kernen and andrew ross sorkin. breaking news this morning. explosions at the main airport in brussels, leaving at least 13 people dead, an unknown number of people hurt. airport officials say two explosions occurred, and passengers are being advised to stay away. the facility has been closed. not only that, roads leading to the airport has been shut down, as has train service. these blasts come four days after the capture of salah abdeslam, the suspect in last year's paris attack. dow jones is now quoting a u.s. official saying that the brussels explosions are presumed to be a terror attack in retaliation for abdeslam's arrest. all metro stations in the city has been closed after two explosions in metroations were also reported. nbc news not immediately ain't to confirm those reports. you can see the picture of the streets right now. >> let's take a quick check on the markets this morning amid what is clearly some chaos there in europe and real questions about what's taking place there. dow looks like it would open

down about 32 points. nasdaq down as well as about 16.5 points off. the s&p would open down about six points. let's take a look at what's happening in the european markets after this explosion. you're also seeing red arrows across the board. pretty much in sync. a quick check of the oil boards before we get to steve sedgwick, who's following the story for us. wti crude at 41.53. steve is in london right now. we're going to go to steve on this story. steve? >> yeah, thanks very much indeed, andrew. we've got a map here of the brussels city center. the first attacks we saw after 8:00 local time, 7:00 london time this morning, and there were multiple concerns it was a wide attack. we heard it was up to four explosions in the departure hull

of the airport. about an hour later, we heard the rail infrastructure, the metro was being targeted. down at a station called maelbeek. that's very important, because that's the station that looks after the eu institutions. you have a whole host of eu buildings and infrastructure down in that part of brussels. we're hearing multiple reports of all kinds of casualties. many fatalities as well. we understand certainly from the brussels airport attack, possibly also from the attack on the metro as well. as you would expect, the airport has been closed down to at least 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning as well. the metro system is down. the tram system is down. of course, the bus system as well. no public transport at all in metro. we've got now the highest level of alert in brussels and in broader belgium as well. they were on a very high level anyway, it's called level three. they've moved up to the highest level, which is four. airports and infrastructure across europe, you're seeing a

heightened level of security. both the two major london airports are seeing a greater police and security presence. i actually just came out of one of those airports yesterday, and it was all very high levels of police with a lot of weaponry. in terms of the market reaction, it seems almost unsavory to look at how the markets are trading, but there's also a very natural reaction. we're seeing a down tick on the insures across europe but also the travel and leisure stocks. we'll look at some of the big names as well. these two names are the two highest rated airlines in europe. they are low-cost carriers. that's ryan air and easy jet. they have been expanding rapidly across the continent. belgium, france, and the rest. they're down by 4.2 and 2.6%. the big travel group tui is down 3.1% as well. of course, is this going to affect inbound traffic to europe as well. the number of chinese tourists have been growing aggressively in recent years. there are concerns that's going

to affect the inbound traffic spoo europe. accor, the french travel group, shares down 3.5%. this all began, this latest wave of terror attacks, in late november when we saw those multiple attacks in paris. i was in paris very shortly after that for the cop-21 conference as well. i can tell you people were very concerned back then in december that it would take a long, long time to recover. but accor shares down 3.5% as we speak. some other names for you as well, including air france klm. this is the dutch-french carrier, which is currently trading down 5%. lufthansa currently down 1.8%. int intercontinental also down. in terms of the latest news out of brussels, the belgian crisis center has said no public transport, stay where you are. the belgian pm has called on the

population to avoid moving from their current location. the first attack was followed by the latter attacks around an hour later. so there were still concerns there could be further attacks as well. the authorities have confirmed that the airport attack was, indeed, a suicide attack there as well. again, a lot of concerns about what happens next. we have a high terror alert for eu. this is the center, the hub of the administration for the eu in europe as well. all meetings have been canceled. the alert has been raised to an orange level as well. a very high degree of security as well. there was supposed to be an ecb hearing at the eu parliament today. that, too, has been canceled. we have teams moving in on the brussels capital. it's proving very, very difficult. the eurostar, which is the main trainline from the united

kingdom into brussels, into paris, it's not now going to the brussels midi stop, which is the main hub for the eurostar, the train line into brussels. that's now stopping several miles short of brussels. so getting into and out of brussels very difficult. people are being warned to stay off the streets. of course, they're not using public transport as well. in terms of the casualties, a lot of numbers being thrown around on this one as well. i'm not at libber iterty to say latest figures. there are concerns about multiple fatalities and scores of injured people from the various attacks. guys, back to you. >> all right, steve sedgwick. thank you for that. joining us now is tara palmieri, a reporter from politico. she's currently at the airport in brussels. what can you tell us, tara? >> it's really a scene right

now. one of the people i've spoken to, who works a the a ticketing desk where the explosion happened, said it was an apocalypse, pure chaos. another man who works at swiss port as a check-in agent, 20 years old, said he saw the explosion, ran, and hid underneath a luggage belt. like you reported, there was another explosion. they're right now taking people out. a belgian official just told me that 80 have been wounded and 30 casualties. they have no doubt it was a terrorist attack. in fact, in the explosion in the metroation in maelbeek, they found the explosion material inside of a wagon. it's targeted throughout the

entire city. they're on orange alert. essentially, the city is on lockdown. children are being locked into schools as well. >> you mentioned a wagon. what type of wagon? >> the explosion inside of the metro station, according to belgian officials, it was -- the explosion was inside of a wagon, which is interesting. i don't understand the meaning of that. we're trying to figure out if there was a person inside of there as well. they have, you know, no doubt these are terrorist attacks, and the entire city is on lockdown. >> we've also heard this was a suicide bombing. it looks like that was almost confirmed. so you traveled to the airport after this happened. how close are you to the actual site, and can you confirm -- what was it an american airlines ticket counter? >> american airlines, correct. there's not just one site. there are multiple sites throughout the city at this point.

you have the eu building. i was dropped off by a taxi about two miles from the airport. i had to run basically on the highway to get here. we're as close as we can be to the scene. passengers, as they get out of the airport, employees, we're speaking to them. you can see when you look at the airport some windows have been shattered. the building is actually physically destroyed. so lots of people crying. some people didn't hear it. the ones that were in other terminals. for the most part, many of the people coming out right now witnessed the explosion. >> all right. tara, it's like ongoing. we know how devious these people are, where once after the initial, you never know. anyway, we appreciate your reporting, tara. >> right now let's bring in

ayman javers from washington. good morning. >> good morning, becky. still very early here on the east coast of the united states. a department of homeland security official tells me folks here in washington are tracking the developments. we're waiting to hear from the white house. the president obviously traveling in havana, cuba, today. of course, he's there with air force one and all the acue that monoof the presidency as well. we can expect a statement from the white house. i want to give you some context to this because this was something that officials in europe had feared starting on friday when they captured salah abdeslam, who was apparently the last remaining survivor of last year's paris attacks, had been on the run since then. he was captured in a shootout in belgium on friday. officials then said the threat level was very high. they said many more people were involved in those attacks in paris than they had necessarily thought. they also said that he told

investigators after his capture that he was planning to restart something in brussels. so there was apparently a hot pursuit for an active terrorist that ended in his capture on friday. ended up with a situation where they suspected there was another terrorism attack that was in the works as of last weekend. salah abdeslam told officials that he intended to kill himself at the stade de france attack. he had been on the run. the number of fellow plotters had surprised officials in europe, and it may be one of the things they will look at in this attack. we obviously don't know now whether this attack was connected to that capture, but that's the context that all this is happening in, guys. >> ayman, i know those reports over the weekend, "the new york times" laying out the report

from the paris police with the whole situation in paris and the attacks there, they had mentioned that something like 90 fellow conspirators were involved and had come over, had hidden in the refugee flow that had been coming from syria. those were the numbers they were trying to confirm. i guess that's what people are so concerned about right now too. >> absolutely. there seems to be relative ease of movement for these terrorists and the people affiliated with them throughout europe. one of the big concerns now is finding the bomb maker who was involved in creating those suicide vests. analysis that was done after the paris attacks suggested that they were fairly sophisticated attacks, that the explosive itself was something that's highly volatile and dangerous to make. so somebody with some degree of skill put together those bombs. if those were similar bombs in today's attack, you look at a potential master bomb maker or makers who are out there somewhere in brussels, perhaps in france, somewhere in europe

building bombs and providing them to these terrorists who carry out the suicide or hidden bomb attacks, whatever this attack turns out to be. clearly there are some major brains of the operation that are still out there, and that'll be one major, major focus in the immediate hours here. we're also seeing some reaction here in the united states. the new york police have said they're going to step up security in new york city. i think you can expect that here in washington, d.c., and other major cities throughout the united states as officials just tighten things up. not on any specific threat information they're getting, that there might be something here in the united states, but just a general awareness that this is an ongoing situation potentially. >> ayman, a sort of larger policy question about europe, and it's an issue that's been brought around here, which is about borders and border control and the ability, especially in europe, where they have freedom of borders and people can come and go. one of the issues in those articles over the weekend about what happened in paris was the fact that the deficient countries did not communicate necessarily very well to each other. the spellings of certain

people's names in terms of going from one system to the other didn't always translate. how do you think this changes that dialogue and debate if it does at all? >> well, look, it's going to have to have an impact on the bureaucracies in europe. the point you make of the spelling and lack of communication between the different national intelligence agencies, national border agencies in europe is an obvious one. that's an area where officials are going to have to tighten up as fast as they can. these are government bureaucr y bureaucracies that don't move quickly that, have a history of not necessarily working in a compatible way with one another. it's going to be a challenge to organize that. obviously -- >> but do you see any kind of move afoot to slow things down or to step up not just security at the borders but to literally make it much more difficult from a policy perspective for people to move as freely as they have? >> well, you saw that in the immediate aftermath of the paris attacks where officials called for shutting down the french

border meetly. that's going to be discussed at a political level in europe. it's one of the cherished freedoms in europe, but those freedoms are under attack now. officials were already at the highest terrorist threat level you can imagine, knowing there was something in the works, given they had that confession from the captured paris terrorist. yet, this attack apparently a suicide attack was able to happen in brussels under the noses of those very officials who were working to stop it. so the clear conclusion that you have to come to is that officials do not have their arms around this at this point. they're not able to stop a terrorist attack, even when they are -- have some indication that something may be in the works and they're efforting to find all those people who might be involved, possibly simply too many people, simply too well hidden. the intelligence they're using simply too devious now for law

enforcement to stop this one this morning, guys. >> okay. ayman, thank you for helping us try to make sense of what is clearly senseless. >> already in the works, andrew, with merkel. she's gone from the margaret thatcher of germany to the neville chamberlain of germany in like six months. >> but the question is how quickly things like this hasten that debate, that dialogue. >> pretty fast already. >> okay. when we come back, we have much more on the explosions in belgium and the response in the markets. before we head to a break, we should say we are remembering a technology pioneer this morning. silicon valley legend and former intel ceo andy grove has passed away at the age of 79. he had suffered from parkinson's. he has an amazing story. he was intel's first hire in 1968 and became president of the company in 1979.

he would take over as ceo in 1987, adding the chairman role ten years later. grove retired as chairman in 2005. actions. they speak louder. we like that. not just because we're doers. because we're changing. big things. small things. spur of the moment things.

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reporting two explosions at metro stations as well. let's bring in military analyst retired colonel jack jacobs. we had a source on earlier talking about the bomb going off in a wagon. we understand you have more clarification. >> what we call a rail car, they call a wagon. if a bomb went off in a wagon in a metro station in brussels, it means the bomb went off inside the subway car. we haven't heard yet about casualties, but if that's true, it's bound to be pretty awful. >> i hate to ask you to speculate, but i will. there was this arrest last week of this mastermind on friday involved in some of these other attacks. do you think they're connected? >> well, they're connected in an interesting kind of way, i believe. you remember the report that

said that they were planning other attacks. that his cell and perhaps other related cells were in the process of planning other attacks. there's been some speculation that these attacks today were in retaliation for his arrest, but it seems much more likely that these are the attacks they were talking about. it also raises some speculation that there may be more either today or in the near future that had already been planned. >> ayman javers mentioned that officials here in the united states want to really tighten things up. do you think there are cells here? >> oh, yeah, undoubtedly there are cells if you talk to any officials from any of the many intelligence agencies that we have in this country. they'll tell you exactly the same thing, that there are cells. the problem is how do you monitor them.

>> are those independent cells, or are those cells coordinated with some of these other cells in europe and the middle east? >> well, they're undoubtedly coordinated. people i talk to say there is some coordination indeed. some of the people in this country originated from cells in europe and in the middle east. the good news is that they are not very well coordinated. that's also the bad news. because if they are bell koowel coordinated, it's much easier to follow the chain of command and training. it's much easier to track if they're fragmented, which is what they are. it makes it much more difficult. >> would you shut down borders in europe? >> in europe? oh, yeah. for a long time, a lot of people who were concerned about security couldn't understand the

complacence of the european countries when they decided they would have open borders and indeed open them up to elsewhere. once you are in europe, the first place you land in europe, you're wherever you want to go in europe. it's been astonishing for decades how the europeans could be as complacent as they have been about security when the borders are completely and totally open. yes, borders ought to be closed. i think if they want to get a handle on the internal security threat. >> colonel, you know, you bring that up and the comparison is always the united states where there are open borders between states here. what's the difference between what we do here in the united states and what they do in europe? >> well, entry into the united states is much more difficult than entry into europe proper. so that's the very first thing. the second thing is a cultural one. we undoubtedly have disaffected people in this country, but by

an large, people in the united states, no matter where they're from, feel that they at least have some access to the economic system and the political system. that's not true in europe. people who come from outside europe, particularly from the middle east, and who settle in large urban areas, are largely disaffected. unemployment is enormous, especially relative to unemployment in the united states, particularly among immigrants. no access. it's difficult to move up, and there's an enormous amount of frustration. this is not to justify anything that takes place there. but if the european community wants to make things easier on themselves, there's going to have to be an enormous cultural change, education, the route to education and through education to positions of authority and responsibility in the economic

system. they're pretty much closed in europe. not so in the united states. >> okay. all right, colonel. we appreciate your time. we'll see you again. i think you're going to come back on and talk some more yet today hopefully. thank you. yeah, between states, i thought you were going with, i don't know, our southern border's not exactly ironclad. we have porous borders north and south. >> that was the entire reason for the eu being built that way. look, the united states is a massive -- >> that is a utopian dream in europe in a lot of ways. in terms of liberal societies. nothing will shake the confidence in that more quickly than paris followed by belgium. you could see it start to pick up speed and momentum with what's happened with merkel in germany. if this happens again in

belgium, you wonder how they'll be so open. same with trying a union with southern europe and northern europe. >> very different cultures, very different economies. but again, they look at the united states. >> they do. >> we had a war 100 and -- how long ago was that? other than that, there's a difference between mississippi and new york, but we're all americans. there's a difference between california and florida, but it's not like italy and sweden. >> there's no coordination also. >> we're a true union with a true fiscal -- >> we are also are separated from all the chaos happening there by a massive ocean. so it does provide more protection. >> well, that notion, we get brought back from time to time. quick check of the markets. when europe was down about 1.5% earlier, we were down about 80

earlier. as it happens so many times, a lot of times the lows on these incidents are when they're happening. i wonder some day if it becomes so frequent where, you know, it does affect economic activity, whether it has a more long-lasting effect. bull everything has recovered. joining us now is michael tyler, chief investor at eastern bank. here on set is joe quinlan from bank of america. we'll talk a little markets. obviously that's why you're here, joe. you were just in brussels airport. >> friday morning, yes. >> so today is what? is today tuesday? >> i was there friday. it's like walking into any typical airport. >> what airline? >> united. the counters are pretty close.

it's a compact area to begin with. >> it's a dangerous world. i would say that things like this in terms of a long-term view point for asset allocation probably only occupies 10%, 15% of your time, doesn't it? >> it does, but joe, you were talking earlier about the security situation in europe and holding the european union together. that's huge. that's a huge issue and a huge challenge. the european union, the economy is $18 trillion. if it does become more difficult to move goods, people, and so forth, that's a big issue for the markets. >> speaking of a potential brexit, one of the britain's huge problems has been these open borders and not wanting to open their borders in the same way. >> a huge challenge to a great transatlantic partnership. that has a lot of business implications for u.s. multinationals. >> michael, i guess you would say in terms of what an investor does today based on this, you probably wouldn't -- would you recommend any type of action today? >> i think this news, although

it's tragic, probably doesn't have been a long-term impact on markets. although, i would agree that there is some concern that it could affect the movement of goods across europe. bear in mind that global trade has been slowing for some time. that's been a much bigger macro concern that this just fits right into. as investors, you look for safe havens at times like this. u.s. treasuries, i think in particular, will continue to do very well on the bond side. don't be surprised. stocks have been frankly so strong over the past five weeks, they were looking for a pullback. this may give the market an excuse to slow down a little bit and regather some momentum. but it seems to be that markets are being fairly resilient this morning. >> probably on to something, sorkin. you can't have the eu without borders. and this is going to be a rising sentiment. >> this is the central issue. it's a central issue, i think, policy-wise, central issue for the markets, the economics of

this entire experiment called the eu. >> there's enough trouble with trying to have a common currency. then you throw this in. nobody knew that the war in syria, the civil war in syria, that millions of people were going to be crossing these open borders. it's like, i don't know, all bets are off. that might be a problem. >> they just always are one or two steps behind. always seems like they're reacting. >> the euro, everybody can have everything. it's an entitlement state. it's this idyllic utopian view. suddenly the real world seems to impinge on their notion, and suddenly they'll change very quickly. >> colonel jacobs brought up a great point that they've not integrated, people who have been emigrating in for decades. >> but no one has been stopped from coming. >> let's give the eu a little credit. when it works, it's a beautiful mechanism.

there's cross-border trade, people, ideas, data. there's something to be said. when it does work, it's a great opportunity. >> depends on what -- >> ultimately, you have to centralize security. that's a very challenging thing to do. >> europe has grown 40% slower than us for like 25 years. i don't know whether it's the entitlement state or the -- you know, it's nice over there. >> ireland is like 8% growth. the problem is you have ireland growing by 8% and you have greece in a depression and a lot of things in between. it makes it difficult to say what's actually happening there. >> with the same currency. >> right. >> i think you have to look at individual countries and individual companies because of that disparity. that does make it more challenging to hold the union together. the other issue that really is important is that although there's been a lot of net migration into europe, it's not clear that the immigrants, whether refugees or otherwise, are assimilating or integrating into the society and

contributing into the society, and that i think is one of the main reasons that britain in particular is very concerned. so i think you might want to look at sterling and british companies today and be a little nervous about them. >> right. if we were at 51.49 stay -- >> it would tip the scales. >> i think it gives the exiters a little more momentum and a little more focus today. >> a lot more mainstream. irvin king yesterday was on. wouldn't dismiss the notion. boris johnson, mayor of london. there are people lobbying for this. i've been reading more and more articles that say don't think this would be the end of the world for the u.k. even the markets, if prepared, could probably handle it at some point. >> it wouldn't be. let's face it, you give it time to work itself out, they have two years from the time of the vote. they're still part of nato. they still have a strong u.s.

relationship. europe is not going to want to abandon britain so they'll still develop whatever trade relationships they have, just on a different footing. >> all right, gentlemen. joe, thank you. >> thank you. >> michael, thanks. still to come this morning, we have much more on the explosion in brussels. we'll get an update from michelle caruso-cabrera in havana, where president obama is making a state visit. hardest job in the world. that's why i'm here. can you... i can offer advice from the accumulated knowledge of other educators... that's wonderful but... i can tailor a curriculum for each student by cross-referencing aptitude, development, geography... sorry to interrupt. but i just have one question: how do i keep them quiet? (pause) watson? there is no known solution. sometimes they just drop in. always obvious.

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to hold a news conference. we'll monitor that and bring you updates as we get them. in the meantime, let's get to michelle caruso-cabrera in havana this morning. she does have reaction to what's taking place in brussels. >> well, we're hear in havana because president obama is here for his two-day visit. we're waiting to hear from the administration. we're certain he's being briefed or going to be briefed at this point about what's happened in brussels. i would add that in the wake of what we've seen in paris, november 13th of last year, the goal of terrorism, of course, is to cause fear, raise concerns, and also to have a high degree of symbolism. that's exactly what we're getting from this attack at this point. first of all, to occur at the check-in counter of an airport, american airlines, certainly there's symbolism there. in addition, the ability to create fear, which had already been widespread in europe as a result of what happened in paris. we know two airlines that reported last quarter, they had

seen a decline in trask to europe immediately after paris. one of them had cut capacity as a result. so tourism was already down. you were seeing that fear that terrorists would like to create already happening. this happening in the wake of paris is of course significant, andrew, especially because we know this is a city -- people have said this already on air, but it's worth repeating -- already on high alert with security forces deployed throughout to try and stop an event like this, and it already happened at this point. so that will certainly lead to the sense that this is something that cannot be controlled and that security perhaps is out of control. that is exactly what the terrorists would like to achieve at this point. of course, the other degree of symbolism, maybe it's coincidence because they happen to live in brussels, but that's where all the big meetings for the european union happen. all the fights that we have seen about what to do about migrants, that's where it happens. there are huge buildings dedicated to the bureaucracy of europe there in brussels. for it to happen there, i think,

also adds to the symbolism, even though these individuals, many of them appear to live in that area. it could be coincidence. >> michelle, being down there -- and we'll talk about a couple different things here. but being down there, the coverage and your perception of president obama's meetings, there's two takes we had back here. one that really, i felt, sort of disconcerting was agreeing with raul castro, that we had problems with human rights and didn't have universal health care. i see it covered in other media outlets as they were butting heads about the differences between cuba and the united states. what were you thinking when you heard the president say, i don't disagree with your criticism of the united states? >> well, raul castro has repeatedly in the past and yesterday focused on what he describes as the plight of

african-americans in the united states. i think to some degree, that's what the president was agreeing with. to equate that with a violation of human rights equal to what we see here in cuba, i think, is absolutely ridiculous. i'm not sure the president was going that far. i would give the president credit in a couple of instances. if you watch the news conference yesterday, raul castro expected to answer only one question, wanted to answer only one question, and was quite defiant and tried all kinds of reasons to not answer a second question asked to him by andrea mitchell. when president obama finished responding to andrea mitchell, he turned to raul castro and said, i know you planned to answer only one question, but do you want to answer andreandrea' question? he put him on the spot, trying to get him to engage. then you saw what happened after that. i think there's a little bit of both on his part trying to push

them along into the modern era in terms of communicating, but yeah, i was -- i thought comparing the situation of civil rights here in cuba to the united states is overdone. >> so not a full-fledged stop on what some have called the appeasement tour of the last five, six, seven years. let me ask you one other thing. so there's a shot in the "new york post" -- is there a huge billboard of che, was the president standing in front of that? is that a real shot, or was it superimposed? did you see that? >> oh, no, that's happened. >> that was real? was this guy not a terrorist? wasn't this guy a terrorist and a bomber and a brutal thug? >> he's a murderer. >> that's the juxtaposition. that's the other thing that occurred to me. i don't know. >> when they took over, they started -- they assassinated thousands of people upon taking power here in cuba.

he and fidel castro. so when we see young people wearing t-shirts, it's incredibly disconcerting to me. they have no idea what kind of individual he was. >> the optics aren't great. in light of the recent developments and everything else. i don't know. what was i guess supposed to be a victory tour for new relations with cuba, i guess it depends. >> the one thing i would say was positive is to see raul castro almost undressed, his inability to make it so clear that he is not used to ever taking a question or defiance from anyone was a moment to be seen. i thought it was a momentous political event to see him struggle in that and to deny that there were political prisoners here in the face of what the whole world knows is not true. >> there's some new political prisoners, i think, aren't there, in the last couple days. >> yeah, they've been rounding up the usual suspects. it's frequent. and it depends. sometimes they put them in jail

for a day. sometimes they put them in jail for a week. sometimes for much long eer perd of time. a senior administration official has told me in the past, they've said to them, listen, you've got to stop beating people up. when you beat people up, you know, as we try to undo the embargo, the people who support the embargo point to what you're doing and use it as a reason to continue the embargo. this has to stop. so they've tried to engage them on that. we'll see if it changes. >> michelle, thank you. again, michelle caruso-cabrera. when we return, more on the explosions in belgium. we're still looking at official reports of at least 13 people killed in those explosions. we'll be talking to the brussels bureau chief for the "financial times" right after this. as we head to a break, take a quick check of what's happening in the european markets. they're down by about half a percent. this is well off the lows from a few hours ago. "squawk box" back with more on this situation in just a moment.

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welcome back, everyone. take a look at the u.s. equity futures. they come off their lows of the session. the dow futures down right now by about 45 points below fair value. s&p futures off by close to eight. the nasdaq down by 20. obviously the markets reacting to what we've seen today in belgium and the attacks there. joining us now is the brussels bureau chief at "the financial times." i realize there's a lot of chaos on the ground, but what can you tell us about the situation? >> as far as we can tell, there are two separate attacks. there was the double bombing at the airport, which is outside of central brussels. actually a good way from central brussels.

about a 45-minute drive from here. obviously an airport we all use with some regularity. talked this morning to a source of mine who's an aide to the economics chief who was literally about to go on a plane to rome to discuss economic issues with the italian government. very shaken, obviously. but the thing that's really sort of struck home in the eu quarter is the second attack, which was on a metro station here literally about 100 meters from where i'm talking to you, right near the european commission headquarters. the local media is reporting as many as a dozen killed there. that's a metro line that almost everyone here in our bureau uses every day. one of my colleagues literally emerged from that line about 90 seconds before the bombing went off. they sort of sealed that off for now. we were just down there taking a look. we can't get a closer look, but smoke was billowing, ambulances everywhere. it seems both those places are going to see dead in the double digits. >> peter, this is a situation we've tried to talk about, the

open borders in the eu and what this means. i know this is a moving target, but what does a situation like this do to those who have not been pleased with the european union overall or at least the idea of a potential brexit from the eu. >> look, the jihadists arriving in european countries, a lot of brexit people obviously will blame this on europe's open borders. as americans know all too well, it is not just europe that is subject to these kinds of attacks. self-radicalized nationals in the u.s., in europe who live here and have passports are the ones who are committing most of these attacks. it's not foreigners from syria who are taking advantage of open borders. it is belgians. it is french. in the u.s. case, it was naturalized citizens in southern california. so yes, we have seen a lot of pro-brexit and anti-eu parties try to use these attacks to argue for either exit from the

eu or the end of open borders, but the fact of the matter is, it's much more difficult issue to ascribe to things like border control. this is a much more -- >> although, peter, be fair, th suspected terrorist from those attacks in paris, saleh abdelslam who was just arrested in brussels on friday and taken in, he had talked about those open borders, talked about how there were 90 compatriots, fellow terrorists who he were saying had snuck in from over those borders and the open borders between belgium and paris have loud them to move very freely and across the continent in ways they wouldn't have been able to do before the eu? >> abdelslam is a french citizen born in brussels. he has a european passport. he would have been able to travel throughout europe as were all the paris attackers, mostly paris attackers were french or belgian citizens.

frankly a little bit -- certainly an issue. what we've seen is that several of the leaders were able to enter europe as part of this refugee flow, this influx we've seen from turkey into greece and both u.s. and european officials are concerned about this. but abdelslam was hiding in brussels for four months. you know, he did not sort of use open borders to hide or escape authorities. this is a much more fundamental question of whether european law enforcement and european security forces have the capability and wherewithal to deal with this threat at home. so i think it's clearly an issue, the border control will be an issue but much more an issue of intelligence services and security services in the country clearly unable to get an understanding of home grown jihadists in their capitals. >> or cooperating between capitals. >> same issue we saw after 9/11.

cia and fbi had segmented information about terrorist networks that was not shared. not only intergovernmental where we have the same problems here in europe where domestic law enforcement and intelligence services don't communicate well but then the added layer of multinationals who don't communicate as well either. now frankly the french and belgians work pretty closely together but there's 28 countries, you know, if you count the numbers who are in the border free zone closer to 26. so that's a lot of countries that need to coordinate their efforts and if you can understand how the u.s. has problems even sort of to coordinate within its own countries to get 27 countries cooperate is more difficult. >> peter, thank you very much for your time. coming up, much more on the terrorist attacks in belgium. comment from the belgium prime minister coming up. we needed 30 new hires for our call center.

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. coming up the latest from belgium on the bombings at brussels airport and downtown metro station. we'll bring you more. you're watching "squawk box". wild-caught alaskan salmon.

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breaking news this morning, explosions rocking the brussels airport and a metro station there. the city is on lock down. european union telling staffers to stay home. tom friedman is here with more. second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. >> announce welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc, first in business worldwide. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. take a look at futures right now after those explosions in brussels that just happened in the past several hours. you're looking at red arrows across the dow looks like it would open off by 47 points, s&p open off by 7.75 and nasdaq off by 20. europe similar red arrows across that board.

and let's look at oil before we get to the story of the morning, wti crude at 41.38. in the meantime for more on the u.s. response to the attacks in belgian, eamon javers has been following this story, trying to make sense what seems like a senseless act this morning. >> reporter: that's right. i just got an e-mail from a white house official the tishl telling me the president has been apprise this morning of the explosions in belgium. this official goes on to say have been and continues to be in close contact with belgian counterparts and provide additional information and updates as we're able to do so. that's the word from the white house. president obama traveling in hava havana, cuba has been apprised of the situation in belgium. guys in belgium, security relationships between the u.s. law enforcement intelligence agencies and their counterparts in europe, obviously continuing to work this and will expect to get more information on the u.s. side here in the united states as soon as officials can tell us what they know about what's

going on in belgium. back to you. >> before you go. given that we're in the middle of a president ideal election how do you imagine this gets politicized. it hasn't happened yet but in several hours i imagine we'll hear from candidates on this. >> reporter: i think it does get politicized as everything does here in washington and in a campaign year. we can expect to hear all of the kind to say something would be my guess. you've seen a range of different responses to the terrorism threat from donald trump talking about banning potentially all muslim immigrants coming into the united states. to other responses from the other candidates. i think you'll hear more of the same. what tends to happen in the political season is that everybody jumps on every new event and instantly proclaims that it explains that they have been right all along in whatever they have been saying. i think you'll see that on the campaign trail as cynical as that might sound. >> we may not have quite as much -- remember san bernardino

before it was over it was about gus. we heard from the president. we heard from harry reid and i think we heard -- i mean across the board that came out. then that shifted then to the republicans with the terror thing. it's like both sides. in this case i guess we're going skip the gun rhetoric and go right to the terrorist probably in this case. anyway -- >> we'll get over to europe right now. let's get to london. there's more news on this attack in belgium and a check on the markets. steve sedjwick joins us. >> reporter: thanks very much. i've been making a mental list of all the attacks and work out some market reaction. very often the market shows a tempered very calm reaction. amazing how that's compared with the extreme volatility we get on news flow. we had this attack this morning at about 8:00 local time at the

brussels airport. an hour later we heard the metro had also been atakds and there was some incident and now we know multiple casualties and possible multiple fatalities as well. but the market reaction has been quite tempered. i've been going back to "charlie hebdo" in january last year and the bataclan attacks. the market takes a down tick. sentiment, certain stocks in certain sectors that get hit. if you look at the reaction of european markets yes we're down. these aren't extreme sellers. we're not talking 1, 2, 3%. german market we got the flat line. the bell 20 which is the belgian blue chip market and really close to events on the brussels exchange trading around the flat line looking like in the next couple of second it will tip into green territory. similar case on the french market which was down earlier on now down 1.4% and london as

well, scene of many terror incidents down.46 of 1%. first one emboldened back in 1990 when the ira planted a bomb in the old london stock exchange. how many of these events we've had over the years and how quickly the market picks itself up and starts thinking rationally. thinking rationally some stocks will get a hit. let's look at some of the names in the "travel and leisure" sector. if you were watching an hour ago these two names the two bigelow cost carers, they were trading down 3.5%, 4%. they rallied. i will show you these as well. another sector you might want to focus on. these names which are down were down less than they were an hour ago. let's bring in retired army

colonel jack jacobs. jack, thank you for sticking around with us this morning. it's probably not all that surprising that additional attacks came. we've been hearing warnings from law enforcement agencies and heard what's been kind of coming out in the investigation from those paris attacks too. i guess the question becomes what can we do to prevents future attacks from happening? >> better intelligence. that's the best way, but then there are a lot of people who don't want to see better intelligence because it infringes on privacy. the balance between security and privacy is one that has been developing over a long period of time and is now the most, i'd say contentious of all things. to what extent does everybody have a right to privacy and to what extent can governments intrude on that? now the rules in europe are very much different than the rules in the united states. and part of the problem in

europe is that governments have been reluctant to delve into the kind of intelligence collection that's absolutely necessary to ensure privacy. in the united states law enforcement really wants to do it, but the majority of the population and all the polls i've seen seem to prefer to keep their privacy even if it means that they are at greater risk. now it's easy for people in the united states to think that because we appear to be very, very far away from what's taking place in the rest of the world. we do have a relatively short memory, remember that 3,000 people were killed in new york city on 9/11 and yet we seem to have recovered intellectually from that very, very quickly. i think there's going to be a resurgence of discussion and debate on the subject of the

balance between privacy and on the one hand and security on the other. i believe that if you -- i'm not the only -- that believes that the only way you can increase security is to give up some privacy. >> you know, we have seen that debate play out here in the united states with the battle between apple and the department of justice. the department of justice backing down just hours before these attacks, it looks like they have said they don't need apple's help at this point, they can potentially break into that phone from the san bernardino shootings on their own but it does leave that question out there about the balance between security and privacy and where we come down as a nation. you almost would like to see this progress just so we can come to some sort of rules, rules of the road for how businesses operate here in the united states. >> yeah. you know, one thing comes immediately to mind if you're on a phone and talking and that signal is going out every where, do you really have an

expectation that what you're saying is going to be private? it remains to be seen whether or not this is going to be -- this is going to be worked out soon. the government has backed down only because it says it found somebody outside the government and outside apple to break into the phone. this problem is going to crop up time and time again and if you want to prevent future attacks, not just find out why a previous attack occurred, if you want to prevents future attacks, then this debate is going to come to the forefront and pretty quickly and it's going to be loud and contentious and acromonious. >> colonel jacob, thank you for your time. >> you're watching as we were talking before the colonel about the markets, which have been down all morning but they cut their losses in half, and this

is a response that we have become all too familiar with over the past ten, 15 years. typically it's not a long lasting response and we are loathe to talk about it on a day like this, but we always do. that's what we do. we're cnbc. jason trender is here, chief investment strategist somewhere. he's at strategist partners. i don't know if you want to add this comment. we've seen this far too many times recently and there's an initial response, the dollar gets stronger, usually, stocks sell off. there's a little bit of flight to quality. a lot of those moves are reversed over the coming days and weeks. >> i think obviously we've become inured to this. the big market reactions will come later on when there's a big political response. again, not to bring politics

into this but i think globally there's clearly a reevaluation of immigration policies. there's almost no question that this -- this is not just a u.s., of course we've been talking about donald trump about it, but this is a global phenomenon. >> if it happens, it would start in europe. that conversation? >> i think it's already started. >> how do you see it play out and then what are the r ramifications. >> average people are thinking the political leads and this is justin u.s. again, in europe as well are not listening. i think you're going to see more of that. i think it will make trade harder. for instance like tpp, i think that's, unfortunately, the

chance of that happening, that's gone. not going to happen. >> jason, you know a month after paris i guarantee you tourism had to be down 20%, 30%. then people finally go back and, you know, it wears off. now you got another one. hasn't been that long. there's going to be some economic activity in an area that has negative interest rates already. >> one of the things that's been odd, joe, about this cycle is that the savings rate over the last year, year and a half has actually gone up while the unemployment rate has gone down. that usually doesn't happen at the end of a cycle. >> you talking about here >> here. >> europe in my opinion, negative interest rates will be seen as a big problem in 10, 15 years from now. >> if people start staying home and restaurants and airports -- >> europe has a particular problem because it virtually has no population growth aside from immigration.

it has real demographic problems as it gets orlando. tourism is a huge part of their economy. >> if it becomes more frequent and the time between, you know, the attacks become shorter -- i don't think we can say it won't have an effect on the overall economy. >> people are becoming inured to it and it's happening more frequently and happening in more places that's more high-profile. >> free movement of people across borders planning to do harm. bringing their own suicide belts along with them. >> unfortunately i think that's true. >> i don't know. i was messaging -- we always plan -- it's off the table. just got back a week ago. but, there's a lot of people you know that are thinking i'm not going to any airport in europe at this point. because i haven't gone to brussels specifically but it's like boston compared to new york or paris. >> this happens to my

understanding in the departure area. >> we got a wire american airlines said it was not in its direct vicinity. we talked to joe earlier who said he just came back from there. he said it's a very tight area. american is coming out on the wires and saying this was not directly in front of their departure areas, it's probably close. >> there's a number of conflicting reports. i talked to the "wall street journal" editor who does a lot of work for the "new york times". there's debate if this took place near one of the delta terminals or delta desk or i may mispronounce it etad that was also a debate, little bit, i don't know if it's a debate question mark of where it happened. >> chaos comes immediately

following all of this. you'll get conflicting reports on the ground than may be one of those situations. >> what about, i mean, back to the apple debate. this sort of larger question about technology and our privacy. >> listen, my own opinion is that i think a lot of, for lack of a better term, a lot of the i would say politically elite views of things are going by the wayside in comparison to what the national will is. and i think that's true about open borders. i think it's true about trade. and i think it's also going to be true about privacy. and whether we like it or not. >> you mean we'll open up -- >> they are already open. political will be, i think, is heavily skewed towards less privacy. >> you're just saying what's obvious. we'll go back to the patriot act which we diluted. >> listen, joe, it's obvious but i'm amazed how many people don't

necessarily recognize how obvious it is. >> there's no coordination between agencies over in europe at all right now. there's a lot of things, a lot of people that need to get their house in order security wise including snooping. there's a lot of things. >> i think so. >> we should attack it at the source more than we are. >> that may be another part of it. it seems to me that's another part of the equation. >> it will eventually. even the pacifist. >> look how quickly the sentiment changed in france. >> right. not have guns seen on the streets of paris. now the parisians -- >> i remember going as a child to pairs and people standing with guns. in england that's true. >> guns are popular in france. all right. thank you.

the belgium prime minister holding a news conference a short time ago. willford frost has been monitoring and joins us now with the details. >> reporter: thanks very much. the belgian prime minister has been speaking in brussels in the last half an hour in french. he has said that our worst fears have happened. we realize we face a tragic moment but we have to be calm and show solidarity. he said many dead, many injured some gravely. he described these attacks as blind, violent and cowardly and does say there's several sites of concern. authorities are trying to stabilize the situation. he says we're following it minute by minute. we also had some news from some other european leaders, david cameron the british prime minister will be chairing an emergency cobra meeting. that's due to start any minute

now and similarly the mayor of london has said they are upping security across main london transport hubs although said there are no direct links from brussels to london in terms of threats right now. the increased presence of security staff is to reassure passengers. similar sentiment echoed by the germany interior minister again saying elevated security presence but no immediate link expected from brussels across the border. >> thank you for that. appreciate it very much. for more on the bombings in brussels let's bring in clint vanzant. good morning to you. so when you look at what's taking place or what we see what's taken place and the arrest that's taken place last week how expected do you think these things are? >> i think this is very active. what has bothered me is that both the french and the belgians

have indicated they have have been surprised as how vital these terrorist networks are. when somebody says that, when they say we're surprised how many people are involved, that says we don't have a good handle on that. now, the french minister of the interior just yesterday said there were at least 90 known terrorist suicide bombers wandering around europe somewhere. well if there's 90 that they know of, how many do we not know of, how large a support is that network, and i think we all realize that there are at least 1500 fighters, isis fighters who fought in the middle east and who have now returned to europe and bringing with them kind of a zika virus of terrorism that is spreading throughout europe and listening to your prior conversation, yet the terrible thing is this is becoming more

and more what europeans are going to have to deal with and just like the zika virus here in the united states we're trying to keep that away from our shores, but it's very easy to slip in and as the fbi tells us, they have a terrorist investigation going on in every state of the union. it's likely that virus is already here just like we saw in san bernardino, california when that attack took place a few months ago. >> this is going raise all sorts of questions about borders within europe and what should to be done. what would you do? >> well, you know, every time we react, we become more restrictive. i mean those of us in washington, d.c. area and many capitals, you know, when car bombings were taking place when we got these monstrous concrete planters that were put in front of every door to stop a car bomb used to be able to at one time almost walk up to the white house itself and now you're

pushed blocks and blocks away. so terrorists are still winning, even though we moved them out further and further. just like the attack that took place at the belgium airport today. if you look at a target a bull's eye target and say the bull's eye is the most critical area, security attempts to push people back and push that threat back further and further. but now today that threat didn't get to the plane but it got to the public area. are we going start denying people the ability even to come in to the airport without a ticket? and to address your question, what does that say about international borders? are we going to allow terrorists to win to make us and act those borders to have gates and guards going up and down to try to stop the few of the millions of people that normally go back and forth on those borders every day? we hate to let them win by

making us become more restrictive like that. >> okay. thank you very much. appreciate it. our special guest for the rest of the our is fort myers friedman foreign affairs columnist at the "new york times". thank you for being here. obviously this changes a lot of situations in europe and even beyond. what do you think waking up and hearing about these attacks? >> you know, it's a reminder of several things that people are talking about this morning but for me, i think one of the things we underestimated is that isis is not just wicked, they are wickedly smart. and i think we face a real fear that these guys are going to get hold of something dirty, okay. that's what they are trying to do. >> a dirty bomb. >> exactly.

we really underestimated how smart these guys are. i would be a lot more humble about that. becky, i'm 62. i've covered every middle east war on the ground since 1979. except this one. because you can go because isis has a department of chopping people's heads off. so i think we know nothing about these guys. we know very, very little. i would be very humble about who they are and what their capabilities are. >> bowlingical is scary. >> something dirty. these are guys who burned a pilot alive. they chop people's heads off. i think they are wicked but wickedly smart. i think they are very dangerous enemy and take them very seriously. >> the french prime minister saying we're at war, we have been subject for the last several months and picking up on what you said about this how do you night war?

>> obviously, what you guys have been talking about up to now is part of it. you have to use every possible technical means you can. again we have these debates about the iphone that we have in this country and that debate is purely the luxury of not having one more 9/11. one more 9/11 and that debate is so over. all you have to do is look at france to know that. we have to find a compromise solution that balances privacy and security. and i think the longer we wait on that the more vulnerable that we are. >> this brings back the days of the patriot back which we walked back a little. we walked backwater boarding. if this keeps happening enough do we suddenly go back to all no holds barred and the aclu is going to need to start fundraising efforts between to protect the civil liberties that some people think are compromised. i know there needs tube middle ground, i agree and both sides

need to give but we did learn some things the last time around and you can't -- you can't turn into the terrorists yourselves. obviously you can't stick, you know, electrodes on a person's privates, it's not -- as obama said a thousand times that's not who we are. but people are pressing again yes that's who we need to be. you'll hear that again. >> you'll rely on experts on what's effective and what's not effective and we learned torture is not effective. not only morally repugnant to us but the point is we're going to have this debate and it's going to affect the election, joe, because i actually went to the mini version of this -- i always said about the israeli palestinian conflict. it's the mini version, the off broadway version of the wider war civilization to what's going on broadway. if you look at the debate inside

israel on this issue, and how they've dealt with it and there's going real tension there that it's going to come up here. we're living in a bubble right now. it hasn't happened here. as soon as it happens here. >> israel is already beyond the patriot act. in terms prove filing and smart ways of watching things they are already beyond what we do here. >> but we're in a moment of luxury. >> what do they do in israel on this encryption issue. can they break into the phones themselves? >> i don't know. they are pretty capable. theft the west bank and gaza wired for sound. that's use pick up the paper every other day and find out they've taken out some guy. this is going to be a real balancing act. it's a balancing act in another way and that's i think people totally lost sight how important the european union is for us. as a columnist, if you read a column that has european union in the lead that's like a flashing red light. don't read that. turn the page.

the last time i called it donald trump's european union to get people to stop. but the european union is the other united states in the world. it's the united states of europe. it's the other great center of democratic capitalism. >> this question of a balance between free movement and free trade and still being able to protect and police your borders. it's a huge one. it's a massive problem. >> very different in the united states. >> and sharing cooperation. cooperating and having law enforcement agencies that can speak the same language. >> my point, becky, is we've and the this view about isis that we'll deal with them at the level that is comfortable for us. okay. so whatever is comfortable for us special ops, regular bombing and gradually degrade them. that's the policy. what i've been saying for a while now is that you're missing the threat to europe. if europe closes in on itself because of the huge refugee

inflow coming in to europe, you fracture the european union, that really hurts america. these guys are amplifier of american power. if you lose the european union is that a huge, huge strategic loss to the united states and not even in our realm of discussion. >> our last guest clint vanzant says what isis brings is not the pure isis but a zika virus of terrorism that spread. how come san bernardino wasn't the wake up call for america? >> it should have been. the wake up is if these guys can light up a couple in san bernardino, california, going back to the point joe is talking about, what do you think they can light up in islamabad or or karachi. >> i watched three or four speeches at aipac yesterday and one of them, i was watching donald trump and one thing that he talked about was how kids

here would have a role model of a sports hero or a neurosurgeon or something. there's a large part of the world where the hero is a terrorist or is a jihadist. and he says he's going to stop that. i wish we could stop it. now, saying you're going to stop it and being able to do it are two different things. before isis there was al qaeda and after isis there will be someone else. that's a problem that we're not even thinking about solving and the core, it's the core issue. >> i was just in iraq. i just came back on sunday. and actually i went through istanbul and had the bombing there. and an american official was telling me in the months before isis emerged, they were getting -- there were 60 suicide bombings a day, some days going on inside iraq. i really wasn't paying attention

to it. but the level of perversity and how much it spread and how you can get so many people to do this is something we still don't under. >> we're back to your conversations about radical islam versus islam. do those 60 people all think there's a reward waiting -- >> yeah. i think we still don't know and hoff not fully confronted the fact that these people are taking permission from and inspired by an interpretation of that faith and we don't want to face that fact. >> face that because it's very politically incorrect to tie the two together. if you put word radical in front of islam doesn't it make it okay to talk about it? >> the way to talk about it is that these guys -- we tend to talk about it this way, joe, that there's islam and a tiny majority imitating or pretending they are muslims but they believe something else.

i don't buy that. i think there's a conin tt cont. the guidance system game from saudi arabia. and the fuel came from iran. so that the iranians pushing the shi'ites in iraq, okay, to keep squeezing the sunnis and not making any accommodation to them at all. that i say, having just been in iraq that situation is still so alive. one thing that strikes you, i'm down the road from mosul, is that we have no idea what comes after -- if we actually took over mosul and got isis out there's zero agreement on who takes over. >> i want to pause for just a moment. if you're just joining us right now explosions rocking brussels airport killing at least 13 people and injuring others. eamon javers joins us from washington and he has more on the story. >> reporter: you guys were just

talking about donald trump and we talked earlier about the presidential candidate in all of this and we now do have a tweet from donald trump. here's what he said on twitter just a few minutes ago. he said do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place brussels was. not any more. it is from a different world. u.s. must be vigilante and smart. no tweet so far from the other presidential candidates. not hillary clinton or bernie sanders or ted cruz or john kasich at this point. as you know, we've been talking about the potential for blow back here in the united states. i was talking with sean henry a former fbi agent here in our office this this morning who raised an interesting point that we should lay out there. the concern right now among u.s. law enforcement is not necessarily that this particular set of plotters in belgium has contacts here in the united states and could spread that. the concern is more that there could be self-radicalized individuals who are inspired by today's activity in belgium and might seek to do their own

attacks of their own volition and that's really the insidious thing about isis and the terror threat we're facing you could have situations where people simply decide to do this on their own without any contact, without any kind of command and control element of isis itself. that makes it very difficult for u.s. law enforcement to respond. we're seeing stepped up security in new york and we're just getting word now from nbc news that metro system here in washington, d.c. is saying there will be stepped up security patrols, additional k-9 units, more officers walking the beat on the metro. having driven through downtown washington, d.c. in the past half hour there's no visible security on the streets. done seem to be any more security visible than you might see on a typical tuesday. now we're seeing this response from donald trump. you can expect we'll see it from the other candidates. traveling in havana, cuba, the

president was apprised of the situation this morning and can expect further details from u.s. intelligence and law enforcement as the day goes on, guys. >> thank you very much. we'll head to london. steve sedjwick joining us us with the latest from europe. >> reporter: we're hearing similar kind of thing across europe. interior minister at france, 400 extra police deployed implementing i.d. checks on the paris transport system. and border checks. paris has been the subject of horrific attacks at the start of last year with "charlie hebdo" attacks and in november where we saw the bataclan attacks as well. his boss the president of france is currently saying all of europe has been attacked. he's talking now and said europe needs to take action together, the necessary measures together as well. in term of the european markets and how they are reacting it's a very tempered calm reaction.

we were down the best part of 1% after these horrific attacks. hit roundabout the market opened. we saw the metro attack an hour after the attack at the main brussels airport. since then the markets have got a measure of calm. the belgium blue chips down .2 of 1%. paris down .5 of 1%. some stocks are being hit. thomas cook down. air france down. by and lashing the market is taking it very calm. hearing a lot from various people including the counterterrorism head here in the uk increased policing presence at key locations including transport hubs, the main airports for london. back to you. thank you very much, steve. our special guest for the rest of the hour tom friedman foreign affairs columnist at the

"new york times". i knew you were coming on yesterday and then this happened. this morning it was like wow we have tom friedman on. the kind of timing you would like. >> i want to pick up something on trump that i wrote a couple of weeks about this. look, he's positioned himself -- imagine it's november 2nd this happens. so i lived through that in israel. i saw -- was reporting then how -- there was an assassination. and decides to call a new election. before he does he takes out the chief engineer from hamas bomb maker. hamas responds with a series of suicide bombs and paris goes from 80% in the polls to losing to netanyahu. this is part of this election and trump has positioned himself perfectly to take advantage of politically of anything like this.

>> when he first came out with what and people always think it's foot in mouth disease with him when he does something but every time he does it you need to look beyond that because there's a method to it. and as untoward as it may sound, i made the characterization that when he made that muslim comment that he was going long. >> yeah. >> and that he will benefit when that happens and more and more people will say that's not such a crazy idea after all. and, you know, i was thinking wow it hasn't happened. three months goes by and we've got between now and november. >> the terrorists follow all of this very closely. they have significantly impacted, again, go back to what's going on off broadway, israeli elections and they will definitely try to impact this one opinion i have no doubt about it. that they are watching.

i go back. they are wicked and wickedly smart. they would love to have trump be president because these guys have anapocalyptic vision. >> you think the terrorists want trump to win? >> no question. just as they want netanyahu to win in israel because they thought he would be more aggressive toward him and initiate a broader war. >> and inspire the rest of their population. >> that's what they feed off. >> the plan for the caliphate. >> that's the only way they can radicalize all muslims is getting us to attack all muslims. >> so what do we do in response? >> you know, i think that -- you know, we have been through this a lot of times. and there's no question, i think we have to, obviously, up our technical means to monitor these people. you've got to, obviously, take isis down because the more they

control space the more they are able to plan. >> the act of taking them down will embolden them the same way and up recruitment. >> and having just been in iraq, one thing that struck me is how much iraqis are fighting who will replace isis in mosul. shi'ite as driven by the iranians they don't want the sunnis to take over. the kurds want their part. just after we invade iraq and after the surge we keep winning these military victories but there's no political consensus within the arab muslim world on how they will live together. >> when you talk about information, you spent a lot of time in the silicon valley weigh into the apple debate. is tim cook right or wrong? >> there has gobt a technical fix that both communities agree on. you cannot have a situation where we are inventing devices

that are impregnable. >> tim cook is not seeking a middle ground. he would like to have absolute and you wanter encryption. >> yeah. >> he believes there should be no key. >> i think there has to be some kind of technical agreement that the congress of the united states should be writing new laws for these new technologies that somehow balance, you know, the need -- >> the worst terrorist attack could be, if our entire grid was hacked. description is incredibly important. >> joe believes everything should be encrypted. i'm an aclu card carrying member. >> god forbid there's an attack like this in the united states of this scale or greater magnitude. look what's going on in france. the average american will say mr. government you do whatever

you want. so i think we should pre-empt that by sitting down. >> you drew it on torture and i guarantee you made the point. if you knew the guy had the small pox or dirty bomb and 100,000 people you wouldn't even stop at water boarding. you have to stop at water boarding. you can't -- you don't care about slippery slopes any more. there's such a thing about slippery slope. >> would you say full on torture is called for if you can -- if you know there's a dirty bomb. >> if there's a tick time bomb you do whatever you can. >> there you go. >> i don't know. we're back to that's not who we are. >> okay then you know what you're deciding there are gray areas where there's not a right or wrong. tim cook isn't right or wrong. the fbi isn't right or wrong. you want to make it one way or the other. >> my view on the technological

front it can't be -- >> a bigger metaphor for privacy in general. >> can't be we allow these devices to become immune from every subpoena involved. you want to take our freedoms for the acts of a few. >> you're suggesting by allowing the government to have access to this phone when a warrant or subpoena is available somehow everybody's privacy will go out the window. >> i will say as tom said there's probably a middle ground that says the government -- by the way tim cook has wanted this too. >> he wanted congress to deal with this. >> you make one keen you make a key for everything. >> i don't think that argument will stand up. >> if that were the case it would totally open the back door torch's phone because the chinese and everyone else then you wouldn't do it. >> the reason, they don't need

april toledo this. the reason the government backed down they have a key from an outside -- >> they have the key already. which means the whole thing is hackable. it's hackable anyway. >> that was the saddest thing about this is our fbi is so incompetent. >> it's also sad we have american companies that have done -- that are real american companies that don't want to help in a case of a terrorist attack. >> there's a higher principle here in terms of being important to everyone encryption. >> if it's hackable anyway it doesn't matter. >> apple makes -- apple makes a new operating system basically every quarter. right. every quarter. couple times a year. have you heard of examples of that operating system being hacked and being available to world. they have done a magical job of keeping it secure. i find it baffling we have this

crazy argument where to help in this one instance in which somebody else can do anyway they throw up their hands and say the key will go every where. >> the argument comes down to do you want to some day have a system for banks and for power grids that is totally unhackable? do you want that eventually or do you think it's okay that all these things are porous. >> all these things are porous. two the government can get in your bank account if they want to. >> they shut down the grid already. >> that's the point. >> what's the point? >> the point is -- >> the point is you need to get better and better at this encryption and you can't let some slippery slope take this to the point where you have no security whatsoever. because of terrorists. because of terrorists. the rest of us all of a sudden, all of our freedoms are compromised because of these guys. >> all of our freedoms are compromised because of these guys. >> we'll continue this conversation in just a moment. in the meantime the president of france speaking that hour.

willford frost has been monitoring and joins us now with more. >> reporter: president francois hollande has made his comments on these terrible acts. he said the republic of france gives its full solidarity with the belgian people. he's offering them all the soup port th -- support in these dramatic sishss. he will relentlessly fight the terrorist attack. france was attacked in january and november and will don't fight against terrorism. he expressed his friendship to belgium and said we must be careful to encourage unity in france and in europe as a whole. the war against terrorism will be long clearly echoing the sentiment of support and solidarity and trying forward looking and positive in terms of where europe goes from here. he continues his press conference and we'll bring you more when we have it. >> thuch.

our special guest this hour is tom friedman foreign affairs columnist at "new york times". tom we've covered a lot of different topics all related back to these terrorist attacks. maybe we should talk more what this means for the eu once again because we're looking at a potential brexit. that vote coming up very soon. >> i go back to what i was saying earlier americans don't mesh how much eu amplifies our power around the world. whether it's imposing sanctions on putin. they can be weak sanctions but sanctions are important. or whether it's funding the ukrainians or other democracy groups around the region. if temp u starts to splinter and fracture and can basically no longer be our wing man in the world that has strategic enormous implications for the united states and we haven't been talking about that. >> eu is less than a perfect union. don't have a centralized

government, centralized fiscal authority and that was proven back in 2008 with the financial crisis. we saw the way the union was rocked at that point. the immigration coming in from syria, these terrorist attacks that's happening that poses a brand new threat that people haven't seen. >> i think rear just at the beginning of this because basically two things are going on here. one is we're seeing the rise of what i call the super empowered angry man. we have a world now of suppe su powers. we are in a geopolitical divide. noits longer east-west, north-south the big twied is between world of order and world of disorder. world disorder extends from afghanistan through the middle east, across central africa. chad, mali.

there was a terrorist incident in mali. there's one a day almost every where in central africa. what's happening? i think that basically the forces of climate, of technology, of globalization are taking all these weak states and basically all these states whose borders are incredibly artificial, these states were like mobil homes in a trailer park. what you're seeing today is a hurricane doing through a trailer park. what you're seeing on the mediterranean are tens of now millions of people trying to get out of the world of disorder into the world of order. and so if you just look at iraq as a question of isis or not isis, this is where i have been critical of the president because he talks about syria and saying i was right not to draw

the red line. we can debate about that until the cows come home. all i know is this. in allowing syria to be blown up we have collectively not with the united states but what arab world, europe and us, but by botching completely blotching the libya enterprise, okay. libya was a cork on africa. we uncorked it and then left it completely open. syria the same thing. now all these people are flooding from the world of disorder into the world of order. >> how much of this is because the united states has pulled back from the world stage to some extent. you talk about -- putin hasn't pulled back. >> there's simply no question that things like libya where you go in and you intervene to decapitate the country and you don't put boots on the ground, you are giving hostages to fortune. i only wrote one column about

libya. we get to write around headlines. the column was please make my president lucky because my view was in decapitating moammar gadhafi and we and the europeans together not doing anything to establish a post-moammar gadhafi security order on the ground with boots -- let's remember we had 500,000 troops, maybe more in europe for 50 years in order to secure that peace. that order. we're going to have to face that argument again. >> having said all of that americans are still very weary from all the wars we've been fighting. >> i don't blame them. >> i don't want my kids to be the soldiers. >> if we don't visit the world of disorder it will visit us. >> who is winning right now, order or disorder? >> i think order is winning far and away. we shouldn't exaggerate what happened here. 13 people were tragically killed. but what worries me, becky, is that as i say, these guys are

wickedly smart. they are going get their hands on something worse than just a you see si suicide belt. >> why hasn't it happened here in >> we've been good. we've been much better. we don't have domestic muslim population that's aggrieved that the europeanss have, we don't have tens of thousands of young men basically unemployed living in isolated getos which you have all over europe especially belgium where these guys emerged from. we don't that have home grown element that we saw in a rare instance like san bernardino. we're more of a melting pot, thank god. >> when you say you think something might happen or that the terrorists would like to do something ahead of the election downing they will do it here or try to do it here. >> i wouldn't rule it out. these guys are -- you know, andrew they are like cyber.

constantly pinging on the system and looking for vulnerabilities. i go back to this point, we haven't faced group like isis yet. i think these guys are particularly evil and particularly intelligent. and their ability to leverage a world of social networks, the way they have to light people up and inspire them to join their crusade whether voluntarily or part of a larger ploft doing it on your own, we've completed underestimated. you haven't gone to this play before. >> make it political of the candidate that are out there to deal with this problem. who do you think -- i wouldn't say just the most experience but who do you think can change this equation? >> i don't think it's in our power alone to change this. we'll talk about it as we have. but let's remember, where does this start? it starts with the ideology that comes out of saudi arabia. which the saudis still have not

confronted. they are still giving money for mosques that preach the most purr t pu pu puritanical islam. iraq is behind shi'ite that crushed the sunnis that produced the isis reaction. saudi arabia provides the guidance system for this isis rocket and iran provides the fuel. and, you know, so it's not -- any candidate that stands up and say i've got the answer it's absurd because you can't control, you know, all this space on the ground if people aren't willing to live together in some kind of no victor no vanquish way. nothing we do will make a difference. >> that's bean problem for hundreds of thousands of years. >> we'll be doing this show, becky, i'm afraid, for as long as you and i are around.

>> just back to temp u. we had mervin king on yesterday and his notion was that, you know, you talked about -- you can do things in the ukraine, do these kind of alliances. he said the european union need to understand countries that aren't part of the euro area need different parameters of being part of the union. i don't know if at this point you think it's time to go head long into -- when economically it's not that smooth sailing right now. already problems over there. now in terms of borders and everything else not the greatest time to try for full unification. isn't there something in the middle. i don't know if it works without

a central authority. you got greece down here and germany up here and they have the same currency. how does that work. is it essential this experiment continue? >> it's important because they are -- the other great center of capitalism in the world. you believe in free people and free markets eu is a huge -- >> the markets aren't free when you don't have fiscal coordination. >> i'm not enough of an expert on that at all. >> there's alliances and then economic you unification which doesn't work. >> belgium has been guilty of this. civilization has to be defended. okay. if you're not ready to create a defense budget, if you even can't get your act together in belgium because the french speakers -- civilization has to be defended. and if you're just relying on

the americans to do it for you and you're not ready to do what it takes, then you're going to get incidents like this because civilizations being challenged here. and they've been living in kind of this garden of eden, you know, wonderful world where everybody crosses every border and everybody gets six weeks vacation and nobody ever has to go in the army and we can make our defense budget 1% not 2.5% or 3% which we've been telling them to do. the party is over. >> what happens in germany now to angela merkel? >> again i really worry. i think she's really vulnerable. i think she did something wreckless because when you invite in a million refugees overnight, god bless her on the humanitarian impulse is amazing. let's remember how many years did it take germany to absorb east germany and these people were the same culture, the same

religion, they spoke the same language and to all of a sudden so quickly inject into your society a foreign element like that that needs be absorbed properly over time, it was too much for the system and you saw in cologne on new year's eve what kind of impact you can have when you bring these people in and not part of your culture yet. >> the problem goes back to this idea we have let syria implode, and the people there have been fleeing, jordan can't handle any more, surrounding countries can. they people have to find somewhere to go. >> again, i want to be fair to the president. i don't want to be on the ground in syria any more than anybody else. we're dealing with a vicious dictator who turned this war into a sectarian war just to keep himself in power. i don't blame you or any other american who says i don't want my son or daughter to go over there to fight this guy. but we created two huge openings

in this region from syria and libya of people who are themselves now, have been terribly brutalized and their only way out is to get to europe. and now you're going to see, again, people coming up through africa, a lot of these are really economic migrants and you talk to the germans and they will tell you libya, libya, libya, it was a work on africa. gadhafi used to play with us. how would you like a few refugees. and obviously, you know, he knew how much this could destabilize europe. gadhafi is gone. okay. and there is way too little foresight and thinking ahead on what happens if you uncork this country. and you don't put troops on the ground. we are going to -- we won't just have the apple discussion. we'll eventually have a discussion about how do we defend the world of order from a

mass movement of people out of the world of disorder. and if you don't create secured spaces in this world of disorder, syria and libya in particular we'll have this discussion. >> tom i want to thank you so much on being with us on this day and helping us try to under some of the disorder we're seeing this morning. okay. breaking news all morning long deadly explosions rocking the airport and subway in brussels the belgium capital on lockdown. early morning blast reigniting global terror fears. markets see flight to safety. the losses were pared both in europe and united states. even in belgium markets flat or indicated higher. this something we've seen repeated during these unfortunate and tragic periods in the past as well. this is what we do, we bring you

obviously the tragic news but we to look at it through the prism of financial market. >> it is what will happen in the economy beyond these issues too. ju are watching continuing coverage of the terrorist attacks in belgium this morning. let's take a look what's been happening with the u.s. markets. we were looking at weaker numbers earlier this morning. right now the dow futures are down by 52 points below fair value. s&p futures are down by 8.5 and nasdaq off by 21. also stocks in europe have firmed up after steeper losses earlier this morning. we were looking at stocks down by 1.5%. dax is off by .4 a percent. the dax is off and the ftse is off. let's find out or speak about what we do know at this

hour. two explosions at the brussels arraignments and two blasts at a metro station. 15 people have been killed. get reaction from government leaders. >> reporter: good morning. we've heard first of all from the belgium prime minister, he appealed for calm and solidarity within belgium. he described the attacks as blind, violent and cowardly. he did say more police and military presence have been deployed and at that time around about an hour ago he said several sites were still of concern. we have since heard from the french president francois hollande . he expressed his solidarity with belgium. he said, though, that the whole of europe has been hit. he remembered the recent attacks, of course, in paris and said france fights terrorism and must be careful to encourage

unity in france and also across europe. we've heard also from boreies johnson the mayor of london and german interior minister both explained how they were increasing security presence in their major cities more to reassure passengers than any direct increased threat level following attacks in brussels this morning. we haven't heard yet in detail from uk prime minister david cameron other than a few tweets of solidarity. he's chairing an emergency cobra meeting at 10 downing street and expect to have some headlines from that coming up soon. that's the latest from europe's main leaders following those attacks in brussels this morning. >> willford, thank you. steve sedjwick has been in london all morning long helping us track the global market reaction. steve. >> reporter: thanks very much. let's put this in context. this is not an isolated event. last year saw deadly attacks, possibly carried out from terrorists who were based in brussels but made in paris.

start of the year we saw "charlie hebdo" attacks in paris and then at the tail end of the year, middle of november we saw the attacks at the bataclan in whh 89 people were injured. 130 killed in total as well. let's just listen in now from the latest reaction from the belgium prime minister, will talked about some of his earlier comments. let's listen in. >> translator: at the moment the evacuation of victims is ongoing and it's difficult to get the precise answers to the questions being posed because the emergency services would have to evaluate the precise situation in term of the identity of the people concerned. this is also caves people who are not of belgian nationality and for them their embassies are in contact so we can get answers. >> that's what the prime minister of belgium is saying. will gave the reaction from other political figures around europe including francois hollande who said this is a

common european problem. the problem is of course it happens all too often across europe and that may well explain why the market reaction today is tempered. we're not seeing 1, 2, 3% falls on the major indices. the bell 20, the brussels exchange, blue chips in belgium down .4 of 1%. in the netherlands down 1%. paris market down bay similar margin. london the subject of many terror attacks during the troubles with ira currently down .8 of 1%. we've seen the head of anti-terrorism at the metropolitan police talking about increased policing presence at key locations including transport hubs. on the transportation stocks we should take a little look and see if we can see big mover there's. again i would suggest a very decent performance considering the concerns that this has for

both tourism, travel, extra security measures. one of the worst hit stocks klm one of the big national carriers, down 4.6%. thomas cook group. thomas cook is a british travel company looking at the big international tourists. 5.5%. but a strong reaction from the low cost carriers. these were down 3.5%, 4%. ryan year down 2.7%. these are the highest rated stocks in the "travel and leisure" sector traveling around 12 times forward. the flag carriers, lufthansa. the market reaction is down but calm and there's no overreaction going on this morning. back to you. >> again as steve showed the weakest of those european markets is the cac in france

which is down about .9 of a percent. attacks still very fresh in their minds. france has decided to deploy additional 1600 police officers to bolster security at its borders and on public transport. 400 additional police officers will be added to security in the greater paris area. joining us right now from washington with the united states reaction is eamon javers. you want to catch us up to date on what you know now? >> reporter: we're starting to get reaction from u.s. political figures. president of the united states traveling in had a va narcotics cuba. white house officials said he's been apprised of the situation. we also saw donald trump putting out a tweet and going on a bit of a media tour this morning with a number of interviews on television networks. he said do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place brussels was. not any more. it is from a different world. u.s. must be vigilante and smart. also now we're getting a statement from john kasich the

ohio governor running for the republican nomination. john kasich saying i want to express my solidarity with the people of belgium in the aftermath of the attacks that took place in brussels. along with every american i'm sickened by the pictures of the carnage, injuries and loss of life. we're waiting on statement from some of the other candidates here on the political scene. can you imagine those will be rolling in throughout the course of the morning. additional stepped up security at the metro system in washington, d.c. and new york police department are stepping up security in new york. no specific threat here at this point that officials are talking about in the united states but a general concern from law enforcement that seeing these images of the attacks in belgium could inspire people with similar ideologies based in the united states to step out on their own. that's the so-called lone wolf attack that law enforcement officials fear so much because it's so difficult to preempt and stop those attacks.

now authorities here in the united states on the look out. joining us now on the set, former director of the cia and chairman of the foundation for the defense of democracies. good to see you sir. thanks for joining us. it has been four days since the capture of the ring leader, that's the word we decided on instead of mastermind because nobody wants to give him that credit. so the ring leader is captured. is point this was only four days old in terms of planning? >> well, i think probably one has to measure in terms of number of people who wake up, and these four days may have contributed to people waking up and beginning to realize that we're, as the french president said we're at war. and we can't pretend otherwise. the cold war is over. it's done and gone. we won it. great.

history. we don't get to rest on those laurels. we don't have an easy fight. the soviets were an idea enemy. they were clumsy. had a lousy economy. their ideological beliefs collapsed. and we won. and i think 20 years ago people sort of said okay we can relax. when i was director i had all sorts of very normally very supportive congressman and senators supporting the military. they would come cold war is over we don't need a cia any more. do we? yeah, i think so. here's why. that mood has suffused the country for nearly 20 years. and it's over. we are at war. the french president is right. simply defending with more guards in the streets is not going to do it. it's not going to come close to doing it. . >> so we had the people involved

with paris and they were still cleaning that up, trying to find this guy. we knew that he has enablers and people who were helping him but suddenly don't we think there's a much bigger presence in brussels than we thought before >> probably. >> they have no idea. they don't know their names. they have no links to the paris attacks. there's probably still another 30, 40, 50 people -- how many people are still at large in belgium. >> i'm sure it's substantial. this suburb where the suspect i guess we should still call him that was arrested four days ago is very jammed with jihadis. and another thing we need to do is to talk accurately about what these people's beliefs are. we can't win against something that we can't talk about. so talking about workplace

violence and violent extremism and so forth is worse than ridiculous. it undermines the ail built to deal with the problem. people have to start coming to terms with fact that we are at war with radical islam. >> how do you combat that? i ask this because the last time we spoke with you you said that you think that the fbi could be dealing with a little bit of overreach in its case against apple. >> i think that it is important to, as tom friedman just said to you, i do think it's important for apple and for the government, probably nsa would be a better representative than the bureau which is a fine institution but isn't in the business of operating operating systems for telephone. apple and government should get-together and sthort out. it's a technological compromise. both values are important. security is important. and privacy is important. >> we've been told repeatedly --

>> give it a rest, andrew. >> both of those are important. both privacy and security are important. we have to work it out. it's got to work itself out. people have to make compromises and get the job done. >> give it a rest. >> you don't want to compromise at the other end. >> give it a rest. i don't want to argue with you. >> tom friedman literally in the past hour said he believes that isis would like to attack us here prior to the election to impact the election. >> probably the best thing to figure out what isis would do put yourself in their shoes. figure out the possible nastiest things to do and hypothesize from that. >> dirty comes y bombs, small . >> the electro magnetic pulse

attack on the grid. >> take two years to get back up. >> at least. >> what do you think the u.s. reaction should be immediately? >> well, i don't think we're going get it from this president. i think we have to have a president who essentially gives something very much like churchill's blood, toil, sweat and tears speech that he said at the beginning of world war ii that's all i have to offer. blood, toil, sweat and tears. we have to get serious. we're probably going to have to improve our training of our military forces and people who are going to deal with this rob. we can't just say we're tired of the middle east. we can't deal with what's going on over there. as long as isis controls a substantial share of iraq and syria. >> are you expecting that

churchill speech from president obama? >> we don't get it from president obama, no. >> that would be conseepeding at least a modicum of underestimating the enemy and that won't happen. >> donald trump suggesting this morning if he were in charge he would close the borders at this point. is that right move? >> well it seems kind much broad brushed to me. i don't think that's probably the most sensible solution. part of it somewhere may have to occur. we got to win in the middle east as well as protect ourselves here. we can't let there be a growing isis empire, a caliphate adding more and more and more capability. that's what gives people the incentive here, young men, young muslim men usual try to join isis is they see progress in the middle east. we have to turn that around. >> director woolsy i want to thank you. joining us now on the squawk

news line ian bremer president and founder of the eurasia group. you look what's happening around the globe. how does the situation in brussels today change where you see things headed in the european union and around the world at large? >> well the impacts, the market impacts are overwhelming in europe and across europe a few i would point to. one the deal signed between germany, the eu and the turks to try to provide some aid for turkey to keep the refugees there but also would provide deliberalization for turks to get into europe was controversial. much harder to get that implemented across european countries now that we've seen these brussels bombing. june 23 you have a refrern dum in britain on in or out of europe. this is more supportive of the out forces being a part of europe and what's happening

across europe only less attractive and more of a motive for the average brit. much more supportive for fringe parties like deutscheland in german elections. more for the front nationale and extremist groups across europe. then finally speaking merkel's own popularity which has taken a big hit on the back of this refugee issue and the tipping point 1,000 german women sexually assaulted by muslim men many who were refugees on new year's eve this add as lot of fuel to this fire. that's the big market implications i see for this going forward. >> ian, i know it's very difficult in the immediate aftermath of a situation like this to try to play all of this out, but we have been talking about angela merkel's situation this morning where she will be, how germany will be see all of this and what the political reaction will be. how have you played this out? >> this is precisely the reason

why she cut this deal with turkey. not because the germans thinks turk is democratic but inno one else is going to support them in accepting refugees including the germans and every day you see these attacks, the position becomes more untenable. you have to do what you can to keep the refugees where they are. that clearly means that she's going to have to try to double down on this turkish deal which will fall apart. i also think the dangers around another greek crisis are going up. the refugees won't stain turkey and continue to stream across the middle east. greece is a country that approximately gets stuck with them because they can't manage their borders while the macedonians and bulgarians can. so their animosity.

there is a model. israel-palestinian. if you can't keep refugees out you have to keep security mers strong. one state solution but a solution for two people much more surveillance, you know sort of anti-privacy and differentiated rules for those who are seen to be potential threats. there's going to be a lot of social instability. tears at the fabric of what we think europe is. it will hurt the economies. if you double down on security and we see this happening in france after the november bombing, we will of course see it happening more so in belgium after the tragic events of today. that's the model we should increasingly be looking at. >> you want to handicap a brexit? >> we were putting it at 30%. i would say that the tendency is to push it up from there. i don't know if i would go 50-50

but i think you're close. not because most brits don't understand the threat that is dangerous and could lead to an unwind of the uk itself it's just that it's hard to get passionate behind that and get a huge vote turn out where it's very easy to get the heart and soul of the average brit in favor of let's get the hell out of this union. look what it represents. look how badly it's going. >> you mention the potential breakup of the uk if it actually pulls out of the european union. is that because scotland has been in favor of staying in the european union. >> that's right. at the very least you get another referendum. hard to imagine that the scots are going to be pleased with staying in the uk by itself out of the eu. remember that was pretty closely held the last time. >> ian, we spoke with tom friedman earlier this morning. he is of the opinion that we need the eu to stay together because they are our partner in

terms of being a democracy and in the earnings of also approving free markets. how important do you think it is to the united states health and well being to have the eu stay together? >> if you will remember back on. january, beginning of january we put our top risk out and i sat down with you guys and right then we thought the number one risk of 2016 is the alliance, the most important alliance for the world in the last 75 years has been the transatlantic ci relationship. it looks weaker than it has at any point since world war ii. if britain leaves there's no question that that is a break of this relationship, the transatlantic investment partnership the equivalent of the transpacific partnership that we're trying to get done right now. that effectively ends. you have to understand even if you keep the brits in question

what europe stands for what americans stand for, a lot weaker than i want used to be. people don't have good answers. final point, tom friedman's notion that isis would like to do a strike against the united states before the election, i'm sure that's true. one of the only silver lines we got inured to these continued headlines to major terrorist attacks in france, in turkey and now in belgium and they are not going to have much of an impact on an incredibly polarized presidential election. >> this is different. there were how many on the continent of africa recently. there were a few. istanbul. that seems all far away compared to belgium which is 200 miles from paris. we were inured but when it's western europe, it's fundamentally different than when it's down in mali.

>> that's true. certainly, you know the "charlie hebdo" attacks and paris bomgs. >> the gateway between the east and west. >> your point on paris is absolutely right. what i'm saying is after paris the united states has, you know, made headlines for a couple of weeks and then we went away from it. i think belgium, you know, after a couple of these in paris is going to have less impact. i would be surprised if next week in the united states we're still talking about these belgium attacks. we'll find out real soon but i think that's the trajectory. >> ian, in terms of what this means for the economy again very early on all of these situations but you know that when there are terrorists attacks like this it does cut down on tourism and that affects broader economies. what do you do now with your opinion of europe's economy? >> after the paris attacks, of

course, tourism across the board, hotel, reservations took an enormous hit. consumer sentiment went down. obviously with the suspension, the effective suspension of the border agreements with the border controls coming up, trade takes a hit too. plus you also have the french spending much more on security as a consequence in breaking through their agreements on budget deficits. you're going to see doubling down on that. belgium, of course, itself is a very small economy. this has a big knock on effect on all countries that have significant terrorist threats and there are a number of them across europe right now. so, i mean this, unfortunately, the breakdown in the middle east and your last guest said we have to find a way to win the middle east. but that's naive. the question is how much you can or cannot contain. it's not a win. unfortunately all of the instability in the middle east whether you're talking about isis, whether you're talk about

the war in syria, in libya, you talk about instability in saudi arabia, the problems coming from low oil prices all of that is pointed directly like an arrow at the heart of europe. and that is the market implications that the dangers around more of these terrorist incidents around greater populism, more challenging governance, about less support for established parties and the brexit this hits directly at the heart of the european economy. >> i an thank you very much for joining us. >> let's bring in the executive vice president and former homeland security adviser. good morning. you look at this news and you say to your self what can we do here? >> well, andrew that's exactly what security officials are asking themselves this morning. you know talking to folks in washington. clearly the president is being briefed on a regular basis and we've seen the d.c. metro system, for example, and the nypd talking about spot

measures, raising security procedures. that's one thing when you talk about an airport, right, which is a closed transportation system. much more difficult on a train or subway which is an open transportation system and so the challenge there is you increase patrols and sort of random security measures to try to throw off any terrorist who is doing surveillance and trying to launch and attack. but very, very hard on open systems. >> tom friedman made the comment during the 7:00 hour he thinks the head of t-- ahead of the el isis would like to attack us here on the ground. >> i don't take that be an election process. do i think isis would like to launch an attack on the united states? sure i do. more likely we'll see more what we're currently seeing which is in western europe. look, no doubt authorities right now are scrambling trying to understand the explosives that were used in the brussels attack and how does it compare.

same thing that was used in paris. what can they learn about whether or not these were individuals that traveled syria and were foreign fighters. all of these things are important facts so that the rest of western europe can try and learn and protect themselves. >> our last guest said half life on this will be very short and we won't be talking about this next week. i think that's absolutely wrong. this is belgium, again. you know, paris was -- that was a deep, deep wound to the global mentality about how vulnerable we are and this just aedes to th that. paris changed things, this just aedes to that. don't you think this will be a discussion next week? >> i do. look, you've got the brussels airport that's completely shut down and air traffic is being diverted. they closed their metro system.

i do think -- this suggests to us paris wasn't a one off. that wasn't a single act. this is a dedicated group that has the capability -- paris wasn't an accidents, the fact that they pulled off multiple simultaneous attacks around paris. they've done this a second time in another western european capital and puts everyone on notice that they have to a, step up their security measures and the ability to prevents these attacks and have to share information more effectively. we learned that lesson post-9/11 and unfortunately i think our colleagues in western europe are living through the lesson of you got to share this intelligence information across europe. >> would you shut down the board sners >> . you can't. look, the impact on trade. this is all about sharing information and allows you tove.

if you shut down the board terrifies bad guys win. you have to look at your screening procedures and information sharing allows to you do that in a more targeted way than wholesale way. >> thank you. let's recheck now the markets this morning. we were down significantly right at the, when the show started at about 6:00 a.m. the dow was down 70 or 80. now down 50 or so. compared losses to 35 points. and we are queueing on what's happening in europe. down 1.5%. those losses were compared to less than half of a percent. now somewhere between half of a percent to one percent. shanghai had a pull back today after i think six straight session. you can see still above 3,000 which is much better levels than

six weeks ago when we were down 2700. crude this morning, 41.07. get used to a four handle at least what we've seen. >> a new contract. closed at $39. macon tract. >> not seeing flight to quality in the ten year. 1. -- under 1.9%. take a quick look at the dollar. interesting look. 1.12 on the euro, 1.43 on the pound, 111 on the yen. gold, that was up, i think, by the time we checked it this was already in the news. so that had a bit of a run last week and we're still up to 1250 which is the best levels we've seen in a couple of years. >> joining us right now to talk more about the situation in brussels is the co-director for the center for 21st security and

intelligence at brookings. he specializes in national security and defense policy and michael i was just reading an article you wrote recently talking about,000 secure global cities. obviously, this is a situation that we had expected to happen more frequently but when it actually does happen it comes as a huge surprise, correct? >> yeah. tragic day. our thoughts and prayers are with our friends and folks in belgium and europe. the former army chief and staff and i are starting this project in which we're trying to help cities collect best practices because a lot of places around the world are doing very good things in regard to counterterrorism. our own new york city is certainly one of them. i was just in london. they are doing a lot of great things. brussels, unfortunately, has been a little behind. they are valiantly trying to catch up. unfortunately this may not be the last of what they will suffer. they have 19 different political

jurisdictions and six police departments and a relatively underresourced national security infrastructure in general in belgium. but i guess the 19 jurisdictions and six police departments is just brussels. so you got huge problems with coordination. and obviously intelligence gathering in a situation where that hasn't bean priority and hasn't been properly resourced. having said that i don't want to be too critical. doesn't take that much more some i die tot strap on a suicide vest and do this terrible thing. it's banal in its simplicity and even though some components and planning can be impeded or are restricted, this sort of thing is not strictly speaking completely preventable. so, we're in a tragic world. quo have a bit more of this before we have a bit less. >> what are the methods you refer to that new york city and london seem to be undertaking that put them ahead of the rest. >> well, one thing and sort of obvious but there's sort of no

substitute for having people on the street, knowing their communities, and being part of those communities. policemen in particular. then having good relations with the community leaders who can in extreme cases directs the attention of law enforcement and others to problematic individuals. but before that point hopefully at least be aware of where people are congregating, where people are joining up in sort ever suspicious ways because in a world where iphone apps and other such electronic devices are becoming more and more encrypted and difficult to decided fer it's that old fashion human policing or communities policing that's the source of your intelligence. what you really want is for the communities to trust police which means a lot of this has to happen early on. i want has to happen before there's a particular suspect that people are, you know, afraid of and that police, s.w.a.t. teams are examination down and hopefully it's happening at an earlier stage.

that's why the emphasis on resources and proper communities policing techniques, these are crucial things. no doubt belgium and much of continental europe have a challenge. elements of these communities, small elements of these communities are involved in crime, they are also the same communities that sometimes tragically provide the recruits for terrorists. which means the criminal networks can be used to transport the people, the money, the simple technology that's need in the preparation for these sort of attacks. it sort of compounds itself. whereas in cities doing better sometimes they are doing better partly by good luck. because sometimes the criminal organizations are distinct from the would be terrorist groups and that makes it harder for terrorists. >> michael thank you for your time this morning. >> my pleasure. >> we do have breaking news.

deadly explosions rock the airport and subway in brussels. the early morning blast reigniting terror fears. markets seeing flight to safety. futures right now, we just checked a few minutes ago. not much have changed. 46 points in this country. kind of interesting to look at the s&p today. you don't see that much. andrew, we wouldn't need your sorkin board because the fair value is unchanged. change in the futures is identical to until played open which is not something you see. this is a day you should have been doing these because it's easy. see what i mean. you don't need to add or subtract the fair value on the futures. take a quick look at europe. haven't seen that very often where it closes exactly unchanged. here's what we know at this hour. explosions rokds brui s rocked

airport earlier today. and two metro stations explosions killing 15 people. that's 26. numbers will be much higher. we're getting reaction from government leaders in europe and wilford frost joins us again. >> reporter: we heard from david cameron just chaired an emergency cobra meeting. he made a statement where he described these attacks as appalling and savage pep said it's a moment for europe to stand together. he says this is an attack on our way of life. we must never let them the terrorists win. he described it as difficult and appalling times. he did, though, say that the security threat in britain which was already at severe has not been elevated further following the developments this morning. he was pushed by question from

one woman with the press about comments on the brexit debate at the moment which he said are not appropriate but now is a time for sympathy and condolences for people of brussels. of course that similar sentiment to what we heard from the president of france, francois hollande who said earlier said we must be careful to encourage unity. he remembered the attacks in paris he said france rehe lel s relentlessly fights terrorism. and we heard from the prime minister of belgium who said this is a black day for the country. prime minister david cameron the latest to add his own sense of solidarity but stressing security threat in the uk has not been elevated further from its current level of severe. president obama is in cuba today and that's where we finds michelle caruso-cabrera. she joins us right now from havana where she's following the

morning's deadly attacks in brussels. >> reporter: we're awaiting to hear from president obama later on this morning. he's scheduled to make a speech to the cuban people a little past 10:00 which in itself was going an extraordinary event standing u.s. president the leader of the largest democracy of the world addressing the cuban people here, a dictatorship. already that was going key event. now of course what's happened in brussels we wait to hear from the president and his remarks on what's apparently a terrorist attack that's happened this morning in brussels. so that will happen shortly after 10:00. we know from the white house already we've been told he's been briefed on the events of what happened. that's to be understood and to see what his remarks will be. beyond that he's supposed to attend a baseball game this afternoon. we'll see if that changes as a result of events overnight in europe. if he sticks to the idea of life should go on normal perhaps

he'll still aend the baseball game. he's scheduled to meet with political dissidents. speech to the cuban people will be key not only because a democratic leader addressing the cuban people but also because of the events in brussels and to see what he has to say about the situation there. >> thank you. wouldn't even ventura guess. joining us now, jim cavanaugh. no one has answered this question. they caught the guy four days ago. could these attacks have been put together that quickly or were they in the works? >> yes i think what happened is this cell is large. we've talked about, today 90 maybe up to close to 500 operatives in europe. these bombs were likely already

made whether they were suicide visits or satchel bombs for a planned attack. they might have just accelerated the attack as a result of that arrest of abdelslam. they might have accelerated it and just picked public targets. airport terminals you can walk in. public target. a subway. wouldn't be difficult to pick those public targets. the bombs weren't likely hurried up and made in a day two. more likely already plans attack somewhere. they have bomb makers. bomb master there who has trained others. and utilizing their tools. they want to kill and disrupt everything in europe. >> only three things you said. you need someone that knows how to make them. that's one. open border that's two. moving freely across open borders. three, willing suicide bombers that it's almost impossible to stop a guy if he's willing to

lose his life. >> right. you know, the "new york times" did a piece over the weekend a very good report and abooed, the ring leader of the paris attacks cold confederates before that attack he bought 90 kamikazy fighters back from sir why do attack europe. we know if that's true and he told other associates that, could it be bragging coordinate be true? and likely it is true because we know at least 30 people involved in the paris attacks those killed and those rounded up, at least 30. so there's mover them out there. you know, imagine a war with another country and that country has 5 hu00 sabtouers in your country and they get some level of support minor from the population but of ex-patriots but some level of support. there's 500 people.

that's unbelievable. that could really devastate europe. the thing we thoof watch here is the tempo of events they come back on top of this quick in another week or two with another attack or even sooner because they definitely have people who have knowledge how to direct these and they will feel the flury of success after this horror today. >> no way of knowing, i don't think, jim. could be more -- god forbid could be more today. and in different cities or whatever. but, again, you don't want to totally panic from a situation like this. cooler heads prevail. but it's difficult when you see what we're looking at right now on the screen. >> right. >> appreciate your time today. thanks. >> as we continues this conversation joining us right now on the "squawk" news line is the former assistant homeland security secretary for infrastructure protection. one of the big questions this morning is, investment that may

ultimately may be needed in places like brussels and across europe. if you were designing a system to the competent you even can what do you do? >> thank you, andrew. you know, so it is a technology, people process technology approach. so do you need to look at ways that technology can enhance the systems that are support by the law enforcement and intelligence communities because this problem is really, it transcends public law enforcement approach. it really reaches down into the private-sector because these targets are much broader than airlines and airports as commercial targets and they have a responsibility as well besides what law enforcement can do. you do need to look at the investment profiles here because obviously tend game is to keep commerce moving, keep people safe and having confidence that the system can support them while they conduct their daily lives. >> can we really protect what might be soft targets.

this was a target not inside -- inside the airport but not beyond the security line. this was not a -- a lot of people but not a huge number of people. >> that's a great question. you'll never have 100% security. what you see on this and i think some of the commentators have said it we hardened the security lines going into the airports because that's where we believe the airlines themselves, the aircraft are the targets. as we keep pushing those perimeters out we need to push them out. you'll never be 100% safe or secure. you can do things that will channel terrorists or bad actors into place where they are less capable of conducting more widespread carnage. that's what you're looking to try to do. look at ways to cause them to be less successful or look at targets that may not necessarily

want to go to but the path of least resistance for them. again go back to technology side, lots of things out there in the space today, scanning systems, explosive trace detection systems, walk through metal detectors. we see that happening at the stadiums and other places in the united states where soft targets are adopting for stringent methods to screen people. we need to push that forward. it will require voechlt. >> when you think about our security right now here in the united states how do you rate it? >> you know it's a difficult thing. you take one points in time and say we're really good and you look at other things we need to do better. i'm always on the side of we need to be doing better. we need to be doing better on our rail systems and subway systems and transit systems. those are targets that have yet to receive the level of attention as airports. >> what would you do on transit

systems? >> transit systems, you're going to impact people's ability to do things rapidly. look at better screening. again explosives are biggest threat we have. you have to do physical search and using explosive trace detection to search people. >> you would do that for people who are getting on buses, getting on subways, who are -- >> you would do it in a systematic approach. you wouldn't do every person. combine that with behavioral analysis. look at people that have behaviors. >> facial profiling. >> you would do it on behavioral profiling. there are things that people do that you can pick up that are accuse that are indicative of the fact they might not thereabout for the right reason. >> bob you can't strap like a ton of fertilizer to a suicide vest. how would you get -- is it possible to get that material

and know how in here. how would do you that? would you come through mexico? that's fertilizer. how do you get what they use. >> i want to strike a balance here. i don't want to talk about where our vulnerabilities are. >> but it's possible to do a suicide vest in the united states that's as effective as the ones they have in europe. >> regrettably it is. there's ways -- i mean isis and even al qaeda before isis have put out publications to their followers and people on the internet to tell them how to do these things. go back to the tsarnaev brothers. you saw what they could do to conceal a weapon and a bomb that was destructive and got that off the al qaeda websites and the publication. so this has been going on for decades. i'll date myself. back in the '70s we had plenty of home grown terrorists here in the united states that were anti-war terrorists and other

radicals, and the anarchist cookbook was published. that was before the internet. take that how you can put together home plead explosives there's a lot of data out there to tell people how to do these things. one thing on that have capability and other thing is thanksgiving intention to do it. law enforcement tells us we have to work together with the private-sector. it's private-sector capability to put this together. it goes back to earlier question that andrew raised what's the right level of investment? we always think about those things in the context of events. honestly our attention gets heightened. how could this happen? the reality sue can't maintain a severe level of security at 100% level. you can't afford to do it either financially or emotionally because i want to go back to a normal way of life and go back to things that don't worry us

all the time. that's a human condition. that's what terrorists are always going to exploit. in this particular case i would assess based upon very preliminary information that these guys probably acted because they felt the pressure of law enforcement coming down on them. and then rather than risk arrest they probably wanted to carry out their attack. purely speculation but if you look at the timing of the event between last arrest four days ago and this attack you could probably come to that conclusion pretty solidly. and that's just an effective law enforcement. so while we're doing good things on the law enforcement level we may trigger things from happening. again, state of what we're living in today. >> bob we preach your perspective this morning. thanks for calling in. >> sure. thank you. >> let's pause for a moment and recap the story we've been following since early this morning. explosions rocked the brussels airport around 8:00 a.m. people.

11 people were killed at the airport. one explosion was caused by a suicide bomber. separate explosion at two metro stations killed 15 people and belgium federal prosecutor said all three explosions were terrorist attacks. belgium raised the terror threat level and has advised locals to stay indoors. all public transportation in the belgium capital is shut down and flights in and out of brussels airport are cancelled until further notice. obviously we've been gauging reaction and talking to people about what this means around the globe from a terrorist perspective, from economic perspective and we're watching what it means from a market perspective. the market is weaker this morning. we were looking at bigger declines earlier this morning. still looking at the dow down by close to 50 points below fair value. the dow closed at its highest level yesterday. in europe we've also been watching those stocks and again

markets pare its lossed. looking at markets down by 1.5%. the dax in germany is down by one-third of in france, where terrorist attacks were fresh in peoples minds, that market is down by 0.7%. the ftse is down by a half percent. joining us is bk asset management's managing director. boris, it's hard to take this and put it into a market's perspective what a perspective. what are you thinking? >> i think the fallout from this may be more political than economic. if these events spark -- in the uk right now, people i speak to in the uk, the leave vote is close. closer than people may think. when push comes to shove, these kinds of events could trigger

people to consider pulling themselves out of the eu. if you have that event happening, the long-term implations are bigger. the market is sensing that if you have any more of these events before the referendum comes in june, you could have a political cataclysm there. >> in terms of what happens on th this, if britain votes to pull out, they have two years? >> if they vote to leave it will be two years to unwind themselves away. the logistical ramifications are a nightmare. there is no template. >> it can be done? >> it can be done. >> cataclysm? i don't know. >> from an economic point of view. forget the political feelings here. every analysis you see says the

uk will become a smaller economy. here's the other point people are missing. if uk pulls out, that endangers the whole eu unification project. if one person pulls out -- if you have these terrorist events happening in france, spain, all this sentiment creates fervor to break the eu up. that puts pressure on the euro. these are the long-term game plans that maybe isis is having in terms of what they want to do. >> ian bremer joined us earlier today and pointed out there could be another greek crisis coming. this one not directly financial, but because they are harkering so many of the syrian refugees -- >> the weakest country in europe is now the biggest receptor of these problems with the refugees. what you are seeing here unfortunately is the whole infrastructure of europe falling apart in front of our eyes. in terms of the institutions within the union not able to

deal with all the threats impinging on it. that could create some summertime markets. >> where does leadership in terms of trying to promote a unified europe come from? when you think about london being in position, europe -- england being in position of voting themselves out, you think about angela merkel being under so much pressure because of her decision to accept 1 million refugees coming in. who is the spokesperson for a strong and unified europe? >> unfortunately there isn't. it's a weak argument. the argument is the only reason we want to stay is because we're afraid of what will happen if we break up. that's why the leave vote in the uk is powerful. the emotion is behind the leave vote. the rationale behavior is behind the stay vote. >> economically it has not been a huge ratings success. in certain sectors it has --

>> i would argue with that. >> greece, europe -- part of the problem was the -- the biggest benefit was open borders. now that's being clone into question. at this point, that's why we're at 50% leave. or close. >> with the end game of isis, it's to disrupt society. if you have war, you have no commerce, no peace, no trade. that's what they're achieving with all of this. that's the saddest part of all of this. >> are people who said they went into it. it sort of -- >> it's hard to have a currency without a country. >> people say you can't get out, you would have already done it. >> it is not successful enough at this point to be able to withstand all of these --

>> that's like saying qe and zerp -- >> we don't know. >> we still don't know whether qe3, 4, 5, 6 -- how that plays out. >> one last idea, bizarre world in the markets as far as what the central wabanks are doing. after the g-20 meeting, all the central banks started to coordinate their policy against what they were telling the rest of the markets? i think the fed surprise was how dovish they were. they want to stabilize the rest of the markets. we are living in a very interesting world right now. >> you have negative interest rates in europe and now this. right now the markets are shrugging this off. they think it's a one-off event. as somebody said here, it's all about what happens to the next one. if we have a next one coming soon -- >> how long was paris?

>> november. >> if it's a couple months or couple years, off bets are off. god help us if this happens again, all bets are off. market also take this much more seriously. >> you mentioned if this happens again, if the eu gets weaker, that would be an impact not only on britain but the rest of the eu what is the effect on the united states? >> i think it's negative globally. if you have fracture in europe. the greatest thing we've had is unification of trade, easy borders, ramifications. if we have this freezing climate of everybody frozen in space because they don't know what will happen. the moment you have doubt, investment stops. trade stops. none of this is really good. we're playing into their play book. they want to sabotage not only our hearts but our economies as well.

>> thank you, boris. >> joining us now on the "squak" news line, michael chertoff. mr. secretary, good morning. your thoughts, please? >> our hearts go out to the victim's families and to the people, the community. i think that there was some expectation that there might be attacks like this in light of the arrests that were made and further investigation, but it reminds us we need to start to look at security not only at the airport when you get through the checkpoint but in the departure areas, before you get to the checkpoint. we need to be aware of what's going on in the transit lounges. subways, transportations, public trans

transit. i think persons in europe will have to be focused and aware of what their security situation is. increasingly we will see issues like this going forward. >> michael, you can take us inside homeland security at a time like this? this is similar to what we got in 2005 after subway bombings in britain. you get an early morning call, the first briefing about what's going on in europe. the first question you have to ask if you're in the department of security s there going to be a lfollow on? were there any funny communications or suspicious communications between western europe and the u.s.? to the extent you're surveilling people, you want to step that up.

as i think you heard, police in major cities will want to step up operational tempo. at the same time you want to coordinate with intelligence counterparts in europe to get as quickly as possible downloaded information about what they may be seeing, both in terms of their own security and in terms of an attack in the us. i would expect the president would have been briefed, and this operational tempo will continue for the next few days. >> mr. secretary, appreciate you coming on in short notice. we'll talk to you very soon. hopefully not about a new one, but maybe as ab add-on to this discussion. thank you. >> all right. >> let's look at the futures, and how they have been reacting. markets are off the worst levels of the market.

the dow futures are down by 42 points. we were down bial 0 earlier this morning. a similar situation in europe, markets down about 1.5% across the board. in germany, the dax is down by a quarter percentage point. thank you for joining us. "squawk on the street" will be picking up with our continuing conversations about the terrorist attacking in belgium. thank you again. join us tomorrow. good morning. breaking news as the city of brussels is rocked by those explosions. 26 dead and more than one injured. i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer at the new york stock exchange. faber is off. we'll watch for the market's reaction to this tragic news. at the moment, futures are lower but not as low as earlier this morning. europe remains in a broad but moderate selloff. belgium officials