the author's website at jamaljoseph.com. ..

>> this week on "the communicators" west virginia senator jay rockefeller, chair of the commerce, science and transportation subcommittee. he talks about cybersecurity legislation before the senate and the nature of cyber threats. >> senator jay rockefeller, chairman of the commerce committee, you recently said that cybersecurity legislation is absolutely necessary now than citizens are at risk. why do you say that? >> because it's true. george bushes last director of national intelligence, the highest intelligence position in the country and obama's first one, said the same thing, and they continue to say. that's the number one threat to the national security in existence. bob mueller says within a year he will be taking cybersecurity as a much more urgent problem for this country than loose nukes, ex-soviets nuclear

weapons. >> host: do you view of cybersecurity or cyber attacks as terrorism? >> guest: we do. i view it as war. i like to discipline myself into thinking because if you're hacking into the pentagon three, four, 5 million times a day, you know, every senator's office, virtually all corporate america. something has to wake us up. we are not awakened to it, and we started his cybersecurity bill. i'm inpatient about it. we started this thing really the day before obama was inaugurated, when he was elected i knew that he was going to be interested in this. we got olympia snowe and we put out a bill, susan collins came in and it just progressed and progress and progress. so it's virtually possible. we have to get some republicans on board but i think we can do that. >> host: how similar is the

current cybersecurity legislation being pushed by you and senators lieberman and collins to the bill that you brought to the floor or brought to committee three years ago? >> guest: very similar. our bill was accepted by the leader. it was accepted by the white house. we did it with both melissa hathaway and howard schmidt after that. we have had thousands of meetings, either directly or through telecommunications. with all kinds of people. we have made adjustments. we just meet with so many people, and we have made so many tweets. just to get it so it can past. it's got to have critical infrastructure, which is what the republican bill doesn't have now but i think that will change. we've got to have them got to protect our federal situation, the so-called.gov.

we've got to do that and with that of a lot of research development. we've got to develop a lot more talent. for people or up to speed on cybersecurity. to keep up with other countries and other actors. it's critically important. i compared to 9/11. except it's much more obvious than 9/11. 9/11, you suspected that there were people coming in the country. you can keep up with her movements budget a bad feeling about it. something would go on in minneapolis, fbi station and it wouldn't get to headquarters, and then dots to be connected, people living in certain houses in san diego. it was all very clear that something big was going to happen but we didn't know. here we know, because it's happening. warfare in cybersecurity is being waged. we are losing.

and it's, you know, 3000 people died in 9/11. what if they unleash dance or poison water systems or just shut down grades, hospitals, i think, shut down air traffic control so one of those to be days airplanes are just running into each other up in the sky. they could kill so many people, so easily. and the miracle to me is they haven't done it so far. and it's not to our credit. it's to the fact that it just hasn't happened, but it will. >> host: are you finding that these attacks are organized by nation states or by rogue agents? >> guest: most. nationstates would be the first priority, obviously. but a 15 your kid living in indonesia or living in spokane, washington, or oregon, where ever, could be doing this.

it just takes brains, facility, and a malicious intent. >> host: what are you hearing from the so-called critical infrastructure businesses, the electric companies, et cetera, about the regulation? senator mccain call this a regulatory leviathan. >> guest: i just have a hard time with that, because electricity more or less runs every hospital, every business, every school, every home, every enterprise in this country, and, therefore, it's the security of the nation. if they can shut down grades, which they have done in selected places across the united states already, if they can shut that down on a broader scale, then critical infrastructure becomes just exactly that. it's the infrastructure you absolutely have to protect. that number one priority is protecting critical infrastructure, because that's where people's lives are at

risk. where you said you really lose thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. things on the computer system like a damn and all the water is released. and all the people below that damn. they can do these things. >> you think there's a need for a white house level security czar? >> guest: know. i was one of first things we did. we had an original bill. i'm a little embarrassed about because i don't like sars myself but it was kind of the the language of the day. the first item that was the criticized the. we just took it out. the history of the development of the bill has been history of accommodation. the industry, two other committees, to other people. you know, you can stay with your principles because it's not all that complicated. your goals are clear, cybersecurity, critical

infrastructure, protect the government and protect, you know, the overwhelming 85% of entities which are private, information sharing, public partnership with the private sector, all of which is good. it's not regulation. it's just called protection, keeping us safe, keeping us alive. >> host: so when you republicans criticize that this has been fast tracked and the legislative process has been subverted, you disagree with that? >> guest: i was was a we've been on a very slow track. i would have liked to have completed is a year and a half ago. as it is it's going to be hard to get floor time already this year. but i think republican criticism constructively. and individuals in it, all of whom i respect greatly, all of whom know what they're talking about. might approach to each one of them, so have others, i was on

the intelligence community when we started this, still on the intelligence community so i know a lot of these folks really we well. and they are our allies. they just may not know it yet, or else we haven't done a good enough job in making ourselves clear. also, it's sort of hung around, and legislation that hangs around a long time begins to lose momentum. i fear that. >> host: harry reid, the majority leader, says he wants to fast-track his. how did you get his attention on this issue? >> guest: simply by coming out with a bill. olympia snowe and i came out with a bill, and we did in very short order. in fact, we were writing the bill, i think obama hadn't been president more than three or four months, and we had a bill written. and then, of course, we begin talking with industry and all kinds of other groups and other committees and all that. it evolves from there. it's not the same as it was, the

beginning, and a lot of details but its basic principles it's not changed a whit. with one exception, as it is we have to get people who do not believe that critical infrastructure, which is the great mass of american functionality, that has to be in the bill. that is not necessarily a debatable matter. you can't have cybersecurity without having critical infrastructure. >> host: why is the department of homeland security the right agency to monitor this? >> guest: the least reason, i would like to say, the only one that really can. in other words, the nsa couldn't do. they have see a passionate cia problems that would. but on the of the land, homeland security can cooperate as they are, and even be a partner with nsa. i don't see janet napolitano, but i don't see keith alexander in the same place, the same conversation. we had a meeting just earlier

this week and they were both on the same page, both cooperating with each other. but somebody's got to take the lead, and janet napolitano who i really trust at home in tikrit, which a lot of people look back at katrina and say oh, they didn't do that right, but they don't realize they have a superb intelligence unit which has now been beefed up. so it's the right place to do it, and, in fact, the only place that you can do it. >> host: some groups such as the aclu or the electronic privacy information center have raised privacy concerns for individuals on this legislation. >> guest: that would be automatic, wouldn't it? when i was chairman of the intelligence community we did fisa, which is allowing all of those come in this case, to telecommunication companies to be able to go ahead and collect intelligence with their servers all the around the world, from whence we got an 80% of our worldwide intelligence. but they have been sued 40 or

$50 billion, and so the question was, were we going to let them go ahead and do that and collect, or were simply going to say no, you can't do that, and protect privacy in absolute terms. and put ourselves at risk. it was an easy decision to me. not all democrats agreed. >> host: senator rockefeller, just a few more questions. the chief of security for at&t testified at the house recently, and he said that congress, and he was worried about the isp. he said comcast and at&t's of the world being lumped in with critical infrastructure, and he said, congress and the administration have leadership roles to play in assuring the u.s. continues to focus on technology innovation, burdening the private sector with the cost of unnecessary and ineffective regulations and processes is contrary to that. >> guest: if we were burdening the private sector unnecessarily, and burdensome

regulation and duplication, i would agree with him but we are not. we're saying to the private sector, you do this. you do what you think. usurer own imagination. if you can't, you don't know what to do, we will, help. but in essence we lived up to the private sector to do, but then we hold them accountable for what they have done. so common is that regulation or is that being sure -- this isn't like some kind of a business tax or something. we're talking about national life-and-death situations. and so, companies that know what their doing, and they're already doing it, go right ahead. fine with us. but if companies don't know how to do it quite, or are missing the point, we are watching. we are monitoring. we are monitoring. it's not regulating. it's a monitoring. if they need help then we will be there to help them. they will want us to be there to

help because they know how much they are at risk, and what the results of that could be. >> host: senator rockefeller, any funding issues with this legislation? >> guest: know. i mean, when i say that pretty casually, don't i? i have to think through very carefully. there may be some, not the one thing about this is that in the end, people will just vote for it, even if it costs money. we just finishing pasha we just finished passing a transportation bill as you and i are talking. on this day. and that cost money. and able to sing we can do anything which costs money. but it was bridges and roads, you know, more, the different kind of infrastructure, also critical but in a different way. and it passed overwhelmingly. like four to one. this morning, republicans and democrats voting together. i mean, the congress knows what is really at stake in this

country, and when you get an issue like cybersecurity, which is so threatening, which you know, lee hamilton and tom kean and the 9/11 commission say you've just got to get it done and it's got to be that original bill. like that original bill, it's got to critical infrastructure in it. they say that specifically. all kinds of, you know, input from people. i just don't see that money is a problem. >> host: have you looked at how other countries are managing their cybersecurity? >> guest: i haven't. i should have but i haven't heard i've just been so wrapped up in getting this done. you know, europe is very different. china is very different. brazil is very different. i'm not sure that it would've been useful. i think it will be useful for me to do that, but what i want to do is get a bill which has been vetted so many times by so many people put in front of so many

organizations, technological community, the private sector community. i've given a lot of speeches to them, except the criticism, made changes. the staff out of work with on intelligence and commerce have done the same thing. and they have made changes. i mean, if you would want to get something done, don't insist on having it done exactly as you want. don't compromise on the four or five main principles, particularly critical infrastructure. and information sharing which is not as easy as it sounds, like public-private partnerships. that's we do in america on all kinds of things. i feel pretty good about it. >> host: finally, senator rockefeller, i want to go back to the legislative timeline where you talk to senators collins and lieberman last week, and they were pretty sure that this bill would move during this couple of weeks of congress. and you seem to have expressed some doubt about that. >> guest: yes, i hope they are

right. you always want to take a positive view. but for time is hard in the senate right now because of the political bickering back and forth, holds on things, and no, you can talk about that over we not going to take that up, or you have to get 60 votes. all this kind of thing. so i'm being cautious, and am also, i want to be so certain that we really do get a tremendous buy-in from all parties, including the republicans now that appear not to agree with what we say. maybe, i think maybe they don't feel as strongly. i've had several of those conversations with those folks. and so we go to them, what can we do to make this more? we can't compromise critical infrastructure. that's just a really big stuff that makes this country go,

blowing up power plants and all that stuff. but i think we will work her way through that. >> host: senator jay rockefeller has been our guest on "the communicators." he is chairman of the senate commerce committee. we have been talking about cybersecurity. >> "the communicators" also airs each monday night. if you missed any of our interview with senator jay rockefeller on cybersecurity legislation, you can catch the commuters again tonight at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. you can also watch "the communicators" anytime online. log onto our website at c-span.org. click the series tab and select "the communicators." watch other regularly scheduled programs at the series when. c-span.org, your online resource for public affairs programming. >> coming up, the first of two panels on the middle is with former white house senior

advisers on u.s. policy in the region.

>> the strong support we have, when this movement originate, gives us an excellent base, and we in my judgment will go forward in the beginning with at least 177 electoral votes comprises the states of the south and florida, and advantages a few other state of the union, then you have 270 odd intellectual votes necessary to win the presidency. >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office, and loss. go to our website c-span.org/thecontenders to see video of the contenders who had a lasting impact of american politics. >> there's been on his conventions, serious disagreements, and i believe considerable hot arguments. but don't let anybody be misled

by that. you have given here in this ball a moving and dramatic hoop of how americans who honestly different close ranks and move forward for the nation's well being, shoulder to shoulder. >> c-span.org/thecontenders. >> now a panel of former senior white house advisers talk about internal deliberations over middle east policy. among the speakers a former mideast peace negotiator dennis ross. he talks about the one-to-one discussions between president obama and former egyptian president hosni mubarak during last years of egyptian revolution. this 90 minute forum was hosted by georgetown university. >> thank you so much again for joining us for our symposium on religious freedom and religious

extremism, lessons from the arab spring, sponsored by the religious freedom project of georgetown's berkeley center for religion, peace and world affairs. i am timothy shah, and i'm associate director of the religious freedom project. and it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce the second of our three panels today. the panel that we're calling our keynote conversation on the policy implications and the policy lessons that can be drawn from the connection between religious freedom and religious extremism. especially for those countries of north africa and the middle east that have been affected by the arab spring. the idea that religious freedom may be an effective policy strategy for addressing religious extremism is not new. consider the policies that thomas more designed for the island of utopia about 500 years

ago. in utopia he writes go, there have been constant quarrels about religion and the various warring religious groups had refused to cooperate with each other. so then, a new leader came along, thomas moore rights, who, quote, made a new law by which everyone was free to practice what religion he liked and to try to convert other people to his own faith, provided he did it quietly and politely. by rational arguments. but, he continued, quote, if he fails to convince them, he was not allowed to employ violence or personal abuse. so in thomas moore's utopia, a policy of religious freedom was the effective solution for the problem of religious extremism, religious conflict and religious violence. well, that was utopia.

what about the real world? to discuss that question we are delighted that we have an all-star panel of experienced policymakers who, between them, in my rough calculation, have something like 50 or so years of experience making policy, not for utopia, but for the united states government. [laughter] and to lead us in the discussion of this crucial issue, we are thrilled that we have william inboden who in is himself a foreign policy all-star, and also who we are proud to say is a fellow with our religious freedom project excellent introduce will. he's assistant professor at the lbj school of public affairs, and distinguished scholar at the strata center for international security and law at the university of texas austin. is also a nonresident fellow at the german marshall fund of the united states, previously he

served as senior vice president of the institute, and a senior director for strategic planning on the national security council at the white house. is also worked at the department of state as an of of the policy planting staff, and is other specified in the office of international religious freedom, and also has significant experience on capitol hill. so what our great pleasure to have will who will be moderating the discussion. take it away. >> thank you and one for turning out on this lunchtime on friday for what we hope will be a very same living, and insightful question. as the moderator i'm humbled to be the presence of these three. i will go through the lengthy bios. sufficed to say, any one of them would be more than capable of delivering the keynote address on his own. the fact that agree to come together for a conversation i think it's all the more

enriching. there's also a tremendous amount of statecraft experience represented on this panel. by my calculation, our members together have served in several presidential administrations. everyone since, literally everyone since the ford administration. and during that time they presided over some tremendously significant geopolitical events, and also relevant to our purposes today, worked on some profound democratic transitions whether the democratic transitions in asia, democratic transitions in latin america, certainly in asia and europe at the end of the cold war, and no more recently the arab spring. make it sound like a palace our long to the two files, know that they're very young, smart, energetic and have their best years ahead of them. so i think they all started in the 40 ministration when they were about eight years old. [laughter] anyway, what we'll be doing as a structured conversation here. i would be putting a number of

questions to our panelists as a whole as well as to individual ones. and then after a suitable amount of time we will turn it over to the audience for questions from the audience as well. first question is for steve hadley. steve, during his presidency president bush spoke often of his belief that the peoples of the arab world both desired and deserve democracy. i want to know, would you view the events of the arab spring as a vindication or perhaps a cautionary tale for some of the vision that president bush laid out, which were very involved in as well? >> i think the place we have to start is that revolutions in the middle east are being made by the people of the middle east. it's their revolution. this is not made in america. this is not made by george bush. the one thing i think we can claim for president bush is that he, looking at 9/11, was willing

to say and articulate very clearly publicly, that u.s. policy had been wrong for about 50 years. that it was premised on the notion that you could support tyrants and authoritarians in the middle east and get stability. and we felt we needed that stability over 50 years for oil and to keep out the soviets and all kinds of reasons. one of the lessons he drew from 9/11 was that was a bad deal. that supporting authoritarians, instead of getting a stability, really got terrorism. because they created a culture of despair and lack of hope that made the middle east a recruiting ground for extremism. and he came out and said that very clearly, and that the united states had to have a different policy. it had to have a policy that supported freedom, democracy, human dignity, the right people to take control of their own

future, and that that was not only the right of people, but also would, over time, lead to a real kind of stability. stability based on democracy and freedom. and i think he was right. and i know i think he takes, celebrates with the people of the middle peace that freedom and democracy are finally coming to the middle east. now, there are going to be, people talk about arab spring and some said this isn't arab spring. this is an arab awakening, and we will have spring, fall, winter, summer, ups and downs but it's going to take a long time. but at least we can say that freedom and democracy are beginning to be o on the march inabilities, and that's very good news. >> thanks. for dennis, it appeared at times from the outside like the obama administration was caught by surprise by the initial advent