>> i want to read my "new york times" after walter has read it and highlighted it in written in the margins. not everybody in the world, but depending on what the article is, i don't know if saga what that looks like. but there's all kinds of ideas like wikipedia, there's a collective intelligence that collaborates to make more actor information. most of the time. why doesn't that exist outside wikipedia? >> just to your point about collaboration. there's much more way of thinking about collaboration on the web than, you know,

groupware or specific abs created to collaborate. you know, just ask like twitter that are just wide open where you can follow, you can follow any answers that you would like. whether you tweet or not is up to you but you can fall your interest on twitter, you can follow your mom, cnn, whatever it is, anything. nike. i think there's a lot of potential for collaboration because people, people meet others that they would never have met if they're just on a social network because you connect to people you already know. but when you're on a fundamentally different system where you are following people you wish you knew, instead of people you used to know, -- [laughter] then you're kind of, it's more of like an aspirational thing. and we've seen over and over

again, people say look, we've all started following each other on this twitter, and why don't we get together and meet each other in real life? and it has all these wonderful repercussions. i heard about one -- first of all, one of the earlier tweet us was let's get together and raise money for charity. i'm going to start -- i'm going to say in my town let's all meet together at this pub and buy a $20 ticket and $20 will go to charity for developing nations. they raise a quarter million dollars on one tuesday night. >> that's a good example, but there are that many of them. of how you make the virtual world connect to the physical world.

in other words, people have a virtual friends, virtual followers, whatever. and this penny disjuncture. so the future of the internet somehow another better integrating the real world into the virtual world? >> yes, it is. >> how? >> this does a lot to do that. you know longer have to be sitting at your desk to experience the internet. it's more interspersed in our daily lives. and new applications are available with it. so this simple idea of i now call a taxi from this is kind of integrating the internet -- >> to the location. >> you don't have to tell them exactly where you are. you push a button and they show up to your house and all that stuff. >> but i think what i'm excited about is more examples. have you heard of carrot mob? carrot mob is -- >> oh, yeah. >> carrot mob is so named

because it's the opposite of the boycott. anti-boycott. so the idea is people should vote with their dollars, but the only organized way to do that to say we are going to boycott this business. that's kind of negative and also doesn't seem like there's necessary in effect, most of the times. this guy got the idea we should use the carrot instead of the stake and we should say we want you to do this, and if you do we will all spend our money. and so, for example, this guy from san francisco went to all these liquor stores and got them to bid for how much they would contribute to improving efficiency in their store. out of all the people who organize the mob, and the hires did -- highest bid was 22%. they get all these people to show up. they bought everything in the

store. the guy norman dicks a thousand bucks a day. he made 10,000 bucks that day. >> and he put 2200 into replacing the lights. and then all the people, not only -- it wasn't a discount. it was a like groupon to get people in your. they presumably bought things they would anyway. and then they would further invest in the store both emotionally and actually financially. >> it was a fun thing because the pictures she showed us of the first event were all these people talking and chatting, we each other. and and since then there's been lots in germany and all around the world. and it just sort has taken on a life of its own. >> with the future of the net be better if there were less anonymity, or at least the option to be involved? if you could be secure in who they were? >> i think no. and there's a lot of benefits of

anonymity, but not most everyday use case. >> i mean leave aside arab spring side, politics of it. >> i think sometimes a more dangerous situation we need to be able to protect anonymity. and other times when you want, we want to open up and get ahead in life because you want a better job or whatever, you want to use your real name and you want to open up and show your interest and what you can do and that sort of thing. if you're more of, like you know, a whistleblower in a dangerous area or something you want to be able to protect your privacy. >> you keep talking about the collaborative web. people -- i can trust i know i'm collaborating with. >> i think that is true. reputation is important in society in general. so we need to replicate that to some degree online. most large this is not a concept of reputation, twitter, facebook. i'm sure behind the scenes at

least, most large simpsons do because the way to combat abuse. abuse is a huge problem if you're running services, spam and whatnot. and i think it's not even necessarily anonymity. you don't necessary have to use your real name. you can participate under a pseudonym or something, but there needs to be longevity and history of your actions. so there has to be costs to throwing away an identity and create a new one because if there's not, then there's no consequences. >> google today launched a google+, or at least unveil it, which is trying to be a competitor to facebook and trying to do it by guaranteeing you more privacy. do you see the possibly that facebook could be displaced the way myspace was as the

foundation for social networking? >> could facebook be displaced like myspace? the general answer for that is, when you get displaced it's because you displaced yourself. like myspace shot itself in the foot. they took their eye off the user and the focused completely on junky ads and making a lot of money really fast. the same thing citibank it. they are a 200 year old company, and they got all involved in these credit default swaps and all this other stuff. they took their eye off the customer, people buying homes, and almost lost their 200 year old institution. and now they're on this huge campaign -- their new metrics are let's keep 1 million people from foreclosing this year. and of the for many people we know we will for close on, let's try to preserve the credit and get them in a rental. those are metrics they have

they're trying to achieve. stuff like that. they key is execute, keep your eye on the user, see what they need to do. myspace tripped up there. facebook seems of a really firm grasp of its users, but they also seem to have a, we're going to do whether you like it or not kind of attitude because we are really smart and we know it's the right answer even if you don't think you do. >> suppose you're building a new service or product that needed to be based somehow on the platform of "the social network" with the identity or whatever. would you feel comfortable they seen it on facebook? >> i mean, earlier on we did that, and we didn't have a lot of success with it. >> i would probably use facebook if it were useful, but wouldn't depend on it. facebook connect usually useful for sites to bring people in you know.

so i don't think facebook will be displaced. i think, however, i think, i mean, what they do is to fundamental. connecting with people you know. sharing photos and connecting with people you know is very fundamental to obviously most of the world it seems. but i think what's going to be hard is the same thing that's hard for every big company, which is extending that to everything, and so, what i hear from people who accuse facebook lot is it gets to the point where it's too big for certain things, or because you form a network on facebook based on what you do on facebook. and google has been pretty public about their three is that you don't want to share all the same stuff with everybody. and so if they can successfully get people to create these

different circles, or whatever they're calling them, of people, that will more naturally map, but what people want to do. and people will still probably keep using facebook for the step to use facebook for today, because they'll be very, very hard to displace. but something else could come along to be better for some specific other use. >> also, i think being, you know, so obscene as to say something like, you know, why can't you just do everything in one place, what are you hiding? that's just silly because if one has different aspects of their personality it's just a normal thing in life. >> facebook has all the functionality the new google circle does. but people are not used to using it that way. that's a lesson we have seen creating these services over the years is a the norms of the

culture of the system define what people do with it, as much or more than actual functionality problem, if that makes sense. so if people, people can hook their twitter to the facebook and publish their tweets over there, and for a lot of people to just use facebook, like this does it make sense. let alone the syntax at usernames and hash tag's. but is also the type of thing people should share on facebook don't -- itsy different thing than 20 even though the functionality, you know, the functionality of twitter is really -- >> tom friedman started this to me by saying he's never used twitter, never use facebook, never sees any reason why he would do it. do have a response? >> i would challenge him whether not he's used twitter because i would ask it has he ever watch

cnn or read any of the newspaper? have you ever read "the new york times"? there are tweets in "the new york times." there are tweets all the time on cnn. chances are he has read a tweet. he is a twitter user. >> but people can get by without social networking, like speech are the people who can get by without social networking? >> is social networking going to be a fundamental part of our lives from here on in? >> on the web? >> on the internet. >> yes. probably. [laughter] let me open it up. either raise your hand and shout or run for a microphone. yes. i repeat it at the microphone get to you in a minute. [inaudible] >> the other side of the internet is connecting the massive can shooting power that has a lot of knowledge. latest example is ibm watson.

and it seems to me that made we should be thinking about those kinds of uses where, say physician wants to get best practices, or something like that. you're not going to get out on facebook where you get a whole bunch of ideas from wacky people. you're going to want to get it from something that has distilled all of this knowledge and really gives you something to go. so there's going to be a place for that side of -- >> i would like to suggest. spent i think that's a great example of when it comes to the collaboration we're talking about, it doesn't mean with everybody in the world. most haven't allowed for, kind of like user-generated content versus professionalized. it's one or the other. everybody in the world including that -- not jobs and haters who want to attack everybody else.

it is a closed system. i think there has to be new ones in between the. to allow people to earn credibility or to be able to connect with only those who have certain amount of trust. >> one of the things we were excited about with twitter was maybe one day down the line since twitter was designed to work on all 5 billion mobile phones, because they all have global texting, and his 140 characters and their limit is 160, so if it's within a. we always thought well, we might able to have an impact in rural areas where a farmer could ask a question, can i get a better price for the screen, or a pregnant woman has to travel 50 miles to the doctor could ask her questions, you know, are the symptoms worth the trip come and get an answer back from the doctor, yes or no. and, in fact, tests have already been done in uganda and other

places, where lights have been saved because they been able -- lives have been saved because medical diagnoses just over sms. even some guys in berkeley have said microscope you can flip over an iphone and you can take a microscopic picture of a virus and then send that picture in an e-mail from like, you know, abe rand shackled like a frantically and get back within a minute a diagnosis of that virus. >> do you have a collaborative web the next time were somebody takes a cat scan of somebodies, you know, whatever and says let's have a collaboration around how to deal with that? can you betray a high-end product that we? >> right, definitely. >> probably someone already has to the internet is really big. every time we have this genius idea, we just look it up and it's like oh, there's already 10

guys working on it. >> charlie firestone. >> he started off in about the separation of the internet with companies but there's also the issue of separation of the global common medium with countries. and i'm wondering if you have any concern about that, iran or china or what happened in egypt in terms of the global common medium of the internet, and if you have any interest in pushing for a single global additional market? >> well, yeah. i mean, i just -- you know, our philosophy right now, you know, it has always been the open exchange of the commission can have a positive impact on the world. we often get blocked by countries that don't agree with that philosophy.

we are blocked in china now. we're probably blocked in some other places. the funny thing is people find ways to continue twittering. we found that in order to completely shut down people from twittering you have to shut down the entire telecommunications service, and the internet. when you do that you cripple your entire state. and so, who was at that did that most recently? we've got to turn this thing back on. so it's really not worth it. like even now we are blocked in china, we still see in our blog traffic coming from china. so people are figuring out ways around the block to continue to collaborate, to tweet, to share information. does that answer the question, or was there another? >> what i worry about is a separate world within the u.s.,

people only paying attention to people who agree with them. that's one of the ironic things about what all these technologies have created is more separation in some ways rather than more connection. there's less of a common marketplace of ideas to some degree, because people are just filtering out everything that is from a different viewpoint. and the technology encourage you to filter these things out. >> you have to shuffle the deck. >> that some of the twitterers stuff we're doing is starting to get tweets in front of people, from others that are not following. one of the dreams of ours has always been to say okay, we know you live in berkeley, you drive over the bay bridge every day. maybe don't follow the bay bridge on twitter but it's like for 45 and we thought you might like to know the bay bridge fell down. you would be like, okay, yes, i

would like to know that, thank you. and you would be like screw you, why are you tweeting the? this is good information. so this information, a billion tweets, there's information in it for everybody that is relevant. we just have to work really hard on delivering those tweets to the people who need them right now whatever they are on their mobile devices. so their lives can be made smarter, richer, better for it. >> yes, ma'am. [inaudible] >> sorry. for the three of you, could you speak to the conversation about the singularity and the role that you have adopted that this is coming, and a lot of them have simply accepted -- except that merging is going to happen? >> the singularity, that's a

book i read in sixth grade. [laughter] >> this is different. go ahead. [laughter] >> seems kind of crazy to me, but i'm not, i'm not that well versed in similarity. walter, what is your take. [laughter] >> i read a lot about -- i don't think we have to worry about it yet. i don't think we -- you know, i have read the "wired" magazine, i just don't think we're about to lose control. we will find out. next year we will put on the agenda and find whether we are right or not. >> i will say, it's really hard just to keep them working, let alone working on their own to do something. >> for those of you don't know, that's windows machine finally don't need us anymore. they can work off on their own.

i almost think the opposite is that we keep seeing the limitations of machines every day as opposed to the fact that they can run amok without us. we still haven't gotten voice recognition and face recognition. >> i tried to have something to say on this but i think we need to learn how to work together before we can teach machines out of work together. i mean, one of the things, when twitterverse broke out, it was because they went, we went to a conference called south by southwest in austin, texas. we went to the nerd portion, and it was early on in twitterers history where like basically it was just nerves on twitterers and nerds of the conference, and there was a huge overlap. and a few things happen but i would just relate one. that was, there was a guy, he wanted to talk more freely and openly with his colleagues but

was not allowed in the pub so used twitter to send tweet as it gets to love you. how about we walk over to the public pub on 60 anti-named the puppy goes completely filled to capacity. is a line around the block. his plan totally backfire but what happened was in eight minutes, 800 people had converged on one spot from one tweet because he said to his followers from his followers thought was a good idea and senate on and so on. the metaphor the king to my mind was that of a flock of birds moving around an object in flight like a tree or a telephone pole. when you look at it looks like anna chrebet choreographed, it looks incredibly complicated and difficult. and yet it's not. the mechanics of flocking are totally rudimentary. it's simple to mitigation among individuals in real-time that allows me to behave as if they are one almost as if they're one

organism. is for the first time ever we were seeing people behaving almost as if they were one organism like this. we had never heard of a tool or never seen anything like this before. and that sent chills down our spine because we thought sure, this is a party but what if it'd been something more serious? at disaster, a political situation? we went back, two days later, informed twitter incorporated because that was the first big release edition that we are on to a new form of communication among humans that could potentially, you know, change the world. >> yes, sir. >> my name is jason pollock. i'm a twitter at it. aye and 92000 followers on twitter. it has changed my life into so many ways i can't even begin to describe. so thank you so much for creating it. one thing that was read about is there's a lot of people like me on twitter that use it all the time but worry are a minority of

the user base. people know what twitter is that not many of them are active users every day. so i guess i'm wondering how you guys are tackling that issue. >> it depends on how you describe an active user. we like to say that it can get value out of the internet and you have to create a webpage. you don't have to tweak because you a twitter. 6 billion tweets every six days, there's a lot of info in there. 1.65 billion searches a day. there's a lot in your defined. but will you going to say? [laughter] >> i think there's two answers. one is most other ports that have come out about what the percentage of active users are in twitter are only looking at tweet creation. we see a little bit of misunderstanding that people have. we talk to people all the time, yeah, i don't use twitter. i just don't know what you tweet.

it turns out that either actually tweets all the time, or we start anything and say what he interested in and it turns out we can create them a twitter stream that they love and go back to old times. it turns out i think two out of three twitter sessions result in no tweets being created. people are using as a source of information. most of the measures do not look at that. twitter as a company cares about the people who get information just as much as people who create information. a lot of times the early adopters are more likely to create. so that i see are a lot of active users. and number two is because that misunderstanding that we've been trying to correct for longtime. people are getting more and more of an understanding. i think osama bin laden thing, for twitter, a great milestone

for a lot of people. this information came out on twitter. twitter is a news story. i get it now. it's not about the cliché here's what i had for lunch today. it's about getting information i care about in the world. and i may not even have to have a twitter account, but these stuff you in real-time and is relevant to me, no matter what i do or where i am. >> just me alone, i probably check twitter like 20 times a day and tweet once a day. but i think that speaks, i think you can define engagement in two different ways. i think for a long time and a lot of internet companies have been defining engagement as a wrong way. if you define engagement as ours spent staring at a computer screen, like yes, on average our year he spent eight hours staring at our site. light, we are awesome at engagement. i think that's a very unhealthy way of measuring engagement.

i think that if your users are checking your service, 20, 30 times a day for 10 seconds at a time to make a quick decision or figure out what they want to do next, or what have you, that is a way better type of engagement, that's a healthy engagement that shows that our service is helping them make choices every day efficiently and smarter and saving time, et cetera. and i prefer that level of engagement over that like, you know, pumped over a computer screen for eight hours playing games or something. >> i have a question which applies to twitter but also the internet in general. which is when is misrepresenting

herself -- your self are creating a new identity and good and okay in part of fair play? and when does it change to manipulation that is not okay? so for example, obvious the people are protesting should be allowed to create falsehoods about who they are. ..

and pay a thousand people turned sense and wit that he okay? or if people are representing themselves as citizens when in fact they are working for a corporation, et cetera, et cetera. >> so, recap the question. >> i think the answer is pretty clear. you are creating, diverse is trying to manipulate the world for? that's probably one is okay and one is less okay and this is happening a lot. i mean, the number astroturf campaigns going on facebook and twitter is probably a lot greater than anyone that has an

idea because a lot of it is very hard to detect. so that is a problem and it's a problem that relates to vaulters questioned earlier of reputation and that's something all the systems are only getting started at an primitive bat. so eventually, i don't think an account that is created overnight via mechanical turk for 10 cents is going to have very much influence. in foods has to be earned over time. it's a little bit of that in twitter today. i don't know about other systems, but i think that's inevitable eventually are otherwise it's not going to have distressed authority is capable of. >> also, i don't know if this relates or not, but dirty accounts are allowed on twitter, straight up impersonation accounts i. but during the bp oil stove,

someone created bp global pr and they started saying all these sad but funny things. as if bp couldn't care less. ndp didn't coalesce to take it down. and i actually thought that was a brilliant move because he was letting off some steam. if they have a car not the way down to the minutia of shutting down a little twitter account, it would end like they were just completely and utterly evil beyond our means. >> that bp pdr.com was clear it was someone doing a parody. >> it was a logo, but it was kind of drifting. >> it was somebody pretending. >> it was a logo that said we are bp, this is our headquarters

in here is there to eat. we would've said,, that is impersonation. >> twitter shuts down person nation accounts. >> thousands of we. in general, and setters of new technologies don't have a great track record and anticipating what the impact site. >> except for ice. >> i was just going to ask you. the great thing about the telephone but he agreed with listening to concerts. i am curious what has really surprised you about what twitter has become? and assuming the of it and the magnitude and diversity is maybe a little bit you on which you anticipate a period but what else has been a surprise to u.s. twitter has become an emergent phenomenon and changed over time? and what do you think it might become in the future? >> can answer the first question?

>> s. >> so, there is an element of holy crap we didn't know it was going to be this big of a deal, but we knew giving people -- giving a voice to the voiceless anointment to create a web page for free misspoke about injustice or was in many ways the only way they could get their information out what's important and we supported that and we've designed our rules and fought against our parent company to keep it free and open air in the side of freedom of speech and office others just because we knew it was in the world. and so we had a feeling, even though it was fun in the beginning to her was the potential of it also having that same kind of impact in the world. what was the next that they must

be lowered the bar so much more down, like with blogger you had to have an internet connection and at first he had to know even how to ftp in to sleep that. with twitter you just need to know how to do a text message, which the world was getting to know very quickly. so what really surprised me anyways was the speed that twitter krulak and the speed at which all this stuff was adopted in the way that it sped up the data business instead of all these things. >> was it a holy ship almond when someone says hi i'm jared or alex from the state department, which you please not to maintenance this weekend because her having a revolution somewhere. >> there was some energy in the office when we did that.

[laughter] but again, my primary thing was i don't want people to think were doing this because they asked us to. so i wrote a blog post that says we have hundreds of e-mails, hundred of tweet and lots of phone calls and one of those phone calls in the middle of all this stuff is from the state department. we decided to change the maintenance window because all these users thought of is a good idea. frankly we really should be up anyways. but we're not doing this because the state department has decimated enough access to our decision-making capabilities. we wanted to have that global, neutral by two s. yeah, there was a lot of energy that day. >> just another thing surprising to me is the casualness with which a large number of well-known people use twitter has been surprising.

a lot of accounts are handled by pr people or interns are some thing, but there are people like lady god or justin bieber around there but varies. >> we've gotten almost to be on without saying that dreaded name. >> that is part of what i had in mind with the casualness. but people are out there saying stuff. >> in the very beginning i had an argument as an innocent celebrities all use twitter because the reason they are celebrities is because we don't have access. we'll make it to see them in movies and therefore they are special and we look forward to that and we don't want to see their regular lives because then they won't be special. and then they all started going on twitter like crazy. and some of them probably shouldn't have. but it was great for ice because celebrities have built in my

streets of people that love them and they follow them on twitter. >> i've been ignoring this side on the way back. >> and peter, i work for two degrees and that's a whopping 13 followers. >> it's about quality and not quantity. >> are not very good either. our company has a mere 200. i was wondering on places like twitter and facebook, how do small businesses get more recognition and followed besides from being ticker? >> go ahead. >> beauty of small business and twitter has not escaped us from the very beginning because you don't have to have a lot of followers. early on i was in new york city and i walk by a bakery that was mostly doing cookies and they had flake part of a cardboard box with a magic marker to said

follow us on twitter. when the cookies come out warm we will tweet. i was like that was genius because only if 90 people in the neighborhood follow that account, when those guys say chocolate chip cookies coming out right now at like three in the afternoon are sent name, everyone just gets out, runs down and buy some appeared even if it's 90 people, they just sold other cookies. they can either go home for the day or make another batch. all they needed for their entire marketing department was a sharpie and a piece of a box. and then you take that idea and extended out to developing nations and people who sell grains on a blanket on the market and they can say hey, silently on twitter and i'll tell you if i get a special cream next week or something like that. it's just -- there's a whole huge group of small businesses

that are going to build a website and via ad words and advertise. but they can for free get a twitter account and a child were to go for it. >> last question from the women's candida. >> hey, eric p.m., a talent agent focusing on social media. my question to you is there's a lot of talk right now about the tech bubble. is it going to burst? i'm not going to waste my question about when you are going to file for ipo, but where are we in the bubble? >> that's a good jason question as usual. >> i'm not a speculator about the stock market, but i think there's a lot of excitement rate

now because a lot of this stuff is getting real. always the people foresaw from the internet but the first.com boom and now the user base that you can reach a billion people on a service and actually make a lot of money is very clear to people. as usual, investor excited and is outpacing the development of the businesses. long-term i don't get the problem. i'm holding my twitter stock long-term. so i think if there is a correction, these things always going cycles, so that will be fine, but they are fundamental businesses here for the long term. >> jerry t. know murdoch, where are you?

first of all i want to thank jerry murdock who helped get the twitter guys here and do i think is on the board, right? [applause] they are going to come up in a second talk about the yolk is that we can do. but first, let me thank our people here. let me thank heaven and trained to you for -- let me thank heaven and biz for it to randomness. >> aspen ideas is the hash tag. so thank you all very much. appreciate it.

>> next, a discussion on the potential threats from a lack dramatic that pulls, and emp which is capable of disabling entire electrical power grids can be produced by detonating a nuclear bomb at a high altitude or from unusually powerful solar activity. posted by the heritage

foundation, this event is an hour and dirty five-minute. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning. thank you for joining us at the heritage foundation. it is my privilege to welcome you to her louis letterman leatherman out of torian and to welcome those who join join us on our heritage.org website. we would ask if everyone in house to make the courtesy check the cell phones have been turned off as we prepare to begin the program. we of course will post this on a website within 24 hours for everyone's future reference as well. internet viewers are always free to e-mail us questions or comments at any time. simply addressing to speaker@heritage.org. posting our discussion is james jay carafano, director of allison for foreign policy studies and is deputy to her to the shelby: davis institute.

he's a member of the national academies board and army science and technology in the department of the army historical committee is soliciting your fellow at the washington home of security institute. he's lectured and then a professor southern university camps is. he was lieutenant colonel carafano serving in europe and the united states. he has authored several books, including when he co-authored co-authored for us here at heritage, winning the long war, for those who are. please join me in welcoming my colleague, jim carafano. [applause] >> okay, here is the course of action. i'm going to introduce congressman bartlett who has agreed to say words and do some question and answer for a hour. i will then introduce the panel and then the panel will speak

for about 10 minutes amenable to a question-and-answer period and congressman bartlett graciously has agreed to stay as long as he can and participate in a q&a as well. we always started at heritage, but we end on time. so i will be recognizing questioners. if you have a question from the congress or the panel, raise your hand and wave to the microphone to come around. and if you date your name and affiliation mns or question that would be terrific. i have a real honor introducing congressman bartlett today. we are releasing a paper today, "before the lights go out" a survey of emp or pair of nice. so congressman bartlett was instrumental in establishing a commission, which issued two very important report on emp danger. we didn't conduct a survey of what efforts the federal

government and the congress made in implementing the findings of the report. i believe it's certainly the most comprehensive, but i believe it's the first survey done by evaluating what our government has done in response to this thread in the last few years. i think it is very enlightening and important reading. for those of you who adventurous you can grab a copy for a minute can find it at heritage.org. congressman bartlett is the definition of citizen ledges they choose. 10 turns in the house, the house armed services committee and one of the few actual scientists in the house of representatives. he worked for more than 20 years at a science and engineering program for the military and

nasa. he has undergraduate degree from the university of maryland, studied economy, physiology and zoology and he taught on the maryland faculty where he earned a phd in physiology. so he's a scientist, a scholar. he is one of our nations most respective legislatures and a champion for taking on tough issues regardless of how popular they are for the politics of them. if it's an important thing for the security of this nation and county cares about them and speaks about them. i couldn't be more honor to start with them first. please join me in welcoming the congressman. [applause] >> thank you ferry match. i think there were nine members of congress and three russians and a personal representative of

slobodan milosevic. we were sitting in a hotel room in vienna, austria in 1999. during the kosovo conflict, jesse jackson was in belgrade. i remember secretary of state was aghast when there is a photograph of jesse jackson standing in a circle holding hands with slobodan milosevic in prayer. we were there developing a framework agreement, which the g8 about a week later adapted to end the kosovo conflict. the senior russian air was vladimir lukin, the ambassador here at the end of bush and beginning of clinton. he was at bat time he was a chair at their international relations committee equipment to the international relations

committee and the russian duma. he was very angry. he sat in a hotel room. a little short father with his arms folded over his chest looking at the ceiling for two days. and he said, you spit on us. no way should we help you? the only time she could have zero confidence of yugoslavia with russia. and what we had told them was the soviet union had collapsed and were the big guys now. we'll take care of this. thank you. and now is his reference to you spit on us, now why should we hope you because we had come to the russians to help us with a negotiated settlement to the kosovo conflict. finally after two days fair, vladimir lukin spoke up and said if we really wanted to hurt you with no fear of retaliation,

with lunch and sl beyond and checked on your grade for six months or so. the third ranking communist was there, alexander shabazz, a tall blonde russian and he smiled and said one weapon won't do it, we have some spares. i think at that time that something like 10,000 spares. what was he talking about? by the way, curt weldon was fair. he said of course they heard it, but didn't understand a thing he said intel was trained payday. what was he talking about? something that would shut down our power grid, our communications for six months or so and they would be no we fear of retaliation.

slbm was launched from missy. he was talking of course about emp, electromagnetic poles. it's an inevitable accompaniment of any nuclear detonation about the atmosphere, any nuclear weapon in a made about the atmosphere will produce an emp pulse. our only real life experiences that was in 1962 johnston island, hawaii 800 miles away, not much microelectronics but then. 62. hawaii 800 miles away had some pretty serious consequences of this -- of the atmospheric detonation. the soviets had a lot rx. then we, real-life experience with it. we had a number of simulations, but it's just very difficult to simulate the long line of facts.

what is the emp electromagnetic pulse? it has three phases. the first one is different than anything we've experienced. because are your surge. the best best time is in nanoseconds and after the surge. before the surge received it. then there isn't etu and 83 and something we do that though it and something we do that though it and something we do that though it under the ground and will though it under the ground and will last for several minutes. i came to my office a couple years ago and it was a big thick novel on my desk that had a handwritten note and it. that or lowry was playing in his house room recovering from a heart operation and he was surfing the television and he happened on stan.

i was one of a half dozen presentations on the floor of the house on he and he happened at the beginning of that power to stay with me during the whole hour. he was retired and he was a phd in electrical engineering and a really got fascinated by emp and it is a lot of work, study on it. and he wrote a novel. this legacy was a typo. i don't know how many others have read the book. newt gingrich came by my office a couple years before that. and i don't read novels, so i wouldn't know him, but he'll forstchen was within was a well-known author and bill had written a story about an emp

attack and they gave me a little note book with a prepublication draft of "one second after." i came into the office a couple weeks ago and outside the door with a big box. i got what was that? it was 500 copies of roscoe "ond after." newt gingrich asked if i would help in distributing "one second after" to members of congress. they were there 500 copies and we were going to do a good job of having a person, not just delivering this to the office and members of congress because they would like more than to be knowledgeable about lloyd emp is. my wife listens to my presentations on emp and says why would you want to talk about that because all you are doing is giving potential enemies ideas about our vulnerability because emp is certainly the

most asymmetric warfare that you can imagine. and i told her, not one in 50 americans might know about ian p., but i will call you that 100% of our potential enemies know all about emp. and to convince the audience that's true, i have a chart which i use and it's in russian and it shows in futuro for a nuclear detonation on an emp and powerline sparking and everything going out, so obviously they know about it. it is in all of the open literature of any of our potential enemies. it's in all of their wargames, a very early event in all of the wargames because it is so asymmetric. i guess it has been a couple years ago now that dr. mcclellan was than i am with. he is the head of the office of

reliability at ferc. he said when we have the next caring and event -- carrington event is a super solar storm. the last one occurred in 1859. there was not much electronics of any kind man. they caught on fire. this was a really big solar storm. a british scientist by the name of dr. caring and described the event and it's known by his name. if it's when there is another carrington event. dr. mcclellan said that the grid with come down and we would destroy or damage 300 of our transformers. we don't make them. you order them and they will make them for you. it takes a year, year and a half, two years. the grid would be from two to four years in the event of a major solar storm.

that is not an if. that is a win because there will be another major solar storm. the next cycle is what is starting next year. there's going to be another major solar maximum, so we will see what happens. you know, there is a general understanding that if it is too good to be true, it's maybe not true, probably not true. and emp seems too bad to be true, so therefore it is relegated to the fringes and why would we want to talk about that because it is so improbable. i started the few moments we had together by using the comments of vladimir lukin. if we really wanted to hurt you with no possibility of any

revenge because he wouldn't know who did it, we'd launch and slbm. either way, it doesn't even take a state actor to do this. it can be a nonstate act are. a single weapon detonated 300 miles high over iowa or nebraska will blanket our whole country. the russian generals told the emp commission that the soviet developed and they they had enhanced emp weapon that produce 200 kilovolts per meter. that's 100 kilovolts at the margins of our country, northwest washington and miami. they've never made or tested anything anywhere near 100 kilovolts per meter. it takes out all of our microelectronics. although the units that control the distribution of power. i don't know if you have been to a manufacturing plant for the manufacture microelectronics.

i was kind of fascinated when i visited there. it was mostly women doing the work right away. men and women are different. our military has a little trouble understanding that sometimes. women are superior in some things than manufacturing micro electronics they must be superior because they are almost all women. i looked down and and a they had a steel bracelet anklet on and he was tied to the floor. and the reason is these micro at tronics are so sensitive that this datta khel at tri-city when you moved your clothing produces enough static electricity you could damage these microelectronics. we harden them that database you can bounce in your car and drop your cell phone. but they are exquisitely sent to his tuesday's emp waves. i don't know how i first heard about emp, but when i became

aware of it, there was such a phenomenon and i called my friend tom clancy who has done a couple of fundraisers for me. and tom minute is very good research and handed emp scenario and so i asked him if he would talk to me about emp. he said if you read my book you know i know about emp. he said let me refer you to the smartest man hired by the u.s. government. that's a pretty good order because we had a lot of people. from this perspective the smartest man hired with dr. lowell would. and so i got dr. laura would and this was pre-cell phone. and i got his pg number in a paged him and i thought he was in california. he goes out to the satellite and down. it came down to his pager in the.

so within an hour, 79 was sitting in my office. lowell's assessment of the problem we face in preparing hardening against an emp is it is just too hard. we're not going to worry about that. scarlet o'hara will worry about that tomorrow. and that is where we generally are. we had a good bill come out of the house and it had a hardening essay. could bring down the grade. these cyberattack with cascading effect on the good. a current tenant grant and didn't emp can bring down the grid. i mentioned that it doesn't need to be a state that there.

a scud launcher, which you can buy for $100,000 on the open market and any crude nuclear weapon. good svg one about 180 miles of not high enough or can't go far enough to shut down our country, that certainly could take out all of new england. that would be katrina 10 times over, at least 10 times over. either way, both of these novels that i would recommend that you get them and read them. "one second after" and the legacy. the big soviet missile that had 10 warheads on it. and his tory, one of those disappears when they are moving them from ukraine to russia after the soviet union collapsed in pre-warheads are used in this attack in their launcher in the caribbean and we are watching and we see those things. were they going to land?

one is in the atlantic and the other in the pacific in the third is in northern canada. where arey apogee? this is an emp attack. i hope that this story dr. lowry tells in "the satan legacy" is not what is going to happen because it is just the other side of awful. it is awful enough in "one second after." but all of this can be prevented. none of this has to happen. all we have to do is use the technology which is readily available to us to harden our grid and to prepare for this. it is inevitable that one of these three things will happen. it will be a cyberattack. it will be carried to an event, there would be a nuclear emp. all three of them have essentially the same effect. they bring down the grade.

and just think about your life. if you have no electricity for the next year, what will you do? by the way, if it is an emp attack, your car is full of computers, they are probably all friday. but we can prepare so at least the grade -- you might do without your car. it's going to be really tough to do without the grade. the house passed the good bill that had emp in it. the senate decided it was going to be too expensive so they took it out. if it ends life as you know it, it can't be too expensive to harden to avoid it, can it? i'm having trouble understanding that logic. i know there are many out there who have never heard about em p. and g what is this stuff? are you really being a radical

and are you a member of the lunatic fringe? i will assure you this is very real, that it cannot been and we need to prepare so when it happens we will not be devastated by. i'm very pleased to be here. thank you for your attention. [applause] >> were going to take a few minutes for questions from the congressman. so peter. please wait for the microphone. >> one of the prospects of the shield act passing the house and do you know if trent franks is in your bill to protect the great? what are the prospects of getting that through the house what recommendations do you have for us to work the senate? >> just call your congressman, call your senator, urge them to get on the bill. i hope we can get it to the house. this is the only problem we

face, but when there's a half trillion dollars more than all the money vote to spend, it's easy to see how we are focused on our deficit and what we're going to do about it. and nothing we have you opposed comes even close to solving that problem. the ryan budget doesn't balance for 25 years. and during that time, our dad about double senate only balances if you make unrealistic assumptions about economic growth, with the world being against the ceiling of 84 million barrels of oil now for five years. look at iea projections for the future. i love i love challenges, simon celebrated by this. this is a huge challenge. as others have equally big challenge. we need to get that bill out, we need to -- we are not going to have a lot of money. first things first. making sure you have electricity has to be the first thing. if you don't have electricity,

things just stop, don't they? so i think this should be our highest priority. there will be money for much, but there's got to be money for this. >> generalheirector of will and control during bsdi formation. many stories about what we can afford and what we can't afford, but we had a very limited amount of hokey for a hardened communications and there were big caps between the hard and communication, which was their command and control for nuclear forces and the tactical forces. so it's a matter of expense, where you go with hardening. my two predecessors. one was a nuclear physicist who

put into the program everything and nuclear hardening. the one that followed and trained as an astronaut and i came in as a systems engineer. so where do we have the fallback position? do we have engineers that can create generators for emergency there will refried? do you have any of those particular things? you know it's been written about the claim he come to scare the out of everybody. here it comes. but i face this for three years in the pentagon and everybody was talking about hairtrigger this, hairtrigger that. i believe you when this guy said we meant to hurt you we could ask because a decrees of god we escaped a lot of things as far as i'm concerned. do you have any fallback positions that might fall within the affordable area? >> emp condition had great recommendations and has not all

that costly to harden the grade. i have been to the cheyenne mountain and it is more a matter of attention as it is cost. if you are hardening as you build a system by the way, it costs no more than 5% to 10%, sometimes only 2% more. i don't know whether it's true or not, but i am but ain't holding hardening air force one against emp is twice as much. it's too expensive to protect after you build. by the way, we have been leaving emp hardening for military weapons foreign observers said the low funding of the clinton years, we've been leaving them. my question is the only time will ever need this equipment, you don't need in iraq and afghanistan. it's nice and he went a little quicker maybe, but the only time

you need this equipment is against the ear or near pier. the first thing to do is deny you all the equipment, which today is essentially all of our equipment. we have great difficulty finding after an emp lay down. but it's a matter of attention. it's just so easy to violate this hardening. one little antenna outside pleats this thing and spreads ever really get cancer once it's in my. not so much it cost as it is vigilance do you retain that hardening. >> from other folks in the conversation, i don't know if you're aware, but today's national emp awareness state. it is because we have so declared it. [laughter] we actually started as a couple years ago and i said wouldn't it be great if congress celebrated national emp day like there was an emp attack and they could turn off black areas and lights

and air conditioning, close the cafeteria and see what it is like for a day. of course if congress could do anything for a day we'd all be better off. so we did that for a couple years and quite honestly nobody paid attention. so we moved national emp awareness than we can do that because we declared it to begin with two august 15. august 15, 2003 was the largest blackout in human history. 55 alien people lost power for 24 hours. and so i passed the american people what they think it would be like if they had to live like that for a year or two and that's congressman bartlett said, by some estimates it's pretty horrific. you can't feed and sustain 400 million people. when the carrington effect occurred, without horses and

vegetable gardens. so i'll give 15 is national emp awareness day. there's three things you have to understand. the science, the policy and you have to understand the program. i couldn't think of three better musketeers to do this then our panel is assembled today. i'm going to introduce them very quickly and that will just go down murderers through and asked them each to make 10 minutes with that remark and then we'd like to open a debt to the floor and get as much answer and question in the time we've allotted. very quickly and very abbreviated. doc or peter pree is the director of impact, he impact come a citizens group to educating national emp effects and advancing policy and programs. he's also the director of united states program which is for the congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction.

frank gaffney is an old friend at the center for security works on many of the key national security issues of the day and frank is also the host of secure freedom radio. if you haven't heard, you should because it features great guests, including donald mundt told and apparently i didn't qualify the list. and drew miller is the president of the heartland management consulting group, the defense consulting group that works for the institute of defense analyses on dod projects in analyzing a range of security issues. these are gentlemen that have dealt with all three issues. so i'm going to turn it to peter and will just go down the road. >> goodbye to read my biography probably my most important credential is a served on the staff of the emp commission that

dr. bartlett referred to earlier. i think the science and physics have been covered pretty well, but i would just like to recap quickly that an emp is catastrophic in the united states and can be caused by and a nuclear weapon, doesn't have to be high-yield. the commission found even a low yield nuclear weapons would be sufficient to cause an emp attack against a critical infrastructures that the united states. there are nuclear weapons a special design however. mr. bartlett referred to the russians referring to this is the super emp weapon, designed to produce extraordinarily high emp field. and counterintuitively it doesn't have a very high yield. it's not designed to create a large blast. it's designed to put out gamma rays which causes the emp effect

is a very low yield. he was warned by russian delegation, the first and only time they've admitted to the case of proliferation that the secret of the super emp weapon might be north korea may protect today at that time within few years north korea might be capable of holding such connections. the north koreans can build this. but then a few years of being told by 26, north koreans can did their first kicks in the wild declared yield. the seismic signal is so much like the super come up for your roadkill that puts out the seismic signal, which should be the gamma rays coming out. they're cheap as the nine tests look the same. the north koreans have declared this to be a success and presumably it is a success because the defense intelligence agency testified to the senate

last month that north korea is now keen warheads and missiles. it's nuclear warheads and missiles. why would they put a field weapon that needs further development? whatever that thing is, it apparently works. so the super a nuclear weapons nuclear weapons conventional design that could cause an emp event by a magnetic storm, which are commonplace to have been every year. 1989 is a commonplace to cause a blackout in the province of québec described a big transformer. there is this thing were concerns that could commission warned about as did the greek geomagnetic storm, which is a once in a century phenomenon in 1859. we know these things happen, they're inevitable and then the collapse power grids across the

planet, not just in one country. we are concerned about what will happen during this maximum, which begins december 2012 and passes through 2013 because we are completely unprotected and you get an increased incidence of solar flares and mass objections. it's basically like a relay team. a lot of scientific. but the possibility of a bag and external increase which happens every 11 years. last we haven't mentioned there are nonnuclear emp weapons. these are not sufficiently power to take up the whole country, but you could. they are available to everybody. a madman or criminal can purchase an industrial emp simulator, which can be used as a weapon. there is one advertise that they usually show them a briefing, which is an emp suitcase for one person with a very high localized emp field. if you know what you're doing

come you can throw this in the trunk of a car, park it near a train farmer. these things are not protect it. you've probably seen them when you drive down the highway. they are chain-link fences near the highway in strange, large devices. is there basically what powers cities. transformers and skaters are not guarded. only protected by a chain-link fence. as someone put a simulator in the trunk of the car company which built into perky neocon you could black canyon city. so those are very real threat. it doesn't cost a lot to the emp commission came up with recommendations. we've known for 50 years the technology. we don't need new technology. and to protect the minimum we should do in the commission see how is to protect the 300 transformers with the metropolitan areas. if we did that, we could do that

for 100 to $200 million since the commission estimated in the absence of the emp protection given our current state of unpreparedness, a year after an emp attack him a two of the american population would die from starvation, disease, societal break down. the commission was criticized for underestimating by the chairman of the national intelligence council of the those we made some good arguments as to way more people would die to that. mainly because americans are not prepared to go on just the way the great generation that survived. i know my parents, for example, having lived through the great depression didn't trust the system. they've never heard of emp, but they're prepared for anything. my mother was constantly canning food. my father knew how to hunt and fish and all that. most americans don't know how to do that anymore in the

commission assumption was most people did. when you subtract those skills, you probably would end up with higher casualties. so a dollar for every life that would be saved is a bare minimum. that wouldn't solve the whole problem, but would at least give us a fighting chance to save two thirds of the american population. the ferc estimated for an increase of 60 cents in the bill of every ratepayer in the united states for a period of three years, 60 cents per year for three years for each ratepayer we could protect the whole great robustly. to protect critical infrastructures, they came up with an estimate of 10 to 20 billion over a three to five year period. so those are the costs. one would argue that as mr. bartlett has said, there are some things one must afford and

do something about. i guess that they too wrapped up my remarks with this observation we appear to be now in a national security freefall, looking at the large picture, where the american people have been demoralized by foreign wars that don't seem to have much in relationship and there is the care he and the defense department budget is being what god as something that's probably going to be deeply cut because of the financial problems we have. i am hoping that dod and dhs will look to this threat, which the congress has been trying to get them to pay attention for many years now. something not just that they need to do, but they will see us in a bureaucratic interest in this political environment to do it.

we need to do things with our defense dollars that make sense to the average american. and those who have libertarian attitudes many of them. we are moving towards it. lyrically, with a force between isolationism, america's attitude is probably more potent than it has ever been since before world war ii, where people don't want to support a military on fighting foreign wars, wars overseas. how is that related to personal security. we obviously need to do that. but one of the things we can do this by preparing for an emp at the department of defense and homeland security, which can involve utilizing many military base is to work cooperatively for example with the local state governments trained exercise with them so instead of these military bases and our investment in the department of defense is being seen support

overseas contingencies that enable us to give better homeland security capabilities to engineer a and japan. our department of defense is the first on the spot and does a great job there. the next time you look at the tourney at the winter told told so, it struck me there is not one uniformed personnel. and there are lawyers who argued their constitutional reasons for that. the average american won't understand why current policy gives higher priority than homeland security at intimations in japanese when it comes to americans and not to americans. so i think we need to reinvent ourselves in a way that makes dod much more relevant to the lives of americans. the emp is something we must do and can be the answer to doing it in a way that even the libertarians will say yet we

need to do that at the same time that will preserve military capabilities that america has relied upon to maintain peace in the world through its trans-policy, which unfortunately is at such risk right now because of politics. [applause] >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be with people who have been aware of emp for a very long time and done as much as anybody in the nation to try and raise the level of consciousness of the rest of us about this particular threat. as jim mentioned at the center for security policy, which we worry about a lot of threats. we are focused on the dangers of sharia. we are worrying about what china is that too, the russians. we are concerned about threats to sovereignty, including what

is the obama administration has in mind, dusting off the old will of the sea treaty, trying to jam it through the senate as they did this to s.t.a.r.t. treaty. bar none, even as various problems are real and been exacerbated by some of things that peter talked about in terms of both the actual effect on our defensive capabilities and the perceived weakness in the resolution that will be seen by others associated with this cut, the thing that i worry most about is a mortal peril to this country, to its people, to his way of life, to a system of government, to its freedom is not associated with an electro- mag and it pulls derived problem

with our luck triple grid and all of the related infrastructures. the problem that has been mentioned can be accomplished in a couple different ways. the department of homeland security is fond of calling these things me and caused disasters. while, this would be the uber man caused disaster. but as has been said, we are looking at this train hurtling down the track, whether the north koreans actually had failed with their tests are not and therefore were unable to do -- i must tell you i fully expect to hear that position to do and in the business of doing, which is to sell a super emp weapon to somebody else.

and that's congressman bartlett and i just cannot say how appreciative i am for your work in this space, ross go, but as you've pointed out those dear and elsewhere, there are lot of missiles in the world today. in fact, in one of peter slides, the briefing that he gives, there're even cruise missiles that might be of some value in this area. not an optimized attack, but the russians are now producing missiles that are concealed in containers, cruise missiles. and it is entirely possible that that would be the launch of a sort of cover of choice for a ballistic missile, a stud missile for example. the problem is he put one of those things on the ship, bring it close to our shores come you

don't need an intercontinental range missile to achieve the kinds of effects we are talking about here. so that man caused disaster is to say both he and prospects. even if it's not, even if the north koreans, russians, chinese and others aren't intent on exploiting the vulnerability they all know we have, we know mother nature is going to do an emp lay down in due course. peter mention these things happen roughly every hundred years. we are about 106 years overdue. it's coming, folks. in my tell you in that time i've been in washington, which is about 35 years now, i've never seen so outrageous a failure to

attend to some manifesto problem, let alone one of such enormous magnitude. .. nine out of ten of us will be dead wit grave danger, and we kw that it's coming and despite

roscoe bartlett's warnings and others like him, despite the commission's reports, despite con confirmation by other distinguished scientific and other bodies, and despite even nasa and noaa confirming that possibly as soon as 2012 or 2013 we're going to get some of those geomagnetic storms, intense, devastating geomagnetic storms. we are still not doing anything to fix this problem. what do we do about it? well, the first thing is to stop denying it's a problem. what we're here i hope we'll contribute to is raising of awareness that causes people across this country to insist

that there are elected representatives give this the kind of priority that congressman bartlett and others rightly says it needs. obviously, enacting a very modest piece of legislation, the shield act, focused principally on these key transformers. it's the bear minimum that we can do. now, peter estimates the cost of trying to harden these transformers at about $250 million. we spend more than that on coffee for the united states government's personnel. if we fail to make that investment, the costs not only in human lives, but in terms of every other aspect of this country are incall clayble. they use the term

"catastrophic," and i think roscoe, you mentioned katrina. think about that. katrina was a trivial example of what could happen if not coast to coast, certainly over large parts of the country, depending on how this plays out. enacting the shield act and making as i think the act would help do, make it a priority for industry, not just for the government to address this vulnerable is critical. i talked to people in the electrical industry, and most of them don't know what you're talking about, at least on the management side. what they know is this is not going to show up well on their quarterly reports to their stockholders, and unless somebody says well, the stockholders might not survive if you don't do something abouts

being given the sort of priority is requires from the government, maybe we could enlist their help. they do have an invested interest after all. we have to provide the resources for this. it's been said repeatedly now, but i second it. what higher priority is there? than ensuring the fundamental survival of our country. again, to repeat -- you cannot sustain the population of a 21st century super power with the agricultural capacity this country has without electricity, not only to grow the foods and harvest it, but to distribute it and to do all the other things that we require electricity to do from community cations to --

communications to finance to water to sanitation to health care to transportation. you don't have any of those in most places where most people live without electricity, and unfortunately, every bad guy on the planet knows that. some have said, well, we just do it back to them. well, in north korea, that probably isn't a deterrent because most of the people in north korea don't have food the way it is let alone this kind of infrastructure. i want to address other two things that have been said that might not get sufficient attention, but i think they are really critically important. one is for years now we have both saved -- waived the requirement for

hardening of our military's capabilities to ensure that their systems will function in an emp environment. that's been compounded, i believe, but certainly implicitly to this by the fact in order to save money, the military has increasingly relied as congressman bartlett knows with his responsibilities on the arms services committee with cuts in technology. virtually none of which has been hardened against emp for the same reason that the electrical industry is not concerned about this. why? why add the additional cost? even if the additional cost as you said, roscoe, is trivial when you're building it in to begin with, but it's hugely

expensive to fix now if we've built an entire military for two decades without paying attention to this problem. related point -- there's much talk now about the stimulus bill or otherwise of building a smart grid. nothing could be stupiddier than building a smart grid that's not smart enough to deal with this problem, and doing it from the beginning as has been said will make it both possible, i believe, and certainly vastly less expensive than trying to con tend with building it in later on, so i just want to conclude by thanking heritage for, as always, using its bully pulpit to good effect. there's a couple other days that i'd like you to declare while you're at it, but i'm certainly

delighted to be here for this one. [laughter] >> one day at a time. [applause] >> thanks. i served as an intelligence officer in the air force, and worked on plans and programs with the department of defense and familiar with emp threats and other national security threats, and i wrote in journals like 21st quarterly, but then you're just preaching to the choir. i wanted to make people aware of the threats as we're trying to do here today and the government is not protecting you against the threat and be prepared not just for attacks, but for the collapse of our society. my book takes place three years after the collapse and for those of you not familiar with lord of the rings, ruan is a horse based

nation and horses will be our primary source of horsepower. the emp attack is launched from a civilian airliner taking two scud missiles and covers the united states, and as the congressman pointed out, get them up higher and launching from an aircraft helps you do that. the israelis are planning to launch satellites from 747s over the indian ocean. this has been done in the past. all these methods are not new threats, but old technologies, very feasible. any launch would be hard to detect, maybe impossible to stop, and difficult to attribute who launched it even if the intelligence community figures out it's from china or north korea, wherever. we'd be so weakened by an emp attack, we're not in a good position to retaliate. i'm surprised when i read studies, everybody assumes we're

trying to stop nuclear prorifflations there's no advances and everybody builds huge center fusions coming from technology with the world war ii era. advances in technology will not lead to new weapons and created material. projections of nations becoming nuclear i think are very, very far off. there's no technologies enabling more people to develop nuclear weapons, material, and create weapons, and this panel pointed out, it doesn't take much to develop an effective warhead. to work for a complete disarmerment is a very bad and very dangerous idea. while this is emp panel, i want to point out what is a more devastating threat is viral pandemics, and that's bhaps in the book as well as the emp attack. iran is using the same manipulation in biomedical

engineering that we use to develop new medicines that they use for deadly viruses. in the past, we assumed bioweapons would not be used because we thought they would be worried about them spreading back and hurting them as well. you have the ability to develop not just a new virus, but a vaccine for the virus that only you have. at that point, if iran does that, they can wipe out the united states and israel and just give the vaccine to those they really care about. to retaliate this attack, we have to maintain a capable nuclear force with the strategic policy and administration that will clearly use them to punish, destroy, and detour such attacks. we have no such policy or resolve in the current administration. the latest posture review led to the worst decisions the administration has made, a

declaration you can attack the united states with bilogical weapons, and we promise not to reply with a nuclear weapons attack on you. look at the posture and look it over. it's appalling the statements in there and the policies change in the latest review. when you consider the threats of emp and by yo engineered viruses and policies of the u.s. not using nuclear weapons against our enemies, the securities threats are worse now than during the cold war, yet our federal government is too busy pandering with social programs to address the problems. the heritage foundation and other concerned groups argued about the unconstitutional programs that weaken our economy and distract the federal government from its primary job of national security, when it unfortunately continues. i wrote this as a call to stop the unconstitutional federal social programs that both directly and indirectly weaken our national security both by taking funds from defense, funds

from emp preparation in defenses and recovery means, and also shifting the focus of the national government from socialism and economic political programs back to its overriding main mission which is simply national security. americans need to prepare themselves to deal with the consequences of emp, nuclear war, and viral pandemics. do not put faith in the ability of the federal government to protect you against these threats. i put an arbitrary date in the book of 2020, but the disasters could take place at any time. the emp threat is decades old, and it gets worse every year, worse every year because of our reliance on electronics and computer chips that increases every year, and by the way, the chips are not made in the united states, but in china, taiwan, and korea. good luck getting replacements post emp event. it's worse every year because there's fewer farmers, more people to food, and just on time delivery of food and resources.

our military with its tremendous superiority is dependent on high-tech weapons and computer chips. others have pointed out it's a clear obvious achilles's heel for the military. you start with an emp attack. someone smart and ruthless enough to attack us with high altitude emp is smart and ruthless enough to combine the attack with a release of a highly lethal virus that they have a vaccine for and we don't. the u.s. commission on the prevention of weapons of mass destruction warned that a terrorist attack with bioweapons was likely by the end of 2013. this warning was issued years ago, but few americans know about it and no one in congress or the administration has focused on this great threat to our survival. the brookings institution, johns hopkins center, many scientists

have written and warned of these advances in dna engineers and bioengineering gives the ability for the small terrorist group or individuals can use cheap available equipment to do what the soviets did in the cold war which they combined the virus which is 90% lethal with smallpox which is contagious. they can add a gene to make the virus vulnerable. they can protect their people from. we had cases and years ago we had cases where scientists tried to use dna manipulation and created lethal viruses, fortunately just in the labs so far. the bottom line is don't count on the federal government to protect you from threats. they are too busy pappedderring with social programs and poor and unconstitutional programs to be bothered with vital national defense measures.

it would be great if the heritage foundation and ron paul and the tea party could convince people to focus on security, but that's an unlikely thing to happen. my second conclusion recommendation is as individuals and families you need to prepare for the disasters and have your own means of surviving these. the movement is big in the united states. it's getting bigger all the time, and there's sales of bunkers that have been growing in the united states as you read in the paper this year, there's survival communities formed in the united states, and you too should prepare for surviving the post collapse environment described in this book, reinventing america after the collapse. thank you. [applause] >> we're going to open it up to our panel for questions if you'd just raise your hand, i'll recognize you, wait for the microphone and announce your name and affiliation, that would

be great. i wanted to add two quick points because you're not depressed enough. you know, this is a dynamic problem; right? because our infrastructure and technology is changing all the time, so part of the evolution of technology is to actually create processers that require less and less power. we need smaller and smaller batteries, and so we can be more and more efficient and useful with will the. of course, that actually makes those systems even more vulnerable to emps so as we race forward to making first time electronic systems, we are making vulnerable electronic systems. the flip side is one thing we didn't talk about is we talked about some of the protective measures and others and many of these are falling in the category of all hazards or multiuse response. even if you don't experience an

attack aoutlive the next solar flair, that's not to say a lot of these measures go to waste. when you look at our paper about reviewing what the department of homeland security has not done in terms of planning, preparedness, and coordination and the measures they have not done, these things are useful and productive and helpful for security and prosperity for a whole range of things for conventional attacks like a natural disaster. it's not like we're just buying something that's for a once in a million year event. these are actually measures we are concerned about. the lay dpi in the -- lady in the back is party. >> i'm lauren, student at american university, and my question, i suppose, would be there's brief mention about getting private industry involved in the meantime until the government can do

something. my question is what are the sorts of things that can be done at the level of utilityies with regulatory authorities such as pjm or miso and what is beyond anyone's scope and would need to be handled by the government. >> i'll ask congressman bartlett since he talked about that and also peter. i would ask our panelists to really refrain from using acronyms because most of the world doesn't know what they are. >> okay. >> as the power industry to do this without some education and authorization and encouragement is asking an awful lot. the cost of electricity is going up anyhow, and this would add to that cost, a lot by the way, but it was 60 cents to each bill for

each person who buys electricity over a how many year period would provide the kind of -- would pay for the kind of hardening that we need. it's primarily a matter of education. once we know we need to do this and americans understand, gee, that extra 60 cents is well spent, isn't it? then i think that it will do it. after that, it's going to be awfully hard for these people to justify increasing their cost and increasing the billing to their subscribers so i think it's education, and i really want to thank harming for doing this -- heritage for doing this because we need to do this a thousand times over because people need to understand how important it is. it's not just for emp. i want to second what was said about personal preparedness. i lived through the cold war. remember the emblems up there and food was stored, and you couldn't go to any public

building without having a bunch of brochures there telling you what to do and how you ought to do it and accept for, you know, the duct tape and plastic that embarrassed homeland security, they tell me they have this information, but nobody knows it, and nobody is doing what everybody ought to be doing, and that is personal preparedness because we're only going -- we're going to be a strong a nation as we are individually in a cat strofg situation like this. there's no reason you can't be independent of this system for whatever period of time your finances permit you to be independent from the system. it's just a matter of education, and i'm really disstressed we are not doing that because, you know, if you think about it, if you go out and buy supplies and food ahead of time, you are now a patriot because the farmer grows it and somebody sells it. if you do it when the hurricane is at your door and you're a horder, it's the same thing, but

when you do it detours on whether you're a patriot or a sinner, doesn't it? >> theoretically, industry could do it on its own. currently, the north american reliability corporation in fact is objecting to passage of the shield agent insisting they don't need, you know, federal regulationsings that they can do in op their own and will do it on their own, and that's the argument they are making. i do not believe that, you know, because we've known about emp and the commission made its recommendations, oh, beginning back in 2004, and they have not done anything. you know, they are also frankly, i mean, as they should be, driven by the profit motive. i'm a small government conservative as is mr. bartlett. there's probably no other member in congress whose as congress servetive as he is, but liberal departments and conservative

republicans do know you need government and need legal authorities to require industry to move forward. it doesn't have a legal authority yet and that's whyed shield agent is necessary. they'll have an opportunity and there's an opportunity now to actually move forward on their own, and they should be encouraged to do so, but that doesn't ofuate the need for the government to have responsibilities to because people have lives on industry doing the right thing. >> explain what ferc is for people? >> that's the chief agencies we'd will looking to to implement the provisions of the shield agent. >> federal energy regulatory commission. >> thank you. sir? >> hi, i'm dan from the organization of america. for those of you with experience

in the intelligence and government, especially the congressman. something is missing here. we have a large infrastructure, professional intelligence people who make a living studying our adversaries and what they intend to do to us, and how are they not communicating the leadership of our military and to the congress that this is something that needs to be defended against? i'm a little bit unclear about why our professional intelligence establishment is not advising congress to take action. >> maybe drew and frank? >> for the intelligence community, i mean, it's a cardinal rule you provide the information, present it, whatever the decision makers, it's up to them, and you will not find intelligence folks advocating policies. they make the information available, and that's it. >> the question occurs, and peter may be in position to answer this or roscoe better than i whether the information is being provided.

i mean, i certainly have heard from peter about this super emp weapon. i'm not sure that policymakers have been hearing about the north koreans having developed a super emp weapon. as for the policy piece of this, i think that, and i've have so many conversations and others here have as well with people in previous administrations as well as this one, and you get sort of this blank look from most of them with the -- >> more blank than usual? >> even more blank than usual. it's a sense that it's somebody else's problem, not theirs, or it's not a serious a problem as you're making it out to be, and i think the combination of maybe not getting actionable

intelligence and belief that at the time when there's so many other things to worry about, this is in the too hard or not absolutely high priority category seems to be attributing to the up -- inaction weir talking about. peter? >> having served a decade in the cia as a senior analyst at that time i know when i was there, this was during the cold war and after the cold war up until 1995, we were informing, you know, policymakers that there was a serious emp threat, but frank is absolutely right when it comes to policy issues in terms of recommendations about what to do about it. that is crossing the line. you know, you can talk about the threat. you can't make recommendations. that's up to the policymakers which is one of the reasons i left the intelligence community by the way to get on to fixing the problem side of it. now, it's amazing to me how even in washington, d.c. it doesn't

seem to be widely understood what the purpose of congressional commissions and presidential commissions are, and i mean, the reason these things exist, why a commission was established was to have an authoritative statement that includes the collective use of intelligence, defense, and scientific communities. they have spoken loud and clear already in terms of the threat anyway by the emp commission report because they were part of the process and consensus emergedded from that report. second, there was the strategic posture commission report after the emp commission, you know, which re-examined this threat. could rogue states and terrorists do this? this was the commission headed up by bill perry who was president clinton's secretary of defense, and they had the same conclusion. okay, so it's been through the process twice. there's an international academy of sciences study after that that confirmed independently the threat from great magnetic storms, and then there's a june

2010 study by the department of energy and ferc, the federal energy regulatory commission, that went back and said yes, indeed, there are storms, this is true, and rogue states and terrorists can do this, and last in december 2010, the ferc sponsored a big inner agency study including voices from the department of defense, intelligence community, and the nuclear weapons lab and all came to the same concurrence. there's not one official study -- they all support each other. we've had basically the equivalent of, you know, two congressional commissions plus three major authoritative studies all saying the same thing. now, why don't people know about it? i don't know. i mean, it's, you know, maybe it's because you say emp and people's eyes glaze over. even among the nuclear weapons experts when i worked the field, and i think it's the case today, there's a narrow subset of

scientists who understand this and it's a small group of people who understand it, and we've got -- it's been classified for many years. it was not until the commission had first reports and mr. bartlett conducted the first congressional hearings that we actually kind of came out of the classified closet to the public at large. ..

>> i really appreciative and we will get to as many as we can. please, wait for the microphone. >> thank you. none of you have mentioned the possible power of public opinion and in my town which is bethesda i'm not aware that people have any idea the possible dangers that face us very eminently. why haven't public opinions than honest in some way? and there's a plethora of somehow could be, external list, could be told in a way that ordinary people like me could under stand and put pressure on

these government entities that aren't doing anything even though they know of the danger. >> one half of here for peter and the work that they are doing and its impact and the books that are being written on the subject and a movie i think is coming out of bill's book. i think some work is being done in a very serious way on this and when you just said is a call to intensify that effort. >> there's a great motion to 11. [laughter] sadly the lights come back on in the movie which is weird. do you want to jump in? >> i want to ask a question of what could be done that has not been done. >> we went to the utilities and said there's not a problem than the one they proved there was a problem they said there's no solution. right now there is a number of companies that are working with some very large microsoft site

companies that are actually going to build systems that protect the transformers. they're going to build them and demonstrate them. the problem is we need $3.5 million to pay the item of the national land to do this and so big companies come up with the money. the second issue is it looks like they were going to shut down a missile, that's missile defense. a lot of people don't like missile defense so they are denied there is a problem and the president's national security adviser ret etds in "the new york times" that said it's not going to come from a road state it's going to come from the sun and it was the science, so the geomagnetic storm but then they stopped their. the third thing which i think is very important is not just the value devotees that didn't believe there was a solution that was too costly and the geomagnetic storm is that the solution becomes so big that they deny that there's a problem and until you translate the solution their something that is doable which peter has done a great deal of out than people i

think will come on board because a lot of people like the intelligence community's it to me we will know what the nuclear material looks like it in the clouds and sample lit like we did over north korea and find out who is bonnet was. it is a sample that you have the bomb material and they are not allowed to give that to us. so the was the reaction of some people in the intelligence community that the deterrence works or if we can't tell the works so you don't have to face the solution. now we have actually utilities that the solution as peter said there's a dollar a year utility bill and they can charge it to the rate. so i would say that is the second part of the solution we haven't gotten to that the solution is affordable and doable. isakson new technologies. yes, sir. >> congressmen called the work that you did in the committee,

the concern about right now we've seen the export sort of hezbollah was able to launch a missile and say that it's controlled. the u.s. navy on the battle group with the support groups what is your comfort level that they will have the defensive to devotee protecting themselves against an iain he attacked the the to -- against an emp attack? >> ever since i mentioned during the clinton years when we had the big decrease in military funding we've been weaving of the hardening of our new weapon systems. they just are not hardened. as i mentioned, i had a huge problem with that in the congressional records put up and i questioned it over and over why do we feel for weapons at all if we were not pardoning them because the only time that we ever really need those weapons is against the fear and one of the things they're going to visit all of their open

literature and workings is a robust emp lead out to all of the weapons which are not emp heightened which today are essentially all of our reference. i understand why we do this. this discretionary war we are fighting, world war ii has been just fine. we did a quick end with less brutalities with the new weapons. we will have to have these weapons. they are not emp cardinger. at least now as a result of the commission they have a standing task force in the pentagon looking at the hardening across the services. i'm not confident that looking at a serious enough threat. i think a level of emp that they are looking at is classified that it is too low. if with the russian general has told the commission is true what

we are regretting is a fraction of what our enemy is capable of and that doesn't make much sense. >> we are going to try to catch both of these questions here in the middle. >> my name is jeff manji and i am working with a supply of electronics interested in the comments made. the kabul awareness brought up sounds like a great blockbuster for hollywood and they did miss portray the threat. young people like chollet are a little bit more aware because the video games they play have the devices and it's like the ultimate weapon you can take out your enemy. [laughter] but my as comparing this making an analogy to the preparation of any other nation that are actually on the ball preparing the grip for the attack does not distinguish.

>> if you can talk about what is going globally. >> sure. russia and china, and china also has its grip prepared. some countries that are less like north korea because of their backwardness would be virtually vulnerable to this. they don't upend feet could depend on the microelectronic system. it's more dependent upon but they are not as danced as wheat. we know in terms of offensive capabilities they are preparing to use the weapon and it's an open source. north korea and the iranian military doctrine they openly write about attacking the united states, taking us out after the world stage in the attack and in the case of iran we have seen them mentioned during several tests which launched a high altitude classics signature and they've launched a missile on

the bethesda caspian sea for the commission where we would use a freighter or a strutted bucket and the printed missile to the issue worst of the gulf of mexico and peter is also corrected that you would not be able to identify the attacker not only because the missile would not come from enemy territory but you can't do the nuclear front six on the attack. it's not in the atmosphere so there is nothing to collect. >> the last question. >> the big one coming in 2012, 2013, but if you look at the history of the magnetic storms you see that it doesn't respect the maximum and they could come this year. it could come next week. we had one last week the was so big it wasn't directed at us.

they have a partial hit and then something that needs to be addressed is that it could be a scud in the bucket or partial geomagnetic storm that puts us out for a month or two and we need to be prepared for that. and it's another, how are you going to get through the next month or two months, and it's not just the people who were involved and their families, but its corporate america. are we going to our corporations and saying to them can you survive one month or two months without electricity? what will you do? because we want our corporate america to be strong, coming out of this in one or two months. can you address that, please? >> would you like to figure to the cuff -- talk for just a minute explaining what space, whether infrastructure the

united states has? >> let me add to that also because plus solution, some of the solutions here, the space with their infrastructure that we have is basically one satellite that is old, it wasn't originally designed for detecting flares and was added on as an afterthought, and has a actually give off some false warnings and there's a debate now between whether to replace it. there's two competing satellites. one of them is called the sentinel and it's much better designed dedicated as the purpose. but even if you get that space in the satellite, one of the myths that's out there that's perpetrated by some industries that say we can use the satellites to get early warning of a great magnetic storm and close the grid down so that it will collapse, first of all

while we can see the solar flares coming in a few days before they reach the or bit troubling a million miles an hour we don't know if they are going to hit the earth until about ten or 20 minutes after they get detected by that you for about 20 minutes of warning where you are for sure that it's going to hit the earth and then will it cause a geomagnetic storm over the united states? we don't know that. since you're going to shut the whole group down in the united states you're not sure if there will be a geomagnetic storm. shutting it down over the united states as a solution would be catastrophic in itself if you can't imagine that there is no planned to do despite misrepresentations by the industry. there's no plan to do it. we never practiced it and so basically we are not prepared even against that phenomena. however, i don't want people to despair because all the talk has

been about how catastrophic and nuclear natural has been. ultimately the commissions that work with the other studies was a good news story. there is really no excuse for the society to be vulnerable for this. it doesn't cost a lot to fix the problem. some of the solutions are while that sounds complicated let me just give you an example of one of the things we do. if you put a metal shed over these transformers with no windows, the kind of thing that you could get from lowes for example now it is just a cage. that's when you could do to protect against the part the big metal shed. it can also protect against the sniper if a terrorist or to try to use a high-powered rifle which would train else in your protected against that, too and also, the most common failure mode and hurricanes and

tornadoes for the transformers is a tree falls down because they're not they're completely unprotected and they will protect against that, too. we don't have to be a physicist to understand how some of this works. it's a very common sense thing. if you add to that a surge arrester on the line going into the transformer a sensor will pick up something over the line there will protect you coming down the line. it will also protect against cyber warfare because the way the cyber attacks would destroy the transformers and cause the way for them the way the energy comes in coming in a different way so that the energy and the surging through the power grid in this up destroying itself but the surge will protect against everything. if you did those two things the transformers are protected and that can be done cheaply. we know how to do it. it's inexpensive. why aren't we doing it? let me just close with this. we don't -- it was remarked we

don't make among the many things we don't need in this country anymore we don't make the big transformer's anywhere by the test client new york was the first electric grid and the whole world and we exported the technology for the electric grid all over the world but we don't need it here anymore. the big transformers go for export purposes the only to countries in the world not to read softer yen and germany's we have to buy the transformers from there and it takes 18 months to build one because each of them has to be custom made. i would like to see that change as a matter of national security policy in my view if something as important as a transformer or system american lives depend on the should be made in america again and we ought not be dependent on importing them from

overseas. there's a lot of things people can do that has been mentioned and i endorse comments that have been made. we are not helpless of the individual level. there's things people engage in the old fashioned preparedness, individual preparedness my father's generation and the generation and the great depression and world war ii have never heard and have often said they would have been prepared for an even to and probably had a good time. the had garden, the new how to hunt and fish, they wouldn't know what to do the would be oriented toward these things. so those values go back to the prior year brooch and have been lost it seems in a single generation we used to pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency not being dependent upon the system and these values have been lost. even against if you get a garbage can with a tight fitting lid and have electronics like communications electronics or

medical equipment or you want to have spare electronic parts necessary to put them in a plastic bag, put them in a garbage can with a tight fitting lid and that will survive you even if a super -- that garbage can with a tight fitting lid but there are such things that individuals can do both against the prepare tignes generally so that we don't have to be so vulnerable or dependent on washington. we can lead from the bottom-up and i believe as people start preparing as individuals the bureaucrats in washington will notice and will take action because they don't like to follow the party. they like to pretend they are leading. >> we're just about out of time to read a couple of things for a quickly. if he found gispert and informative and helpful and you want to share it with folks tomorrow but will be archived on website and you can go to the link and send the link to anyone and will be there forever and until the next season. [laughter] and they can watch that program. there are also peepers on what

the government has done so for the will be up on the web site and our paper is talking about the awareness and if you go to the heritage website which is headed toward there is an excerpt from the documentary 33 minutes and bills the chair of the commission exactly how many works and you can watch that where if you want to uganda to the documentary website which is 33 minutes dhaka lord and watch the entire film online for free. with that think you all for coming to the and please join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

today a discussion on the bureau's role on combating terrorism nearly ten years after the september 11 attacks. this is 40 minutes. >> all week we are taking a loow lodifferent aspects of the fbi come in different units and agencies within it and yesterday we talked about tactical operations units. tomorrow we are going to look at tactical operations units.ms tomorrow we will look at how the agency prioritizes its resources. thursday, cyber attacks and fraud. friday, we will wrap up the series with crime labs and icday is the role of the fbi in counter-terrorism. david williams joins us. how does the fbi define terrorism? guest: it has been defined differently, by different people. people that want to take violent acts against groups of people with anti-u.s. interests,

generally with the support of political causes. host: what is the role for the fbi in combating terrorism? guest: basically, it comes down to a series of legislative actions passed by the congress that give the united states government, the department of justice, the attorney general, certain jurisdictions that are passed on to the fbi. the fbi is already the lead in the counter-domestic terrorism organization. host: homegrown terrorism? guest: or international. those with genesis overseas, as well as homegrown threats. it is defined as terrorism, it falls within the realm of the fbi. host: there are agents doing counter-terrorism overseas. is that not the role of the military ban apartment?

-- military department? guest: there are a number of different tools available to the government. the central intelligence agency and the fbi worked in counterintelligence. that is the primary role of the central intelligence agency. the fbi's primary role is to look at the intelligence to protect american interests. host: this phrase, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, why are those categories separate? what is the difference? guest: talking about the national security program that puts them together, counter- intelligence is generally looking at people trying to steal the secrets of the united states, whether they be classified or something that gives someone else an unfair trade advantage. that is the classic james bond stuff.

counter-terrorism has to do with stopping organizations before they can do damage to the united states. prevention is the number one word. if there is an act of terrorism, the fbi will lead the charge. taking whatever action is needed. host: you were doing counter- terrorism for 30 years. was it called a counter- terrorism in the 1970's? guest: it was. i did start doing this back in the 1970's, when people were using bows and arrows, continuing right on through. host: what was that like, though, 1970's, 80's, 90's, leading up to 9/11, what was the priority, the focus of the fbi? guest: when i was coming in, the big concern was domestic issues. the weather underground.

offshoot organizations providing bombs on government reservations, injuring people. it was always an attempt to attack the government at that time. that always seemed to be the bastion of the status quo. after we started to get into the later half of the 1990's, we started to see more international activists. in the most prominent case that most people would remember, the 1993 bombing of the world trade center. host: after 9/11, we are showing the most wanted terrorists right now, for our viewers. thathost: not so much. the fbi is very interested in the thrust. it is the interest in the organization or individual.

if it is a criminal act and it falls within the fbi's jurisdiction, we do that as well. i would be happy to touch upon how many and where they are, and what they are doing thinking back to the early part of my career, we had will be called legal attaches. that whole organization, that movement, was built up quite a bit. we had 42 legal that served fbi interests that were primarily based on controlling the leaks. they do not do investigations overseas. the interface with the host country and law enforcement organizations to share

information and get it done. that has grown tremendously, going from 42 to having representatives in 75 cities are around the world. primarily, those are areas that are threats to the united states that are counter- terrorism. host: what about the for situation in pakistan and afghanistan, does the fbi have a presence there? guest: yes, we do. the fbi has been imbedded and working with the department of defense closely. host: is there a role for counter-terrorism? guest: much of it is the collection of parts of the improvised explosives. those are all sent back to the united states for technical analysis in quantico, virginia.

there is a large organization in quantico called a terrorist explosive devices analytical center. they look at each of these that, in. components, when you get them together, laughing signatures for bombers and groups, passing them on to our partners in the department of defense and intelligence. host: you talked about the number of agencies. looking at the employment numbers in the agency, total employees with women as a part of the work force, a little over 15,000. national security agents, 5000. cyber-security agents, about 1000 agents. and how that hasminal

changed. guest: there are separate parts that all come under what the fbi refers to as the national security program. those numbers can go back and forth, depending on the task at the time. looking at the number of agents, id is more of the -- armistead open. yesterday in the program, it did not indicate the number of agents involved from the other impacted groups. those people come under the budget at the laboratory, primarily based on what they do cause involved with appeared- terrorism -- is involved with counter-terrorism.

host: $7.6 billion, $7.7 billion, counter-terrorism /counterintelligence. criminal enterprises and federal crimes, $2.6 billion. services, $491 million. explain those numbers a little bit. are those all the same thing? guest: within the fbi itself, the background of the national security program, the counterintelligence division, the weapons of mass destruction director, and the terrorist cleaning center, all considered as a part of the national security program. those efforts are at cross- purposes, to some extent. host: how does the training differ? guest: all agents go through a program in quantico, va., that

is 21 weeks. thereafter they undergo in service training that has to do with what they are doing at any given time. they also do virtual courses that they are required to do any given time. they are referred to lovingly as baby agents. they are assigned to a more senior agent where they have to do a certain number of steps for the experience. as you move on in the fbi, typically get to the point where you will be a specialist in something. you would be going back to quantico, doing virtual training on all of those this.tn absolutely wonderful program for learning about the culture, the history, and the way that things are done in foreign countries.

of course, the training from the united states for an military academy offers many different things the golan. the fbi is doing this leadership development institute, bringing leaders together to train them. host: i wanted to ask you, what do you think would surprise viewers listening to this conversation about thein counte? guest: one thing that people do not realize is that since 9/11, there has been a considerable increase in the budget of the fbi. on 9/11 we basically had 10,300 agents. look at that, look at what happened to the fbi in general, biggest changes havehat time.be

been in analysts. they are an intelligence-driven organization. to reach that, we increase the analytical component by hiring more analysts. analysts have gone up 300%. those people, among other things, are your language specialists and computer engineers. ,iven the organization's whenever they hire you, or whoever, it comes for -- it comes with computer and so forth. the fbi is the same way. on 9/11, that was 0.75 of the salary. it is now 250%. the fbi has gone to great lengths to make every agent more

robust in what they can do. host: does the agency have a hard time filling these roles? guest:, the hardest is exotic languages. they are very difficult. there are a lot of languages and dialects, particularly in the strife areas of africa. i found one in a coffee shop. host: and recruited him? guest: yes. [laughter] been waiting patiently. go ahead. caller: can you hear me? host: yes. caller: i have two questions. underground earlier in your conversation. i am interested to know, we have subversive groups in the united states going into other countries. such as code tank.

the weather underground is becoming active again by deed and dawn. countries like israel. the groups that are not sponsored, do you check those out in counter-terrorism? guest: for the answer to that is fairly simple. if they represent a threat -- remember, the fbi is an intelligence-led threat-driven organization. but those, in two parts. the person with an intent, but no capability, produces a reduced threat. if they meet the definition of terrorism, the fbi would be very much interested. host: independent line. caller: good morning. you mentioned you

the fbi, 1972, when they had terrorism within the united states government. did you did not mention the black liberation army. you did not ever mention [unintelligible] program of the fbi at the time that infiltrated the organization based on terrorism, destroying these organizations through the end of the acts of the united states government. color abuse is one of the died lines of the fbi? -- what the guidelines of the fbi? guest: correct. caller: then why are there so many shootings of black persons in our communities that cannot be justified and no one from the federal government has been prosecuted? none of these police officers

from the u.s. attorney's office? guest: prosecutions have been done. one is to protect the national security of the united states. the biggest dog in the ring is counter-intelligence. the next is to preserve civil liberties. when we look at the civil liberties, it is important to look at how we are doing that. that is done very aggressively in every field office. host: democratic caller. detroit, michigan. you are next. caller: good morning. what i would like to ask, up in detroit, michigan, in our

newspaper they have pictures of terrorists and that we should be on the lookout for. they came into our office. we all called the fbi and said that they have to watch the planes. also, they were caught at 4:00 in the morning. 3:00 or 4:00. they were let go. host: what is your -- caller: what they said is that we have to watch planes. is that just to subdue us, so that they would check into was anyways? guest: i do not know what that would be about. the fbi does not watch airplanes unless there is a target for criminal action. they are interested in people. i do not know what they said to

you, but i can assure you that every single terrorism we in this country is covered. if, in fact, they stop some people at a power plant, the question is -- is there sufficient cause to take those people into custody? the fbi cannot arrest people just on their elk. there has to be probable cause. host: in the 1970's or 1980's, a tip on a possible terrorist, how long did it take for that information to get checked out as opposed to today? guest: today there are, among other things, and hence partnerships going on between law enforcement organizations, including increased information capabilities. it is much easier to get information out of the

government. there is something out there called the national data exchange that is hosted by the fbi in west virginia and it takes incident-based information, sending it out to law enforcement officers, reading this information to see what is interesting. host: real time? guest: very fast. host: like fingerprints? guest: that modus operandi can be picked up and traced to others. law enforcement officers doing this, there was a similar case in iowa, or new york city. there was a point of contact leading forward to get a better handle on it. host: joe, good morning. caller: if i do not know if this problem is as large as it

sometimes is characterized, but i have read about people being added to the terrorist watch list for reasons of confrontation. can you speak briefly about that? how easy is it for an employee outside law enforcement to get their name on a terrorist watch list? how do you get off of the terrorist watch list? guest: are you on that? [laughter] i was, at one time. people are placed on the list based on the need from the center, determining whether or not they posed a threat to the united states. pat is how it is done. once your army has a watch list, at that point there are procedures that you can go through. not with the fbi, but the

department of homeland security. perhaps they could talk to you about that. host: we have covered the watch list before. we have covered segments on that. you, yourself? did you go to the fbi? guest: i spoke to everyone that i could. indirectly, i had a role in starting it and all of a sudden i was on it because of a common name reference. david williams is about as common as you can get. it really is a pain in the neck. i can commiserate with people who feel they are on it unjustly. i had to continually explain why was and what was going on. every year the screening and listing gets much more sophisticated. and it does get better. host: you said that this was an

idea of yours pelops -- idea of yours? guest: i became a part of the terrorist threat matrix. host: did the fbi get information from that list? guest: the fbi can get information from that list. host: it is considered a counter-terrorism tool? guest: yes. it is run by the fbi, though other agencies are involved. the watch list is just a part of that. trudy, it is the responsibility host: stephen, connecticut. caller: that is a crazy story. host: do you know of any more? guest: no. [laughter]

the fbi has been pretty inclusive lately. sometimes i am concerned that the focus is too much on counter-terrorism. pulling the wool over the federal government, are we spending too much time on that? guest: are we spending too much time on terrorism? i think not. there is a continuing series of reviews done at the fbi to since it -- consider the veracity of threats against the united states. al qaeda is still interested in doing massive damage to the united states. they proclaim that they are interested in procuring a weapon of mass destruction pop to attack the united states. i do not expect that that will change, since the demise of osama bin laden. that is a very real thing. offshoots of that, particularly in the arabian peninsula,

copper is a prickly, a growing threat. to the other groups with no direct affiliation, inspired by that mentality, they are a real and continuing threat. the fbi has kept them as highest priority. host: new york, the morning. you are on the air. caller: mr. williams, how're you doing? guest: fine. host: -- caller: great. a long time ago, before the anthrax letter was sent, a man came to me and he mentioned it passionately. and he asked, would you think of it as political to do so? i was very tired that day and i did not care to answer.

after the next paragraph, he mentioned anthrax. he was so happy about that, with washington. i did not think about it then, but if there was a factor that they could get caught, what do you call it, $2.5 million? i realize that they would need to play it, otherwise. he had a white car. all of their docks were in a row. he wrote the note, like the unabomber. he probably use the ruler. host: do you have a question? caller: we are one payment away from losing your house.

i sent it to my wife. guest: the entire award that the fbi gives out, does that work? guest: the rewards program is very effective. it has been very effective in many cases. some of the international terrorists, we have not had great luck with. nobody called in to tell us that osama bin laden was in a particular place in pakistan, but at the lower level we do find them to be very successful. host: a question from one of our regular watchers on twitter -- guest: they are used when it comes to counter-terrorism. human intelligence is extremely important. it is one of the pillars of the

intelligence base of the fbi. i would say that they are vetted much more closely than when i came into the fbi. there were a series of steps that i will not go into specifically, but those agents as a source of information, easily they had to be gone through to determine the fidelity of the individual. host: what is the risk to the informant outside of the alleged terrorist cell in this country? guest: the risk is high. higher. it does not just apply to counter-terrorism. i would say that the risk to an undercover agent or an informant in drug cartels is extraordinarily high. it is legal, to be discovered. host: what happens to these informants, once their work is done?

recruit sources of information coming up. within sources of information, we have witnesses that we use. once they are used, there cover has been blown. generally, we like -- running sources of information over a period of time. host: john, democratic caller. caller: people like me are concerned about the tactics of the fbi in anti-war activists, anti-drilling organizations, though there is no evidence that these people are a threat. they are sometimes the opposite of terrorists. without probable cause they seem to be completely suppressed.

to my knowledge, hardly any information on these people have turned up to this day? host: do you know where you have gotten this information? caller: i am positive that has to do with the patriot act. in my opinion, the patriot act is a confiscation of the american rights. opinion i have lost all faith in the fbi. many americans have. host: i apologize, your call keeps breaking up. the fbi, counter-terrorism, and the patriot that guest: it does not change the fbi's jurisdiction. we do not go into anyone's home without a warrant.

a search warrant will get you in, so will a court order, based on probable cause. in the national security are been a, you have to have foreign intelligence surveillance court, with probable cause, to move forward and gain entry. the fbi is not breaking into homes, willy-nilly, and it is not seizing anything willy- nilly. caller: in my opinion, let me say this, i live in washington, d.c., when he was in the thing, 1968 through 1972. the fbi infiltrated all of the peace movements, the school that i went to, i would not trust the fbi if they told me of water was wet. i will tell you why. if they were serious about protecting this country, they

would cover the southern border. 30 million people are walking across and no one has detected anything? 30 million people walking across that border? who else is coming in? host: someone writes in -- guest: people distrust the government in times when things are tough. a major terrorist attack, people tend to lose confidence in all aspects of government. since fbi's on the forefront, that is what happened. i would say to those people, talk to the fbi, we are out in the community at all times. you can talk to them and find out exactly what they are doing. certainly the director is on c- span and other networks,

constantly, telling -- talking about what we are doing. water is wet. host: you think there needs to be more communication from the fbi? more of an effort to be more transparent? as much as they can be? guest: i think that it is a very transparent right now. there are some things we just cannot talk about, like the number of informants. certain things are protected. what the fbi is doing, as far as their mission, i think that we are very transparent on that. there website will give younfor. host: republican line, indiana. caller: my question is four could. how did that guy get through? to shoot all of those people? how was he vetted?

explain more about how you, you know, check backgrounds. i had a question about all of that. host: the fbi does background checks? guest:, we do, but not on the army. the army does his own stuff. was a psychologist with authorization to be where he was. the notion that he had apparently suspicious behavior that presages the actions that he took, were a matter for the army. the fbi was alerted to him. he was deemed to not be a threat by the army. host: charles, democratic line. caller: how many exirement fromi

-- from the fbi? you have been retired since 2001. are you double dipping? them by paying you twice? what do you do? guest: i make nothing right now. i am retired, retired. greta is not giving me any money -- any money either. [laughter] i can understand your concern. i have not drawn a federal dollars since 2001. host: pensacola, florida. caller: how much is there a problem around interagency lack of cooperation as far as intelligence? this has troubled me since 9/11. understood that there was a lot of that going on.

i was wondering if you could address that. is that still a problem? does that happen much nowadays? guest: probably one of the best questions this morning. one of the tenants of our mission is to carry for information sharing with law- enforcement communities and counter-terrorism communities. the various tribunals that met after 9/11 exposed areas where that was not what was happening. part of that was that information technology did not allow that to happen. in the days and years leading up to 9/11, there was less communication. it has increased substantially since 9/11. lots of cross pollination between the cia, fbi, and other intelligence organizations. we have inaugurated the national

joint terrorism task force to bring together the key elements of the government. key to that was the creation of the national counter-terrorism center, bringing those elements together, where the real time sharing is going on and most employees look at themselves as members of one team, rather than individual entities. host: does the fbi have a presence there? guest: a huge presence. caller: it is run by? guest: the national intelligence director. that was a good question. host: mark, democrat, florida. caller: here is another good question. ladies and gentlemen, i have worked with senior fbi agents in argentine as a young marine.

53, former policeman, doing maintenance on nuclear power plants, cannot be too bad of a guy. the bush and administration was asked for more, knowing that he would be turned down. taking over the security position for towers 1 and two, can you tell me who the other clients were? guest: i could not. caller: i will tell you. the enron corp., is like those missing 18 minutes of tape. i am dubious. i think that the earlier message about the power of multi- national organizations, with

respect to your perception of patriotism, i do not trust what happened on 9/11 physically or politically. host: any reaction to that? guest: i was in the marine corps and i would have to say that i do not share his cynicism with what is happening in the government. in terms of maintaining secrecy on anything, the idea of grand conspiracies' in washington, d.c., it does not exist. a computer -- conspiracy in this town is almost impossible. host: this question -- guest: that runs on the iii. it is as accurate as the information fed into it. the fbi has been criticized of trying to arrest the wrong people.

without being able to prove that these are really felons. a lot of that is the final disposition that is not being submitted by law enforcement agencies in a timely manner. the fbi only reports that information if theyhost: last p, california, guest: good morning. caller: i do not understand the efforts and meticulous detail that having gone through to protect the people in this country. you have seen quite a few changes between 1972 and now about people getting scared in different ways. e .. guys. you understand that times are changing. changing.