or less the group really. i mean. activists warn that unless the government puts an end to unrestrained and sometimes illegal acquisitions nigeria could soon face conflict bigger than those the country is kind of plea deal with but it reese. but in egypt. and over again the headlines on al-jazeera the head of the military the seize power in me and morrow a week ago has accused the democratic leaders are failing to carry out their duties men on klang spoke hours after tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of me and mar rescue operations are underway in northern india to free more than 30 people trapped in a tunnel a day after part of

a himalayan glaciers collapsed 18 bodies have been recovered and around 200 people are missing the glacier burst in sense a torrent of water down a valley sweeping away 2 hydroelectric power plants elizabeth pradhan isn't just the mouth region and the area near where the accident happened. all day rescue teams have managed to enter the tunnel around 34 people believed to be trapped so just entering the tunnel finally after working all day is some good news remember they had to stop. because they. had prison and they could begin again on monday morning but rescue teams are saying that they haven't yet been able to establish communication with anyone in the tunnels south african health authorities are working with international scientists to draw up a new vaccination strategy they suspended the use of the oxford. gives less protection against the highly contagious variants that's prevalent in the country

lawyers for the former us president donald trump's impeachment trial have filed defense papers saying the proceedings are unconstitutional they also say trump did not incite violence on january 6th when his supporters stormed the capitol and tried to prevent congress from certifying the presidential election results israel's prime minister has pleaded not guilty to corruption charges benjamin netanyahu appeared in court charged with bribery fraud and breach of trust in 3 separate cases he says he is the victim of what he calls an attempted coup. the news hour is coming up on al-jazeera at the top of the hour for now it's inside story where the how much of june thanks for watching.

is the u.s. losing the war against cyber attacks american trade agents reveal that other countries hired them to spy on washington and its allies president joe biden is promising to make cyber security a priority so can he deliver this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm homage enjoy him the united states has one of the world's most extensive intelligence operations the government is projected to spend just under $19000000000.00 on cyber security this year despite this security experts say the u.s. is losing ground to other nations who are hiring american trained agents to spy on enemies and other americans the new york times says the united arab emirates hired

former national security agency operatives to target they hacked e-mails between called the most have been also and michelle obama during the former 1st lady's visit to doha in 2015 it's the latest allegation of the u.a.e. hiring u.s. expertise to spy on adversaries the revelations come as america is still reeling from one of its worst ever cyber attacks in december hackers compromise an information technology firm called solar winds they use that access to spy on the government u.s. cyber security agencies blame russia but moscow denies involvement. in 2015 a security breach was discovered at the u.s. office of personnel management hackers stole the personal data of more than 22000000 people many of them government employees in 2016 both the democratic national committee and hillary clinton's presidential campaign were targeted more than 40000 e-mails were leaked many containing confidential information and over the past decades many private companies have been hacked including yahoo sony adobe

and linked in some breaches lead to millions of people having their personal data compromised that includes passwords phone numbers and credit card information u.s. president joe biden is making cyber security a priority he's hiring more experts and plans to boost funding we've elevated the status of cyber issues within our government including a point of 1st national deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology we're launching an urgent initiative to improve our capability readiness and resilience in cyberspace. all right let's bring in our guests in augusta georgia jake williams president and founder of rendition infoseek and the u.s. army veteran in geneva switzerland so if you're gonna c.e.o. of the cyber peace institute and a former europol official and in arlington virginia bryson bort c.e.o. of sky and co-founder of i.c.'s village

a nonprofit organization advancing education and awareness of security for critical infrastructure welcome to the program bryce and let me start with you today on the one hand america is the world's most advanced cyber superpower but it's also the most targeted how did the u.s. become as vulnerable as it has become. yeah so the expression that you have there is. a reference to the glass house and certainly as we've moved into the information age it's no surprise that he never won a commie in the world with modern business predicated on computers although it's who are critical infrastructure that which how active we are in foreign policy that could burst lay on the private side that would make us vulnerable and open to those kinds of things stefan let me ask you from your vantage point is the u.s. one of the countries that is most vulnerable to cyber attacks and what's the impact of that and thank you for having us i mean the most one of the more he's going

to the complex notion. as long as everyone agrees that it is a business model there where private companies can be who want to say they need the kind of intrusion tools that can attack tools that she'd on the vulnerabilities of everyone and at the end of the day everyone is a mobile because of simply no oversight and no one he's going to have the business model so states are suffering from jake in december it was revealed that the u.s. was hit by a hacking operation that was blamed on russia and described as the worst in american history what is president biden currently doing to strengthen cyber security. well certainly there have been a number of initiatives but i think one of the most important pieces is strengthening that public private partnership the reality is that today a lot of private businesses in the united states have cyber security now regimes

and cyber security tools and staff that are on par with the or exceed what we're often we find in the u.s. government regardless of you know whether you put the u.s. government above or below commercial space getting that trust back into government cybersecurity is huge and binds down a lot of staff that would with folks that are trusted throughout the industry to rebuild a public private partnership bryson the new york times article that we were citing earlier by the cole pro roth says that the n.s.a. knew that the vulnerabilities it was finding and exploiting would one day blow back on americans that they developed a strategy called active defense but that that strategy ultimately didn't work that well what's your take on that and do you think that the n.s.a. has focused more on off and than it has on defense. yeah i think i think the question isn't quite framed correctly and this is where i go sideways but you know to say is that the national security agency is not solely responsible for the defense of all computers and the united states their mission is much more

outside of the country and focused on a signals intelligence to understand the expense of adversaries or in the case of cyber attacks. some level of c. there was an attempt to disrupt so i think we have seen plenty of precedent where the private industry has done a lot with that take downs that we did recently. and certainly as chait noted i mean part of what we're going to see under the body administration is be continued for domestic agencies like csa bets going to take the lead on even more of a domestic vocus a lot more public private partnership because it's all one connected ecosystem that has to work together to respond to these things jake i saw you nodding along somewhat bryson was saying that you want to jump in oh yeah definitely look i have 100 percent agree with what branson saying here are the n.s.a. definitely does have a much more limited mandate they are not in charge of protecting our computers in

the united states in particular on the domestic side and we do need more investment in that to and that the fence you know defensive posture and reality wise we need timely dissemination information from the government on down to private entities and that's what democrats and others over sees an administration i don't expect to see more of that in the current administration safad do you believe that the average person around the world really has a good idea good grasp of just how vulnerable their security and the security of their respective governments are to the threat from cyber attacks and hacking and cyber warfare. as soon as you want to hers 1st because most of the attacks when the un is closed have allies look from the point of view of the phone costs oh id's werman in words that are very difficult to grow as a citizen and we do too often forgot that the focus should be

the human cost the societal impact to the attack you mentioned before what's what can we look into in terms of strategy to defense of others states of capacity to acts way beyond just the technical often solutions i mean this is international law or this is the norm is the rules of the roads and the states and many states for example the really no requirements to what was a really existing and making sure that this flow make sense for you and i you know one of the using the internet or not to you what's up in this room which our blog but when you go off why because there was no international agreement where the intrusion to our look for our looks can we can we spot them and because of that suddenly it's private companies but in legal that would decide the fate of the abilities of millions bryson what's the level of concern in the u.s.

government and in the u.s. about former members of the n.s.a. being recruited by foreign governments or by foreign companies that have ties to foreign governments who would then use their expertise to target america and americans. i mean i don't i don't think that's an old concept and seemed that throughout history of human kind where specialists and military or intelligence find their way in various private forms other places i think it is a bit disconcerting in this regard where those specialists or co-opted or willingly or unwillingly we we don't know the full story. to do things that were turned out zooms across that line. but it's not appropriate from a spy perspective certainly in nicole's article she talks about the fact that when

david salter the e-mails from that and 1st lady michelle obama come across the screen as an analyst that was that was a red flag that. really showed how far it had gone jake it looked like you wanted to jump in as well but i also want to ask you if there are any laws that prevent contractors from sharing spycraft expertise with foreign companies that have ties to foreign governments or with specifically foreign governments. well from a spy craft standpoint with direct work for foreign governments in the us you would have to register basically that you are in the cooperate a mood or supplying a foreign power from a contract stamp when it's not always clear you know who specifically you're working for and what the scope of that work is and in so you know if you look at the story that nicole published you know in this case that wasn't direct government was direct work or any contractor who happened to then be working for that for the

government for that matter you know the line between easy is not always clear right so i'm we talk about you know spy craft in a sense do we mean as the subject we have the office of the office of techniques of compromising a target or are we talking about the analysis of that data which can have both off and 7 events of uses and then of course there's a whole range of defensive capabilities as well again it's just not always clear where that line is so i think that's probably one of the biggest parts about the recruiting side i think most folks in you know in the u.s. who would be recruited for explicitly oftens of missions targeting folks back home in the u.s. would steer clear away from that but when it's not published clearly in those terms and it becomes a much more stuff i want to take a step back and take a look at the kind of impact that cyber attacks could have on specific sectors in any given country one type of cyber attacks that many might not be aware of our

cyber attacks on hospitals and health organizations i'm asking you about this because you and the cyber peace institute have called for an end to coronavirus related cyber attacks you have asked governments around the world to take action how big a threat are these attacks how much are they happening and are governments taking action. now the threat is going to be in words with sir about it's the new friends it's been there for decades it's a career in teams that elite and at the peak of the pandemic and the 1st big 1st wave you could easily documents one back the date on hospital if you will of our group and during hospital once believed in the midst of an image to destroy all the computers and british shooting into the woods with rickerby differently but we go back to your questions but not to the knowledge evil well as

the problem for france it isn't that we would like our very day has to do your professional of health or your patients your facing criminal groups that are trying to run somewhere your hospital to get money you are facing state that those that are performing cyber espionage include through targets that live and research center on the extreme you are facing the group between criminals and states which are launching misinformation can bring you live for you not to trust the word of doctors and more so it's quite a complex feel the difference is certainly exhilarating bryson from from your perspective what's the responsibility of governments to protect their societies from cyber attacks and to ensure that critical infrastructure is protected from pacs and from cyber espionage. i think it is the prerogative of government i have been advocating the best way here or even more i think that the policy

discussion has. been pulled straight so i look forward to being able to refocus that with the by the administration i think the appointment of the national soccer director which will have a high level position focused on cyber security and specifically looking at these kinds of domestic issues which going back to what jake and i said earlier with public private partnership being a significant part of this government can't do this alone private industry can't do this alone in a step by noted the stakes are only getting higher as we cross from your desk your leads and the information age i think we've now reached this very specific tipping point in the information age where cyber his goal systems the fact that computers are no longer about data but computers can now affect the physical world your critical infrastructure what's happening in a hospital where your water is coming from that's already by computers and so we now have serious risk of loss of white limb in consequence and we need to take that

very seriously stefan i saw you nodding just now did you want to jump in as well. you know this is a very important condor that was just made because it doesn't include all that's for sure states cannot respond to that on the whom we support in the states are leading the way i mean it's made not be known was tons of initiative volunteers the journalists the right activists who are in your providing capacity or create in order to protect the some space to bring peace to the space were to not in states to lead the world we do the conversion of of today in terms of how across the skin of private companies that can provide capacity to state to act basically anyone in the world this kind of rule can be. explained from the point of view state that is just not not not ok not acceptable and model you could be looking to produce so states can do it and push it actors looks to me to say to you

look human will be there to support and help jake at the last few minutes we've heard about the role of civil society about the role of private enterprise you know how much responsibility does private enterprise have in all of this and especially in the u.s. going forward are we going to see more cooperation between companies and the government to ensure that infrastructure you know is more protected and that these kind of hacks can't happen going forward. sure i mean look the reality is that we live in a capitalistic society and the reality is as well that unfortunately cybersecurity today is seen as a cost center and not a profit center and so and i guess technically that is true or it is a cost center doesn't make money for the organization it's really a loss aversion and so you know one of the things that i think we're going to see is the need for i suspect although not necessarily they respect probably more regulation and very likely you know specially the smaller small medium enterprise

sizes i think we're going to need to start supplying you know some know how whether that's through grants or assistance or whatever form that takes to get some of these smaller organizations you know up and running with cyber security the reality is that the smallest organizations play a role and some of the largest bridges we see anecdotally a very large attack that we worked in my company watched year against a very very large fortune 500 biomed you know organization the command and control was actually a manager over that incident was actually hitting off a pataki studio that had exactly one poil photographer up in new york city and so this is a spot where this photography studio had bass that we abandoned their website had not dated attackers compromise that and then use that as part of their attack on this large fortune $500.00 biomet company and so really as we look at this it's

going to have to be a you know really a partnership across the board we can't simply say as we do in so many regulations today you know in the u.s. at least to say well you all this only applies to you have you know if you're above a certain revenue target or above a certain number of employees we have to really look at cyber as the entire ecosystem safad in your last answer you made mention of human rights activists specifically and i want to i want to dig a little deeper on that because time and again authoritarian regimes have increasingly use spyware to go after human rights defenders and activists is there a way to reduce the risk that they face. though the name of the service is true the shooting will. work an example of a missile group with the spyware known think it was in more than 100 victims over the past thermals over 46 countries with the journalist midway of activists.

weather going on people in the in the words of your symmetry because they have little capacity to protect themselves if not a person to protect themself but their high dogs as long as the 2 of those states most of these kids. only and birds the the goop and check in little develop procure and syrup intrusion doors that are basically designed by lead to good human rights then then we have a systemic issue to be a mission of security and peace in the service because bryson is there a chance that going forward we could potentially see governments coming together attempting to protect themselves by entering into some type of cyber security treaties i mean this would be something similar to nuclear treaties between between countries do you think that's something that's within the realm of the possible. so

we have the blueprint for what that would look like and that's called the taliban. and like so many things in the world it's you know it aggregate academic answer on paper and yet nobody has agreed to it in practice and we see the same issue here because. we see nation states wanting to preserve their rights to be able to respond or to advance their interests and of course cyber is what we're talking about here is only one part of how those national interests are fomented there are so many other levers of state i think what we're going to see is the internet as we've known it as a degree of open project it is dead that's not going to continue we see authoritarian countries locking down their own internets and i think we're going to see is the world continue to at least buy a brigade and possibly break into small pieces of the internet and those smaller

pieces will probably have a informal to formal recognition and some basic rights of what that means to be on the internet jake it looked again like you wanted to jump in so so let me ask you as well i mean you know are we going to see this type of thing going forward please go ahead and expand to the point that bryson was making if you like. you know i've had breakdowns right where we absolutely have the blueprint for this a that's what right as well that you know we are going to see out of segmentation i believe at least of the global internet we've already been in china we're seeing authoritarian regimes both result in myanmar having off internet access to their you know to their citizen and we also see as well the limit even when the it's not cut off limiting what individuals can be in the i do expect that that's going to be you know bifurcated but but separately from that a big problem that we have we had setting norms a lot of people like to compare the you know compare cyber to you know deterrence maybe in model that's normally uses in the nuclear age right the nuclear deterrent

and cyber just doesn't work that same way and the reality is that if you know if we have some type of kinetic attack after abuse of that attack and if there was simple i mean the big thing that we lack in bombers today is a good solid after allusion without knowing without being able to conclusively say this is who performed the attack it's very difficult to direct any one to unfortunate turns into a direct any counter-measures towards that group i mean we have several examples of cyber all flagged as we call them with adversaries intentionally misdirecting you know investigators and of course there are probably an unknown number of those that were successful that we just don't even know are all flags that i think until we fix the after vision problem i don't see how we get to a really a set of cyber norms because how then will you actually enforce that stuff on how concerned are you that this all only gets worse going forward and and when we talk

about potential worst case scenarios what would you envision. you know just a little what was served in terms of them would we need to. sort of use an i o. u.'s. this is a basic this deed is the existing international law applies in cyberspace it's we committed here and there's a set of norms that has been there we have to be a fall in force and they really believe we're going to because it will do the it is well and norm of oil interests or law is violated nothing in terms of the tradition we deduct that we know what has been a tradition and it took 3 year of defeat we need 2 of capacity one of those for police is that without order this is public in order to link the doc to suffering and the law so that the public you and i if you want to understand what he's working and if he does continues there on the road on the birth then we are facing

recently or we're years is nearly years kettering of the nets yes the greek the beast is going to be quite so quite complicated and the because of because in the symmetry between the wunderkind end of the day the films there are. all right we've run out of time so we're going to have to leave the discussion there thank you so much to all our guests jake williams safaga and bryce and board and thank you too for watching you can watch us program again any time on al-jazeera dot com ever further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter we're at at a.j. inside story from image and from the whole team here bye for now.

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