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tv   Sen. Warner on Cybersecurity Defense  CSPAN  March 19, 2024 6:44pm-7:15pm EDT

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opportunity and i think you'll live. >> we extend the educators, parents and participants who have supported each of these young filmmakers on their creative journey. congrations to all of our winners but do not miss out the top winning documentary will be broadcast on c-span starting april 1. plus you can catch eac the 150 award-winning student cam films online anytime at student cam.org. join us inged in fire inspiringg minds as they share their opinions on the issues that are important to them and affect ou. the chair of the senate intelligence committee, mark warner td security at a crowded strike summit in washington d.c. ♪■ ♪ ♪ all right, here we are.
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i am very, very happy to have senator warner here with us. mool here note senator warner's background the governor of virginia and senator hirono in virgini and as the chair of the senate select committee on intelligenc stexperts up on the hill in this space certainly from a nationalt relates to cyber. it is such an important role that he has. i'v have had the pleasure of chatting with him previously on a number of these issues. having been in front over the years. so, welcome. ksh a lot of your constituents here? what's the most important
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question how we live in virginia? those of you who don't, why [laughter] i'm a little intimidate most crowds i go to i can pull off being the fiber guy. this is not the crowd i could pull off being the cyber guy but i'm looking forward to the conversations. >> it's so take. we've got a lot of folks from the executive branch of her a lot from the defense industrial base they've been involved in the space for such a long time. they certainly understand the risk. but i am a big believer in the holistic response which includes them havin authorities the legislative branch is able to provide. so, having her to provide that perspeive is really, really important. >> congress has been so functioning recently. [laughter] ra. [laughter] >> that was not a newsflash for
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anybody. >> let's talk about china. bute china. i know you have been vocal about china. what is happening politically similar geopolitical issues. some of the intelligence that has come out. f work. adams team identifying china targeting almost all of the 39 critical sectors that we have. and the impact that they have had on companies. what do you see as the important steps for the u.s. public stepín sector in managing china relationships? especially given a lot of companies are doing business in china. >> first of all let me start by. enormously smart people yet they pose a level of competition with
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the united states we've never really seen. was never really an economic threat the way china is. china is invested in technology and the technology domain at a level frankly the way america invested in the post- >> era. myhe background i was a telcom guy, a wireless guy and became venture capitalism part one of the wake-up calls for me when all the sudden oh my gosh not only is china running the table with an equipment vendor is national security but they're simultaneously flooding the of the technology standards around wireless key medication my view on china will. dramatically back when i was a governor hose into collaboratioe
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notion the more we integrate the more china is going to go into ther. i think of president xi took over in 2012 he made a conscious decision to say he would be willing to sacrifice growth and personal freedom to maintain the dominance of the commonest part of a change chinese law and 2016, 2 clear any company in china that's one of the reasons i am on the issue. he that company has to be responsible to the cc pete not to shareholders and customers. starting at about 2017 and i am proud it's less fully functioning bipartisan committee in the congress. which again is not a high bar to get over. but we have startf what we called classified road it shows. we briefed industry sector about by industry sectordo we did not say decouple but we did say be well because a $500 billion a year of intellectual property
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theft byhe china for china witha much more strategic technology domains looking in 2030. documents they help you it was interesting to see the evolution pre-covid we got some pickup. but not s think the aftermath of covid, the aftermath of putin's ope treated and thee the weight increasingcr amount of chinese aggressiveness. countries are waking up. the interestinghing, every interest group or every industry group would come and at least take with the exception and i say this withru concern it was related to my old industry as it is a venture capitalist but private equity because too many large american private equity companies are making so much money in the did not want
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to hear the truth. now again post covid they are willing to hear. this is an ongoing education process. it resulted in the case of wall way we are to replacing equipment. it was the generation between when john cornyn decided we need to try to bri s semiconductor industry back to this country of the chips bill it motivates me and the concerns i have about tiktok both inata t frankly on tiktok more just the power of the propaganda tool you got 178 million americans 90 minutes a day on average on tiktok a slight shift in the algorithm can mean particular for youngng people get almost all of it is from tiktok. a slight shift in the algorithm can mean suddenly you're s gettg news taiwan is part of china or putin should win in ukraine.
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it has been an evolution. deal ? china is very good you know as well as i do. statement we need to collaborate with countries like yours and others. we also need, i think to be more aggressive at taking down cyber criminals. more aggressive in pushing back against influence operations. within the realm of what we can talk about in this room. over were very aggressive in 2018 at taking down some ira other entities in washington and showing them ways we were not going to sit back and simply be a punching bag. unfortunately from cybercrime to the change hack to election pres
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we were in march of 20 which is hard for me too say because i am arat and i think we also pick up our game you talk but these different domains were china has infiltrated infiltrated the critical infrastructure. hooksett told the election for a minute because i want to talk about that in a moment. but continuing with the concept when holding people accountable and how do we push back? i have set for a long time these are not computers attacking computers. >> yes, yes, yes peacocks are going to see that with ai. with the human beings today that are physically behind these attacks that are programming, identifying the targets, they are collecting and analyzing the intelligence a lot of it with ai. there are still human beings what we could on the private sector side is protect our infrastructure prove got to
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constantly play defense. there is no offense forhe at whatat is that the government cn do, it should begin with these individuals hiding in russia and china and elsewhere in thelaw et access to them to take them off the field therefore it these attacks continue indefinitely until they actually stopped. what are the lovers we could use? >> we can use efforts a few years back with chinese pla officers that at least we put and indicted but again were not nearly aggressive enough. there's formal law enforcement prosecuting here in america. even if you are not able to be touched. >> you lock them in. >> you lock them in. but also our ability to dispt some of t their networks. toom disrupt cyber criminal activities.
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it was a week plus after the change in united healthcare passed. before we were even on the path towards identifying the bad guys. again i don't think we can do this is government alone we h gs and others in the space of identifying and being frankly more on the offense and simply on t d side. >> one in the most important things from the government perspective and i was talking to somebody in the administration earlier today about the need to have more coordination across the entire. how do we bring togetherhe capa, the resources of all the different intelligence agencies to have a more proactive approach and a more aggressive approach that we could do more disruption and eidetic densification et cetera.
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there have been pockets of sues it is as coordinated's and as effectie as it could be. >> there is constant tension. as someone who the coupling ber economies you a clearly have our friends in the state department whove want to make sure and the white house trying sleep we don't total rupture with china. we have to have a thoughtful stte coordinated. part of the issue is people come to chinaly they have not stepped back on any of their our critical infrastructure. they have not been us all in on misinformation or disinformation as russia has been in pastasthag much much better att it. so if they are not cting bkor ut sink in unilaterally disarmed
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but we do need to be■■ willing o be a little more aggressive. >> i have often times talked about the risk the from cyber having similarities with nuclear proliferation. certainly a nuclear warhead goingnl off at a major city woud be catastrophic to the world. is there an opportunity to have those types of discussions? >> i think it couple comments. t there's more expertise in this room and correct me if i'm wrong. my understanding is in the late '90s w is an effort toom try to set some level of international cyber rules that healthcare systems it was the united states that did not want to go through that when china and russia did we thought we are far enough ahe i standard mightt be good for us.e that might be short term over a llong-term vision number one.■çs
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that surprised me we have not seen the russia/ukraine war which my top priority right now is not having america walk away from ukraine. it would be his a mistake of historportions. but one of the things i have been surprised that in most people at usg have been surprised we have not seen russia use thon a grand scale te expected. part of that is because ukrainians are good at defense. parte, of that is because compiesikrosoft and others haveic helped the ukrainians but i think there has been a little bit of a reluctance from the russians to use your absolute top a game in the ukrainian conflict but i think it still exists. and i do think we should be
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conscious of that. then a little bit again it appears to be more cyber criminals in united h you know and russia in particular you may be an agent by dayr guide by night. but the level of attack could be problematic it's a year or so ago they a shipped on the irish healthcare system for about s a this notion of no rules of the road what's on or off limits or system there be lower l attribution standards. we would not excuse if you are eight nighttime criminal workfon government. having some broader understand on that helps all the parties ouinvolved to.
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>> i thi you are right there will have to be more discussion of rules of the roses recall it but it has to be a framework. some of that is out the carrot and some of thato they stick. that's just the way it is it's what human nature is i think. ss this line this is whatnding the result is going to be. defining this clear redlines is critically. let's talk about the election because it's on a lot of people's minds we talked about earlier today. adam was talking about it. i have been involved when i was in the bureau back in 2008 and it was not publicized at the time. it has been publicized and now,i president obama's talked about s campaign was targeted and senator mccain's by china which was a clear espionage. they were collecting to understand what each of the candidates positions were on a military and■@ finance, economic
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issues et cetera. and identified the russian government in 2016. and we went public with it. that the most extensive bipartisan investigation of how much interference by russia. >> i read four volumes. i've not got to five but i read it for cover to cover. it was incredibly bipartisan which i and the opportunity to speak to folks about t that was criticaly important for u.s. national security.he but we saw 2018, was on 22 other cases of targeting beyond russia, china, ironic, and others others, criminal elements. when we look forward to 2024 being a huge collection in the unitedies around the world, where do you see what the u.s. can do in advance of the fica tax t >> u.s. citizens in our
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democratic process. >> yes. appreciate you asking that. and i've said this in another forum, and i know i made some folks mad in the administration, but sit i think we are less prepared in 2024 than we were at equivalent time in 2020. and why do i say that? in 2020 i knewplayers were, they identified. i don't have that complete clarity for a variety of personnel shifts and a couple of other frsnd here is the reasonsy i think we're in potentially a deeper pile of hurt. es have learned, our adversaries and, frankly, even some that are quasi-allies,, other countries that we can't tal about, this remark by effective and really cheap. a lot less cost than building a tanker orly an aplane orarrier , you know, i throw mass misinformation at a nation like
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ourselves. secondly, unfortunately just to kind of the political environment we live in, oring there's a whole lot more americans inen 2024 that don't trust anything iour■i system. including our electoral system. than was thecl case in 2020. and that is just a fact offinisf crazy theories has a lot more receptiveness. and third thing, we talked about this behind the stage, the the missouri if case that was argued before the the supreme court yesterday which i think if the government's not scares the dickens out of me because this case basically said voluntary communication between social media platforms and the precluded. this is coming on the heels of when mark zuckerberg and and i went back and forth in late 2016 when he said, of course, warner, there's no russian activity on facebook. he subsequently said, okay, if there is, show me, and let's
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work together. that's part of the clap rah ative, cooperate i have relationship between most of -- cooperative relationships between sis saw and the f if bi on sharing of information. and that was working very peckively as of 2020, march of 2020. we really fromy when put forwart least mid january, we had no communication at all with any of the majorák platforms and the government about a election misinformation/disinformation x. that's crazy. now, we've shaken up the lawyert i think, again, those channels of communication and not only with the social media platforms but,t, researchers, with private sector entities like you guys who are identifying this kind of misinformati and disinformation and election tactics i don't think we're as a far along. and then finally, and this, i think, was adam's i got a chanco
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have him come by and falk to me and staff, you introduce a.i. which brings what used to be kind of almost curated kindividual one-off, you know,t had russian manipulating that didn't use the right kind of english language, that's all kind of in the pt a.i. tools out there. now, the only thing and, frankly, wert not going to get in place a set of guardrails legislativel. a i -- on a.i., i was at the munich security conference, and we pushed along with some of our e.u. friends to get 20 of the tech company including twitter and tiktok to at least the agree tott a voluntary set of a.i. els since half the world was going to election. this would not just apply to the united states, but it would require water marking, it would requou an invitation
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if that water marking is amanipulatedded, so i think the is some interested in doing some legislative the activity opn on. it would require tech companies to kind r of take down and help educate. with no at least to date major coordinating entity is a problem. and then finally i think because of some of t■se ofof some of the presidential candidates and, frankly, some of the figures in the house who are so over the top, i mean, i never thought the republican party would be leading a jihad against the t fbi or at least a small pt of the republican party, ytherei think, from the white house -- reluctance, to even to name who's the top election security official because of fear that that the individual wil harassm. so we're going to, you know, t this is very much on my radar screen. we're going to do, the committee's going tad some public hearingme public hearing.
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but i am all in because, you know, we have enough differences between our country amongst americans, and we with to fightn election in a fair way. we do not need foreign interference. and then that doesn't even take to the question ofhelf which isn machinery which i think we're in pretty good shape. need some of the voluntary were puts that together, again, umped president trump like the -- umped president trump -- under president trump. people literally leaving, and my understanding in certain counties leaving the sis saw systems, i think the ion steam -- ion a stein systems off the voting precinct level concerns about some kind of washington interference perform that is the second half, making sureec the actual mechanics of r voting systemre protected. i feel better about that than i
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do about the misinformation/disinformation. >> i also feel that the infrastructure piece because of the■> disparate system, the way our systems with the thousands of counties in the 50 states and, you know, it's not some centralize oohed area that's a d likely not the type of attack the from an actual hack breach to impact broadly, the misinformation piece and the sowing of divisiveness and the e belief that our systems can't be trusted, our officials can't be trusted or law enforcement can't communities. we know that the adversaries are targeting both a sides of the se issue. >> right. >> you know in they don't care if you're pro-second amendme or anti-second is amendment. hay don't care if you're pro-life or to-abortion. they don't care. what they care they am a from mify the message so into an argument with your
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neighbor. and by sow ising that divisiveness because we're not united, we are -- >> and the case in point, this 2016 in texas there was a, in houston there was a group that was kind of far-right group and there was at group of muslim-americans in texas who were trying to say -- [inaudible] created through fake sites a conflict where they were going to have a protest, and literally without the interventi■:on of the have had violence and and lotss of injuries. so that kind of, that was child's play compared to what would be played out in, exactly your point, shaun is, accelerating kind of division. but division that can actually result in violence. >> yeah. we have a common enemy, we're stronger, i think. when we're fighting internally, we're incredibly weaker. ande' national security is not . >> if there is a threat to the
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united states, people need to comeeo together whether you're n the left, whether you're on the ght. unity, i think, to help protect this nation. senator, you've been, i think, just a leader and in fighting in a nonpartisan way, in doing -- >> i work in the only place in america being a gang member is a good thing. i've been part of every bipartisan gang. i've got my tats up and down my. we had about a half hour chat backstage, butut unfortunately we're out of time. i want to thank you for being here, for everything you've done to try to keep our country safe, and thank you for continuing to assert your leadership to help country toens of your state and be in a better place. >> thank you, shawn. listen, you got a lot of expertise in this room, you know? onse
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guardrails around a.i., whether it is election security, we didn't even get into obviously the ransomware and us to fully implement our reporting legislation that's taken way too long. anybody here from sis saw, get those the legs -- regs■$ again, it has a 5-year implementation schedule which is way too lounge. i am wide open for -- way too'te issues at the level you do, or but i could not agree with you more. these not partisan -- are not rtisan issues. s it is national security. it's, frankly, a future-past split rather than a left-right split. and for a lofthes and -- lot of the guys and gals that i work with, that future stuff scares the dickens out of them. i'm a wide open e for how i can do better. >> please join me in thanking senator warn warner for -- [applause] ♪
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