middle aged nine chinese guy who just can't believe his luck that a woman half his age 90 so charming and attractive and

funny, and the next thing you know he's handing over our critical sensitive information. so i would say however you feel about border security, that's its own real separate topic. if the question you are worried about is espionage on behalf of the chinese government against america, whether in peacetime, in a crisis scenario, i wouldn't be looking at that as more likely to come from people of chinese origin, , whether that's chinese nationals, chinese ethnicity. it's just really not something you can predict in that regard. >> host: let's take this text our viewer. does mr. mcreynolds think china would attack america's article infrastructure prior to an invasion of taiwan? >> guest: so that is a

fascinating question. i teach sometimes at georgetown, and my final exam for some of my student, my china minister course, was having them examine that question and see what they thought. and when you get into open-source writing by chinese military officers on this question, the only explicitly say how would we invade taiwan but how would you integrate information warfare and kinetic warfare in an island invasion scenario, or something like that. when chinese military theorists are writing publicly about this, they often talk about

intertwining information warfare, and conventional military operations. and on the one hand, that makes total sense. but on the other hand, as we see with russia's invasion of ukraine, that is often easier said than done. because just as a practical question, let's say china successfully attacked america's critical infrastructure that would help us move our military assets into the taiwan strait, or into the theater of conflict. does that infrastructure stay off-line for a minute, an hour, a day, a week? how do you predict the impact of even a successful attack?

i mean, it's very hard to predict even whether an information attack on critical infrastructure will be successful, but even if it is successful, how long does that affect effect last? the answer to that question would completely change how you are carrying out your conventional invasion, your amphibious assault of taiwan. and multiply that question across tons of critical infrastructure in america. in taiwan for whichever other country was involved in the hypothetical future conflict, or u.s. allies and partners that would support us. and then there are just so many layers of uncertainty that i think it's very easy for military theorists writing in people liberation daily, like the chinese military newspapers to say, yeah, we would use all

of the above. but actually turning that into a strategic advantage i think could be very harmful. >> host: again you can find more information if you go to jamestown.org. he's the chinese security study some of their at jamestown foundation. thanks for the conversation.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: negotiations on border security continue to make headway. i'm grateful to senator lankford for his uninterrupted focus on

the task at hand, which is meaningful policy changes. our colleagues at the negotiating table are under no illusions about how difficult it is to fix our nation's broken asylum and parole system. they're working on what would be the first serious repair in more than 30 years. but there's no longer any disagreement that the situation at the southern border is unsustainable and requires the senate to act. this is the core of america's national security. it will be an essential part of supplemental legislation to address pressing security challenges and negotiations will continue in earnest until we get there. the senate cannot afford to get

this wrong. from south texas to southeast asia and to the red sea, it is an historically challenging and consequential time to protect america's interests, our allies, and our own people. the world is witnessing the first land war in europe since 1945. ukraine's citizen soldiers were in the trenches -- are in the trenches right now. resisting russian aggression with western assistance. american leadership has strengthened the nato alliance, prompted our closest allies and trading partners to share more of the burden of collective defense, and driven historic investments in the military -- in military strength and industrial capacity we need here

at home to compete with our biggest adversaries. finishing the job will require more of that leadership. meanwhile, israel is responding to the deadliest day for the jewish people since the holocaust. our ally needs the time, the space, and the support required to eliminate the terrorist savages responsible for the horrors of october 7. and the entire region needs american leadership to restore deterrence against iran and its terrorist proxies who attack u.s. personnel with impunity. from the other side of the world our friends in the indo-pacific are watching closely what goes on in europe and the middle east and investing seriously in their own military strength because

they know that china is doing the same. our single-greatest strategic adversary is growing increasingly aggressive, increasingly advanced, and increasingly keen to seize an edge over a global superpower that fails to act like one. so, mr. president, the stakes are high this holiday season for our allies and partners on the front lines of authoritarian aggression. the challenge -- the challenges are real for brave american servicemembers who are spending this time of year far from home and loved ones to keep us safe. it's a dangerous world, one that doesn't reward weakness. america needs to show that we

haven't forgotten how to lead and that we're committed to restoring the hard power that leadership requires. so i'm encouraged by our colleagues' commitment to keep working toward an agreement on national security beginning with security here at home. the senate will not let the challenges we face go unanswered. mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the senate recess until 1:45 p.m. the presiding officer: without objection. the senate is in recess until

>> measures agreed upon by both republicans and democrats. next vote in the senate are scheduled january 8 when work will continue on a two ukraine and border security. as always find live coverage of the senate on c-span2. >> weeknights at nine eastern c-span's encore presentation of our ten part series "books that shaped america" c-span partner with the library of congress which explored key pieces of literature and had a profound impact on our country. tonight we will feature the journals of lewis and clarke

detailing the expedition to explore the west all the way to the pacific ocean from 1804- 1804-1806. our guest is authored several books on the lewis and clark expedition. watch c-span's encore presentation of "books that shaped america" weeknights at night eastern on c-span or go to c-span.org/"books that shaped america" to vie t series and learn more about each book featured. >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 4:30 p.m. eastern from this year's george washington symposium at mount vernon a discussion about the united states constitution and how it is evolved over more than two centuries. at 7 p.m. eastern i to her of the smithsonian national portrait galleries 1898 exhibit with portrait of the major players in the spanish american war illustrating the expansion

of u.s. interests and influence abroad in that era. at 8 p.m. eastern lectures in history market university political science professor on the life and presidency of jimmy carter. at 9:30 p.m. on the presidency a lunch and remember and first lady pat nixon and betty ford who soared back to back terms in the white house from 1969-1977. posted by the gerald ford presidential foundation. speakers include mixes nixon son-in-law edward cox and this is for the daughter susan ford bales. . the american story watch american history tv saturdays on c-span2 and find a full schedule your program guide or watch online any time at c-span.org/history. >> russian president vladimir putin briefed reporters in moscow on russia's domestic and foreign policies and the war in ukraine. he also discusses negotiating the release of "wall street journal" correspondent