to be uncomfortable having direct confrontation. one of the things that happens why fathers are important, there is a lot of different reasons but one of them is fathers help their sons in particular learn to modify and moderate their owning a aggression. they help them learn the limits of aggression. the usefulness of aggression. they can model various behavior for them and they can help them. one of the findings that the psychoanalysts in boston jim herzog who has written a book called, father hunger found that children who are two, three, four, five, without a father at home, have more trouble modulating their aggression and managing it and what happens if you can't managing a aggression you become anxious or you, kind of split off and become disconnected internally from your aggression. i think that is something that may have also happened to him.

one of the things that is striking also is that all of us, when we are developing have an either/or experience in life. you're a good guy or a bad guy. my kids used to say to me, do we like that person on television or is he a bad guy? who is better, barry bond or mark mcgwire. whatever it is it is always comparing. is this the better thing or is that the better thing. comparing and contrast. almost like opposites and when you're an infant the theory goes, at least i ascribe to is that when you have a bat, your experiences are segmental. they're really like digital. so a baby when they're crying has never been happy and a baby when he is happy has never been crying. i mean that is sort of the feeling you're with a baby who is totally miserable or totally joyful and that, but if the baby only has one

mother they may link their image of that mother with both the crying and the happy. in order to manage their world they have two mothers almost, a good mother and a bad mother. it is an either/or. are you good or bad? eventually as they grow older they realize something woody allen called ambivalence. they learn that they can love and hate the same person and be angry and also need them that is something that obama learned very deeply in one way and inñi fact gave one of the most moving speeches i ever heard on his grandmother in the famous speech on race in philadelphia in 2008. but the problem is in politics most nations are basically paranoid and most nations are either/or. and many leaders are paranoid, especially in particular in the last 30 years, ronald reagan and george bush, george w. bush, would be with us or against

us. you're the evil empire or we're good. it is like either/or. and is a both/and person, not a either/or person. very hard for a both/and person to lead a either/or nation and it is a great difficulty. and i think that is one of his major difficulties, which how do you lead an either --/or nation but you have to recognize that it is either/or. there is lot more in the book. i'm not just going to go through everything in the book but basically those are some of the main ideas in the book. the, the technique of applied psychoanalysis is very old. started with freud. almost as old as clinical psychoanalysis because it is essentially an experience analytically of treating people who you can never get into your consulting room because they're either public figures or they're dead or sometimes even

fictitious figures like hamlet had a lot of analysts over the years. [laughter] probably still does and but it involves reading everything about them. looking at everything you can about them. looking for patterns in their behavior. looking for different feelings that they repeat. looking for feelingsçó that get aroused in you when you read about them and thinking about those things. so it's a very extensive exploration. the and the difference with obama is, he actually did write essentially two autobiographyes so it made it much more compelling to read them and think about him in a psychoanalytic way. then i would compare the difficult things that i read with various behaviors that he exhibited as president and also comparing a lot of the things that he said versus the things that he did and i've looked at that extensively. and that's essentially a lot

of the book. i felt that the last couple of chapters, what were very important was that, i wrote a chapter called, our obama and another one called their obama and the reason i did that was because i really think that there are not just two different obamas, one candidate, and one president, there is at least two different perceptions of obama and i was very interested in the dynamics of those perceptions. the unconscious factors that go into into making those perceptions and how people on the left or liberal people see him. people on the right, how they see him. and there is chapters on each of those. i was really thinking very much about hisñi accommodation and his accommodating and i will stop in a second but what happened was, i was going to send in the book on a monday morning to the publisher to get printed and on sunday he made announcement that he had killed bin laden. i thought, oh, my god, you know. here i am talking about this

bipartisan, neurotic president who's tough and, and i called the publisher and i said, editor, i said you know what? i think we need another chapter on this book. and it became a very interesting project to do that chapter. he agreed and essentially it reallyxd is about, the chapter is entitled "mission accomplished" but basically it just had something to do with, worries me a little bit as a psychoanalyst but basically, i felt that he was comfortable being aggressive and being absolutely dead on tough when it's clear to him that everybody will support him. and when he is not attacking anybody except when he is a candidate then it is okay to attack people in the other camp or the other party but

basically it's okay to do it this time but not okay any other time and it was very hard for him still i think to do it but i'm worried about that conclusion or that tentative conclusion because i was reminded of sir carl popper whoñi i happen to have the fortune of spent an evening with many years ago and he hated sky coanalysis and -- psychoanalysis, probably for him good reason sometimes. he said to me, look, if this glass suddenly started going up and there was nobody lifting it up all science would have to throw out the theory of gravity. they would start questioning the theory of gravity but a psychoanalyst would find a way to fold that into their theory [laughing] so i hope that chapter did not just do that but, you know, but it may have. there is one other theoretical thing that is very important about psychoanalysis i think in general and we all know about and that is something called repetition compulsion.

repetition compulsion is an unconscious act whereby you repeat early problems that you had, patterns of behavior that you had in relation to certain people, probably in the effort, in an attempt to solve them, have them come out differently. and, i was struck by thatñi, you know in my own life. everybody has that in their lifes in one form or another. obama wrote something that just absolutely shocked me. even though i know about repetition compulsion. he wrote, in "dreams for my father", so he wrote this in 19, oh, yeah, 1955 i guess. 1995. 55. 1995. he writes this in one sentence. i had grown tired of trying to untangle a mess that wasn't of my own making. isn't that an amazing thing to write, given the fact that he inherited the biggest mess that he sought

it out to untangle the biggest mess in the history of anybody's lifetime, to untangle? it's stunning. anyway, why don't we just stop there. there is lots to talk about. people may have lots of thoughts and i think this is a good point to stop? okay. >> yes, okay. we've got a question right here. >> okay. that sound absolutely spot on. it confirms, sort of what i thought. my question is, politically it has been disasterous for him. the deficit argument this summer where they just backed him up. each time he agreed to something, they really did, keep moving the goalpost until he finally said no. do you think he can learn anything or do you think he and we are compelled to repeat this until 2012? >> i think he is much better than mark twain's cat.

mark twain said that he didn't believe in learning from experience. he said that a cat who jumps on a hot stove will never doñi it again but of course it will never jump on a cold stove either. i think that in obama's case, i think he actually is learning from his experience and i think he can. i mean my, i think that, in fact i said in one interview that felt his single best therapist at this point would be john boehner because he would finally recognize that this man is only out to get him, and the idea of a grand bargain is an idea that was initiated maybe even by boehner but that it is about a seduction and abandonment. this is a pattern in obama's life of seduction and abandonment also i really didn't get into in this discussion but is in the book. his mother would be very close with him and go away. there is seduction and ban

donement pattern. if he can see people are fundamentally out to get him, okay to be a little paranoid especially if you're president [laughing] in fact if you weren't, it's, so i think he can learn from experience but right now we're seeing somebody who is not clear yet to me. he is either candidate obama coming back, or he is actually the president who we wanted him to be in the first place. it is not clear yet but i do think he can learn from experience. i actually was so moved by that possibility in fact after i finished the book that i decided, i wanted to get him a copy. so on friday morning, the book came out on a tuesday last week an on friday i went to the white house and i went to the gate and i tried to get, get the guard to take the book into him and it is a whole long story but was pretty amazing. the guard said no, and blah, blah, but i had to mail it. so i had learned earlier that day somebody from the white house communications

office had actually rung up the person who did the interview of me in "huffington post" and said to her, is this for real? and she, to her credit wrote back, and said, yes, and how is your mother? [laughter] so, i like that. so i decided to find that guy's name and i called him up and i called the white house up and the white house was giving me all this rage ma role and wouldn't talk to me. and i talked to her, the secretary of this guy and she said that the book would get there, i still have to mail it in, i said i was really concerned if people like, sean hannity and everybody, maybe i was being grandiose because i don't think they were paying much attention to this book but if they were could make hay of it got a hold of it would be a bad thing and he should know about it. look, it will get here in timely manner. so send it in. i said i've been living in

washington too long, what do you mean timely manner? [laughter] and she said, well, a week, two weeks. i said, i don'tñi know what timely is to you or timely to me but what do you mean. finally i got so fed up i'm going to go to the phone book and look up the guy's address and just give him the book. he was director of communications at the white house. so, i hung up and about 10 minutes later the white house called me and they said this is the white house. i got really scared. [laughter] and they said, somebody is going to be calling you from the white house. so a few minutes later this woman called me back and said she changed her afternoon schedule and she will meet with me and will let me giver her the book so i can give it to him in the afternoon at lafayette park. i said, okay. lafayette is fairly book park. >> wasn't in a garage. >> wasn't in a garage. that's right. i'm glad it wasn't in the garage. it was in lafayette park.

i said lafayette, park, let's find a better place. she will meet at this coffee place on pennsylvania. and said, you will recognize me. i'm old, bald man with a big white moustache and how i will recognize you? she said, i will bewaring a black trench coat? [laughter] sure enough she was and anyway she got the book. i hope he can learn from this. he is really great in lots of ways and is maddening in others. >> thank you. >> obama from his family history and everything that we know and, you described, had many, many reasons to not turn out well. i mean we know people who have very early dismantling in their lives. they don't ever quite make it or they're not quite full citizens you might say in society. and i have known a couple

people who i think like obama, have made, you know, very well out of their life and i think certainly he has. i'm wondering what your perspective is on the factor of tell against? because people i know all seem to be of a high intelligence, that were able to see what was the reality and be able to go beyond? >> i think high intelligence is very important especially in his, especially because in something, you know, i don't want to sound too freudian, but some ways freud wrote about delayed gratification and the thought is trial action. so if you can learn to think before you act, and that usually takes somewhat higher intelligence, then, you can actually move into action in a very different way in a much more mature way. obama, from his earliest days was able to think. he read a lot. he was interested in myths.

he did have very good mothering in the first few years of his life. even though he came from two broken homes essentially and mixed race thing he also had a lot of really positive things. his grandmother adored him. she worked very hard to make sure he would do his studies. so he was really, in that sense, he got a lot but intelligence plays a huge huge role. one of the things he wrote about as an aside, it wasn't, when he looks at a picture in a magazine, before he reads the cap fun he likes to figure out what the caption would say. and that is somebody who has got a playful mind and who is smart. he likes to think like that. i think it does play a role. there is microphone over there for those who want to talk to but yeah. >> i need your help in making sense of something. big obama supporter. but i have been stopped in my tracks on the issue of

the, i won't even name names because the names inflammatory but, on the issue of the extra judicial of two american citizens overseas. there are always going to be bad people in this country who threaten people. this is the first timeñi in our nation's history that the second testify branch in a secret proceeding has tried, presented evidence to itself and determined that an american citizen is worthy of being killed without presenting any formal charges against that person or even revealing what the processes are for putting that person on a list to be killed. and i can not square this with the candidate i supported in the election who seemed to be the beneficiary of some of the best that our legal education has to offer. who seemed to be himself a beneficiary of the 14th amendment and i feel like i have missed something very profound about his

background that needs explanation. >> well i do think that is a very important question, first of all, and something that has troubled me also. i think that his, if he can somewhat anonymously expressing a aggression and murder russness and at a distance he is somewhat comfortable doing that and does override his sense of law because it is doing the right thing. one of the things that i didn't mention in this discussion but i think if you read the book you will see, is that he talks about how at times he would withdraw into a tight coil of rage and he used that term. and i think that the tight coil of rain is really aimed unconsciously at both of his parents, not just at his father for abandoning the family but for, at his mother. and i think that the rain at his mother is just so

unacceptable that it has to be denied or repressed or something and so he mocks people who think the way she did as his way of getting back at her. but as far as the rain that is there i think it really is there and i think that bill maher has been made anxious by that rage enough that he actually said something about it. he said, you know, he essentially said that obama is telling people don't mess with me. i'll, you know, i can look you right in the eye and be very friendly and then i will have you killed. and i think that is a message that is coming out. now i think that i don't know where else to go with that but i do think the source of it is he is able to do that as long as the person is anonymous because as a both/and person you can never know the person you want to kill. once he plays golf with john boehner he can't kill him.

[laughter] that's too bad. not that want to kill john boehner but it is too bad he can't just do what needs to be done which is make clear what the problems are and name them. >> i had a question that was very much related to the last comment and, has to do with osama bin laden and these drone killings, use of secret war. david ignatius wrote how he is one of the presidents who has taken most quickly into understanding our intelligence system and all this secret stuff that is out there and we have all the secret armies. and he is also what is interesting been one of the presidents who has been most vociferious about shutting down and badly treating whistle-blowers and not tolerating any kind, wikileaks, any kind of attacks of someone coming at him. so i'm, wondering if he put all this together of someone who can't brook criticism?

who can't brook having an alternative view of out there and, and on top of this being willing to take, to be a law unto himself regardless of of what the law is? >> this is always where i like to come to politics & prose. this is so good and so important. i think in his unconscience, again this is my reading of him, whistle-blowers are whiners, are complainers. they're not really responsible, healthy people in his mind. just the way he treated the congressional black caucus a couple weeks ago, heñi said, get out of your slippers and all that stuff. i think that it's because he was never allowed to whine. my kids whine. some of them are here even and they know [laughing] i hope they don't whine so much now but i think he never was allowed to whine,

ever. his mother would not allow it. i think he has learned to not accept it. there is one vignette to say as part of the answer that is important. he talks about how he, when i was telling you before how he would look at pictures and try to figure what they were about, he was talking about a guy in life magazine who had, a black man who tried to bleach his skin and he started reading about it. he was nine years old at that time and he said that he was horrified that somebody could hate themselves so much that they want to change their skin color. and it is a horrific thing to discover and he discovered it at nine. he was horrified but the thing that is the secret thing that impressed me in the book is, not the horror of it and not his rage. he wanted to run and tell his mother about it. he wanted to ask his mother's boss who was an african-american. he wanted to ask him if he knew about this. wanted to ask her if she knew about this. instead he read it. he was horrified. over a period of 10 or 15

minutes he put the book back, "life" magazine back. put it in a pile. smile on his face and acted if nothing ever happened that is where that stuff goes. >> killing john boehner would not gain him any votes. >> no, it would not.ñi >> the point i want -- >> i will vote for him anyway. >> is, obama is a politician and i think it is very important, i write also about psychology of leaders and i think you have to look at what a leader like obama is a strategist. he is constantly thinking of what will work, what will win. he has had a vision from the start about what would make the country stronger in terms of infrastructure, education, science, so on.

health care. and if you look at the nature of the voting public, there is 20% really determine an election. you have probably 40% democrats, 40% republicans and tend to vote that way and 20%çó independents. those independents elected him because they believed he would bring people together. >> yes. >> so the strengths that he developed, as you point out from childhood and so forth were exactly what they wanted to see. >> yes. >> if he didn't try he would have lost immediately. any support from this group. what he has been able to do now is to be able to say, as he attacks the congress and republicans, i did everything. i tried everything. i went a distance. he has set himself up strategically to be able to really do a truman-type

election. so i think it is very important, if you want to balance the understanding of obama to understand the fact that he is a very gifted politician and that has both from a human point of view and ethical point of view strengths and weaknesses. go back and read the excellent book about lincoln and slavery by eric foner. you see some of same kind of contradictions you're discussing. >> i agree with that and i do think -- that is why this is a very hard, freud said, don't ever write about a patient until the analysis is over. well, this is an ongoing situation. i think that had i more time and wanted a different publisher i would have spent more time with some of the5÷q6h% issues that you raise. i think they're very important. i do think he is a strategist. i do think he thinks in the long run. from with that is until two years ago, until last year,

until a few months ago, he seems to really deny the destructiveness and in fact, in 2010, he was getting people to vote against congress, not against republicans in congress. so the democrats lost the congress badly. but that was partly his fault in that he really didn't, wasn't explicit. one of the important things being aggressive have it being pointed and name what you're angry at and talk about it. as opposed to the do-nothing congress. his complaints about the congress are very similar to what the left has complained about him. it is interesting to think about it that way also, the do-nothing president who says one thing and doesn't get it done. now you're saying, but i was really, first of all psychoanalysis is only one thing, one tool to understanding and to expand our thinking about a person. it is not really going to take into account all the political economic factors. he is a very smart

strategist and people have always talked about, he plays chess when everybody else plays checkers. i think that is probably true and it's a daunting experience for me to be working with someone who is that smart and thinking about him in this way. so i appreciate the comment and i think we'll have to wait and see. >> we've got time for one last question. >> question about strategy. i don't know how many people saw the front line series, lost in detention but it was about the president's strategy on the immigration policy and in that it is about the large number of people who are being, larger number of people who are being deported from this country under him than were deported under george w. bush. >> yes. >> and the numeric goals that are being set for the number of people to be deported, to the point where people are, families are being broken up and people who will come forward as witnesses or victims of

crimes find themselves deported. there was one very chilling part of that, that show where a representative of the administration referred to those families as collateral damage. >> yes. >> and i'm sorry, i'm like the other gentleman having a hard time reconciling that with the principled person? >> i think that, i think that that's why i wrote the book too. i mean that really hard to reconcile that. let me say one thing. that if obama could have said something to his mother and i don't blame everything on this but i think if he could have said, instead of closing that book, can you believe that people do this? tell me about it. or if he could have said to his mother, what's more important, a boy or a remote indonesian village? if he could have said some of those things i don't think he would necessarily be in the situation he is in

now because i think he was collateral damage to his mother as research. and i think that that's makes it very difficult. there is a kind of attachment that some psychoanalysts talking about these days, more than ever before, really, called dismissive attachment. which is if you are, hurt in certain ways by a parent or, by a sibling or whatever, you instead of protesting and getting angry you shut yourself down and close off. that is a dismissive attachment. i think he does that and i think that his mother did that. and i think that's a problem because he can really see these people as collateral damage and it is very disturbing? >> [inaudible]. play golf with him [laughing] >> can i make a comment? >> sure. >> i don't have a question. when you talk about a strategist, maybe he is a brilliant strategist but he is strategizing plaquemines and his involvementñi with --

black man and his involve with jeremiah wright had to understand about theñi power of politics in america. >> absolutely. >> delicate tightrope. flick after second, wink of an eye, you can go from benevolent to the blackmon sister that will devour us. >> yes. battling that all his life. >> and particularly now. >> the irony about that at that is, wright was the one real significant, in my view, father figure he ever had after he left hawaii. he was a person who married him and michelle. he baptized both their children. he went to that church. he really had intense substantive discussions with him and he was also torn away from him in a certain way. and i agree with you. it is a very tough balance. thank you. so i'm going to, i'm going to do one last thing [applause]

one last thing because i think this is important and that is something i ran across last week which is, a quote of rumy's which is only one sentence. it summarizes some of these issues. the out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. i'll meet you there.

he spoke of politics and prose in washington, d.c.. >> on behalf of the entire staff i'd like to welcome you to the store most to their regular here know how much we appreciate your presence and how much we gather like this. tonight's event is one of the nearly 500 author talks that we hosted the story each year. part of what we consider our central missions which is not just selling books but the literature and ideas were and that same spirit expanding the offerings in the recent months and we continue to support dozens of book clubs. if you are new to the store and what find out more about what we

do, you can sign up leader at the information desk back in the center of the store to receive our weekly newsletter that contains the calendar of events, listings of glasses and programs, staff favorites and other useful information. or you can go to our website, www.politics-prose.com. and please, keep in mind if you can purchase the books from online and if you have any reader you can even download evokes the from the web site. we are delighted to have as our guest this evening david unger. david is someone who makes a living by expressing opinions. the editorial opinion of "the new york times." he's been on the editorial board of the times for more than 30 years. and if you ever read a times editorial of the military, foreign policy, or international

finance, there is a good chance david had a hand in it. he got a historian's training to his journalism having earned a ph.d. from the university of texas at austin and his provocative new book "the emergency state americas pursuit of absolute security at all costs" offers a broad historical perspective that surveys 70 years of u.s. security policy to argue that the united states has gone terribly awry trying to make itself safe. david's basic point is that the institutions that we have built, and policies we have established to ensure our national security or our originally designed to fight nazi germany and wage the cold war against the soviet union. they were not conceived to protect us against today's international terrorism and other 21st century threats.

david argues that since the time of roosevelt and truman, we have slipped into what he calls, quote, permanent self renewing state of emergency marked by excess of lacy credit agencies and a kind of imperial presidency our constitution had never intended. the result has been an increasingly complicated, costly and intellectual security system that has damaged our democracy, undermined our economic strength, and ironically, david argues, left us more vulnerable. david doesn't just described, he also prescribes. the final part of his book contains a blueprint for the future, and as you might imagine from his steering critique, the solution for revitalizing american democracy would require radical changes in our approach to national security. some of the things he recommends

even have a kind of fact to be cut back to the future quality like requiring that the war we fight declares by congress and not by the white house and become much more selective about what the government information gets classified. david crites with a lot of passion in his book even if you don't accept all of its promise it will definitely make you think, and by encouraging walter reed it. david plans to speak for about 20 to 30 minutes and then he will take questions and then he will stick around to sign copies of his book. if you have a question with just step up to the microphone here in the center and of course tonight we have c-span cameras here. please silence your cellphone and join me in welcoming david

unger. [applause] to this great washington institution i'm really glad to be here. the most important part of the evening will be your questions and my responses but since the book just came out bradley gave an excellent summary i think i ought to tell you a little bit more about what is a net. first of all the title what is the emergency state, i live in europe most of the time the state of emergency isn't quite the same thing. the emergency state is a set of procedures, practices and institutions that we've developed, constitutional short cuts we've developed over the last 70 years to fight world war ii, to fight the cold war, to fight the war of harvard without

the intent of building a system parallel to the constitution but with the effect, under war is one of them budgets that can't be reported to the congress that the cia and come, as you can't exercise the power over classification of information if we are not allowed to know about them and even president obama can't tell us what happened with the jerome strike because presumably he's allowed to know what he's not allowed to tell us. we don't carry a the emergency stay all at once. it's been grown. it certainly didn't start under george w. bush, but i think the experience of the bush-cheney administration made us see in a clearer way or we've been doing. but as i did the research for this book, my feeling is the bush and administration invented little but was new. it was built on practices and

conditions into extraordinary conditions but nothing really new we can talk about that in the question and i answered the details of the recent past its but things we can do now to get ourselves back on track and the ideas i offered in the book and the purpose of the ideas i'm not qualified to give a blueprint of returning america to constitution, none of us is. it's a deliberate over four months by the educated elite of their day with popular input to the ratification conventions and we need the same kind of process. what i'm trying to do it here is stored in the discussion i'm being deliberately provocative with some of the proposals but the analysis is straight it's that it as carefully as if it were going to a "new york times" editorial where we never liked to have to remember some corrections because be

overstated our point and the changes we decide on the war and peace and changes that we recruit and configure our military forces, changes in the way that congress passes and deliberate military budgets and changes we deal with the world as a whole, changes that we reach and treated the agreements because the emergency state isn't just about foreign policy. it's about how our american democracy shapes or ought to shape our place in the new global economy. it's not - from the economy. it's facing away our constitutional democracy can and should with all the assets available to us in our system. it's not just about what we decided to do it's more important how we debate and decide mainly in daylight with information from our government cannot impose execute hearings. it's about making our democracy work again. that's the main point.

the concept of the title is on the one side we have the coherent fought through plan of the constitutional democracy, the separation of powers, the checks and balances. all of them may have a little and aquarium feeling the 21st century but they were done for a reason, the rhythm from the experience of the founding generation with a tyranny of british colonial rule with the fate of earlier republics italian renaissance, republic before them which failed and had succumbed to the military leaders. the kid particularly understood that the greatest danger to the survival of the republican democracy was unchecked for power in the executive. they knew from the experience of the article in the confederation they need a stronger national constitution. they were determined to build one with the exit of authority couldn't go to war unchecked. they decided the war power deliberately between the president and the congress why were they afraid of the war?

because the war for one is a source of testing that a government which we just constant war is going to have to levy heavy taxes which will get this our populace the system and change the relationship between the government and the secrecy of war and secrecy to the government opened. they are consistently worried about the war power. finally, as the authors will tell you of any kind of book, the title concept is a narrative frame. it's the author choice of some reorganizing the massive data out there. now the only way of organizing it, it's the way that i chose to organize it. most of the material in the book, there's some primary research there and there's some reporting that i've done in the course of my time there's some original documents to look back and most of this book is based on is the very rich secondary

source literature we have, but industry analysts in the history, and what i've done with that is i've gone back into all that data that we all know that you all know, that all know, and looked at patterns that come out of it when you ask the questions of 2012, and that is the way good history works or else the history of the revolution would have been written and finished in 1830, no reason to go back to it, 1850 is a different set of questions. theodore roosevelt asked a different set of questions. woodrow wilson's era, the depression era and ours has asked a new set of questions of our shared american history in order to get better and to modify for the needs of today. i tried to be but i try not to oversimplify the reality is complex and also faceted there

are no heroes or villains in this book. we have this complexity, but we don't have to surrender and say it's so complex i can't make sense of it. we can make sense of it, and if we don't try to make sense of it we walk away from our democracy. our democracy count on our trying the average citizen, serious citizen wanting to inform themselves, trying to inform themselves, and if the government isn't giving you the right information demanding that the government can use that information we have not a direct democracy and the assembly we have a representative democracy. the ways we have to demand of our representatives to tell what is going on to be for their decisions not just the campaign boaters but those that have the say of putting them in office or not.

there was always good rationale the president the last 70 years could find for going all side of the constitution and taking emergency state measures we've mentioned like the and declared war, presidential war. fdr had an isolationist congress. the executive he sincerely and accurately so is the need to keep britain from been done before the nazi onslaught and he couldn't master the politician that he was he chose not to face a congress and a public which still is within the shadow of the first world war and isolationism he wanted to run for a third term he wanted to handle all the presidential powers and he went a little bit astray there. but the threat is real it is good. roosevelt did this in the war time and started commenting war time abraham lincoln claimed

habeas corpus in the civil war but when america determined to the japanese and second world war, normally when america's were:war ends and peace is declared the party that led the war turns out the commands are made, but a peacetime emergency state is different the peacetime will when does it end, when does the emergency end, and when we entered into in the truman years was the peacetime emergency state. there were not terribly koln years but we were not a declared war. the last war was the second world war. already the constitution is unhinged here in that we are doing the kind of emergency actions which are constitutionally and otherwise justified by the declared war mike of the presidential or country as the congress has endorsed. but we're doing it in peacetime and indefinitely with of the

emergency state come at hawk emergency state. so truman and eisenhower would talk often about the nature of soviet communism just as we recently had heard about islamic fundamentalism. we then heard this is the uniques ret america has to act like the enemy to fight the enemy. it can't afford to follow to be america to follow its constitutional space rules we have an unscrupulous enemy that will live with whatever. >> that is not the behavior of stalinist russia to challenge whether that was so wise way to respond to it. then after eisenhower you get in the late 50's with the development of the ballistic missiles where either side could annihilate each other on a 20 minute warning. well how can congress declare war met with the launch? there's an argument for adjusting levels to use the power the president has always

had under the constitution to respond to an actual attack in the country to give him a little space to respond on that. but we didn't choose that risk. we chose the presidential decision making, presidential secrecy, cutting ourselves off from that debate indefinitely. and then when the emergency past, when world war ii ended, we saw we had a peacetime emergencies did. the cold war nuclear confrontation, we didn't inherit the safe will, but we didn't have the 18,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us after 1989 after 1991. and yet, the constitutional shortcuts remain in place and i miss the public debate about do they need, did it happen? i was working for the daily newspaper, we talk about a lot of things now we can go back to the constitutional democracy because we are not living -- we didn't have the debate.

there is no reason i would argue that the and declared war that we fought since world war ii, korea, vietnam, afghanistan, first persian gulf war, iraq couldn't be declared. there was no time pressure, there was no need for the surprise, there was a long run-up we all read about it in the newspapers for a constitutional war, not national war, not to consider foreign policy in the democracy the war have only been as popular as the presidents who waged them and only state to the custody popular as long as the president's state popular. korea was enormously popular from june of 1950 until the chinese came across. an albatross politically was popular until that offensive and maybe a little earlier than it can often they would invoke i'm

not going to change the policy of the inherited from the president's and so on so there's become a kind of often war think what that does to the soldiers we are finding a conscription on your volunteer army you still have to put your life on the line to kill and to die for your country in a war which has no constitutional authority we all have this image and with every step of a returning vietnam vets i never saw this happen. nevertheless, people came back to the kind of welcome they deserved for the sacrifices being made for the risk they made in good faith for their country because we had these and your regular kind of war. soldiers still lie, soldiers still light today in afghanistan but the country doesn't really seem to care much anymore about how it ends as long as it ends.

why is it that we have come to think of world war ii as a good war. could perhaps be because it is our last properly declared war in the national war under presidential war. in the era where because the nature of our dangers are not coming at us by surprise from other high-tech superpower we can deliberate and debate. we can go back to the constitutional way that worked but let us of our previous war not like our current war. most of the things we've done since 9/11 was a real letup on this country and a real threat, but it didn't -- it wasn't responded to in a way that made us more secure and was responded to in a way that made the terrorism and the more popular cause in the middle east the

diminished a reputation as a law-abiding nation that divided us internally. it has made us more secure and it has made us that a democratic and it doesn't need to continue that way. the emergency state doesn't work. i can harkin on the war power because it is the obvious example but the emergency state is a much bigger package. it's not just there have been books as long as life and in the business about the imperial presidency, the invisible government, the unitary executive and the national security state. a state reaches more broadly. it reaches to a much bigger problem, a problem that was put together for reasons of national security but created structures that have shortchanged of democracy in other areas as well, economic areas the federal budget areas, tax areas. the we we put together our military budget i work on the

new york times analyzing the military budgets each year. much as i would like to say the current budget is about 525 billion regular baseline budget and 80 billion contingency for iraq and afghanistan why we could cut that in half and still be just as safe we could still be just as state spending have that. once you build it you've got a contract out of there and pay a price of terminating those contracts. we have built it up recklessly and we have to build it down carefully. but what is the result of building that recklessly about a decade in the last decade including obama as well as bush. the 30% real increase of the higher defense budgets in real terms and the ronald reagan buildup or during the height of the cold war nuclear concentration. it is part and parcel of actually what is being debated in this presidential campaign. military spending accounts for

roughly 50 cents of every dollar of discretionary federal spending. last year it was the equivalent to one-third of the total federal tax received. we spent 3.2 trillion last year. our taxes were 2.1 trillion, that's why we have a 1 trillion-dollar deficit of 2.1 trillion that came in as taxes 700 billion went out on the military. so what does the public see? doesn't see the bridges that don't fall down, doesn't see the world class health care system, does it see the shorter lines in the social security office? no. it sees the world's most powerful military and the world's biggest budget deficit. it's pointing our system and political debate how can those of us who believe that there is a place for an activist government in maintaining a

safety net and improving the quality-of-life in america make that case when the mass were the numbers to describe. it's for our tax dollars and the most palpable and most visible thing and it's subtracted from the kind of -- i live in your opinion that is not a happy place in. you all read about the euro crisis. they are not getting what they paid for for the bureaucracy about things that are going to be addressed and reformed and the democratic system we have ourselves in a people with our military spending and we are there now and voted for the change we believe and and it can't be done overnight but this is 2012 and we are there now. it is the policy, the emergence the state is and waging without the half a century, and i'm not saying they kept a sinister secret, but okay, i've been a

member of the council foreign relations for 23 years. i go to all the meetings. i read all of the literature, and it's taken its unstated that the underlying strategic purpose of american foreign policy is expanding the base of the market and is global was in the economy, it's promoting not just globalization and free trade, but a very specific brand of the globalization of the free trade. stealing a line from my colleague, tom friedman, i quit the project flat world. it has been designed to make the world flat, and then one day in the mid-1980s will street for its own reasons tilted and all of those high-paying factory jobs slid off somewhere, not here. you heard the echo of this in the state of the union if president obama believes that he is right the tax incentives and

regulatory incentives can bring manufacturing back then it must have been the prior tax and regulatory policy facilitate their departure that the government can act in ways that rebuild our lost industrial base or economic base and let it be something other than the service retail financial sector economy which we have learned the hard way we are going to have to do just not enough jobs for the country with three a third million people and that great a job. if you read the things in "the new york times" about apple production in china, what comes out is what made the late steve jobs. he had to do it in china it wasn't the low wages. we are talking about sophisticated technological equipment which are a fairly small fraction. it's the fact if he wants a new iphone model in six months, he's only got the work force and the infrastructure build up around china.

it's why when the floods in thailand your hard drive doubles and cost. it's the physical location. that used to be the strength of this country. when the midwest was the industrial belt and when the coal and iron and the auto plants to get the railroads and the erie canal and st. lawrence seaway this is the stuff of industrial power, and we have been living under the illusion the past 20 and 30 years old jobs all products are equivalent when they are not and the week of one day and china says sari, we don't want to do that way. we have the power not to and then what is our vaunted power that we've over invested in the military toys and under invested in economic policies? we will get back to the subject. i don't want to get over the simplistic year because economy is a complicated place, but the narrative took the life just given you is it wrong either. american of the three power is used to spread.

i'm going to use the jargon. a word i probably wouldn't use. a neo liberal form of the globalization across the planet. why am i using that particular word to point out the problem is not globalization is the particular form of the globalization. we have chosen to press around the world and confused with the word globalization which who could oppose or stopped the way of the world? but we've chosen a particular form of globalization. the new liberal globalization as i just use it is a war of choice. it's a policy of choice waged against the 99% come paid for by the 99% and waged in their name and a ramp but it fell to their consent. what do i mean by the kneal liberal globalization? briefly a globalization divorced from democracy that the very

opposite of what we embarked on after world war ii the first brentonwood model but built 30 years of upward mobility rising incomes, prosperity at least to the part of the world we used to call trilateral japan, europe and north america is the fact it is only part of the world, but the success didn't depend on the fact it was only part of the bold the trick is to do the same trick for the whole world now that we did. why did the brinton was modeled not produce the new liberal globalization? why did it produce the generalized prosper the lessening of the income disparities? well, one reason is that it was shaped largely by two men. john maynard keynes of the british treasury and harry dexter white of the new deal of the u.s. treasury. they were the architects of brinton what's. at cannes was a candian reef

it's the international system credit from which the imf and world bank and the wto derived. he understood one thing that was crucially important is for the government's to tenderly impose capital controls. why did he need this? living in britain and the united -- and 40's devotee enter war period having been the inventor of the keynesian antirecession stimulus policies, he knew that in a completely financial world with no capital patrol the country that tries the stimulus is a way out of recession would be subjected to the capitol, it would be self-defeating in order to allow the keynesian world he over the objection of the

economic insisted on the capitol control and the ability of the recession to invoke the capitol control. sounds very technical and economist talked but it is the crucial link which allowed the government, democratically elected government in a trilateral world for 30 years to dampen the recession and convergent come to follow the fiscal policies room for that as we see right now as we see right now in europe and the crisis and as we see in a pointless debate whether the obama administration stimulus policies were enough for not enough. in a flat world into a globalized world, the u.s. government still has the capacity to create as much demand as it wants to the tax cuts and government spending it just can't call into being, it can't be sure that the production as called into being by that command is in the united

states. we can be stimulating the chinese and german industry while they free ride and don't have the budget deficits and they look down our nose at us for running the red ink. it is a crucial point. it's not the only crucial point. the other thing about the kneal liberal globalization is it's characterized by the free movement of capital without the free movement of labor. free movement of labor means integration, but it doesn't only mean integration. we call the agreements which constituted free trade agreements, not quite. you don't need 600 pages to write a free trade agreement. you just need there shall be no tariffs and barriers and both countries agree on their existence. 600 pages which remember under the fast-track they don't get to see or debate just vote of or down. what is in the other 599 pages i

will use provocative language to say an undisputed fact in the other 99 pages is the protectionism for the narrow interest groups with the right campaign and lobbies on capitol hill who write the detail of the trade law to congress to deliberate political symbol, intellectual property rules. here i am standing here a writer, and author chongging to sell my book for money talking down the intellectual capital rules. i'm not the electronic foundation. i'm not singing the internet should be free. i'm saying that all the stuff that microsoft and apple and hollywood get written into trade agreement in the name of intellectual property or a protectionist measure for all of us and that former protection allows some flows down dismissals in detroit and cleveland is a sin against the

market. what else? agriculture, not a free trade in the united states. i love the family farm as much as anyone else and i love to drive around the countryside and not see the development of everyone else that has to be to the producers of the specific crop and sugar in the mississippi delta and the business running away with a lot of money and distorting doubled to the agriculture so that countries across the third world, which have comparative the advantages in agriculture can't take advantage of that through the capitol to move up the industrial food chain. that is protectionism. why, as other washington institution, my friend dean baker, asked in his new book in liberalism why is it that american retirees cannot use medicare for medical services abroad? we've got medicare, you can live abroad and get your check abroad coming to have to come back to the united states. what's that got to do with

protectionism? everything to do everything. imagine if an american retirees who had earned medicare could use it for a heart operation from the indian doctors that are here there or in thailand? why can't they? it would make it easier for the retirees. but more important, how often have we heard about our unaffordable entitlements? well, why don't we reduce the cost of it? why do we have to take them back to the protected american ama that is not subjected to the price competition? why isn't that an auto worker or a computer programmer has to face the music of a globalized ways to competition and a doctor doesn't? it doesn't make sense and it distorts our policy and our budget and we never be dated.

as we have protectionism, that's an example of the kneal liberal globalization. so this fast track. i don't know if everybody noticed the shorthand, but starting in about the 60's or 70's it became accepted fact in this town that you couldn't get a trade agreement negotiated with a foreign power of the president had to come back and explain to dealing with congress. so instead, we got into the habit this is an emergency state have it. this is in the constitution says rather clearly that the power to regulate international commerce belongs to the congress but now that congress is expected and pilloried if it doesn't put your hand off to the president blanket authority, fast-track authority to negotiate yield come back and given up or down vote just like the president wants an appointee for 90 days. there is a better case in the tree the grants, and in a globalized world of the trade

agreements have tremendous consequences and the 600 page one tough more tremendous consequences than the one pages. so we go off into a world where trade specialists, trade lawyers, my best friends are trade lawyers that they created a world where all these questions at best have a secret arbitration panel of the wto and elsewhere and they decide just which of the democratic law the congress passes might be pre-empted by the trade agreement and which we might still allow to find and the infamous case that brought this to some people's attention was the marines mammal protection act. the wto practices and a law that can't be changed. it's nothing that can't be negotiated. practice says that when a commodity inters the international marketplace it is a can of tuna.

it doesn't matter if it was made in mexico or the united states. that's good. it doesn't matter if it was made by people forced to work at gunpoint and they're put in jail. that's not so good. it doesn't matter if it was made by a factory whose mission is pouring arsenic into the rivers of mexico or an american company trying to keep the river is clean and abide by the clean water act. that's pretty bad, right? because that means that the worst conditions producer has a competitive said vantage, and even the well-meaning american producer has got to meet that or delay in the marketplace and how we shape our trade law. why can't these decisions be made in the light of day? why can't the united states follow the united states constitution? i quote from the constitution congress has the exclusive power to regulate commerce. we follow that?

a couple minutes. read the book. it's all there. on an bipartisan in this book. we've had 13 presidents since 1940 with six democrats, seven and one party and six in the other. none of them come off very well. there were recognizable differences in parties of the beginning of the period. the republicans were generally a little more fiscally conservative, a little more restrained, for in war. that evaporates and to get into the period of nixon and ronald reagan and they are all pretty much peddling the same forms of emergency state without knowing it. we all signed on to this without knowing it. when you look at the book i

offer a new way of seeing richard nixon. every book has to have a hero and it turns out that richard nixon comes off as a kind of antihero in this book because when richard nixon is elected in 1968 with 43% of the votes the country is in a mess. johnson is waging a war in vietnam which he knows is and winnable what he is afraid to go to people and he is afraid that who lost china and the dinallo or whatever. he can't figure out a way to get out of it. he knows it is hurting america's position in the world and at home and it's hurting the society. he is trapped in the logic and he doesn't know how to get out of it. he is trapped in the logic that began with harry truman and the truman doctrine saying the whole world faces the choice between the two systems. the whole world did chase defeat

could face a choice between the systems. but if you make that the defining element of your foreign policy from 1947 to 1968, you were in a zero sum game. there are only two hours. if the united states admitted there was hurting itself in vietnam and with drew, this goes down on our side up. there are only two sides. in other words, the problem that every politician faces in 1968 was how to liquidate the disaster of the vietnam without accepting the strategic defeat globally in the cold war which would have heard other areas. along comes richard nixon, because he's richard nixon, and he figures it out. first of what was always democrats that got saddled with losing china and never the republicans because richard nixon wasn't there so hit a little freedom of action there to begin he realized that what was the clock running out on him domestically was the draft, the all volunteer army.

richard nixon is too smart to think that a war that is 500,000 americans and into because the vietnamese were losing it would suddenly be successful as he put the vietnamese back but it was buying time. he was lying political space and what he did with it, how much -- hauer early he came up with it, it became a zero some trap. suddenly he can do it. you can step back in vietnam and not have the victory in the soviet union so it's not the hold of richard nixon. it's not all the things he did. it's not the plumbers, it's not the paranoia, but as i say, we look at history from the vantage point of our own time and this is an interesting fact if you're looking at the years in the emergency state to see how richard nixon fits into this

picture. and then like a tragic hero he is of course done in by his paranoia by his secret government by trying to plug the pentagon papers by the well-known fact. a new way also of looking at the 1970's and 1970's the emergency state -- the 1970's for those of you old enough to have any memory of the 1970's was a painful time whether we are talking about the last final days of richard nixon, the saturday night live presidency of gerald ford, the cardigan sweaters and the hostages of jimmy carter, even the music wasn't very good by then. but, from the vantage point of 2012, things had gotten so bad they were almost starting to get good. the people were so convinced

they were leading them down the wrong path that they put heat on their elected representatives. suddenly the need of people in both parties to get reelected in this atmosphere made congress to wait for its representative van winkle sweep past the war power act and start having some scrutiny over the cia and was really hard. it is really hard to get control of the american state and was really hard to try to construct it better in the international monetary trade system and come to grips with changing the economic reality in the world. and then we stop, and we might have stopped just because it was so hard and lawyers were not burning our feet and we got tired and we might have stopped because ronald reagan came along and told us we didn't have to do that, that it was morning in america again and that everything would be fine and just the shoot right to the end, ronald reagan and i am in the middle of reassessing ronald

reagan. when i see bruce bartlett in and larry koret and other distinguished members in the administration say such intelligent things about the policy mystic today, i realize what's not make a cartoon out of the ronald reagan administration was different things we can learn but unfortunately, but the successor candidates and presidents learned from ronald reagan is don't make jimmy carter's mistake and say our energy addiction is a problem and we have to decide we're going to be a democracy or a power in the middle east. just keep smiling and saying we can do anything and there you go again. clinton and bush and obama, all the differences, we are living in an electoral democracy of the ronald reagan presidential template and the primary is looking to grab that template and obama says i have it over

here. >> surely there is a question. was that controversy? >> we for the microphone. >> you can picture i don't disagree with it almost sounds like you are over with ron paul as the only solution. >> ron paul says a lot of smart things. if he were -- ron paul is a significant constitutionalist but libertarian and he would send the police into the bedroom on various issues. to be honest here at the rallies if i want america to start

debating these issues i have to be happy that ron paul has raised them and got in the response he's gotten particularly from young people. i think he has to be allowed in debate i think it is healthy for him to be in the the date whatever he's doing now in the romney santorum maneuver. >> i have a question. what about the national security about the lack of violence as a public good and it's an international public a good and with the u.s. has decided to do in pursuing the public good which is usually costly and in the 70's we would expand at to the human-rights which is another public good, and i feel like maybe ronald reagan and people since then have decided

we can't afford everything let's just focus on one tangible and you are suggesting maybe even giving up paying for the public good now. >> you can't do everything. you can't afford to do everything. i think the public peace is public good. it's a collective public good. it's something that the united states should aspire not to unilaterally deliver to people whether they ask for it or not. but you operate in the international arena as it sort of in perfectly did in the libya episode to mobilize the international forces. it is our tradition. we slipped into saying in the beginning of afghanistan rumsfeld was very explicit. they were offering to help.

we want our forces, we trust our forces let us do it, you go in the quiet area i have an article coming out in the journal that takes on this very question which is to say i'm not an isolationist. i think devotee unfortunately named in turn nationalism is not the only kind of internationalism on order and it can be a bitter internationalism. it can be the internationalism more worthy of lust takes on things like the millennium of political which affects billions of lives, billions of children. there's the more posture on the global warming from the biggest proportion of energy. i think that had, you know, we can't do everything. no parent has succeeded in

leaving. united states didn't try to do everything for the emergency state. it always understood the debates are always about where the interests stop, where does it become collective and where is it someone else's responsibility and by the u.n. as the league of nations, the unilateral sought appointment to do everything keeps us from doing anything well keeps us from multiplying our force by attracting our national allies to decide by beating and a more collegial and collective action and i'm not pretending they don't of national understand there are not jealousy and it's always the target in the rest of it. i'm just saying it can be doing a lot better than we are and the first step is to set the priorities and say here we are in the world now the richest people in the world the richest nation in the world, the richest nation of the world's history, the most formidable military

power with the global reach. how do we want to use our lives, our treasure to make this a better world for us to live in and others to live and to protect our democracy which is a work in progress. >> i was wondering about the emergency things like i saw once on this alternative newspaper somebody was saying a building collapsed and was still standing and people were saying there was dynamite there's a show called coast to coast on the stock hits, but do you necessarily

believe everything that people might say about september 11th 2001 about the government, like people say the conspiracy. >> trust but verify. as a journalist i'm willing to listen to things. i want to see evidence behind. i've lived too long to see accepted versions of things, by camelot for example later camelot was and what we thought it was. i've not seen evidence that makes me feel it was radically different. what was staring us in the face is our government failed on 9/11

we had the intelligence failures coming in and the policy response to the coming out. that is the area of my special expertise. that is what we focus on. why do our governments fail us? how can we make sure our government is less likely to feel as in the future because things like that can happen in the future. what can we learn about how people slip through the cracks on 9/11? what can we learn that was wrong about the way we went to war in iraq and afghanistan? what's learn and prepare for the future. i have no reason to believe it unless i have with evidence to believe and so far i don't. journalism is an imperfect field but, you know, it's one rule of thumb that gets us through every day is if there is a relatively simple and straightforward explanation that doesn't have a lot of holes in that, don't go looking for more complicated ones. it may be a mistake.

stat i wonder if you have a sense that time is running out to deal with our problems. >> no, i mean, i'm an optimist. what i am saying here is american constitutional democracy still works. the good sense of the american people are still there. we should listen to it more often. and yes, it's true we have got more people on a less sustainable planet than ever before in the global temperatures are rising. we don't seem to be headed in the right and direction for a lot of things. but as long as we live, as long as they are out to sell this book and talk about it here, there is a reason for hope. i don't think it is too late. i have not written a gloomy inevitable decline of the west

to read the book calling for the revitalization of the energy and the spirit that i know in this country from living here and having seen in better moments. >> professor unger, former student. right now i read the every day that china lends more money to africa than the imf does, and this buys them access to resources that fuels their economy, and a lot of their economies are bankrupt. some people are calling it a new form of authoritarian capitalism or state capitalism. and i wanted your opinion on how that is me before the next era of the emergency state will we see a combination of the military emergency and also an economic emergency where, like stalin and bin laden, the chinese way of business isn't exactly playing by the rules. spec i think we ought to give a lot more thought to china than

we usually do. by teeing resources i don't know the growing economy that didn't do that. in part got to world war i and in the sense world war ii because the japanese oil embargo by the sense that the countries had to lock that up at the expense of other countries that they couldn't trust the market to make it ever available. like iran saying you said we could get our uranium globally but he put the sanctions on and we have to develop our own capacity which isn't to say the the behavior is innocent or good. it's not dangerous. but it is to say that it's interactive, which is the scramble for resources is competitive in the zero some and the chinese oil company is not allowed to buy chevron if they are not allowed to be sold for the national security reasons.

who can be surprised when china goes and makes its own rules when it can't. what worries me most about china and africa isn't that. there are enough resources for all. the r and china itself. what bothers me about china and africa is that all of the imperfect efforts that the non-and chinese donor nations have created to create some kind of performance guideline and anti-corruption transparency guidelines, melanie and development guide lines, putting the money to good use is rendered worthless if china feels let's grab a pariah. the iranians are a pariah. they need us. they can't say no. we will give them the aid no strings attached whether anybody else can attach their strings. that is a collective good, too and we have to find a better way to deal with it than our own

virtue to assist the chinese when they go a different way. two minutes, please. >> plight, professor. it's great to see you again. my question is a follow-up on the last one. do you feel the rise of china will be used to perpetuate the emergency state? >> it would be hard to have watched the january 6th national defense strategy roll out and not feel that way. >> the was the first part of your talk. the second part is the trade imbalance, the manipulation charges. it seems like a sort of speaks to both of the things you talked about tonight. >> it does. what worries me to get more specific on the issue at hand on gentry six, essentially one way watching what obama and leon panetta and dempsey said on january 6th is no more. we are not going to make that

mistake again. we are going to wind goes down and spend a dividend building of another part of the world against a chinese threat which at this moment militarily is hypothetical and which perhaps building up would make and encourage the chinese to respond in the same way with an arms race. what scares me as someone who has analyzed the defense budget for 20, 25 years is that a lot of the things we buy that or most wasteful for the war we actually fight only makes sense with a high-tech enemy and the soviet union in the cold war stealth fighter jets, nuclear attack submarines etc.. they made no sense for people that live off the land that are non-state and operate or anything like that. they are useless. and we use those war despite the investment and all the wrong things. these are the profits of the military industry, and we know

that they haven't liked what congress and the president has been handing them in the way of cutting the trolley and often it in your budget. the only response would be the legitimate national strategy that says we have to build up against the high-tech. the information is classified. i can't tell you what we know or don't know about china and the south china sea, tie on, anti-ship missiles. i'm not saying it isn't justified. i'm just saying, incidentally iraq and afghanistan that didn't work over now we are going to send that money repositioning ourselves in australia in the philippines and singapore against a not yet visible chinese threat i see before you go down the expense of path producing the budgetary imbalances, shall be a little more of that of evidence.

>> david could go on and he does in this >> type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. .tv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> republican presidential candidate mitt romney is campaigning in arizona today.

>> homeland security secretary janet napolitano last week urged lawmakers to pass cybersecurity legislation designed to strengthen both the government and private computer systems from attack. she testified before the senate homeland security committee. this is two hours 50 minutes. >> the hearing will come to order. senator collins is on her way. i just saw senator mccain and governor napolitano together, and he seems to me with two of you here i cannot hesitate to offer my congratulations on the centennial celebration of the great state of arizona.

yes, here, here. i happened have been on the floor of the senate -- >> i was there at the time. [laughter] you look very well for your age. very well. okay. this is, in fact, the 10 hearing our committee has held on cybersecurity, and i hope it is the last before the comprehensive cybersecurity bill before us today is impacted into law. the fact is that time is not on our side. to me, it feels like september 10, 2011. and the question is whether we will act to prevent a cyber 9/11 before it happens, instead of reacting after it happens. the reason for this legislation is based on fact.

every day, rival nations, terrorist groups, criminal syndicates, and individual hackers probing for weaknesses in our most critical computer networks seeking to steal government and industrial secrets, or to plant cyber agents in the cyber systems that control our most critical infrastructure, and would enable an intimate, for example, to seize control of a city's electric grid or water supply system, or our nation's financial or mass transit systems with a touch of a key from a world away. the current ongoing and ongoing cyberthreat not only threatens our security here at home, but it is right now having a very damaging impact on our economic prosperity.

because extremely valuable intellectual property is being stolen regularly by cyber exploitation, by people and individuals and groups and countries abroad, that is then been replicated without the initial cost of research done by american companies, meaning that jobs are being created a broad that would otherwise be created here. so when we talk about cybersecurity, there's a natural way in which people focus on the very real danger that an enemy will attack us from cyberspace. but as we think about how to grow our economy again and create jobs again, i've come to the conclusion that this is actually one of the most important things we can do, to protect the treasures of america's intellectual innovation from being stolen by competitors abroad. last year, a very distinguished group of security experts, led

by former department of homeland security secretary michael chertoff and former defense secretary bill perry, going across both parties issued a stark warning, and i quote, the constant barrage of cyber assaults has inflicted severe damage to our national economic security, as was to the privacy of individual citizens. the threat is only going to get worse. inaction is not an acceptable option, end quote. i agree. the bill before us today is the product of hard work across both party lines and committee jurisdictional lines. i particularly want to thank my call six, senator collins and commerce chairman, senator jay rockefeller, senator dianne feinstein, for all their hard and cooperative work in getting us to this point. will be privilege to your from all three of them shortly. ..

>> can well be, probably someday will be the target of an enemy attack. it is today the target of economic exploitation, and we've got to work together with the private sector to better secure those systems both for their own

defense and for our national defense. um, in this bill the systems that will be asked to meet standards are defined as those that are brought down or common deered -- commandeered would lead to the collapse of financial markets or significant degradation of our national security. so this is a tight and high standard. after identifying the systems that meet those standards, the secretary of the department of homeland security under the legislation would then work with the private sector operators of the systems to develop cybersecurity performance requirements. owners of the privately-operated cyber systems covered would have the flexibility to meet the performance requirements with whatever hardware or software they choose so long as it achieves the required level of

security. the department of homeland security will not be picking technological winners or losers and in my opinion there's nothing in the bill that would stifle innovation. in fact, a letter from cisco systems and oracle, two of our most prominent i.t. companies, concludes that this legislation -- and i quote -- includes a number of tools that will enhance the nation's cybersecurity without interfering with the innovation and development processes of the american i.t. industry, end quote. if a company can show under our legislation that, show to the department of homeland security that it already has high cybersecurity standards met, then it will be exempt from further requirements under this law. failure to meet the standards will result in civil penalties that will be proposed by the department during a standard rulemaking and comment process. the bill also creates a

streamlined and efficient cyber organization within dhs which will work with existing federal regulators and the private sector to insure that no rules or regulations are put this place that either -- are put in place that either duplicate or are in conflict with existing requirements. the bill also, importantly, establishes mechanisms for information sharing between the private sector and the federal government and among the private sector operators themselves. this is important because computer security experts need to be able to compare notes in order to protect us from this threat. but the bill also creates security measures and oversight to protect privacy and preserve civil liberties. in fact, the american civil liberties union has reviewed our bill and says that it offers the greatest privacy protections of any cybersecurity legislation that has yet been proposed.

um, i'm going to skip over some of the other things the bill does and just go to mention that the process by which we reached this legislative proposal was very incollusion inclusive. we not only worked across committee lines, but reached out to people in business, academics, civil liberties, privacy and security experts for advice on many of the difficult issues that any meaningful piece of cybersecurity legislation would need to address. i can tell you that literally hundreds of changes have been made to this bill as a result of their input, and we think finally we've struck the right balance. i do want to describe briefly or mention some things that are not in this bill. first and foremost, this bill does not contain a so-called kill switch that would allow the president to seize control or

all or part of the internet in a national crisis. it's not there. [laughter] >> never was. >> it never was. thank you, senator collins. [laughter] we put an exclamation point, now, by dropping a section, frankly, that people thought included a kill switch. it just wasn't worth it because of the urgent need for this bill. there's also nothing in this bill that touches on the balance between intellectual property and free speech that so aroused public opinion over the proposed stop online privacy act and the protect ip act and has left many members of congress with scars or at least a kind of posttraumatic tress syndrome. stress syndrome since that happened. in fact, this is not the ultimate verification of my assertion that there's nothing here anywhere like what concerned people in sopa and

pipa, but i note with gratitude that one of our witnesses, mr. stewart baker, was a leading opponent of sopa but is testifying today in favor of our bill. after the cybersecurity act of 2012 becomes law, the average internet user will go about using the internet just as they do today. but hopefully, as a result of the law and outreach pursuant to it they'll be far better equipped to protect their own privacy and resources from cyber attack. bottom line, a lot of people have worked very hard to come so far and in a very bipartisan way to face a real and present danger to our country that we simply cannot allow this moment to slip away there us. i feel very strongly that we these to act now to defend -- we need to act now to defend america's cyberspace as a matter of national and economic

security. senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, let me first applaud you for your leadership in this very important issue as well as the leadership of our two leadoff witnesses, senator rockefeller and senator feinstein, who contributed so much to this issue and this bill. and i personally thank you for holding this important hearing today. after the 9/11 attacks, we learned of many early warnings that went unheeded including an fbi agent who warned that one day people would die because of the wall that kept law enforcement and intelligence agencies apart. when a major cyber attack occurs, the ignored warnings

would be even more glaring because our nation's vulnerability has already been demonstrated by the daily attempts by nation-states, terrorist groups, cyber criminals and hackers to penetrate our system. the warnings of our vulnerability to a major cyber attack come from all directions and countless experts, and they are underscored by the intrusions that have already occurred. earlier this month the fbi director warned that the cyber threat will soon equal or surpass the threat from terrorism. he argued that we should be addressing the cyber threat with the same intensity that we've applied to the terrorist threat. director of national intelligence james clapper made

the point even more strongly, describing the cyber threat as the profound threat to this country, to its future, its economy, its very well being. in november the director of darpa warned that malicious cyber attacks threaten a growing number of the systems with which we interact every day; the electric grid, water treatment plants, key financial systems. similarly, general keith alexander, the commander of u.s. cyber command and the ther of ns -- the director of nsa, has warned that our cyber vulnerabilities are extraordinary and characterized by a disturbing trend from exploitation to disruption to destruction. these statements are just the latest in a chorus of warnsings

from current and former officials. and the threat, as the chairman has pointed out, is not just to our national security, but also to our economic well being. a norton study last year calculated the cost of global cyber crime at $114 billion annually. when combine with the the value of time victims lost due to cyber crime, this figure grows to $388 billion. norton described this as significantly more than the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined. in an op-ed last month entitled "china's cyber thievery is national policy must be challenges," former homeland

security secretary michael chertoff and former deputy secretary of defense william lynn noted the ability of cyber terrorists to cripple, cripple our critical infrastructure. they sounded an even more urgent alarm about the threat of economic cyber espionage citing an october 2011 report by the office of the national counterintelligence executive. these experts warned of catastrophic impact that cyber espionage, particularly that pursued by china, could have on our economy and competitiveness. they estimated that the cost easily means billions of dollars and millions of jobs. this threat is all the more menacing because it is being pursued by a global competitor seeking to steal the research and development of american

firms to undermine our economic leadership. the evidence of our cybersecurity vulnerability is overwhelming. it compelling us to act -- it compels us to act now. now, some members have called for yet more studies, even more hearings, additional markups. in other words, more delay. the fact is since 2005 alone our committee alone has held ten hearings on the cyber threat including today's hearings. i know the commerce and the intelligence committees have held many more. in 2011 chairman lieberman, senator carper and i introduced our cybersecurity bill which was reported by this committee later

that same year. since last year we've been working with chairman rockefeller to merge our bill with legislation that he championed which was reported by the commerce committee. senator feinstein has done groundbreaking work on information sharing which she has been kind enough to share with this committee as well. after incorporating changes based on the feedback from the private sector, our colleagues and the administration, we have produced a refined version which is the subject of today's hearing. and it's significant that three senate chairmen with jurisdiction over cybersecurity have come together on these issues. and each day that we fail to act the threat increases to our national and economic security.

now, others of our colleagues have urged us to focus narrowly on the federal information security management act as well as on federal r&d and improved information sharing. we do need to address those issues, and our bill does just that. however, with 85% of our nation's critical infrastructure owned by the private sector, the government also has a critical role to play in insuring that the most vital parts of that infrastructure, those whose disruption could result in truly catastrophic consequences, meet reasonable risk-based performance standards. in an editorial this week, the washington post concurred writing that our critical systems have remained unprotected.

some of our colleagues are skeptical about the need for any new regulations. i have opposed efforts to expand regulations that would burden our economy, but regulations that are necessary for our national security and that promote rather than hinder our economic prosperity strengthen our country. they are in an entirely different category. the fact is the risk-based performance requirements in our bill are targeted carefully. they apply only to specific systems and assets, not entire companies, that if damaged, could result reasonably in mass casualties, mass evacuations, catastrophic economic damages or

a severe degradation of our national security. in fact, some of the witnesses think that we've gone too far in that direction. senator lieberman has described much of what the bill contains, so i will not repeat that in the interest of time. let me just say that this bill is urgent. we cannot wait to act. we cannot wait until our country has a catastrophic cyber attack. and it would be irresponsible of congress not to pass legislation due to turf battles or due to claims by some businesses that we are somehow harming our economy. in fact, what we are doing is

protecting our economy and our way of life. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator collins, for that very strong statement. i agree with you, and i would just correct one part. you said how pleased you were that three committee chairs with jurisdiction have come together on the bill. since i consider you the co-chair of this committee, i would say it was four. >> thank you. >> i appreciate very much your contribution to this effort. we're really grateful to have senator rockefeller and senator feinstein here and, again, i can't thank you enough for the work we've done together. i think it's a very powerful statement that we agreed on a consensus bill, and i hope it enables us to move it through the senate. i though the majority leader is really concerned about the threat and is committed to giving this bill time on the floor as soon as possible. senator rockefeller, mr. chairman, we welcome your testimony now. >> thank you, chairman lieberman and ranking member collins. you're quite right about that.

i think senator reid wants this on the floor as soon as possible. and frankly, the thing that scares me more than anything is the fact that we have had so many hearings, and yet that was he's to get to the agreements that we've all come to, and they're solid now, rock solid. but we still have to find the floor time for it. this is not going to be an easy time to do that. so the pressure's on this congress, on both the house and the senate, to come through on this in the face of all of this danger. it's huge and not yet guaranteed. i think our government needs a lead civilian agency to coordinate our civilian cybersecurity efforts, and that agency should, of course, be the department of homeland security under the superb leadership of janet napolitano. i want to emphasize that our bill represents expertise and hard work as both of you have said, three senate committees, and that's as it should be.

we have eagerly sought, as you mentioned, senator lieberman, and have received constructive criticism and input from a whole lot of places. i can remember giving a speech i think two years ago to a business group presenting ideas that olympia and i had for this -- snowe and be i had for this, and they were just surprised to hear that somebody was willing to listen to them, to listen to their complaints, and there were a lot of them. it's, even when people refused to engage with us, and there have been that even within the senate who refused to discuss with our staffs, that doesn't mean that we don't take some of their suggestions, and we have done that. because if they don't want to engage, that's okay. if they've got good suggestions, put them in and make it a stronger bill. beyond this bill's principle authors, senators lieberman, collins, feinstein and myself, the bill reflects the input assistance or request of senators on both sides of the aisle as it should be and which gives me hope for final passage.

senator snowe was my co-author of the bill that congress reported out last year, as you know, senator or carper was a co-author of the lieberman-collins bill. both have left major imprints on this bill. senator hutchison and her staff worked with us for a good part of the past two years, she's my ranking member and be absolutely superb. i call her co-chair, too, incidentally. and i think we have, in fact, met most of her concerns. we've sought to engage senator chambliss in the same fashion. there was some reluctance at some points to discuss, have staff discussions. didn't make any difference. we were interested in what they had, and if it was something good in what they had, we put it in the bill. we wanted it in the bill. and it had to pass future tests as we, you know, combined the whole -- all the efforts. senator kyl and senator whitehouse contributed an entire

title regarding cybersecurity awareness. senators kerry, lugar, gillibrand, hatch did the same on the title regarding diplomacy. because of senator mccain's concerns, we omitted significant language pertaining to the white house cyber office. when colleagues had ongoing questions about a provision that i personally believed to be extremely important, i agreed to drop it there the base bill. this provision that i'm talking about would clarify private sector companies' existing requirements regarding what material risks, quote, pertaining to cyber have to be disclosed to investors in sec filings. because as you know at one point out of frustration i went to the sec, and mary schapiro agreed if you're hacked into as a company, it goes on the web site of that company at sec, and that's had a substantial impact, actually. i believe this provision is absolutely crucial for the market to help solve our cyber

vulnerabilities and will fight for an amendment on the floor, and that's as it should be. that's the way the system works. but in the interest of providing more time to address colleagues' questions, i agreed to take it out of the bill that we introduced this week. any suggestion that this exhaustive process has been anything but open and transparent is patently false. this has been a really open process. and lengthy, as has been pointed out. why have we worked so tirelessly to include the views of all sides? why have we tried so hard to get this right? because our country and be our communities and our citizens are at grey risk, they simply are. i'm not sure if they're aware because there are so many things reported in a news cycle that it-diminishes the overall, aggregated weight of the danger. so our citizens have to be aware of this. this is not a republican or democrat issue, it's a life or

death issue for the economy and for us as people. i want to be clear, the cyber threat is very, very real. this is not alarmist. here's why. it's hard to talk about this sometimes without seeming alarmist, and yet it simply reflects the truth. hackers supported by the governments of china and russia and also sophisticated criminal syndicates with potential connection to terrorist groups are now able to crack the codes of our government agencies including sensitive ones, and the fortune 500. they can do that. and they do that on a regular basis. senator collins mentioned what mike mullen said, and she pointed out that we're being looted of valuable possessions on an unfathomable scale, but that's not the end of the problem. the reason this cyber threat is a life or death issue is the same reason that a burglar in your house is a life or death

issue. how do you know what he wants to do? is it take your belongings, is it something more? you don't know. he's in the building, in your home. that's where we are now. in terms of a country. so that's the situation we face. cyber burglars have thrown in. mike mullen has said exactly what senator collins indicated, that the only other threat on the same level to cyber threat is russia's stockpile of nuclear weapons. fbi director mueller, remember the first thing after 9/11 we had to pass sadly, pathetically, was a law saying that the cia and the fbi could talk to each other. how pathetic could that be? but that's where we were because of stove pipes and things of that sort. director mueller testified to congress recently that the cyber threat will soon overcome terrorism as his top national security emphasis. so it's, it's all very serious,

and you can't exaggerate it, and it could happen. so then you think about how people could die. a cyber attack on air traffic control systems, and i was talking with secretary napolitano just before this hearing. often over big cities it gets very soupy. people don't like to be in tube by weather. pilots don't like it. they can't see above or below. but they're protected because of the air traffic control system. we're going to put in a more modern one. cyber hackers can take that out. they can take, of aty or group of cities, they can take that capacity so that planes are literally flying in the dark, and they will fly into each other and kill a lot of people. and people have to understand that. l rail switching, networks are hacked causing trains can which carry toxic materials, deadly materials through our major cities, and that can be a

massive explosion from that. so we are on the brink of very, very serious happyings. we have not be reach -- happenings. we have not reached that which is one of our problems in getting legislation passed, but we can act now and try and prepare ourselves. i just -- let me just close by saying i was on the intelligence committee during the time leading up to 2001, and the world, the world was rife with reports of people coming in and going out of our country, of dots here and there that appeared to be connected but were not quite sure, and what about this mow saw by thing and folks in that house in san diego, and what about the closing down of the bin laden unit or a message that thefer got to the bin laden unit. all of that was there, and the national security apparatus was working very, very hard on that. but, and they took it seriously, but they didn't get deep enough

because it was a new phenomenon. well, here we are this a very similar situation -- in a very similar situation. we -- it's already with us, it's much more obvious than the lead up to 2011 was, and so we now have to act. we do not have the luxury of waiting to see and develop. we have to act. at some point the congress has to assert itself, the federal government does have roles. this is not a heavy-handed thing as senator collins has pointed out. of it's not. but the federal government is involved because it is a matter of national security. and so i just wait to work with anybody and anybody to get this passed through both houses of the united states congress. >> thanks very much, senator rockefeller. that was great. chairman feinstein, welcome and thank you again. you contributed immensely, particularly on the information-sharing section of the bill, and you bring all the expertise and intelligence from

the senate committee on intelligence. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman, senator collins, senator landrieu. i look at this as quite a banner day. i look at it as finally the senate is coming together, that we are settling on one bill. this is the bill x if it needs improving, we'll improve it. >> right. >> but we have a focus thousand, and with a focus -- focus now, and with a focus we can hopefully move forward. i want to thank you for your hard work, for the dozen hearings you've held and for all the offers for consultation that you have placed out there to us. let me speak for a moment on behalf of what i do in the intelligence committee. we have examined cyber threats to our national and economic security, and just last month at the worldwide threat hearing which is an open hearing we heard fbi director bob muller

testify that the cyber threat is the number one threat to the country. and already cyber threats are doing great damage to the united states. and the trend is getting worse. let me give you just four examples. and what's interesting is we know about these when they happen, be but they are often classified because the people that they happen to don't want it released because their clients, um, will think badly of them and, of course, it's not their fault. but nonetheless. i think it's fair to say that pentagon networks are being probed thousands of times daily, and it's classified military computer -- its classified military computer networks have suffered a significant compromise in 2008. and that's according to former deputy defense secretary bill lynn. in november 2009 doj charged seven defendants from estonia, russia and moldova with hacking

into the royal bank of scotland and stealing there are -- $9 million from more than 2100 atms in 200 cities worldwide in 12 hours. in 2009 federal officials indicted three men for stealing

>> it is much harder for us to play defense than it is for them to attack. the hard question is, what do we do about this dangerous and growing cyber threat? i believe the comprehensive bill that has been introduced, the cybersecurity act of 2012, is an essential part of this answer. i'd like to speak briefly on the cybersecurity information-sharing bill that i introduced on monday and that you have included in title vii

in your legislation. the goal of this bill is to improve the ability of the private sector and the government to share information on cyber threats that both sides need to improve their defenses. however, a combination of existing law, the threat of litigation and standard business practices has presented or deterred private sector companies from sharing information about the cyber threats they face and the losses of information and money they suffer. we need to change that through better information sharing in a way that companies will use that protects privacy interests and that takes advantage of classified information without putting that information at risk. so here's what we have tried to do in title vii. one, affirmatively provide private sector companies the

authority to monitor and protect the information on their own computer networks. two, encourage private companies to share information about cyber threats with each other by providing a good faith defense against lawsuits for sharing or using that information to protect themselves. three, require the federal government to designate a single focal point for cybersecurity information sharing. we refer to this as a cybersecurity exchange to seven as a hub for -- to serve as a hub for appropriately distributing and exchanging cyber threat information between the private sector and the government. this is intended to reduce government bureaucracy and make the government a more effective partner in the private sector. but with protections to insure that private information is not

misused. this legislation provides no new authority for government surveillance. fourth, we establish procedures for the government to share classified cybersecurity threat information with private companies that can effectively use and protect that information. this, we believe, is a prudent way to take advantage of information that the intelligence community acquires without putting our sources and methods at risk or turning private cybersecurity over to our intelligence apparatus. i'd like to raise just one issue of something that is not yet included in this bill, and that's data breach notification. this is an issue i've worked on for over eight years since california had a huge data breach that we only inadvertently found out about that had literally hundreds of

thousands of data breaches. um, it's an urgent need. i have a bill, it's called the data breach notification act. it's come out of the judiciary committee, and it accomplishes what in my view are the key goals of any data breach legislation. one, notice to individuals who will better be able to protect themselves from identity theft. two, notice to law enforcement which can connect the dots between breaches and cyber attacks. and, three -- and this is important -- preemption of the 47 different state and territorial standards on this issue. this is a real problem. we have 47 different laws in this country. it makes it very difficult for the private sector. companies will not be subjected to conflicting regulation if

there is one basic standard across the country. i know that senators rockefeller and pryor have a bill in the commerce committee and that senators leahy and blumenthal have their own bills that also were reported out of the judiciary committee. but the differences in our approaches are not so great that we can't work them out. and i'm very prepared to sit down with members of this committee, with senator rockefeller and others to find a common solution. but i would really implore you to add a data breach preemption across the united states so that there is one standard for notification to an individual of data breach, of communication with law enforcement that goes all across america. until we have that, we really won't have a sound data breach system. let me just thank you.

um, i think we're on our way. i'm really so proud of both of you on this committee for coming together, and i think it's a banner day. so thank you very much. >> thanks very much, senator feinstein. we couldn't have done it without you. thanks for your testimony, and i'm personally very supportive of your aims with the data breach proposal, and i look forward to working with you and, as you say, the others who have bills to see if we can't find a way to include that in this proposal when it comes to the floor. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> have a good rest of the day. and now, madam secretary, i hate to break up a conversation between the current secretary and the first secretary. but -- [inaudible conversations] we almost had the trifecta of the three secretaries of the department of homeland security

here today. secretary chertoff wanted to testify, had a previous commitment and has, i will say, filed a statement for the record strongly in support of the legislation. secretary napolitano, thanks very much for being here and for all the work you and be people in the department have done to help us come to this point with this bill. we welcome your testimony now. >> well, thank you, chairman lieberman, ranking member collins, members of the committee. i'm pleased to be here today to discuss the issue of cybersecurity and, in particular, the department's strong support for the cybersecurity act of 2012. i appreciate this committee's support of the department's cybersecurity efforts. your sustained anticipation to this issue and -- attention to this issue and the leadership you have shown to bring a bill forward to strengthen and improve our cyber authorities. i also appreciate and want to emphasize the urgency of the situation. indeed, the contrast between the

urgent need to respond to the threats we face in this area on the one hand and the professed desire for more deliberation and sensitivity to regulatory burdens on the other reminds me, as several of you have suggested, of lessons we learned from the 9/11 attacks. as the 9/11 commission noted, those attacks resulted in hindsight from failure of imagination because we failed to anticipate the vulnerabilities of our security infrastructure. there is no failure of imagination when it comes to cybersecurity. we can see the vulnerabilities. we are experiencing the attacks, and we know that this legislation would materially improve our ability to address the threat. no country, industry, community or individual is immune to cyber risks. our daily life, economic vitality and national security depend on cyberspace. a vast array of interdependent i.t. network systems, services

and resources are critical to communication, travel, powering our homes, running our economy and obtaining government services. cyber incidents have increased dramatically over the past decade. there have been instances of theft, compromise of sensitive information from both government and private sector networks, and all of this undermines confidence in these systems and the integrity of the data they contain. combating evolving cyber threats is a shared responsibility that requires the engagement of our entire society from government and law enforcement to the private sector and most importantly, with members of the public. dhs plays a key role in this effort both in protecting federal networks and working with owners and operators of critical infrastructure to secure their networks through risk assessment, mitigation and incident response capabilities. in fy-2011 our u.s. cert teams

at dhs received over 106,000 incident reports from federal agencies, critical infrastructure and our industry partners. we issued over 5200 actionable cyber alerts that were used by private sector and government network administrators to protect their systems. we conducted 78 assessments of control system entities and made recommendations to companies about how they can improve their own cybersecurity. we distributed 1150 copies of our cyber evaluation tool. we conducted over 40 training sessions, all of which makes owners and operators better equipped to protect their networks. to protect federal civilian with agency networks, we're deploying technology to detect and block intrusions of these networks in collaboration with the department of defense. we're providing guidance on what agencies need to do to protect

themselves and are measuring implementation of those efforts. we're also responsible for coordinating the national response to significant cyber incidents and for creating and maintaining a common operational picture for cyberspace across the entire government. with respect to critical infrastructure, we work with the private sector to help secure the key systems upon which americans, including the federal government, rely such as the financial sector, the power grid, water systems and transportation networks. we pay particular attention to industrial control systems which control processes at power plants and transportation systems alike. last year we deployed seven response teams to such critical infrastructure organizations at their request in response to important cyber intrusions. to combat cyber crime, we leverage the skills and resources of dhs components such

as the secret service, i.c.e. and cbp, and we work very closely with the fbi. dhs serves as the focal point for the government's cybersecurity outreach and public awareness efforts. as we perform this work, we are mindful that one of our missions is to insure that privacy, confidentiality and civil liberties are not diminished by our efforts. the department has implemented strong privacy and civil rights and civil liberties standards in all of its cybersecurity programs and initiatives from the outset, and we're pleased to see these in the draft bill. now, administration and private sector reports going back decades have laid out cybersecurity strategies and highlighted the need for legal authorities. in addition to other statutes, the homeland security act of 2002 specifically directed dhs to enhance the security of nonfederal networks by providing analysis and warnings, crisis

management support and technical assistance to state and local governments and the private sector. policy initiatives have had to supplement the existing statutes. these initiatives strike a common chord. indeed, this administration's cyberspace policy review in 2009 echoed in large part a similar review by the bush administration. and we've had numerous contributions by private sector groups including the csis study led by jim lewis, one of your witnesses today. still, dhs executes it portion of the federal cybersecurity mission under an amalgam of authorities that have failed to keep up with the responsibilities with which we are charged. to be sure, we have taken significant steps to protect against evolving cyber threats, but we must recognize that the current threat outpaces our existing authorities. our nation cannot improve its

ability to defend against cyber threats unless certain laws that govern cybersecurity activities are updated. we have had many interactions with this committee and with the congress to provide our perspective on cybersecurity. indeed, in the last two years department representatives have testified in 16 committee hearings and provided 161 staff briefings. we've had much bipartisan agreement, in particular many would agree with the house republican cyber task force which stated that, quote, congress should consider carefully targeted directives for limited regulation of particular critical infrastructures to advance the protection of cybersecurity. the recently introduced legislation contains great commonality with the administration's ideas and proposals including two crucial concepts that are central to our efforts. first, addressing the urgent

need to bring core critical infrastructure to a baseline level of security and, second, fostering information sharing which is absolutely key the our security efforts. all sides agree that federal and private networks must be better protected and that information should be shared more easily, yet still more securely. and both our proposal and the senate legislation would provide dhs with clear statutory authority commensurate with our cybersecurity responsibilities and remove legal barriers to the sharing of information. senate bill 2105 would expedite the adoption of the best cybersecurity solutions by the owners and operators of critical infrastructure and give businesses, states and local governments the immunity they need to share information about cyber threats or incidents. there's broad support as well for increasing penalties for cyber crimes and for creating a

uniform data breach reporting regime to protect consumers. this proposal would make it easier to prosecute cyber criminals and establish national standards requiring businesses and core infrastructure that have suffered an intrusion to notify those of us who have the responsibility for mitigating and helping them mitigate it. i hope that the current legislative debate maintains the bipartisan tenor it has benefited from so far and builds from the consensus that spans two administrations and the committee's efforts of the last several years. let me close by saying that now is not the time for half measures. as the administration has stressed repeatedly, addressing only a portion of the needs of our cybersecurity professionals will continue to expose our country to serious risk. for example, only providing incentives for the private sector to share more information will not in and of itself

adequately address critical infrastructure vulnerables. and let us not -- vulnerabilities. and let us not forget that innumerable small businesses rely on this critical infrastructure for their own survival. as the president noted in the state of the union address, the american people expect us to secure the country from the growing danger of cyber threats and to insure the nation's critical infrastructure is protected. and as the secretary of homeland security, i strongly support the proposed legislation because it addresses the need, the urgency and the methodology for protecting our nation's critical infrastructure. i can think of no more pressing legislative proposal in the current environment. i want to thank you again for the important work you have done, and i look forward to answering the committee's questions. >> thanks very much, mad tam secretary. -- madam secretary. we'll do a six-minute round of questions because we've got a large number on the following

panel, i know some people have to leave. madam secretary, let me get right to one of the issues that's been somewhat in contention which is that there are some people who have said that the expanded authority here, particularly that related to cyber structure owned and operated by the private sector, would better be handled by the department of defense or the intelligence community. in other words, they should take the lead in protecting federal-civilian networks. i wonder if you would respond as to why you think the department of homeland security, as obviously we do, is better prepared to take on this critical responsibility. >> well, several points. first, the department of homeland security, as i stated, already is exercising authorities in the civilian area working with the private sector, working with federal-civilian

agencies. so that's a space we are already filling and continue to grow our capacity to fill. second, military and civilian authorities and missions are different, and there are significant differences. for example, in the private protections that we -- privacy protections that we employ within the exercise of civil jurisdiction. and then finally, i would note that both dod and dhs use the technological expertise of the nsa. we are not proposing and have never proposed that two nsas be created. rather, that there be two different lines of authority that emanate using the nsa, one, of course, for civilian, one for military. >> that's a very important factor. i want to come back to that in a minute. but one of the opinions expressed to the committee as we faced the challenge and decided

which part of our government should be responsible for responding was that there would probably be very deep and widespread concern among the public if we, for instance, asked the national security agency or the department of defense to be directly in charge of working with the privately-owned and operated cyber infrastructure. particularly with nsa, that there'd be a concern about privacy and civil liberties concerns. does that make sense to you? >> i've heard the same concerns. they do make sense, and indeed, when secretary gates and i by memorandum of understanding kind of figured out the division of responsibilities and how we were each going to use the nsa, one of the things we were, we were careful to elevate was a

discussion of the protections of privacy, civil liberties and make sure that to the extent we have people over at the nsa they're accompanied by people from our office of privacy, office of general counsel to make sure those protections are abided by. >> right. i'm glad you mentioned that memorandum of understanding between the department of homeland security and the nsa because i want to make this point. incidentally, senator mccain and i codified that in law, that memorandum of understanding, in the national defense authorization act that was passed at the end of last year. but that memorandum doesn't, if i can put it this way, doesn't preempt the need for this legislation. in other words, that memorandum doesn't allocate responsibility with regard to, um, working with the private sector, having the authority to require the private sector to take steps to defend themselves and our country from cyber attack, is that right?

>> that's right, mr. chairman. it's a memorandum that describes the division of how we would each use the resources of the nsa, but it doesn't deal with the protection of core critical infrastructure the way -- >> right. >> -- the bill does. it doesn't deal with the private sector at all the way the bill does. it doesn't deal with information exchange the way the bill does. so it really was designed to make sure that at least with respect to how we each use the nsa we had some meeting of the minds. >> so there's nothing in your opinion inconsistent between the memorandum of understanding between dhs and nsa and the cybersecurity act of 2012? >> oh, not at all. >> i'm pleased to note for the record that in testimony earlier this week secretary of defense panetta and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general dempsey, both endorsed this

legislation. and then this morning before the armed services committee the director of national intelligence clapper and general burgess, the head of defense intelligence agency, um, also endorsed the legislation. both of those expressions of support were unexpected by senator collins and me and, therefore, all the more appreciated. i wanted to ask you this question. dhs' industrial control systems cyber emergency response team has played a critical role in providing support to the owners and operators of critical infrastructure. can you describe some of their capabilities and the work that they've done to assist private entities? >> well, what they have done is to help isolate and identify when they have been notified of attacks on industrial control systems to help identify the source of the attack, the methodology with which it was

conducted, to work with the infiltrated entity to prepare a patch and then to make appropriate disclosures or sharing of information to other control systems that could be subject to a similar attack either in that particular industry or in other industries. >> so on a, on a voluntary basis if i can put it this way, um, dhs has developed the capability and relationships in working with the private sector that will be strengthened by this legislation? >> yes. we have since the passage of the national institution protection act, infrastructure protection act, the n.i.p. in 2006, we have been working with critical infrastructure through their sector coordinating councils. it has a lot of names, basically what it means is we have a process in place for dealing with the private sector and for exchanging some information on a voluntary basis.

but that doesn't mean we get all of the necessary information we get from core critical infrastructure. that's one of the problems the bill addresses. >> thanks very much. my time's up. senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, to follow up on a question that the chairman asked you, it's my understanding that dhs has unique expertise in the area of industrial control systems that is not replicated at any other government agency. is that correct? >> yes. l. >> and that's important because industrial control systems are a key part of critical infrastructure like the electric grid, water treatment plants. is that also correct? >> yes. and when you think about it, if you have the ability to interrupt the control system, you can take down an entire

protective network. you can interfere with the, with all of the activities there. and the attacks on control systems are growing more and more sophisticated all of the time. >> and could you tell us about work that is being done by dhs with your ics cert team and a national lab with respect to the u.s. electric grid? >> yes. we are working in both of those capacities with the national labs, with the grids in terms not only of mitigating attacks that have occurred, but also preventive measures that they can employ. >> so you're doing training as well and helping the critical infrastructure owners and operators identify vulnerabilities? >> that's correct. >> it's my understanding that in january the administration

transferred the defense department's defense industrial base cyber pilot program from dod to dhs. this is the program that's known as dib. >> that's right. the dib pilot. >> the dib pilot program, as i understand it, shared classified cyber threat indicators with defense contractors in an effort to better defend systems that contained information critical to the department's programs and operations. i understand that dhs is now the lead for coordinating this program with the private sector and that it's being expanded to other critical infrastructure sectors. could you tell the committee why the administration decided to transfer this pilot program from dod to the department of homeland security?

>> well, the dib pilot really gets to the division of responsibility between military and civilian, and what we are talking about here are, basically, private companies that do important defense contracting work. but they are, in essence, private companies, and is so the authorities and the laws that we use are better situated in dhs which deals in this context as opposed to dod. so we've been working with dod from the outset on the design of the dib pilot, have been working with them on the initial, the initial aspects of it. and now as the decision was made to extend it and to grow it, the decision was also made that it's more appropriately located within the dhs. >> the bill provides the authority to dhs to set

risk-based performance standards for critical infrastructure. to you believe -- do you believe that we can achieve great progress in improving our cybersecurity in this country ab sent that authority -- absent that authority? >> i think it's, it makes it very, it makes it tougher. i mean, we have, as i said in my testimony, you know, the basic authority under the homeland security act. we have authorities by various presidential directives. um, but nowhere do we have explicit authority to establish on a risk-based level, on a risk-based basis the protection necessary for critical infrastructure. >> finally, i think that a lot of people are unfamiliar with a lot of the work that the department has already done in the area of cybersecurity

including the fact that there is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week national cybersecurity and communications integration center. i believe it's called the nkik. >> yes. >> could you explain to the committee and those watching this hearing how this center operates and what it does with respect to the private sector? >> you know, the nkik is really an integrated 24/7 watch center for cyber, and it includes on its floor not only dhs employees, but representatives from other federal agencies from critical infrastructure sectors that coordinate with us through the n.i.p.. lots of acronyms in the cyber and government world. and finally, it also has representatives from the state

and local governments as well because a lot of the information sharing is applicable to them. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thanks very much, senator collins. senator mccain. >> mr. chairman and madam co-chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on long-awaited cybersecurity act of 2012. obviously, i welcome all of our witnesses including secretary napolitano and my old friend, governor ridge, who will have some different aspects and views on this bill in his testimony. i'd like to state from the outset my fondness and respect for the chairman and ranking member, especially when it comes to matters of national security, so the criticisms i may have with the legislation should not be interpreted as criticism of them, but rather on the process by which the bill is being debated and its policy implications. all of us recognize the importance of cybersecurity in the digital world. time and again we have heard

from experts about the importance of possessing the ability to effectively prevent and respond to cyber threats. we've listened to accounts of cyber espionage originating in countries like china, organized cyber criminals in russia and rogue outfits with a domestic presence like anonymous. who unleash cyber attacks on those who dare to politically disagree. our own government accountability office has reported that over the last five years cyber attacks against the united states are up 650%, so we all of us agree that the threat is real. it's my opinion that congress should be able to address this issue with legislation, a clear majority of us can support. however, we should begin with a transparent process which allows law make ors and -- lawmakers and the american public to let their views be known. unfortunately, the bill introduced by the chairman and ranking member have already been placed on the calendar by the majority leader without a single markup or any business executive

meeting by any committee of relevant jurisdiction. my friends, that's wrong. to suggest that this bill should move directly to the senate floor because it, quote, had been around since 2009 is outrageous. first, the bill was introduced two days ago. secondly, where do senate rules state that a bill's progress in a previous congress can supplant the necessary work on that bill in the present one? additionally, in 2009 we were in 111th congress with a different set of senators. for example, the minority of this committee has four senators on it presently who were not even in the senate, much less this committee in 2009. how can we seriously call it a product of this committee without their participation in committee executive business? respectfully, to treat the last congress as a legislative mulligan by bypassing the committee process and bringing the legislation directly to the floor is not the appropriate way to begin consideration of an issue as complicated as

cybersecurity. in addition to these valid process concerns, i have policy issues with the bill. a few months ago, as senator lieberman mentioned, he and i introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill codifying an existing cybersecurity memorandum of agreement between the department of defense and the department of homeland security. the purpose of that amendment was to insure that this relationship endures and highlight that the best government-wide cybersecurity approach is one where dhs leverages, not duplicates dod efforts and expertise. this bill, unfortunately, this legislation unfortunately backtracks on the principles of the moa by expanding the size, scope and reach of dhs and neglects to afford the authorities necessary to protect the homeland to the only institutions currently capable of doing so, u.s. cyber command and the national security agency.

at a recent fbi-sponsored symposium, general keith alexander, the commander of u.s. cyber command and the director of the nsa, stated that if a significant cyber attack against this country were to take place, there may not be much that he and his teams at either cyber command or nsa can legally do to stop an advance. according to general alexander, quote, in order to stop a cyber attack, you have to see it in realtime, you have to have those authorities. these are the conditions we put on the table, now how and what the congress chooses, that'll be a policy decision. this legislation does nothing to address this significant concern. and i question why we have yet to have a serious discussion about who is best suited, which agency, who's best suited to protect our country from this threat? we all agree it's very real and growing. additionally, if legislation before us today were enacted

into law, unelected bureaucrats at the dhs could prom promulgate prescriptive regulations on american businesses which own roughly 90% of critical cyber infrastructure. the regulations that would be created under this new authority would stymy job creation, blur the definition of private property rights and divert resources from actual cybersecurity to compliance with government mandates. a superregulater like dhs under this bill would impact free market forces which currently allow our brightest minds to develop the most effective network security solutions. i'm also concerned about the cost of this bill to the american taxpayer. the bill before us fails to include any authorizations or attempt to pay for the real costs associated with the creation of the new regulatory leviathan at dhs. this attempt to hide the cost is eclipsed by the reality of the assessment of critical infrastructure, the promulgation of regulations and their

enforcement will take a small army. finally, i'd like to find out over the next few days what specific factors went into providing regulatory carveouts for the i.t. hardware and software manufacturers. my suspicion is that this had more to do with garnering political support and legislative bullying than sound policy considerations. however, i think the fact that such carveouts are included only lends credence to the notion that we shouldn't be taking the regulatory approach in the first place. because of provisions like these and the threat of a hurried process, myself -- a total of seven of us, minority, ranking minority on seven committees will be introducing, um, and are left with no choice but to introduce an alternative cybersecurity bill in the coming days. the fundamental difference in our alternative approach is that we aim to enter into a cooperative relationship with the entire private sector through information sharing

rather than an adversarial one with a prescriptive regulation. our bill which will be introduced when we return after the presidents' day recess, will provide a common sense path forward to improve our nation's cybersecurity defenses. we believe that by improving information sharing among the private sector and government, updating our criminal code to reflect the threat cyber criminals pose, reforming the federal information security management act and focusing federal investments in cybersecurity our nation will be better able to defend itself against cyber attacks. after all, we are all partners in this fight as we search for solutions. our first goal should be to move forward together. i -- and i also would ask entered in the record a letter signed by saxby chambliss, ranking member on intelligence, myself, ranking member on armed services, jeff sessions, ranking member on finance, congress han enzi, ranking member on health

care, kay bailey hutchison, lisa murkowski, ranking member on the energy committee and chuck grassley on the ranking member of the finance committee be, which is to senator reid which we have asked that would he, the legislation go through the regular process with the committees of jurisdiction having a say in this process. so, mr. chairman, i thank you, and i yield the balance of my time. >> no balance. [laughter] senator mccain, i return -- >> [inaudible] >> i return the -- no, it's not. [laughter] look, with the same fondness and respect that you expressed for senator collins and me when you started, i cannot conceal the fact that i'm disappointed by your statement. we have conducted, this bill is

essentially the one that was marked up by the committee, but that's not the point. the point is that we have reached out not only to everybody who was possibly interested in this bill outside of the congress, but opened the process to every member of the senate who wanted to be involved. we pleaded for involvement. and a lot of people, including yourself, have not come to the table. the most encouraging part of your statement is that you and those working with you are going to introduce some legislation. and we'll be glad to consider it. the senate should consider it. i think senator reid intends to hold an open amendment process on this bill. but you know, as you stated, that this is a critical national security problem. and to respond to it with business about regulation of business, this is national security. as senator collins said, there is regulation of business that's bad for business and bad for the american economy. there is regulation such as we

have worked very hard to include in this bill that, in fact, is not only not bad for american business and bad for the american economy, but will protect american business and american jobs and help to guarantee more american economic growth. on the question of dod and the intelligence commitment, i indicated for the record earlier that we have supported our bill this week. i hear what you've said about general alexander from nsa, but we has at no point, nor has the department of defense or the dni, come before us and offered any suggestions for additions to this bill that would give him more authority. i'd be, i'd welcome those suggestions if he wishes. so i can't, i had to be honest with you as you've been honest with us, express my disappointment and express the only satisfaction i have from your statement which is that you're going to make a proposal. let our colleagues in the senate

consider it. senator collins and i and the others working on this bill will consider it, and let's get something done on a clear and present danger to our country this year. >> mr. chairman, could i just say briefly in response i speak for seven, seven ranking members of the major committees of jurisdictions. i don't speak for myself. there's a breakdown somewhere if seven ranking members of the relevant committees are all joining in this opposition to this process and this legislation. so if you choose to neglect how many years of experience, legislative experience and time in the senate, that's fine. but there's seven of us that are deeply concerned about this process in the legislation, and we don't think it should go directly to the floor. >> i will say for the record that we have reached out to all seven in various ways to try to engage their involvement in this bill. i would have much rather preferred to submit a bill, and

senator collins would have too, that everybody had been involved in discussingment we were very -- discussing. we were very open to trying to find consensus as we did with other chairs who are here. so nobody's neglecting the expertise. i'm saying i'm sorry that they haven't been engaged before, and i'm glad they're going to be engaged now. senator moran. >> mr. chairman, thank you. madam secretary, this is my first opportunity to vet with you since -- to visit with you since the announcement of the president's budget, and i want to talk about a topic unrelated at least to cybersecurity but certainly related to security. and the chairman just spoke about clear and present danger. one that you and i have had a conversation about over a long period of time is related to our food and animal safety and security in this country. and as you can imagine, can expect the disappointment that i have, others in our congressional delegn