carbon emissions are set to rebound after the covid—19 dip — rising by almost the same amount that they dropped in 2020. researchers say that if present trends continue, we could exceed that limit in 11 years unless ambitious goals to cut emissions are achieved. the us has blacklisted an israeli company that makes pegasus spyware, which has allegedly been used by governments to hack into the phones of political rivals and journalists. the commerce department has also blocked another israeli company, candiru, saying there was evidence they had supplied spyware to foreign governments. president biden is urging democrats to press ahead with his agenda after the party suffered a shock defeat in the state of virginia. mr biden has rejected suggestions that the loss in the governor's race was a verdict on his presidency. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk

with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i am stephen sackur. the trump presidency challenged many public officials to make a choice, obey directives from the white house against their betterjudgement or take a stand and face the wrath of the pro—trump movement. my guest today, fiona hill, former russia adviser at the white house, took a stand. she was a key witness in the president's first impeachment and has since had time to reflect on what trump meant for america and its geopolitical standing. has america learned the right lessons from the last five yea rs 7 fiona hill, in bethesda, maryland, welcome to hardtalk.

thanks, stephen. you've had quite a lot of time to reflect in the last couple of years, reflect on some key decisions that you were involved in so let's start off with a very basic one. do you now regret your decision to take up that opportunity to join the national security council inside the trump white house? i don't actually because the motivation forjoining the administration back in 2017 was what had happened in 2016 when the russian intelligence services at the direction of the kremlin interfered in the presidential election, that was the 2017, 2016 us presidential election. as of course as we all know, that created chaos in us politics. it became a massive domestic

crisis and i certainly felt as someone who has served before in the government, i was national intelligence officer for russia back from 2006 to 2009 under both the bush and obama administrations that something had to be done, and so that was my motivation, was to in to do something of the national security front, greatly concerned about the impact of what the russians had done and i would do it again, for sure. ultimately, though, you're working for a boss who from the very get—go patently didn't believe or didn't want to believe that moscow was involved in that interference in the 2016 election which you regarded as so important and so dangerous. that's absolutely right, i think it was that he didn't want to believe it because that put a great big cloud over his legitimacy as president. in fact directly, that was directly what the russians wanted to do. they wanted to interfere

in the election so everyone would have doubts about the outcome and the russian security services thought this was revenge for what they perceived the united states have done and particularly hillary clinton when she was secretary of state against putin's return to the russian presidency in 2011 when there were mass demonstrations and opposition to his presidency. and i was well aware of all of that along with many other people and the thought was that perhaps we could do something to persuade trump that action needed to be taken. but it's a bit odd, isn't it? essentially what we're talking about is you making a decision to take a job with a boss who you felt to be fundamentally wrong—headed and possibly dangerous. look, when something happens like this, i thought about at the time it's a bit like your house is on fire and you have to stand up and do something. i've been working on russia for decades. i started studying russia in 1984. the whole premise of the russian intervention was an old one, they did this during the cold war.

it was propaganda, a pretty sophisticated influence operation and i felt that if i did not stand up, who else was going to try to do this? and there are a lot of other people who i knew in the administration and in the government who were trying to do something to address this too. so i thought it was worth the effort no matter how it turned out later. we will address how it turned out later. i just want to change tact for a moment. i'm intrigued to see in your home where we are interviewing you from you've put a, and i don't blame you, you've put a copy of your recently published book, there's nothing for you here, it's called. and that message is something that i want to discuss with you because you took this very seniorjob in the us administration, you became a naturalised us citizen but of course you began life in the northeast of england. you're child of a former miner, your family had a pretty tough time economically when you were a child, and it is pretty

extraordinary to just chart the trajectory you took from that childhood to getting a top job at the white house. is it your belief that that kind of opportunity would not have been open to you if you stayed in the uk? i don't think it would have been, no. it was all about timing, right? i came to the united states in 1989 but i left my home town to go to university in 1984 when there was a massive youth unemployment crisis in the uk, 90% of school leavers in that period did not have anything to go on to. i was one of the lucky ones to get a place in college. and i think if i had stayed on in the uk, i wouldn't have aimed this high, if that makes sense. i probably would've gotten into a different track entirely. when i came to the united states in 1989 on a scholarship, the timing was really propitious in many aspects. it was the end of the cold war, the collapse of the berlin wall while i was there, and i did

a degree in soviet studies and by the time i had that degree in hand in 1991 the soviet union was history. so i found myself moving along with the times and seeing a real breakthrough also in us—soviet and also us—russian relations at the time so i found myself right in the thick of action that i don't think i would have been had i been in the uk but also honestly, it was the class and accent issue. when you get to the united states nobody can distinguish between a bbc accent like yours stephen and like mine from the north—east of england. we were all the same for them, it's a british accent and i immediately found that the kind of class accent bias that i had encountered in the uk all the way along had disappeared when i got to the united states, no—one really cared where i was from butjust what i was doing and what i was capable of doing. one of your overarching messages seems to be that all democratic societies need to get over the limitations they put on people who come from the wrong side

of the tracks if i can put it that way, and do you think, before we get back to the united states and your recent experiences, do you think the uk has overcome its preoccupation with class, with geography, where you are from and how you speak because there's some interesting anecdotes in your book including one about tony blair which suggests you think the uk still has a big problem? i think the uk has still got a long way to go. the reference to tony blair who was one of the local mps from the north of england when on his ascent to the prime ministership and he was mp for sedgefield, next constituency where i grew up in bishop auckland, in theory also from the north, growing up in durham as well as edinburgh. tony blair was amazed when he met me in aspen, colorado, he says how did you get here? i said i got on a plane, of course he meant how did you get here from the north—east of england

from a comprehensive skill with an accent like mine to be presenting at this big festival that he was also at. that brought home to me how much the uk is still shaped by accent, class and geography. the uk has made huge strides on gender and race diversification in politics and in the bbc and elsewhere and you do of course hear a lot more northern accents in the bbc than you did before but people still get a lot of complaints. i've noticed as i was looking at the book, i would look at people with a northern accent and what the comments were about their appearances on tv or radio and find that people were complaining about the accent still. and in politics, you certainly don't see a lot of people from the north that you can distinguish they are from the north from their accent and their background. entertainment, the news, media and everything else, absolutely but i still think the uk has got a long way to go and the us does too.

there is very similar geographic discrepancies in the united states too. you do talk about that, but let's park that now for a minute and get back to the course of your career inside the nsc in the trump white house. you've already said to me you could see there were some pretty fundamental problems with trump's attitude even when you took the job in 2017 but as things unfolded, both with his reaction to the allegations that russia had intervened massively or tried to in the 2016 election, but also his reaction to certain events that occurred, like for example the poisoning of the former russian spy sergei skripal in salisbury, england, in 2018, surely you could see a pattern where trump was really trying to avoid the reality of what putin's russia was and you were in the nsc and you were trying to persuade him otherwise and failing and again it's a question i often put to public officials, how often did you contemplate getting the hell out of there, resigning?

i had given myself a time limit to be honest before i even went in. based on all the things that you are outlining there, i knew that this was going to be very difficult. i did hope that with other officials there and people mindful of what had just happened on the national security front, this massive russian effort to subvert the elections, we would be able to focus our minds beyond all the domestic political noise. of course i discovered that wasn't as feasible as i had hoped even though there were many others pretty like—minded and trying to push back against this but just exactly as you say, trump himself didn't want to recognise the facts. part of it was his own fears about having to acknowledge that there had perhaps been some questions about the outcome of the election. think about it, if putin had actually said to him in any of these meetings, yes donald,

i did interfere and i did get you elected, i imagine his mind would have been blown by all of this because trump's a own premise for his presidency was that he had won, he had won big, put on this fantastic campaign, he talked about it all the time. his own ego was so fragile that he couldn't accept that the russians might have intervened and had some sort of influence on his behalf. the other thing was that he actually admired putin and i got to see that first—hand. for him, putin epitomised the kind of leader he saw himself as being and that is not anything to do with a judgement on russia, it's what he saw putin standing for, someone who is very powerful, he was very strong and trump used those words about putin quite frequently. he didn't have many checks and balances on his power and he also saw him as very rich and very famous and running the country like his own business. those are very often, people say that's a very unfortunate way of thinking about putin, because this

is not what we expect from an american president, but trump really saw putin as a peer. not as a competitor in the kind of sense of us—russian relations but putin is the kind of leader that he wanted to emulate in his own style and approach to government in the united states. i'm not going to say you quit but you walked away from yourjob for various reasons in the summer of 2019 but you then faced a very tough choice. would you testify as part of the first impeachment process against donald trump? you knew trump had very powerfulfriends, had a very powerful movement. did you think very hard before choosing to go so public? well look, because i had gone into the administration in the first instance, and that was a tough decision as well, i did have to think about that, i had a lot of people say don't do it, some people said they wouldn't speak to me again if i

did and they haven't, and so irrespective of what i was preparing to do in terms of thinking about national security, there was a lot of people really worried about trump himself and the kind of damage that he was likely to do to the united states which we have actually seen. as a fact witness along with many other people, colleagues i worked with really closely, i thought there was no question i had to stand up. i head already been targeted. all kinds of defamation, on the internet, horrible phone calls, threats to me and my family all over the place. i was called all kinds of strange things, i was part of a conspiracy according to many of these trolls. sorry to interrupt fiona, but do you think the fact that as we discussed at the very beginning of this interview, you don't sound like most americans because you are born in the uk and your background was a little different and you are quote unquote european—american. do you think that played into the demonisation

of you coming from that trump movement? i'm sure it did because i was very hard to pin down, right? i don't have any particular ideological affiliation, i'm not a member of a party, i've got this accent that for many people appears british but it could be something else. i've worked on russia and the soviet union for years so there's this idea that i could be a double, triple, quadruple agent. the amount of stuff that was on the internet about me would make your head spin, so people are trying to undermine your credibility, they are trying to catch out, they are trying to put you in boxes, try to get you involved in all these conspiracies. the whole point is to get you out of the way and i understood that right away and of course having been studying russia and the soviet union and the kinds of conspiracy theories and propaganda that had come out of there for decades,

i was already prepared, so i knew it came with the territory but of course very unnerving to think of yourself being exposed like that in front of literally millions of people, the whole world watching when you have to step up to testify, so i did think about that but i had already crossed those thresholds so there was no question that i had to step up again and do something. it is fair to say that in your testimony you were extremely levelheaded. you did not indulge in hyperbole, but since then you have gone quite a long way towards hyperbole. you describe, for example, the trump movement and, in particular, what happened onjanuary six with the assault on the capitol after the us election, you've described that as a deadly serious attempt at a coup with clear and unmistakable parallels with russia. there you are clearly drawing direct parallels between trump and putin. are you now engaging in the sort of hyperbole

that your opponents were engaging in? i suppose i'm not. i push back on that because i am also laying out the facts and the facts are very stark because since that experience that i had, that we all had of watching the first impeachment unfold, the president went on to far more serious things, serious enough, right, basically trying to engage, as you laid it out, with the leader of a foreign country to open investigations into a fellow american politician, the main contender in the next presidential election, with the goal of undermining the other person's candidacy and taking opposition campaigning to a different level. but since then we saw president trump talk down the presidential election to the point where my colleagues in the department of homeland security who are supposed to be pushing

back against the russians and others who might interfere in an election had to speak out against president trump to reassure american voters, and american election officials that the vote was safe and secure. so president trump went on to try and undermine american democracy and i do feel, again, that i have to speak out, especially as someone who has watched these interactions between trump and putin, knowing what the russians want to do and the sad fact is that much of the action that president trump are acting in parallel with the interests of the russian security services and they can be easily exploited. could i give one quick example? after president biden met with president putin in geneva in the first summit meeting, you had two separate press conferences and vladimir putin was asked abouthuman rights abuses in russia and he quickly

deflected and said look what is happening in the united states and he touched on race and racial discord and black lives matter movement, which is an old trope of soviet times as well as the russians. he immediately honed in on what happened onjanuary 6, 2021 where we had the mob storming the us capitol which was a shock for people in the uk too, thinking of similar things that might happen against the houses of parliament, for example. putin very quickly called the mob political protesters. turning this around and jumping right into the kind of rhetoric and words that had been used by president trump and his followers. i see the point you are making but what is interesting is that donald trump has not gone away, there is a strong possibility he will try to run again in 202a. the political polarisation in america has certainly not gone away and here is something

that you have written. you said that this polarisation is ultimately a national security threat as well as a domestic challenge. in what way should all of us outside the united states see it as a national security threat to the united states? well, again, it is the possibility of external actors interfering and exploiting it and using it for more propaganda to sow more discord, turning it back again on the united states. the other point is that it really undermines our capacity for collective action. i am speaking out because i hope i'll get the attention of people on capitol hill who have a choice to make about how far down the this path of party infighting, or whether they can step up to the plate and try to figure out ways in which we can unify ourselves again. we just had the g20 meeting, cop26, this important climate summit in glasgow and everyone is looking to the united states

to lead. our internal discord, our inability to actually pass legislation or to even speak to each other in civil terms also undermines our capacity for taking action on major existential issues that affect everybody. and before we end, fiona, we do not have a lot of time, but i want to tap into your expertise as a continued close observer of geopolitics. the biden administration is clearly and centrally preoccupied with what they perceive as a strategic long term threat of china. they also, it seems, want to give a message to vladimir putin that, look, we don't seek conflict with you, we want a dialogue but we will not accept some of your more egregious actions, particularly when it comes to cyber hacking and ransomware and that stuff that the us says moscow was responsible for. do you think that twin track, preoccupation and focus on china, hoping to park russia, will that work?

it may not. partly because russians are also very much invested in their relationship with china and having a degree of conflict with us, unfortunately, us being the united states, because putin is now focused on staying in power himself be on 2024 and that will be a real banner year for presidential elections in the us and russia. putin is using confrontation with the united states as a mobilisational factor. internally, domestically saying you need me around because i am the person pushing back against the united states and internationally showing china and everyone else that russia still has what it takes to be a major player on the international stage. you need a little friction and confrontation, not with china, you need it with the united states. i think, however, that russia is also interested in coming to terms with the united states

on a number of issues. arms control and getting a nuclear deal. they realise they have problems with the pandemic. right now russia has the highest infection rate and highest mortality rate at any time in the last few years with coronavirus because they have had problems getting their own people vaccinated. and they do know that they have to do something on climate change eventually. so there are a few openings there with russia but it will be very difficult to park them. they do not like to be ignored and they always make sure that we have to pay attention to them. china, as well, will be difficult because we need to basically find a way of moving forward with the same issues on china. the pandemic, global vaccinations, climate change. so there will be limits to how much the united states can do in terms of shaping these relationships because we will have to also weigh off some of the trade—offs and opportunity costs. and, briefly, how much of a problem is it that the world

looks in and realises that there is a distinct possibility that donald trump could be back in power in 2024-25? that gets back to your whole point about the national security risk for everyone else because if people are looking for leadership from the united states on a global scale, they know they won't get it if trump comes back again, and that risk, i think, is also causing constraints for biden because biden cannot guarantee either, you know, an outcome that is favourable for his party in the 2020 midterms or guarantee that he can get re—election in 2024. so, again, i think it underscores that point that we are really in something of a crisis. we have to show in the united states that we can get our act together and that we have got some staying power for the future in terms of our leadership and capacity for domestic action as well as collective international action. fiona hill, i wish we had more time but we have run out of time. thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk.

thank you. thank you, stephen, i really appreciate it. hello. a chillier feel to the weather this thursday. yesterday we saw some decent sunshine early on in the day, and the cloud built up. today it's likely to be a similar scenario. but where we do have the sunshine, it will still feel cooler because of the wind, and because we've pulled in colder airfrom the north through the course of the night. a frost to start the day, all the way down from scotland into the welsh marshes. milder initially across eastern england, but here, a chance of some showers through the day,

some coming in down the north sea coast, as well, and nagging northerly wind here. again, showers for pembrokeshire and cornwall. for the majority, though, it's shaping up to be a fine day with some sunny spells, temperatures at best 9—10 celsius and feeling cooler because of the breeze. but you'll notice through thursday evening and overnight more cloud coming into the north of the uk, it will bring a bit of rain, as well. this is a chilly warm front — the clue is of course in the name. it's ushering in warmerair behind it so by the end of thursday night, friday morning, it's actually much milder across scotland and northern ireland. and that milder air will then continue to tip its way south across the uk through friday around this big area of high pressure. so high pressure keeps things fine, it should also means the winds become lighter and, with the milder air moving in, it will just feel a little bit warmer on friday. a lot of fine weather, perhaps the sunshine not quite as widespread, but the temperatures lift up by 1—2 degrees.

and it will remain fine into the evening if you have plans for bonfire night. aside from, i think some rain for northern and western scotland. and for the weekend, we are looking at milder air taking over from the atlantic. perhaps not especially mild, but certainly warmer than the air will be sitting in for thursday. saturday, very windy across the uk, some rain for northern ireland and scotland to start the day. a bit brighter come the afternoon with some showers but temperatures, we're looking at 13—14 celsius with sunshine to the south. sunday, lighter winds. we're still in a relatively milder air. picking up a little bit of a northwesterly, though, across scotland, it could feel perhaps a shade cooler here, but i think the offset will be that it will be a drier and brighter day than saturday.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. cutting cases of cervical cancer: new findings show a vaccine is saving lives and reducing cases by 90%. carbon emissions are set to rebound after the covid—19 dip, rising by almost the same amount that they dropped in 2020. the democratic governor of the us state of newjersey has been re—elected by a narrow margin, a victory that brings some comfort to the party on a bleak polling day. the us blacklists an israeli company that makes spyware, which has allegedly been used by governments to hack into the phones of political rivals.