to start organizing these things. because i'll be honest with you, when i read in the near times, manhattan, real estate is being bought up by wealthy russians. i keep asking myself, why don't they find an exchange program? you know, is that, i mean it's not the soviet union anymore. and it would do wonders in the united states to have frankly more -- >> [inaudible] >> i think would be very well received by americans, because, you probably have more because you got there more frequently. >> absolutely. >> the new jersey nets. >> i do want to favor the side of the room too much but let's go to the question up front, nikolai, and then i saw a question i think the third row. but why don't we start your?

>> hello everybody. my name is nicholas. i work in new york office. russian think tank working outside russia. and i guess my question is to all panelists. do you think any disconnection between the big ideas behind american soft power and the reality? i'll explain what i mean. if american politics -- if congress is paralyzed there is no option to decide anything. and would we see all the crises in american economy, when we see -- it's kind of difficult to say that this great american idea, democracy, division of powers is, this idea is not working in

the current world. thank you. >> this kind of reminds me of i won't call them debates but conversations i've had with russians about america's style diplomacy. sorry, democracy and eventually mean anything and the country doesn't work and were going down the tubes and all this. you know what? i think this expression is in english which the truth is in the pudding. i mean, i don't think that you can, you can say how whatever is happening in the united states. on a let's call it the soft power world in the united states will affect people abroad. i mean, i was on a little vacation and i went down to the jefferson memorial, which i love, and for the umpteenth time i was reading the quote that either the looking at all the people who were there. there were people from china,

everything for country down there. and they are finding inspiration. nobody was jumping off the walls. nobody was screaming. they were all reading their things. so i think it's almost like hollywood. it cuts both ways. yes, we all know that congress is dysfunctional. will they eventually get their act together? i have no idea. will this american democracy, probably older than not the least i would hope so. i don't know. but there are so many messages that the united states exudes. the high sculpture, the lowest base of culture. the sincere belief in democracy, and the perversion of democracy. it's everything. so i don't think that you can really say how this, let's say, a flash point, one point in time will be perceived

internationally. and in what country. different countries to see things in different ways. >> well, i think in the short term is a public diplomacy problem. and the longer-term its soft power issue. so now we're talking about the short term and in that sense i think it might be an issue in terms of the perception of the united states around the world. but when it comes to soft power which entails decades if not centuries, i don't think you'll have a big impact unless of course it's a protracted period of crisis that then gets and the more long-term problem. if we look at soft power, the components our culture, political guys. so foreign policy depends on the perspective but as you mentioned it depends on who is looking at them in terms of their appeal or their legitimacy. when it comes to political values that u.s. to promote freedom and democracy so they're still standing to do what they

profess as to whether it's working domestic or not, i think that's a different question. and in terms of culture, culture is still very appealing and very prominent around the world. so i would say that so far it is still very strong, despite the short-term public diplomacy problems, if that answers the question. >> regarding jefferson, you know, he corresponded with alexander the first. and i had the pleasure of reading some of his correspondence when i was working on a following of documentary materials pertaining to the early american russian relations. jefferson had a bust of alexander the first at monticello. that was lost but today is a replicate there. what you're saying about the u.s. and soft power, the fact that something rotten in dark -- rotten in denmark and the u.s. interestingly enough it reminds me, and, therefore, the u.s. soft power public diplomacy cannot be effective because of what's happening here.

it reminds me a little bit of an article that lead appeared in foreign affairs by joseph nye regarding chinese and russian soft power, where he made the point that it won't be successful intel the two countries get their act together at home. so it's an interesting one of you, it's kind of an agreement here that if, ma you, if you can no longer attract the world by what you are, you've got a problem with soft power. you know, i think that's part of the problem the united states does, in fact, have, that it is perceived in many parts of the world as, you know, hypocritical i think is probably the thing that comes to mind that we say one thing and do another. we criticize other countries human rights, and what about our situation here? so i think the general point he would be that unless a country

itself at home preserves its values and principles, it's soft power, and public diplomacy, you know, won't work, you know, you can put lipstick on a pig. >> let's go to a question in the third row and i'll take one more question century getting off at 730 tonight. so we'll take your question and then your question in the fifth row. >> i promise you a difficult question and so i've got a number of thoughts and i'm going to try to conglomerate them -- >> not a soft question. >> we'll see how soft it is. i think it's a little more hard and soft. in this case we look at the issue of soft power and other russian are defined as something more tangible, something they can almost buy an export to other countries. something that is hard, physical and this is. we look at the old soviet policy of revolution eventually and

looking at the arab spring. we see that the old soviet policy used to be we can give you a revolution that we can export to you. basin in the form of an ak-47. we make a cheap weapon we can export other countries that people can revolutionize the way they do government. they can take over from the basic population. so looking at how that sort of turned into what we see today with the arab spring, that is, people have the same weapons that were exported during the cold war cannot continue the policy of revolution, perhaps and difficulty with the russian government is now trying to promote. looking in that sort of relation to other forms of soft power exports to russia does, grain exports which i think is really key to the arab spring, look at some the real primary causes of that and it comes down to food prices which were affected by global warming and basically -- decimated the grain during those years but how does that all relate to what rush is trying to do and what they see as an

actual problem, does the past policy mix with the current policy? to the sea ways they can export soft power to eventually stop the revolution they may start in the first place? >> a list of questions related, let's tackle that first and then we'll get to yours. spin a globe, i'm not an expert on that part of, you know, the world, but from what i understand russia has been, they have a constant basically of how they describe their foreign aid and that's you mentoring assistance. i think the way to conceptualize it it is rather different from the western conceptualization again. but i guess that would fall under what you're sort of describing. so yes, they have been trying to show assistance to those governments. but what i see is that they're

on the side of the government. they're not on the side of the people, if you may. or rather should i rephrase it to get out on the side of the insurgents. they are not on the side of the rebels. so i think the times of change and i think they do recognize that picture right now their interest is in maintaining their powers that be, you know, whether it's in syria or later maybe and iran. but they do want to promote their interest. so whatever is that is so dangerous they're going to redefine and rebrand it as such, and they still do provide weapons to syria. yesterday and got the news they are providing the defense system. i think that is important to remember that they're going to promote their interests. i don't think there's anything wrong with the. i think the problem comes when you're trying to reach consensus. he giunta realized that each country is after its own foreign policy interests. that's what i think is often forgotten when redoing analysis of russian foreign policy, or

any other country foreign policy because we look at it from the american perspective. so keeping that in mind i think rush issues being utilitarian. >> ed squires, i'm a professor of geography at george washington. in the discussion i don't think i've thought about it before but you mentioned the founding fathers, they certainly were not a majority and they were trying to promulgate a revolution. they use of soft power very effectively both before and after, during the revolution with franklin. i guess what i'm trees about is not soft power diplomacy that is being used between countries, but soft power and diplomacy that is being used within countries, think about the current situation in russia where any kind of foreign intervention is being cut off where the press is being cut off, if you talk to partyline

you're in. if you don't you're out. i would lik like you to commentn that, but also back up and say i think what is happening in u.s. as well with certain groups of people got in control of the press, or got control of the government. so what about this internal use of soft power as a way to control people? and i think that maybe part of what we're seeing in syria as well. >> can i make just one quick comment? i'm sure you're all familiar with what's happening with the act was passed in 1948 and thanks to subsequent amendments made it clear that u.s. government has sponsored information products, programs such as the voice of america could not be disseminated domestically. the act was recently amended. now you can look at the ua on the internet and not fear of going to jail.

so yes, i mean, i think it's a very kind of iffy situation that distinction between public diplomacy can you, outreach to foreign audiences and public affairs communicating with american audiences, that at the state department as part of one office. i mean, and under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs is supposed to harmonize these two activities. well, maybe that makes more sense than the 21st century where audiences, foreign and domestic, are, the distinctions are of literate due to mask an indication and internet. but i think we have to be very careful about domestic quotes public diplomacy outreach being used as propaganda. and, of course, many insidious ways in our 21st century is to the new social media of having

propaganda that doesn't appear as propaganda. those are my thoughts. >> i will just jump in because i know we're running out of time, but one thing i think it's important is that if you're talking about russian propaganda, i think themselves, obviously the penetration of television is massive in russia. however, the younger generation are turning off tv, a lot of young people don't watch tv news. they are on the web and they're going to aggregating sites in getting information. so that i think in a microwave, it's kind of like a macro situation in the world, that it's going to be harder for the russian government to give a coherent message to some people, precisely because, in less space are really tracking down which you really haven't i don't

think, on the web. the way the chinese have. i think it's going to be hard to really do what used to be possible. because a lot of russians are looking at the same stuff you're looking at. >> well, we could go on and on. i think on this topic are unlikely we have a reception that follows where we can continue talking about this topic, but this has been a fascinating discussion, so thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to be with us tonight and sharing your insight. as i begin is a very important topic right now in u.s.-russia relations, a great evolving topics i think a lot more discussions that we could have. so please join me in thanking our speakers. >> thank you to the audience. [applause] >> a token of our appreciation. we have some gifts.

from russia. [inaudible conversations] thank you so much again. [applause] >> please join us out in the lobby. >> with congress off for the memorial day recess, we are featuring booktv in prime time each night this week.

>> that's all tonight beginning at eight eastern here on c-span2. >> c-span2 will continue to cover various discussions throughout the week from book expo america. live coverage from new york city continues tomorrow with a panel of authors discussing their upcoming books.

live coverage of that discussion gets underway tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> there tends to be a denigration of the u.s. military i some historians that whenever one battalion fought an american battalion or one regiment fought an american regiment, that the germans tended to be tactically superior. that mano a mano they were the better military. i think this is just nonsense because it's pointless. global war is a clash of systems. it's which system can produce the wherewithal to project power indialantic, the pacific, the indian ocean, south east asia. which system can produce the civilian leadership to create a

transportation system, the civilian leadership that is able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1944. >> sunday, two-time pulitzer prize winning author and journalist rick atkinson will take your calls, e-mails, facebook comments and tweets, in depth, three hours live sunday at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> earlier today, u.s. army chief of staff general ray odierno spoke atlantic council here in washington. about the long-term strategic challenges facing the united states army. >> so one of the comments i made based on exactly the scenario that you outlined is that it's impossible for us to be revolution. we need to be evolutionary because it's going to continue to change. so one of the pass i go down is let us evolve. ..

one is mobility, one is our strategic mobility which is our ability -- to maintain those

capabilities. we have to build packages that allow us to deliver people quickly. and in small increments based on the situation that we might see. the second is our ability to do command control and intelligence. we do it better than anybody else so we have to explain our ability to develop command and control and intelligence capabilities that we then push forward as fast as possible down to the lowest level. third is logistics. we do a better job in strategic operational tactical logistics than anybody else in the world and that is what allows us to sustain long-term operations, whether it be a battalion or company for several quarters for word. the most important one in my mind is leader development. but one thing we must focus on in times of uncertainty in the

budgeting uncertainty is developing our leaders because we need to continue to have a noncommissioned officer corps that enables us to be will to deal with these complex issues and so we are refocusing that and in the next 30 days or so the new leader development program will start to bring us into the future so we have to involve these capabilities over time. the one thing i worry about, and everybody's declaration there's going to be no more, we need no more ground forces that would make the army too small. that's why we have to evolve that over time. we have to be careful because we've proven that hasn't been the case. i see nothing on the horizon yet that tells me we don't need that. i know there's a lot of people that say i hope we don't ever have to deploy the ground force. i hope we never have to deploy ground forces again. but for us to be toward our

sources and have the key devotee to protect the nation you have to have the right number of ground forces so we have to give it in a measured and a deliberate way so that is my view on that. next in use twitter with a panel that includes a former iranian hostage. "the new york post" editorial page editor and seattle-based egyptian journalist that covered the air of spring. from the university of colorado annual conference on world affairs, this is one hour and 15 minutes. >> good afternoon. i want to welcome all of you to the 1:00 session on tweeting for freedom. i am moly tayer and i moderator of this. i have no connection to tweets except that i read them and i

have a friend but as a stand-up comedian that sends out one joke a day as a tweet so if anybody wants his address i would be happy to share that. i wanted to give you a quick touch base on tweeting because literally about six years ago i was sitting in the seat with another panel and we were talking about tweeting and was so new and so stream of consciousness that literally some of our students were telling us things they were tweeting and i was like i don't think i would be very interested in that, but it's gotten much better. for those of you interested in the wikipedia level of research, it starts in 2006 and it is the founding of twitter by jack dempsey who was a college student at the time. twitter comes from the way the company landed on their handle is the definition of the term meeting short burst of inconsequential information or

tripping so they thought that would work as a pretty good name for what we are doing. the youth has tipped mightily in the early days in 2007 south by southwest from the conference in austin about two weeks ago did in interactive -- twitter was there and they did a piece they put up 60 screams and tweeting all of the messaging coming out to further enrich the conference activities. in 2010, the last time for which i salles analytics on this, 40.1% happening out there are point list babbles still. some of the stuff the students were telling me that they had back in 2008. 37.6%, conversations. people actually having a back-and-forth. 5.9%, self-promotion. [laughter]

8.7% has passalong value, things that are being tweeted and then there is spam. one of the best quotes i found in the description of this comes from jonathan who is a professor of internet law at harvard who says the qualities that make tweeting seem half-baked are also make it quite powerful. so with that i want to introduce the panel and get us started. i am going to tell you about what we would like to do today and let me know if you are comfortable. each of the panelists with us today want to do a little bit of a ten minutely out from their perspective. i am going to then at the end of the 40 minute segment ask if there is something burning they want to respond to from one another. and then we are going to bring it to you. there is a microphone right in the middle of the room. given that we are videotaping this we but love if you would

walk to the microphone for questions so we can actually capture the whole session. i have some very short introductions. as i read my package saying you are welcome back as a moderator here's what we don't want you to do, read the biographies. so they have all given me a tweet and here is what we have today. >> is this microphone on? >> hello? >> okay. if you can hear me the hash tag is cwa13 and for this is the most brilliant panel of all. [laughter]

>> i will start there and we will bring it back to you. i am going to start with our home town sweethearts, willow wilson who doesn't live here anymore who gives me this introduction. she is a professional bender who is a casual gamer and student of religion and is the author of critically acclaimed books and comics. sitting next to her is sanho tree, the fellow institute for policy studies and talks about drug policy cultural war, social justice and stuff that amuses him. he likes a good and he it's bad. he wants to start a faction today or tomorrow, and he is based in a motor on the potomac.

thank you for being here. then coming towards me on the like to introduce to you shane bauer, whose twitter biography is investigative journalist, former hostage, middle east presents he joins us today from a long trail. >> new york post editorial writer, stand-up comic, pungent etc. i work in new york city and of course as it is said, i tweet on everything from local politics, national politics, comedy,

anything that i find of interest. >> without further ado i want to start at the beginning and allow willow wilson to lay out her thinking. where are you? >> so, twitter. i was a lead of dr.. when i first got into to order it was through a friend of mine who is an early adopter of everything who e-mail me and said you have to get on this. it's going to be huge and i was like you really want me to create yet another handle, another password, another thing i have to keep track of on the internet? you're telling me this? this was post facebook and post destruction of my space. everybody had g. e-mail and everything. there were too many botts in my name that were there permanently in cyberspace. and so i was very reluctant and

i got on only because i heard that it was going to be the new way you had to promote yourself as an author and was going to quickly become obligatory. so i got on a twitter and i discovered there were a lot of other authors and famous people on their who were early adopters who were actually tweeting themselves, not assistance or go to people or robots but as themselves. so in 140 characters or less i could get a daily dose kashechkin qtr if that's your thing. i said this is actually kind of interesting. connecting people throughout my day like most writer in my time

alone because writing requires all of your concentration and is a solitary activity. so i tend to see e-mails, even the important ones as an intrusion but if people got into a trust me on twitter and said you have a link or have you heard of this bank, the limit of 140 characters is very convenient because i could write in and out 20 seconds and then get back to what the verdict was i was doing. so that is a pretty frivolous use of twitter. and the true potential of twitter didn't reveal itself to me until the early months of 2011 during what became known as the arab spurring. i spent a large time living in egypt working as a journalist to read my husband is the egyptian and we still have a lot of

friends and family back in egypt. i've been paying attention since the heavy elections to the emerging phenomenon of criticism of the regime on the internet which began primarily through blogging but then branched out into facebook and eventually twitter. and it struck me watching this phenomenon unfolded that the internet because things are red instantaneously it is much harder to center than print media or television media today and for this reason, the regime of egypt is very rightly afraid of this new technology and the people who were using it and as far back as 2005 was inhabited in some cases even torturing them for criticizing the regime. and this was happening when here in the u.s. the traditional

media was poo pooing the entire phenomena and they were just going to sort of go away and putting forth this libel with a bunch of slackers with no social consciousness. so the picture that was emerging from the in the middle east was very different. that was that technology truly could be used to circumvent the state and censorship in a way that you couldn't do in any other kind of media. and i thought this is going to go places. it skipped the 20th century. never have fax machines, went straight from the basic land line to the technical environment that we know today so in many ways they are more than what people consider the better developed west.

at the time i started writing a novel about a middle eastern emirate who was providing security online to whoever came to him for help. i finished it the week that the egyptian people occupied the square in 2011. and i got a call from my agent that said we have to sell this book now and have a lot of interesting conversations from their end with people that told me that the generation was of was it going to be huge in the middle east, don't they still ride camels and then they were all kicking themselves and said how did you know and i was thinking how could you not know? so i think it's watching that phenomena unfold was so astonishing to me because for

the first time in the sordid history of the internet, the regimes were scrambling to block internet access and cell phone access in order to prevent the revolution from occurring. literally this is the last ditch effort of the mubarak regime. they shut down the service because a lot of people go on twitter and facebook and communicate. to the best of their ability they shut off access to the internet because it was such a fundamental way for these people who decided enough was enough to come together and to plan where they were going to take the next demonstration. where they were going to, you know, hit the next checkpoint and a day one. that means to go down in the history books. this was the literary -- this is

the printing press version 2.0 but in that moment the genie was out of the bottle. if you can tweet faster, you can take them down after the fact. but, you know if it takes an hour or two hours to do that it could have already been seen by millions of people. so twitter is sort of the ultimate of digital one of seven ships. it's very difficult to center and as i am watching now the fallout of the revolution digitally from my little perch in the u.s., it's amazing to me how much faster news gets out on trigger them any mainstream media, cnn, fox, al jazeera, etc.. and to me, as someone that is

interested in what is happening to people on the ground in these faraway places that makes it extremely valuable to me not just a tool staying in touch with people i love and see what they are doing but also to swallow the movers and shakers who are literally giving the world a blow by blow account of history in the making. so, that is a very heavy note to kind of in don sali will say this there are plenty of frivolous stuff that goes on, on a twitter but that is an echo of what goes on in day-to-day life. people are shocked if the majority of conversations that had been on twitter or meaningless except for the people having them that if you listen to people talking in the checkout line of the curse restore i think you'll find that is true most of what we say about our cars and kids and

grocery trips to letter provides a platform to connect with people that have the same kind of idiotic problems that we feel so alone and isolated so why would say it is inherent intruder because probably point number 1% of the people that used water for revolutionary purposes and it reveals is talking about their dogs, this is real life happening every day. and i think that in an age where we are increasingly isolated, this is one of the most valuable tools we have to reach out in the most ordinary possible way and get sympathy for the things that make us feel alone but actually unite us. so i will end on that and can get off. >> thank you. [applause] >> sanho? >> i have to thank you for introducing me because it was at this conference in 2010i first

learned to take it seriously and the way that happened is that the day before i flew out here i stopped at my local best buy and happened to be the same day the introduced the first ipad and there were a couple left and i picked one up and wouldn't let me put it down. i brought it to the conference and i was the only one -- we were the only to people at the conference and i had an alert that pops up when someone mentions me and i started seeing all these things and people kept asking like sanho tree has an ipad. it had nothing to do with the substance of what i was going to say. if people are talking about me on to utter it must be a valuable medium so i've been on ever since. but it can be very frivolous. i confess i have tweeted things

i've eaten and stuff. i forget who it was that talked about old technology, like the telegraph and faxes and contrast with technology today. we have a smartphone that sits in our pocket and you can access the human history and wisdom in this one device and we use it to look at the videos but it has a tremendous upside in the potential for the social change that we are barely beginning to learn about and some of the pioneers in this that we are mentioning. one of my favorites is angelo that works at the media matters and the handle is goaneglo to be used to be stopped glenn vacca. they were leading people to violence and he's much more than

the fox commentators. says someone has to do something about this. he went to to better and built up 26,000 followers. what he did was start the campaign to get them kick off of fox news and the way that he did that is he studied each of the advertisers that advertise on the show and then he would send a direct message initially saying would you mind following me for a moment i want to explain what i'm doing and then he explained we are not asking you to drop all together but stop advertising on the show because here is the record of all the things that he has misrepresented and it's causing a lot of harm in society, et cetera. if they were foolish enough to ignore him he would then go public with his brother and the corporate hammill of the corporations and basically got thousands of followers to express their own outrage of the corporation for continuing to advertise on the show.

by the end of the campaign he knocked off more than 300 advertisers from the show and they knocked off all of the advertisers of the show they could only show internal fox ads and the advertising rate was a fraction of the other shows so fox did the economical thing and got rid of it but that shows you there's tremendous potential. if i offered you a beer in your liberal, how would you react? that brand is poisonous and will continue to be yet it's been over for a very long time and here is where it gets interesting to the social media obscures' the young and brand loyalties. the intersection gives tremendous power that is yet to be tapped because hoff if it is

with xenophobia comer racism, oppression, and its fixed with people for the rest of their lives or for a long time. those of you in college here you get a lot when you first enter college, deodorant and things for this and that. why do they give you free stuff? if you ask your parents have many decades have you used the same detergent, toothpaste, soap? brand loyalty lasts throughout your life very often and that's why there is so much programs on television and free things for young people because you are not as published yet and the hope to get the market share out of that. as the younger people you possess a lot of economic clout and if you combine that you can make a big corporations the cave and that is something we haven't been able to do up until now in this kind of viral advocacy. it is a tremendously

revolutionary forum and the sense that it also is very democratizing. i work on drug policy and i quit my day job, and i tweet nettie 11:00 and 4 o'clock eastern time with drug policy news articles every day based five minutes apart may be a dozen or two dozen articles for the wire services following the but the drug of office. but when they see the story day after day, every single day so it's critical to the war on drugs they can no longer continue on ignorance and purport somehow it isn't working or that they can't ignore it any more. it's democratizing so we can talk to journalists treacly and offer them suggestions or criticisms that will shape their

reporting and they will contact me as a result of that. the same with bureaucrats. it's easy to strike up a conversation in a wave you couldn't do with email and when they realize how many others you have, they don't want to make more you. they are more willing to engage sometimes said that is the tremendous upside. there are down sides, however and we need to be cognizant of the dangerous world. i am concerned less about water, more about facebook and youtube ban other social media in the conflict zones. i became politicized in college. i did a lot of activism on central america and the dirty war and thinking back to el salvador in the 80's when the death squads were killing people, driving them out of their homes, torturing them, dumping the bodies. in those days they were looking for the union organizers,

community activists and they could torture people and maybe some of the names they would get out of them might be accurate and they would find those people and get more of those innocent people also got ground up, but nowadays you can hack a lot of these accounts for instance and your rights become your death warrant so like columbia where they've done illegal surveillance or honduras you can have a couple facebook accounts and figure out pretty quickly who they are in any given country. people have been driven out of their homes and disappear on their you to comment or other comments and social media. trotter is less dangerous because everybody has a disclaimer on their bio. they do not equal endorsements. but with other social media we need to be careful about what we are saying and to whom we are

saying it. if you are in part of a world of your freedom of speech isn't guaranteed, it could be a liability. so, anyway, that is in a nut shell some of the up sides and some of the down sides. but i will leave it at that. [applause] >> this is my first panel and i'm happy to be year. i first signed up in 2009 and just got signed up to facebook and was kind of weary. i wasn't into the social media at that time and i was living in damascus and the reason i signed

up is that there had just -- they just kicked off in iran. the way to follow what was happening i quickly learned because the news was telling us this was to follow it on twitter atwitter was still not a threat to the syrian government. facebook was blocked but twitter wasn't. so i signed up and i just kind of watched them coming through from, you know, people and other cities and a kind of -- when i was thinking of the title, you know, that moment kind of captured to be both because in signing at if they're ought to look at my contacts and sign me up to my friends and whenever i did, and most of them were people saying things like how much they like hot dogs and things like this. i just kind of watched so that i could pay attention to iran.

ironically a couple months later i became a prisoner in iran, which i will talk about on the other panels, but was kind of off the map in prison for two years with a lot of those activists actually in a political prison. but coming out, one of the things that happens to people in prison is kind of a time warp. use get your referenced point to the world is when you went in and then world moves very fast. so i got out and suddenly twitter was important. especially the journalist, you are in a lot of, you know, a lot of areas, but you are kind of -- there is this kind of unstated rule that your social clout is measured on trotter followers so it was important for the news and they had been heavily viewed

in the arab spring but i was noting that it was kind of the same by mary. was still mostly frivolous. the most followed personal shredder right now is just been bieber lady gaga has more followers than the heads of states. but, you know, i -- after getting out, i read a lot about what had been happening in the middle east watching it in prison in the state media lines. and i think -- i kind of realized. >> they take credit in some ways for the mass of events happening in the world and this is one of them in a certain way less so

than the way that was being talked about as an organizing tool. i think that rather shaped the narrative. indonesia for example. the riots indonesia -- in tunisia and egypt also but the difference now is people were starting to kind of reference it and they have these pashtuns with the dates like generate 25 or wherever. and quickly, very quickly there were directly to connected to each other in a way that it was

possible before. all of the connections were happening and it kind of became this sense of movement. but i think ultimately the importance of rubber and the use of it other than the frivolous uses as a reporting tool. i think that was used in iran. people are reporting what is happening as it happened which is important internally, but it's also important for getting the word out. people in the middle east often tweet and english because they are tweeting for the world. and then, you know, the kind of larger media is watching and reporting on that.

there's an example last week of this i watch where twittered played a role in a situation that had to deal with freedom and reporting. there is this guy that was kind of an environmental activist involved in the earth liberation front and spent time in prison for arson. and in his time in prison, what is held in a federal solider confinement units which has other people what kind of politically crimes that have a political motive. he was recently released in prison. after his release, he wrote a blog on the huffingtonpost.com which a lot of people do come and he talks about this new evidence that had come out about his case which basically proved

he was put in solitary confinement for the speech. and i think that was two or three days after he made the post, he was rearrested. and i found out about this on to murder because his lawyers -- he's engaged in a lawsuit related to his imprisonment and represented by a kind of human rights kind of legal group called the center for constitutional rights, which i follow. they picked this up and wrote about it and it kind of got into the larger sphere of media and

it was released because it turned out that although all that was used was until a couple years ago that you could -- you were not allowed as a federal prisoner to write on a byline which means you can't write for public consumption basically. and that had been declared unconstitutional. as a, you know, in part because of this kind of attention. which i think is kind of in some ways a typical use of twitter at least in the kind of media realm how they deal with it like saying people -- i follow people that are, you know, sometimes activist, sometimes part of organizations, what ever come about our kind of doing this work and then it's just quickly shoots out this kind of ladder

and becomes a story. so yeah. >> we will pause there and hear from robert. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, shane. i was hoping i didn't call you by the wrong name. we will have robert round this off and come to questions and then come to you. >> thank you very much. when shane made the observation that lady gaga has more twitter followers than the president of the united states, i was reminded of the old story when babe ruth was in an argument i'm not sure i think this was before the red sox or the yankees when he said i should get this. i'm were fixed.

they said i had a better year than the president of the united states. so, i'm really glad we are getting a chance to talk about twitter. i find myself using twitter in a number of different ways. as a journalist, and shane mentioned this a little that as a journalist i found that water has replaced what was the essential tool in our trade at a news wire. back in the old days the reporters would check the wire to find out what was happening close ally in the united states,

across the world, checking every few minutes, and particularly assignment editors and major newspapers would be checking that to find out what they needed. now you don't need that. twitter gives you that and twitter who gives that to everybody, not just journalists. you can follow the fox twitter feeding and msnbc. and there's a whole lot more popping up who don't work for the major news organizations, but they are also putting out

information that turns into an early warning system for many of the professional journalists out there as a couple of people said. you know, because people everywhere there was a statistic that was released a few years ago that said in the developing world. than to have results on them running water. there are different ways that you can tweet and so forth you can have a smart phones so to say. if you have got to have a general phone you can send out an instant message and so forth, you can tweet and get into the conversation. so, in a sense, that has democratized the information

flow. it also allows a feedback loop for journalists. i live right across the street and got the address wrong. we did get to the address wrong. so if you are a journalist in a sense, it certainly made your job harder because you've got -- you don't just have the few leaders in your newspaper or organization, you have got thousands if not millions of people who are able to call you on your stuff if you have the basic fact is wrong. the flip side of that is you also have what we call the patrols who decide to cyber stock you in different ways just to make your life miserable, but that is part of the freedom as

well. if you were a media person, you are a public figure, twitter allows them to read when you put out there and criticized you whether fairly or unfairly if feith. if you want to leave on a particular story and you think you're looking for an expert, you can send out a request. devotee of or someone will say this person knows this or that person knows that, and that is always a great way of assisting you if you are trying to track down a story. for the republican members of

congress that has of course made me a professional political observer as the years have gone by. and i find -- this is where the aspect of twitter comes in and what i think is ultimately a beneficial way and we are inanity eligible age of the interesting thing as a starter. they break down some of the hard court ideology, for example one of the people of. a guy named oliver willis works for the media matters in for the left-of-center media checking sites. i will disagree with probably

most of oliver has to say. he happens to be a big type, i'm dhaka -- comic-book nerve and if you go to his record page, you see this big for superman breaking down something and so forth we will start getting into these hash tag as about super heroes and stuff like that in terms of the eddy logical point of view he sees me in a different light in human beings and with varying interests and in fact one of the ways that i discovered makes this a rather fascinating topic is a person to tweets under the name of andrea.

she's not well known at all but year-and-a-half maybe two years ago that had to do with a comic book discussion i use the search engine on trotter to start following everybody that had put in a hash tag or whatever this topic was and i followed the discussion and i stumbled across this woman. after following her these are the things i didn't learn because she then started having conversations that had to do with others because she's in my time when i find this out about her. i found out that andrea is a lesbian that married in ohio, she has two kids, they live in a farm and i then later found out

she's a hard core libertarian who isn't a fan of barack obama and this is the thing, and all of the analysis that you find in terms of breaking down for the electorate. the average reporter out there wouldn't have been able to find this person committed just breaks completely and totally breaks down the idea. you're supposed to be thinking this way or have this kind of lifestyle. those people are out there. and twitter starts to reveal that and i found this out because of the frivolous aspects

of trotter because i'm following a conversation on comic books and i ended up following this. tweeting sets up a phrase the false choice because people think of freedom house just the pursuit of a political goal which is essential and so forth. but frivolity is what makes us human and the ability to be freed and frivolous and have conversations about sports and comic books and looking at the kids to soccer games and stuff like that. that's part of the freedom as well. these frivolity is part of the freedom, and twitter is a great

tool to reveal that to everybody. thank you. >> thank you, robert. [applause] i'm going to do a quick check-in at the table and then i will invite those of you that have questions to please bring them to the center microphone and you can start moving in that direction right now and i will get to you shortly. any of you from willow down to sanho. before we invite the rest of the room to speak with you. >> it's remarkable. one of the places that i think is clearly visible of comity and aspiring comedians, and twitter when things go viral they go by role like you would not believe. think about the days of the young jerry seinfeld during the circuit for a decade hoping some producer somewhere in the back of the audience might take notice and give a shot at a bigger venue and possibly a show

etc. nowadays if you are really talented and smart and young you can rise to the top the jury quickly based on how many people retweet. >> i cut myself off a little because i realized i was coming up against the time. but i did want to just mention that a little bit about house sanho said it is great if you are a comic of getting your stuff out there but it's also -- river has also created its own kind of humorous style, particularly in the hash tag jokes where someone will set something up like suspicious and children's books titles, and that will be the hash tag, and somebody will send something out like, you know, horton hears a

ho. [laughter] you start getting these things. it's changing in the sense that the punch line is in of the hash tag itself and supplying the other side of the joke and it is a completely different way of -- a completely different type that sets the former. from the comic crowd sourcing and the market power to move political information and the direct democracy and the end of the ap where do you want to go to work? and if you would please, give me your name if this is your first time and then ask your question, please. >> tell me how many times have you been here? great. your name? >> we are pleased to note most of the political factions engaged in the social media have ben --

>> [inaudible] >> we can't hear. >> get really close. >> it's not on. semidey want to come up here? it was turned off. are we on now? >> as someone in the political left i am pleased most of the media actions have been left wing that i have heard of. my question is can we expect that we can see the political right for the tea party or the religious right start leveraging social media in the future we believe that it is politically left as a tool or publicly

neutral as a tool. there is a whole lot of social media involved in the tea party movement. i think that's just a fact. there are folks on the conservative side who do notice that in 2012 with the obama campaign the left was more organized on social media at that time and they are figuring out, you know, why that is, but it is very, very much involved. if there is a certain hash tag that goes out for the white

house on the democratic side on some kind of issue, the conservatives then sometimes it will try to hijacked the hash tag to get out there on the counter talking points if you will. >> others? >> i had a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago that works with twitter, and i was kind of asking him how people in that letter talk about the role in the arab spring. he said it's kind of this question that comes out with the internet in general, and especially with her right now is it inherently space? i would say that it's not. what happens in the middle east there is a kind of time lag in the technology where certain people get them first but others

catch up and twitter is now starting to advertise it a lot. inside atwitter that is one of the big pushes is advertising. it hasn't yet ranked tweets like facebook does, but i think it depends on who is using it and it can be blocked also like other things. >> i think that we all need to follow people. it's important to follow the oversight to see what they are thinking because if we want to get people to stop doing what they are giving you have to understand why they are doing it to begin with, and very often our ideas are why they are doing things and might not be the same as why they think they are doing things we need to craft policy responses that engage them on that level. >> if you were going to do that, bring your xanax.

it's really depressing to all people. i've often found myself having to and follow people from different political ingalls angles otherwise i would have a coronary and drop dead. .. so if you want to, you know,

once you have the list and you want to say, i want to find out what people are talking about that have a background in new york city politics or something like that, you do that and look at at list, you know, as you wish. >> thank you. >> name, first time? how many times have you been here? >> patrick, a senior here. it's the forted time here. >> thank you for spending every year at cu. thank you. >> thank you. my question is to the whole panel but based off mrs. wilson's quotes. we taunt how twitter supports freedom in general and governments in general have a difficult time controlling the twitter world and he brought up the example of egypt in 2005. many individuals pointed to china as a place that has done particularly well or they disagree on it. they talk about china controlling the twitter. i wonder if you can comment china is sustainable. if it hasn't been a successful, just -- [inaudible]

>> the china journalism experts at the table? >> i don't -- i know a small bit about the golden shield, as it's called. the massive tent that the chinese government that erected over the internet and the country. it seems pretty effective, most of the time. i think because i don't know the cash 22 about the internet it's so easy. when it's difficult to access things on the interpret we don't put in a lot of effort to get there, most of us. i think there's a vibrant, of course, hacker community in china, but i think for the average person, you know, who is not necessarily all that politically involved or who might have political interests, but not a lot of time or interest in devoting to getting together with those people who share their interests or to get to that information. it might not be worth it to make

the effort to breech those that the government put in place. so, i mean, that's sort of -- i think there's a passivity built to the internet on some level. it's easy to get stuff. instead of finding the way to access the information. we don't make any effort. we say i can't -- you know, "new york times" is going put up a wall i'm going stop reading "the new york times" article rather than making the effort or paying the money. but north korea is another great camp of successful internet. i think governments are getting more savvy governments in general but specifically one who have a vested interest in controlling the population access information. they are getting more and more clever about to limit people's access to not only particular sites on the internet but also, you know, internet access in general. so i think that's probably going

to be a big factor in the next ten years or so. in terms of how we look at propaganda, cyber warfare, all of these things. because the things that were true five and six years ago when social need ya was a new thing. to get rid of them you had to unplug the internet. that's rapidly changing. so probably, you know, if one had to repeat the same thing -- if you adopt the same thing in another five years, in a place like tunisia or egypt or libya, you probably have a harder time. because, you know, the people who are interested in limiting people's access to the internet are learning from these incidents even as we're learning how to use technology better. it's, you know, it's going to be it's going to be an interesting decade in term of internet

security, for sure. >> anyone else have specific thinking about the chinese? >> nieces and nephew and growing up in china they go international school. for teens, there are lot of ways to get around the great fire wall. they, of course, know how to do that. i don't know about average chinese whether or not they can do it. there's an asthawmg chinese people need to be on our social media and platform. the u.s. has some 300 million people. china, if you add a billion to the 300 million. that's china. all right. and why would they want to be on a platform that is based in another country, another culture, another, you know, sort of customs. why is there a knee jerk assumption that how they ought to be on our platform. if the russians developed a neat social media software program, would you gravitate toward that or do something native to your culture and country? but yeah, so, you know, when you consider what most people use

twitter and social media for, chinese people are just as happy tweeting about their chinese food and cats. [laughter] as well as any ore platform, i guess. >> by the way, the chinese food and the chinese cats -- that was -- [inaudible] oh. >> oh. >> i'm sorry. >> goodness sake. i forgot where i was. i apologize. [laughter] anybody else have a followup for matt? [laughter] thank you, matt so much. introduce yourself and tell us how many times you have been here. >> daniel, i'm a fifth year senior, and this is my fifth time. >> thank you. i was a fifth year senior once myself. >> nice. only five more weeks. [laughter] so mine is more about twitter usage for you all as opposed to fairly political usage of twitter. i've been a blopger for a year for about a hip-hop thing i'm doing. i know, you are established. it's probably a little bit

different for you all, compared to someone who is just started out and isn't as established as you all are. what have you found to be the most effective usage of twitter? what trends have you all used and seen others use to get your message and your information out there? >> any recommendations? [inaudible] >> so if you retweet other people. they take notice of you and may follow you or retweet your stuff back. that's a good way to build more twitter followers. i try to do that in terms of advocacy. i will retweet other people's stuff. then i'll include their handle so they can build up more followers. if you are trying to build advocacy. it's a good way. it's a good way for social relations, i guess. the monkeys that groom each other. [laughter] >> if you are -- if you have been blogging on something of a

political nature of whatever sort, and you want to, you know, tweet out that link, and you want to -- if it's of a conservative nature, you can use a hash tag. like top conservative on twitter. i think the left side of that is the #, i think is hash tag p2. if basically somebody is on twitter and they want to search for conservative -- what they're talking about. they can put in the hash tag and they can zero in a bunch of other conservatives, and they can do the same thing for p2, if they are on the left. so it's not a bad idea to just track what kind of hash tags are out there, and put those in your tweet as well to get some random people who might not otherwise know what you might be writing

about. >> any other personal experience you would like to share with regard how best to use twitter? no. okay. thank you so much. >> hello. >> hi. my name is ryan. this is my i think fourth year here. my first year was -- [inaudible] i think that's four. what i want to ask about twitter one criticism that i have of it personally, it's got a very short attention span. an example i want to give is sort of a local one for me. like you, georgia, i live in new york. during hurricane sandy, during the hurricane itself twitter was invaluable. all of my nonbelieving twitter fab were on twitter. when it came to the issues that san i did that brought up that were more complex and longer laster. twitter was yearsless. the times ended up more valuable resources for issues like the

project not having power two months later. here's my question not for anyone specific. is it not a problem of twitter. it focuses so much on the moment. >> should we expect more than just the moment? >> i think that, you know, part of what twitter does, it's distribution tool, and a lot of but of an issue. that is developing to watch what is happening and what the conversation is around it. and i think that's useful for that. a lot of people use it to send

out to link to other things. i think it's useful for that, you know, to have this short list of you know what what is the most substantial -- where you can click on and go to a more substantial thing. you can see the headlines or whatever. and can comment on those longer geeses or whatever it is. >> i think it's right. and every information resource or every information tool has certain advantage or certain disadvantage. the newspaper, for example, any newspaper can get to a story and gate deeper level than a minute and a half story on the local news. what you said is correct, though, twitter is great for --

in terms of journalist sense. it's great for breaking news, it's great for, you know, giving eye witness accounts for, you know, people in different places. but it's not a substitute for those who were going to give greater backgrounds to a situation. i mean, obviously you want to have people who are in iran or on the street of cairo or in tunisia at the time give you a sense of what is happening at that moment. but you are going need people who are going to really put all of that in to a bigger picture for the second day story for the week after, for the month after, and so forth. that's -- and then, you know, twitter can then use be used to tweet out links to those storyings as well. but it's not going to be -- you can only get so much obviously in to 140 characters.

by the way, you do get certain people, just like when blogging started to rise it came from people who were obsessed about one topic. you have people who are focused on one topic, and they'll tweet about that particular issue or topic on a daily basis. if you can get information from that as well. >> there's a selectism aspect to twitter. people retweeted the tweept. -- tweet i have done my duty for hurricane sandy or whatever. that's the end of the thought. if there's one serious downside. it's that it's easy to feel like you have made a difference, and you have done your job by hitting retweets and so helping, you know, whoever it is, you know, get their message out or that's the way you can help the cause. so there is that element of, you know, armchair vifm -- activism

that might make people feel come placen't. twitter is where the social responsibility begins and ends. it's the bare bones beginning. in order make it happen, you have to get off twitter and go in the streets. that's certainly a downside you have experienced firsthand. >> i think the whole shallowness alleged shallowness of twitter or -- in our culture tends to get a lot of disrespect. doesn't get the respect it deserves. if you think about how wisdom used to be passed on in a pre-lit literate society. the provenn -- most people didn't read, how did you pass on wisdom? through the oral tradition and proverbs. there are cheesy sound bytes that don't teach you anything and doesn't rhyme and they are stupid. there is also teaching sound byte. teaching proverbs.

basically, i think twitter accounts now to be concise and boil down the essence of an idea and pass if on. i love following things like yiddish proverbs or african proverbs. it's a great way to pass on nuggets of information. >> there's probably one out there. >> not yet. i've searched. >> something to do in your spare time. >> anybody else? have i got another question out there? in the meantime i was going to ask what was the most surprising tweet. how -- what? what were they thinking i was going to do with that? >> somebody asked if i was going start a militia. i don't know why. i still don't know why. i tweeted him a question mark and he asked the same question again. i was like, okay, it's one of

the special people. i'm going back away from it. >> thank you for the suggestion though. [laughter] >> they don't make sense or have any verbs or nouns. i tend to ignore them. one favorite tweet of mine i think embodies the brilliance of twitter. it was from a former participant. she was tweeting about the egyptian revolution and the elections, and her tweet was something like egypt -- it was theday of the election. and she tweeted egypt 5,000 years, democracy finally! thank you, egypt...down with mar sincerity. [laughter] that was funny. it was emotional. it was from the heart. and it was brilliant. wow. >> i don't know if i really have a good response to that.

because sometimes you get a tweet that is just so psycho and out there you just sort of roll your eyes and just just move on. occasionally you will get, as as i mentioned before the cyber stalking type. or the person so obsessed about something you have to just, you know, you have to block them or something like that. i can't think of one that [inaudible] >> i can't pick one. i remember when i got back on twitter, after i got out of prison, first site i had. it was after i published my first article after getting out. the guy said, congratulations on your first role. i would like -- but also when a kind of went back on twitter. i would get a lot of tweets people just saying welcome

home. welcome back. and it was i was like it was thing in my pocket that was constantly people were like reminding me just saying welcome back. that was awesome. >> nice. >> do you have a question? >> my name is candidate -- kate lynn, this is my first. >> woot. >> my question is for everybody. it starts with an assumption that a system of communication creates a certain relationship between the people involved in it. so, you know, there's a certain intimacy writing of writing a letter and putting it in the mail and everything. and broadcast media are sort of anonymous and so on. but i wonder if you have any thoughts about kind of human relationship exists between the people who are participating in the communication on twitter? >> i also want to say thank you, willow.

willow has -- the next session. thank you. [applause] back to the relationship of communications. >> [inaudible] recently with people from anonymous. they are anonymous, i don't know who they are. real anonymous or someone pretending to be involuntary manslaughter or a new account they keep setting up but they were launching a cyberattack on north korea, and i kind of warned them. it's kind of volatile and not atm country. they don't respond to the same kinds of -- and they might not -- they probably don't know who involuntary noments is in north korea. if they say it could be an attack from the south. it could be sparking something. it's hard to have that kind of back and forth with someone who is anonymous. >> i don't -- i find that most pool i follow or follow are me are not people i really have kind of actual relationships in,

you know, a physical world. and i think that is true in social media, in general, for me at least. >> i think that in certain ways i have become friend, if you will quote with that, with people on twitter in term of they're not -- it's not like facebook where, you know, these are people i either went high school with or college with, and worked with and we reunited in social media. these are people i think they followed me. and i followed them because we either agree on politics, or we disagree on politics. but we have civil discussions and we learn some things about each other, and so it's just kind of -- it's an interesting

-- we suddenly -- it goes from as i said before about the freedom to be frivolous. it goes from talking about obamacare or something here and there to having a discussion about the new york rangers. something like that. it's people you find you have more in common with than just -- than just the political. but, no. i mean, we don't necessarily talk about, you know, kids and stuff like that. sometimes duo, depending on what the situation is. but, you know, i do feel it's been -- it's allowed me to find out more about people and relationships on a, you know, on a broader meaning. they may not be my best friends. i will consider friends. i actually have met some in person after becoming friends

with them and followers of them on twitter. >> i truly appreciate, too, if your comments about the fact you have bridged a lot of different points of view by following people and building different profile of information you want to seek out of twitter. and i think that itself is interesting. the relationship of you to those communities as well. >> also the social media joke. facebook is where you lie to your closest friends and family. and twitter you are brutally honest to thousand of complete strangers around the world. [laughter] that's exactly it. i actually find myself -- i find myself much more -- much more on twitter than i am on facebook lately. my twitter account is connected to facebook, so if there's important stuff i'm putting throughout. it's going to go on facebook as well. i don't feel the need to, you know, tend and feed facebook as i did when it was the thing.

>> anybody for closing. you want to give us how to follow you? >> i twitter handle is @robgeorge. >> that's me. >> mine is @shane underscore bower. -- bauer. follow me on grinder. never mind. if you have to ask, forget it. >> too much information. [laughter] >> sandra? >> first name last name together? >> first name last name together? >> yeah. >> and of course the bios are in the booklet if you haven't been to be find one. there should be some in the hallway. i want to thank you for sitting and listening with us. i hope you learning to write really picky fun things to describe your place in the world and learn from others. thank you so much. we have a few minutes if you would like to visit with each other. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] with congress off for their memorial day recess we're featuring booktv in prime time each night this week. tonight three books related to america's military beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern with karen johnson and "educating america's military" at 8:55 former marine writes about the experiences of his platoon in iraq in "joker one" then at 9:30, a panel from the military writer symposium. look at challenge facing veterans returning from combat. that's tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. c-span2 will continue to cover various discussions throughout the week from book expo america. our live coverage from new york city continues tomorrow with a panel of authors discussing their upcoming books. among them author of the "radiance of tomorrow" a novel.

-- wally lamb who wrote "we are water" and chelsea handler author of a book yet to be tighted. live coverage gets underway tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. according a new pugh center study, mothers are the soul or primary breadwinner in a record 40% of all u.s. house hold with children. up from just 11% in 1960. the changes could likely -- are likely to bring added attention to child care policies as well as government safety nets for vulnerable families. go to our facebook page, and share your thoughts at facebook.com/c-span. public fascination with francis cleveland extends to her clothes. she was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hair style,

they emulated her clothing. this is a dress from the second administration, and in a way this is the most prized piece of all. it's the inauguration grown. this was her gown from 1893. it stayed in her family and became the family wedding dress. and this was use bid her granddaughters. even her everyday clothes were stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now. the jacket. a wonderful jacket. black with a beautiful purple blue velvet. it's a more evening-appropriate piece. this is a bodice, would have had a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful lace and slightly more ornate. it would have a matching collar.

again, you can wear this with a shirt waist and skirt. our conversation on francis is available on our website c-span.org/first lady. tune in monday for first lady caroline -- harrison. ma reern corp. major general speaking with reporters at the pentagon today. said he suspected the taliban would be defeated and driven out of the province in afghanistan by tomorrow. the region was the focus of president obama's troop search in 2010 and 2011. here is a look. >> right now if you were here, you would see the afghan national security forces, all the pillar of that force and fight in seeing it. they are closing that rapidly. they have done quit well. i suspect by tomorrow the taliban will have been defeated

and move tout whenever else they intend to go in the future. with that, i'll take questions. [inaudible] >> reporter: a couple of the statements you made there. including the last one about by tomorrow. did you mean literally by tomorrow. the taliban would be defeated? can you expand on that a little bit. also, could you elaborate a bit on your earlier statement about -- i think you were talking about the afghan forces taking the lead responsibility throughout your region. you believe we are at that point. could you explain what you meant about where you stand on that? >> certainly. it will fall in with the saying in fight that is going on. i believe that the -- fight will

be completed by tomorrow. it's been going on since the 25th. the afghans, other than aerial at port, as well as some resupply that the logistic, they need some work on. they have done this fight quite often. pretty much by themselves. they just met with the general about three hours ago around a map and we discussed what was going on. what he needed. host not asking for anything other than aerial support to move support around and some logicsial support in shallow water. i asked him specifically if he needed help with getting rearming done, and ammunition moved forward. the answer was quited honestly no. he has taken the fight to the enemy and clearing up the center right now. he moved from the south and the north simultaneously to close in on the enemy toward the center

and push them out to either the west or position his command forces or to the east where they would cross over to the kandahar. most of them tried to go to the west. he has them trapped as we speak. >> in the wake of the boston bombing bombings. online radicalization. it included peter neumann. and peter bergen, author of the "longest war" the enduring conflict between america and al qaeda. >> radicalization. go to the great panel starting on your left, with peter neumann who is professor and security story at the department of studies in london. director of the international study of radicalization. he's adjunct professor --

teachers security studies program there as well this summer. the author of multiple bookings. next to him is mohammad elibiary. the founder of loan star intelligence. he's advised numerous federal, state law enforcement of organizations including texas department of safety, national counterterrorism center. worked for that time on the dhs under secretary janet napolitano. and here next to him is -- a fellow here at the new america foundation. she's also an attorney. she's had a great deal of experience working with the muslim community and president of the safe nation collaborative. she'll a fellow at the truman project. we are pleased to have you here. this is your first public event at new america. next to us is our co-host.

next to me is our co-host harris tarin. the muslim conflict affairs counsel. next to him is -- who is currently working with the islam society of boston culture center. and finally, we have rashad hussein the organization of the islamist conference which is the largest intergovernmental organization after the united nations. with that, i'm going turn it over to harris. and we'll each of the panelists will speak for a few minutes. we will engage in q & a. we'll throw it over to you. >> thank you, peter. thank you for agreeing to co-host this timely and relevant conversation. it's something that definitely

impacts the american muslim community. that is why we at the muslim public affairs council believe it's impair for our community, our institutions, our line to engage in this very relevant and timely conversation. and be very public about it. we have taken on this topic for the past decade. question think that this topic addresses whether it's online radicalization or countering violent extremism in general. it impacts our community, at times impacteds our community disproportionately. it's imperative to speak to policy makers, the american public, and also american muslims themselves. so we put this perspective as this threat as the president said last week in to in to proportion. and address it that is good for our national security. but also takes in to

consideration the foundation of our -- on civil liberty. that is why it's important for us. it's a public conversation that needs to be had. we had happy we had a great turnout today and people are interested in having the conversation with experts, community leaders, government officials, with individuals who are the forefront of dealing with this topic. whether it be online, or in communities. and so -- again, we want to thank you peter and the new america foundation for hosting this. it will be each individual speaking for three to five minutes. talk about their perspective, and how they see the topic. how it impacts community and government and the relationship between various countries and societies. they'll be speaking for three to five minutes and open it up. i'll ask an initial question from each panelist. and open up to the audience and have a conversation with you as well.

our first panelist is peter newman. peter, go ahead. >> thank you, thank you. >> since i only have five minute, i thought i would take tight of -- title of the event and give you one reality and a couple of myths. let me begin with reality. it's true that the internet has profoundly changed the way that people, especially in the west, have come to embrace violent extremism. nowadays, for example, we are talking a lot about so-called loan attackers. people terrorist attacks without being linked to to mallized command and command structure. i believe it's not a consequences we are seeing this increase at the particular point in time. it's not a coincidence that lot of people who we call lone attackers have been active on the internet. the lone wolf phenomena and

online radicallyization linked. you cannot understand one without looking at the other. i believe the most striking and obvious example in which online radicalization has changed the nature of radical dispassion processes. another one we are seeing terrorism cases pop up in places and locations where we never expected them. the assumption, trait additional assumption by academic policy makers, used to be that terrorism comes out of communities. the fringes of community may be the extreme margin of communities but so it was the product of a particular physical place. you had to understand the place, the people, the organization in that place relationships between people in that particular physical place. only that would tell you how people became radicalization. you now have cases of violent

extremism popping up in places where they isn't really a physical community to speak of. why? because it can be part of an anonymous, vibrant, active, exciting virtual yule community even when there is no physical community. the -- internet has made that possible. if i was a sociologist. i'm not. i would argue that the internet has loosened the constraint within which radicalization was taking place. online radicalization isn't a pros excess of turning up or down a number of long held assumptions. there is also misassociated associated with online radicalization. here is two of them. one, there's nothing exceptional about terrorists of violent extremist being on the internet. they are on the internet because everyone else is on the internet. we are in the 21st century. it would be strange if terrorists were the one group of the population that were not on

the internet. and nor there is there anything strange or exceptional how they are using the internet. like everyone else, probably like everyone in the room they are using it to disseminate their idea, promote causes, search, connect and communicate with like-minded people often across great distances. what makes violent extremists from the general online public and you is not how they use it. it's the purpose for which they use it. that is what is different. a second and persistent with which i'm going close, by the way. is that you can get rid of violent extremisms on internet by shutting down websites. this comes up again and again. it shut down a couple of website, the problem will go away. we heard a lot of that in fact in britain over the past weeks in the wake of the incident. let remove and inspire magazine. the al qaeda-english language.

let me remove that. let me say a couple of sentences how it's a flawed argument. let's take inspire. typically when a new edition of "inspire" magazines comes out there's not just one place you can download the magazine. it's simultaneously published in a dozen of places. within minutes of it being published, the reader of the magazine will not only download the magazine, they will repost it in even more places. so within a couple of hours of this magazine being published. you can download it not just to one location on the internet, not just from dozens of locations on the internet, but literally from hundreds of locations. so it's very difficult, if not impossible and certainly pointless to try to remove "inspire" from all the places. in my view, rather than removing stuff from the internet, we should become a lot better at challenging that kind of message and these kinds of constant.

we should also become better at monitoring what happens online and understanding the networking that exists. how "inspire" being passed around, for example, a keynote and hugs and violent extremism. it's a big challenge, it is also an opportunity to say that cliche. when they are online, they are revealing at love information about themselves, they leave a lot of traces, in my view. it's about time we stop laughing about the fact terrorist have twitter accounts and start understanding that they use them for. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> mohammad elibiary? >> hi. let me first thank new america foundation and impact for the invitation. this is a great opportunity for me to participate here today, and though i was mentioned in -- my role in homeland security advisory council to the secretary was mentioned in

introbio, i'm here speaking officially obviously only on myself. so nothing i say should construed otherwise. now, having gotten that out of the way. in online radicalization myth and reality to save some time in open up more time for q & a, i'm going go ahead and wholly endorse peter neumann's report at the bipartisan center that came out last december on the topic. if you haven't read it, i recommend you read it. now the perspective they bring on this subject is personally had the opportunity over the past several years to do a number of these community-based partnership with law enforcement for interventions, and they span the gamete from people who are haven't wrapped their minds around doing any kind of violence but they are flirting

with the idea of joining this virtual mosque community, or muslim community online that is interested in the same issues that movement is to folks who traveled overseas to countries where state department can give you directions in you can stay in the three hotel. these are the people you can get in a cab with. and you sleep under our guards. so that's pretty broad range. what i have seen is there is -- there are needs to be a lot more capacity building so more people enter this struggle, so to speak. the counter are in tifer, i think there's ample resources throughout in communities across the country traveled in worked with community leaders on building relationships with law enforcement agencies. but what i've seen is a struggle

inside of different departments and agencies on what role. how do you divide the labor? how do you hajtdz the nuances. how to you get the funding for pilot program in interventions and that kind of thing. that's where i personally like to close in my intro comments. we actually have to, as a country, i think be able to recognize the good progress we have made in community engagement all across the country. but we have also need to chastise ourselves a little bit because we scrolled done more over the past several years. we have roughly sixteen cities where you're going to find approximately 60 to 5eu6r%, two-thirds of the counterterrorism resources across bureau officer -- offices. we need to kind of concentrate on where we can kind of train community leaders or allow them

the opportunities to partner feeling a little bit more comfortable at the regional and local level. and that -- unfortunately over the past couple of years from here in d.c., that has not really been executed properly the initiative the fbi headquarter office did not produce the result that a lot of us two and a half years ago were hopeful it would when the fbi assigned the coordinator. and that's a very important agency because that's our lead agency that is going to know about the tips in the joint terrorism task forces structures. other agencies like the department of homeland security have done a great work in the training for local and state law enforcement to elevate their sensitivity, it's a new area they should be more proactive in helping to build up preventative infrastructure in their towns. but still we haven't really gotten, i think, enough piloted of an architecture across a lot of our major state ace cross the

country. >> all right. [inaudible conversations] the c-span audience. we should avoid using -- [inaudible] violent extremism. >> thank you. >> will do. >> thank you. >> thank you. i wanted to just begun by stating maybe what is obvious, and that is because perhaps they said and a lot of us work on a policy level in other ways. but is that young the internet is highly successful tool being use bid violent extremists because it very quickly and effectively and broadly disseminated certain narrative. somebody else mentioned the word narrative. i think it's important understand what the narratives are. some narratives that are propagated online is islam in the west are not compatible. you cannot be a good american and muslim at the same time. america is at war against islam. and right now we're seeing a shift which is encouraging in that, you know, we're asking western muslim communities to

step up and become engaged and become partner in bring the voices online to counter the narrative. i think it's important to take a look at it a little more broadly because those narratives are not just being propagated by violent extremisms and muslims. they are being reinforced by anti-muslim actists which is an interesting phenomena. you have extreme degrees on the -- agreeing on the same narrative. what is problematic for the anti-muslim for an activist who want to spread the idea that islam and america on western values are not compatible is that it leaves west muslims in the west failing more alienated. it can have a effect on muslims who might become more diseffected they are feeling after 9/11. which helps them become more vulnerable to violent extremists online. what i find problematic, the folks have been more influential

on policy makers, media, politicians and we see it when, for example, a local elected official wants to bow out of an event because there's pressure of on them to not associate with certain muslim individuals or groups. or we have highly respected muslim scholars who are asked not be a part of an official event and not make remarks. these play to the same idea of there are suspect muslims and nonsuspect muslim. as we look at muslim communities to engage online and counter the narrative, i would broaden that call and say we need the general public, media, politicians, policy people to push back on the anti-muslim narrative that are propagated by islamists -- people don't like the term. it's an easy term to use. secondly, most of my work is done primarily in grassroots communities. a couple of observations i had about that like mohammad said.

the discussions tend stay here. they don't filter very well downstream. when i am speaking to a mosque, parents in a mosque, they have absolutely no idea what is happening online. they have no idea their kids can access certain kinds of video, so easily. they don't know how to filter that. is there a filter? probably not. the local law enforcement has no idea either. we have to identify better heck noifm get the information and make it actionable on the ground. i'm going end with -- do i have a minute? is that we with are asking western muslims specific i are to counter narrative that our coached in islamic scriptture we have to remember there are certain kinds of voices that have more credibility. it's not going to be what you might understand as progressive or more liberal voices. they're not going have the street to counter the voices. it's going to be conservative muslim voices and conservative muslim scholar who have the kind

of credibility it takes to counter a lot of ideologies. and part of the problem is that we're stuck in a space where we say conservative muslim, we think fall. fallacy. we have to get to a place where we are more nuanced about understanding these distinctions and not clumpling people together who are trying to distinguish between their creed and the jihadist. i think that's all i want to talk about. >> great. >> first i want to thank new america foundation and everyone for being here. it's a wonderful experience. as -- in boston who was there during the tragedy, and then coming back to america after around seven years of trading overseas and dealing firsthand with some young people who were impacted by some of the online efforts "inspire" magazine and other websites. my conclusion as well as others

the way to combat is through building coalition in a community involvement with policy makers that is lead by the muslim community. and really should focus, i think, from a government perspective and a local perspective asking us to be responsible for leading this effort, but thenned a advising others to be aware of the falling four points. number one, information needs to be based on a credible resources. i mean, i was labeled on fox news a operative muslim brotherhood sympathizer. my mother from oklahoma lost her mind when he heard that her baby boy joined al qaeda on fox news. that was an attempt to undermine any credibility that i may have had here and other circle. and asked the tsh it would have been a different definition. i think that was mentioned by rain ya earlier. neither are beneficial in making effective policy moves. there needs to be, i think some

leeway given to the larger muslim commune toy define we are. i think for example the word -- all aren't radical and jihadist. they might many b more conservative than say some of us are. they are law-abiding citizens and wonderful people. the second we need to respect civil rights as well as cultural new answers. -- nuances. i think they get turned on their heads when it comes to our community. the third is that we need to avoid the secure relationship with the community exclusively. when you tell people our relationship is strictly based on surveillance, mapping your community, you know, questioning about, you know, potential jihadists and the community and suddenly turning that to are you a member of the muslim brotherhood. the investigation becomes confused. it's part of an investigation initially trying to help an investigation. creating a securized

relationship creates tension, especially in immigrant communities where the fbi of a certain country would show up at your house, '02 basically over been you show up in america and create our first point of introduction through government and communities is a legal introduction. i think that really stigmatized the potential we have. i think it should be a broader base approach. the last is that counter extremism needs to be lead by the muslim community. number one, an intellectual area. for example, now, we released a book to the iran seminary in boston. he was -- wrote this after the bombing counterterrorismism and extremism. one of the most important role. it's written by an as a handbook and parents, websites children should not be surfing. witnesses that will try to avoid you from going to. that also means that scholars

within the community need to be given some leeway to engage this problem. the fact that the the brothers - i need to be able to sit down with someone and not worry about being subpoenaed or held as material witness in order to counter the issue. every young man i have met and never met a woman, let's hear it for women who has been influenced by extremism. every young man i have been met and been able to sit and offer pastorrial care to changed for the better. i heard statements like, i can't believe i hated people like this. one of them opened the soup kitchen in his city and said this is my jihad now. to serve poor people. they are influenced by pastoral care. if it's insecurized. i can't function. i'm scared to to talk to them. the second, an institutional level, muslim communities still

suffer from institutional mediocrity. i think we have to be honest about that. the muslim voice, i don't think nay are aware we are prepew -- the third through effort that involve far more opportunities than just three logical; right. community base efforts. serving i would say answering, for example, urbanization in our chiewn tie is a big issue. gun control in montana is -- massachusetts. drug abuse, delinquency, doing programs that involve them outside the church base mode. those are areas we have focus on or dealing with or countering the extremist. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. thank you to the new america mown dedication and impact as part of our effort to deepen and expand our partnership with custom community around the world. and wide rake of areas. one of the issues that is come

up in muslim community often raise it themselves is the issue of terrorist radicalization including in the online space. part of the reason that muslim communities are concerned about this is because they are fearful of their own family, own neighbors, perhaps being recruited by terrorist networks and being killed by terrorist networks. we talk to people around the world in muslim communities who have family members that have been killed. for example within, on a friday prayer in a suicide bombing. it's a issue that comes up quite often. part of the challenge we're facing is extremists online are producing terribles that you created means to target youth and draw them to their work on ideology. in some cases they have been to be do so in ways that are more -- emotionally appealing what they have done with cricket camera statement. or issue condemning terrorism or terrorist attacks. muslim communities have been at

the forefront. they are using these images online and oftentimes their narrative is that the disbelievers are killing your brothers and sisters around the world. and oppressing them in other ways. it's your obligation as muslim to defend the worldwide muslim community. and they sometimes use emotional hymns, they'll use verses from the qor ran, which they have taken out of context. and portray a situation which if they act then they are awarded for actions they have taken including violent. in addressing the drn -- challenge we recognize the government has a -- on a wide range of issues. there's layers of intervention at moment. level. there's an intelligence role, the work we're doing defeat to help work toward the dismantling -- as president spoke about last

week, one of the most important partnership that we have with muslim communities in the united states who as i said have been at the forefront of condemning terrorism, condemning terrorist attacks and working themselves to address radicalization. because adds as aside, they are concerned that terrorists are killing innocent people. they find it to be something that is totally repulsive to their religion or any religion. and they are concerned that muslims have been the largest victim around the world. and so they take the lead in a couple of areas in a couple of conversations. we had talked to muslim communities who are developing materials and messages that may address the same greecheses that others raise. at the end their message, they say, the way to address it is not violence but address it in a way that islam prescribes.

that's -- that narrative is something that is best coming from, you know, and not necessarily from the government. they talk about the punishment, for example it would kill innocent people. muslim and nonmuslim. that's been a consistent part of their messaging and i think in the online space what communities communities are doing more to make sure their voices are heard. they are also working and trying to disseminate images that show what terrorists are doing in places like iraq and pakistan where you see after friday prayer, even in -- for example muslims have been killed. and they have been talking to former radicals. they have been talking to family members. those who will have been killed and working with internet service providers to make sure that when diseffected youth is online. they want to make sure that some of this they are producing are

-- some of the hits that come up at the top. finally point i want to make. as a government, we created a number of partnership and working with muslim communities, and we have done a number of things on the policy level. we have ended the war in afghanistan. we have ended the war in iraq. we have winding down in afghanistan. we are supporting the middle east, the transitions in the middle east and north africa. we have been continuing to work toward middle east peace. we do it because they are the right thing to do. now one of the themes that i've heard a lot in traveling overseas from muslim communities is that the idea that but not for many policy concerns the radicalization problem would go away. i think it's dangerous and something we have to be careful about. because as you know, many of the terrorists attacks that we have seen have been against muslim and muslim places of worship.

.. there's an ideological issue that goes far beyond that and maybe that is by the fact the overwhelming majority of the victims of terrorist attacks have been muslims. - in places of worship of around the world. you hear them talking about the war going on in various parts of

the world and offering prayers for those places, but it's less common that you would find the same imams when they are going through those issues saying we want to pray for muslims who are trying to use violence as a way of addressing their grievances. and as it was pointed out there was further training ve they are undertaking to understand because i think today it is one example of this but we've talked to people around the world that said when you sit down and you make it clear the motivation that these people are using for their action is actually totally false and the religion actually tells them they need to promote safety and peace and well-being in a number of ways that many of them have actually said they are

not hateful of the west or the target of which they were engaged in and i think that is going to be a critical part of what we do going forward. >> thank you. can i have you kind of respond to some of the comments that have been made? >> just picking up on what was said. one of the documents recovered in the bin laden compound was a letter from al qaeda to the leader of the taliban saying basically stop attacking the muslim places of worship so there is a recognition that, you know, there is unacceptable behavior that is going on. people motivated by this and theology. i wanted to ask some observations. is the concept -- does it make any sense and they were in

contact with anwar al-awlaki asking for the sanction to kill fellow soldiers he wasn't acting as a lonely wolf. when you think about that it was someone like ted kozinski who didn't have a phone let alone the internet. so the concept seems to be worth reexamining the bipartisan policy center on this issue which the basic theme is we can't take down the course we have to provide alternative speech. he's sitting here with the new american foundation. we have had a partnership with google and facebook and community organizations to help people understand how the internet actually operates so you can put up alternative message as an alternative narrative's. a question for the extremism idea what that have stopped boston?

the older brother tamerlan had gone beyond the point about what kind of intervention would have worked with a the younger brother who was basically following in his brother's footsteps rather than being a true believer in a sense. i was interested in your observation about the disappointing efforts of the fbi to do the counter extremism. i would like for you perhaps to elaborate. was the bureau in the wrong place to locate this effort? picking up also on the observation the conservative muslims are going to produce the most credible alternatives to the messages of al qaeda come and a concrete example was a very influential clerics in saudi arabia who was one of the first in a public manner to critique osama bin laden. not just al qaeda i as an idea but al bin laden as a name.

another observation that the imam made is that we've had an attack and the channel i think there was an understanding the country we don't want to over securitized the u.s. government's approach to this problem with. on the other hand who is responsible which is kind of a problem that potentially -- one final observation the new america's foundation maintains a database both on the right-wing extremist and left-wing extremist and terrorist and people motivated by the ideology and the muslim community is likely to provide information in the community on somebody that is turning to violence as any other community. that is a fact we faced statement said the premise is going to be the solution is

intellectually going to make sense and is factually true we have seen the muslim community and multiple cases served on the dying or reach out to an organization law enforcement to say there's something going on that somebody needs to pay attention to. is there any reason that this approach wouldn't work in the future? >> of those are all important questions and i will have each individual address the question. one thing i would like to ask you, while you mentioned what was put forth to you, can you also talk about the extent is it an overwhelming threat? that is a question that we are asked quite a bit because this isn't a dinner table conversation that takes place. they are talking about the economy and about jobs. but what is the extent of the problems of that we put it into the perspective and we are

proportionate in their response to the government and the community. if you can both address that in a little bit. >> so, two points. the first is responding to peter that made an important point which is that sort of concept of the lone wolf. the lone wolves are socially isolated. so when we are talking about lone wolves, we are talking about people that are active and social and they are actually acting on the online extremist community etc., etc. so they are not socially isolated i consider myself to be middle-aged now, but as older people, we do not fully get the idea that you can hang out and develop socialized people online but that's what these people do, the hang out

with ten, 12 hours a day and if you ask them, they will give you five names of people they haven't met and whose name they actually don't know. the first step towards countering the threat is to recognize it's also a space and when we talk about the community engagement, we also need to recognize we need to engage in that space, too. it's not only the physical places, it is often the online space is because the people that we are concerned about consider these places to be places. that is the first point. the extent of the threat is in terms of the online threat, if you look at most biographies and trajectories, people have radicalized and in that sense it is important undoubtably.

but again it's not only about numbers. we have seen in london led a single person can trigger so it's not about the number of people killed. i always hear this more people get killed in bathtubs etc.. we have heard all of these statistics. the thing about terrorism is in the number of people killed. as the amount of terror that you create and the sense of community polarization and a single killing in london can trigger and the - an impact of the single action by the lone individual in london can have on the community. it is great because not even a single person can cause a lot of damage to the community. >> i agree with everything peter just said. [laughter]

the way that i some did not deviate -- sum this up working with communities to disrupt the terrorist plot is a pandemic, but it is a problem and should be addressed. actually, the more capacity building we do for this we are building resiliency of the local community which is the goal of homeland security. on the macrolevel it is to get the community's more resilient ha. in answering the question about the bureau and the program are learned a lot from the folks back in 2008. i see there's a few government officials in the audience here who are actually involved in the

effort back then by the national counterterrorism center to see what we can draw from the u.k. model and their experiences. at the time is running in the community non-profit and i flew a cleric that actually help advised in the program to my office in dallas and i spent a whole day learning about their models of i did try to shop around to find out how do you do these kind of intervention and then i found a lot of success in engaging in the building relationships with local field offices, joint terrorism task force supervisors that have been on the job for ten, 15 years. they've arrested bad guys and build up the credentials and now they are interested in doing

something a little bit strategic to the environment around them to shrink by haystack they have to find needles as opposed to the other techniques criticized earlier on the panel. those folks are interested in examining what kind of substantive partnerships to build a preventative capacity in their cities is possible. my recommendation to the fbi folks when they started looking at creating the coordinator position was they needed to not be in the community relations office so they left of the office of public affairs overseas in the community engagement and the to get out and put it into the director of

intelligence which i thought was a better place. then there was another recommendation i had given that was you need to interconnect with the joint terrorism task force because they get the leaves on people teetering on the edge of the potentially becoming violent extremists there was an effort to look at that and another recommendation i gave i felt just like they went through the transparent to process where they brought a lot of the community local and state law enforcement, academia, muslim communities, other communities and basically kind of created a framework strategy for doing the counter and violent extremism.

instead of going down that approach so everybody understands the role and how it will get operationalize to the local field office level instead they decided to pilot a couple cases they were taken weather bureau was trying to take this stuff and that didn't work out well. that effort i think kind of collapsed towards the end of last year a few weeks ago it moved to the joint terrorism task force which is located in the counterterrorism center and that's where the operation or the assignment was. it presents us with an opportunity to look at the question peter asked. the fbi has had a mission very for 100 years and with of the 2,004 reform act it gave the

assignment to preempt so basically the destruction role in the terrorism plots to the the the prevention capacity building and always a lot of social science stuff. sociologist was mentioned earlier but that's kind of rare for folks that are joining the beer to get back and build cases instead of by its location in the task force there is a possibility of building a partnership pearland for this sector can potentially have a role. local and state law enforcement and may be the prevention stuff is done with the police department. those are other aspects we can explore leader.

>> the next question i want to point to is there's a feeling among the panelists about the counter narrative their needs to be in - as strong and graphic as the extremists put out online and devotee of face of the clinic. i know you have a couple efforts. we've worked together to bring them together to produce a video called injustice cannot defeat justice. now you have a virtual mosque he said multiple conversations involving extremism. how do you see the role of communities, imams in the government because there's another the government to

actually gotten into the counter narrative speed switch in the u.s. at times we have the constitution and that isn't something we can get into but where do you see the responsibilities lying? >> that is a lot of questions. let me address a few issues. a group was studying together in egypt and the scholars realized as we mentioned earlier in the internet was becoming a mock what andy wasn't founded by any. what did your best people activists scholars imams where you divide the virtual moscow. looking on the community in general no longer defined religionocity and institutional commitment they begin to define

themselves and i would say in some ways people could be part of society but then i have brothers that have a lot of friends but no one really knew the theological aspirations of these people so we decided to create something called the virtual mosque as a was already purchased to allow people that don't belong to institutions and the studies show the majority don't attend mosques. but they allow them to engage in a transparent environment we have an article written about a muslim the contract his experience with homophobia in the muslim community and an article written by the islamist from years back and then we hosted as you recall in 2009 or 2010 before mom used radicalization before it became this kind of cool word that we can all hash tag with people like yourself and others and the outcome of that is we are able to attract other scholars who

share that vision and wanted to respond to those and we were able to reach as i mentioned earlier some people that were affected by an even older folks affected by the chehab message. the advice is to give muslim leaders and policy makers and especially imams, we don't need to be too close to each other because it undermines our street credit. the british government before these were all new programs. i was involved in the radical project. they label me as a moderate muslim leader and the undermine my ability to work at the street level with a lot of people and that was seen from oklahoma city needs to be an implicit relationship that recognizes this is a dynamic problem and a man not represented a larger body of the community but an act of terror is impact on society

in a way that it demands a response sometimes that ignores the majority of the community. to do that we need to be able to see that as free transfer and leaders who are born and bred with in the community and haven't been influenced by their people shaping how the community moves being seen as sellouts so their needs to be an unpleasant relationship we need to model partnerships with government and people like ourselves but we need people to trust us. muslim matters is an important job of equalizing the community and a positive way and they offer the traditional community but they are given freedom to do that which is crucial and. >> that's an interesting insight. i want to come to you and talk about the resources because i know that at you to become new america you address this issue. a lot of the communities that i talk to if they say i just don't have the resources to deal with

this issue. i have to worry about pastoral issues and things. they still have their nascent stages. both the policy makers and the communities and how they can come together and address this issue by the resources. >> i think the challenge of resources for the local muslim communities is limited to a lot of -- it affects different issues and you see people that were not attending because of limited resources and programming that is available.

the easiest way is to provide information and that doesn't require a lot of resources necessarily. when you provide the information to parents and you say we are not going to talk about this in terms of transnational she hot networks. we are going to talk about this in terms of you being parents just watching what your children are learning it becomes a manageable issue will so if you are not going to talk about political issues or violence you have to think about who is going to have the discussion but -- if they are interested. where are they going to go? do you know how to tweet? no, they don't. if they can manage the problem -- i also make the analogy of

online sexual predators, these are part of the national and the transnational gangs so i feel like it's my responsibility to make sure that she is safe on line and it's the same issues of a few free men like that, it takes away this over film -- overwhelming feeling. it affects your family and community, local law enforcement. i'm sure that they can speak to this after. it becomes a very local issue. >> mo we did in four or five years we now have volunteers and editors in the muslim community. we make 37 high school youth so giving those that are transparent and are seen as legitimate that attract people that want to work in the community and do positive things we did recently the prayer for syria that attracted more than

300 mosques all over the world everybody crate for the security to the guy received a letter from dagestan that said i'm from the arena they claimed radicalized this man. we have gathered to pray for syria. there are about 11 in l.a.. so having transplant trust for the alternatives you will be able to redirect people towards positive influences. >> and to add to questions. this conversation is about surveillance and partnership. individuals say that we increased surveillance on communities. you've had the whole controversy with the nypd and what happened there so there is apprehension in terms of engagement. do we engage when the work will and local law enforcement agencies no matter what and is

there a point of no return? if you surveils the community and go into the muslim associations are you going to get the needle in the haystack and commit more work for yourself? then there is the second question. the president tried to put this threat in perspective and he talked about the proportion of the threat and also about understanding with that involving the threat of thin. you've been around this issue many years about where you see this threat devolving and where is it going in the next five to ten years? >> i will leave the question of surveillance to people on the panel and i would note alan goldman that wrote the story is in the audience at berkeley and the nypd story. on the question of the scale was right president obama is exactly right when.

a significant but not as eager threat. going back to the database that we maintain that new america i think it's actually interesting because we have not discussed it at a number of deaths caused by the right-wing extremists killing people for political reasons this isn't just murder we calculate the 29 deaths since 9/11 minutes 21 thefts. peter newman is right to say of course a particular event like what happened has huge political consequences far beyond just one murder. but the fact of the matter is the threat from the right and extremist in the number of people killed since 9/11 is basically the same as from the jihadist terrorism and it is an interesting question that i do not have a very good answer for

what why is it that we tend to overvalue the threats from terrorism when it's about the same as right wing extremism? 9/11 is a big answer to that that the answer is that al qaeda and groups like that cannot pull it off which is why the president gave that speech he had wanted to get for some period of time it's hard to give publicly because what happens if you are 1% from and someone has links to al qaeda and kills a dozen people in the major american mitropoulos the political cost is very high for the politicians making a statement that we all know basically is true except for people on the extreme fringes. we know that it's been much reduced and i think that was a very welcome speech for the president to make and there is no reason why the united states needs to be in a permanent state of of war. it's never happened before. i think that he's setting the political ground for the discussion about basically

taking america off the wartime footing which has policy implications in guantanamo and the way that we organize our national security and i think it is a long overdue conversation. that doesn't mean that the home from extremism has gone away. it is a sort of serious and a significant problem and it is one -- that's why we are having this discussion now but it's a problem that has largely been managed. what is surprising is how few we have had. the was the first attack by people motivated by al qaeda's ideas in the united states to pull off something significant, you know, that had a sort of big political impact to be obviously the major was one. there is a whole set of reasons why these attacks are infrequent.

>> i will come back to the question and maybe put that to peter. i wanted to ask a question regarding the impact of this in the relationship with other countries. u.s. representative and the special envoy of the president you engage muslim communities abroad and i know that you are constantly engaging them. how has this focus impact of our relationship? the president last week talked about the relationship with pakistan being strained and one of the ways we can get around this is to ensure we have a strong relationship with muslim majority countries especially those coming out of the spring of how do you see that playing out? >> since the beginning of the administration we recognize like other communities, the become muslim communities and around the states have been contributors to the areas and so our partner ships have been

comprehensive in areas like education, job creation, health, science and technology, and that is the bulk of the work that we do what it's happening on a day-to-day basis when the same concerns as any other people around the world. they want to make sure the access to education crack access to health care, they are doing whatever they can to bring economic security to their family. at the same time it is often the muslim communities themselves for the reason i mention that have raised the issue of the violent extremism. they are concerned about their family members and about their neighbors being recruited by terrorist networks. they are concerned about of being victims and so it's an important conversation and we have had partnerships to counter the extremism for some time now

but it's to make sure that we are contributing to the efforts of the communities and sharing information that we collect at the federal level to make sure that the local communities know about the latest threats that we are having these type of briefings that you participated in with local communities that were increasing our cooperation and engagement so that communities have opportunities to brief us on their efforts and to identify threats in their communities which has led to the destruction of plots and a number of places and we also have a convening of role. you have the imams, you have factors in business, you have internet companies coming you have government, so many people concerned about this problem we have the ability of people that might not ordinarily sit together with people to come together and to address this issue. now, we have to be clear that although we have engagement on a comprehensive set of issues and

we continue that work. and if the if there are certain actions that had to be taken from time to time because those that we are partnering with might not have the ability to respond, or those in some parts of the world might not be willing to respond and we have to take those actions to protect a was a kid the and inevitably, there are going to be instances in which that has an impact in the relations that we have been clear the basis is for the protection of people love the world and it's not somehow motivated by what the terrorists have labeled a war against muslims or islam. we've been clear from the beginning that the muslim communities in the united states are the greatest rejection or the counter to that argument because they have been successful what such high levels. the american people and the

resilience that the shown in the response to the terrorist attacks have also made it clear to people around the world and in many places we go to people say how can you still, you know, allow this type of freedom of worship and religion and this type of thing happening in our country there would be restrictions going on. some communities take note of the fact that still, you can go into a grocery store or subway station and find a muslim at one of the five prayer times making their prayer and this is something sometimes you won't even find in certain parts of the muslim world. so if they have recognized that our resilience has been strong and that by staying true to who we are as americans and keeping to our values that is one of the best ways we can defeat the ideology. >> please stand up and state your name and please ask a

question and keep it as simple as possible. >> are you doing the microphone? please start at the back and move forward. >> in the back. go ahead, please. >> my name is marion triet thank you to the panelists further comment to that i'm a member of the muslim american community in the struggle with this sort of idea of the violent extremism quite a bit to the dallas i listen to you and obviously think about the issue it seems to me there needs to be a shift in the frame in terms of how we talk about this and i think to the point on the connection between islamophobia and violent extremist there is a narrative that says muslims are responsible for the crimes that happen in this country and once

we take the response of the as a muslim community, unfortunately we feed into that narrative which can lead to more alienation among american muslims. so we need to think about this in the broader context of the violence in this country because this is happening in america. not abroad. america as we know is a country with serious issues when it comes to violence. i haven't heard any of the members talk about this. but i wonder whether or not you have any comments about addressing this issue in that context in the united states. from my point of view it has collaboration with other communities in putting the urban communities and that can address some of these resource issues that you mentioned as well and finally it still allows for the particular guy is culturally sensitive to happen in the communities that gets away from that sort of stereotype of race,

ethnicity and religion in terms of the propensity to commit violent acts. sorry for the long question. i stay out of the political activism in this issue. on the systems that the questioner raised i don't want to see stereotypes out there. the community leaders that get involved have to answer for themselves which is when you look at these kids, do you see them as a problem insight into how to address this and how to save them? are they part of what you should go and do in your ministry or it isn't your problem frankly if it is a political problem because

of overseas foreign policy or because of stereotyping policy makers and one sort or another. i personally took are made the decision a long time ago that i kind of adopted, virtually adopted a lot of these kids. i saw them as people that can contribute to the community of strengthen and but they are going off the rails to early in their life instead of building a family and actually accomplishing something. that is a decision that i have seen other clerics do. muslim matters were mentioned earlier and an example of a person where we have had many hours discussing these issues many years ago and she ended up, him and others ended up saying i

am privileged to be in the position i can draw all these kids, these so to speak in their mothers' basements that are kind of living in this virtual world. so as an example of one thing that he did, he did a reverse sting operations to speak. so we had an offset for fox news of, taking issue with putting him on the drone and i basically chastised and gave it to turnaround on the muslim matters and posted his response. he's celebrating that the aquifer and the ideology. the political what is on from what actually at the same time he's chastising me for having bad manners so to speak by speaking about al-awlaki that

way. that drew folks out of their basement so to speak that actually would come to the comment line if he would be able to engage them. that is leader who played to me from an official of the national counterterrorism center that they loved seeing that. that is something the community did on its own because they felt that the needed to adopt these kids. we didn't sit there and look at the macronational political discourse of nonviolence and the discussions going on in america for well over a century about violence by different parts of our society to the we just went to solve the problem short term and address it. we left the political macrostuff for academics who could maybe put some data to how many cases there are that we frankly couldn't leave it all there

until that is on the bigot level political discourse why is. >> given the number of questions. >> i know peter used the expression of chehab terrorism and i know it's in the vernacular and it's probably inevitable to say jihadis. but my comment is even in today's paper you said that it was used as if it were negative. and i'm wondering if there might be a way to as a counter narrative to let people know like eugene robinson today in his column in "the washington post" used jihad.

it is a misuse of the concept and how can we get a counter narrative out there that when the word chehab is used is being misused. not everybody accept your point. it is not controversial. also in the contemporary setting we need to take it beyond an abstraction so people are doing great things like the one that opened a soup kitchen like i mentioned earlier. it is the hash tag on twitter. there was a massive campaign as they started saying today i took my mom to the grocery store. my jihad. today i weeded out my parents' garage. today i didn't go to the club

and blow up my dad's credit card. so that exploded, metaphorically of course, maybe that is in the best word to use of course but you started to see every day average muslim people and they said i went to church, and that actually defined without scholars having to come into the big legal classical language that no one understands, that actually gave the masses of the community the opportunity to say this is what it means to me as a 12-year-old muslim kid in georgia. and until now, the islamophobia actually tried to hijack the campaign and started putting an alternative messaging and then you have the younger muslim community reacting and governor rising themselves and saying let's define huji hod according and that was a beautiful example of countering that now the media level. people who are talking about it even a osama bin laden are not

scholarly able to define it. >> a violent reaction to the foreign policy and others doesn't fall under that definition we look at the orthodox. >> i wanted to ask a question about the muslim youth that we do a part. the end of getting targeted. and we have a 15-year-old whose father had actually gone to the fbi to get some help with his radical ideas. and instead of helping him to get some counseling to get out of it, they actually made him a target and then in the last three years we have had over 400 prosecutions of these muslim

police from 15 to 25-year-olds that have been actually convicted and i have some numbers we had 663 arrests and in 2011 some people from special-interest countries but it is mostly middle east and south asia. how can we trust law enforcement if we go to them for help and they actually turn around and use it against us? >> by the time i finish here, the fbi is going to be really upset with me. but that is an issue that i have been working on for many years. eventually, in 2011 they did give me their top award for actually participating in these cases to create an offering of essentially for these kids.

we have a history in american policing in this country in these interventions where we have given opera -- offering communities to get the kids disengaged from the track they are on the. i agree that the sting operations as they are currently referred to in the muslim community have been overused. there are a lot of folks in the fbi and a lot of the field offices that have come to the realization that, you know, other tool in the tool chest is actually good for everyone. >> can i ask you a question on that? is it -- the incentive structure presumably is to make cases, right? that's how to get promoted and so is there a recognition in the bureau is the case not made in the circumstance that a kid in poland that that is also

something that you get recognition for what or is that kind of a party in the sky? >> there is recognition. the director, frankly the special agent in charge of the fbi field office in dallas frankly in 2006 is to encourage me to start down this track. he retired now. so, he did have some clout to back at headquarters to have the conversations behind the curtain to be able to say then you had several folks at the nsc who were also advocating for this that had credentials in that world. so yes, multiple field offices had to come together and push the headquarters and say we have

some piatt cases like the ones i worked on that we should kind of work to create. unfortunately like i was saying earlier we have spun our wheels where on the national level we never really got a national counter violent extremism policy of around all of the field offices. therefore you did not get the training freckly for the new agents as they are coming in so you have some folks in the field offices that can rattle off a few that are trying to continue to pile wet that and to try to put that messaging and to create another tool being deployed. >> one very quick thing because what you said is perhaps the biggest problem right now. in britain and this led to the creation of the program that was mentioned before. so, what happens when someone

comes across the security forces in britain, they haven't done anything but they know that this guy is active and talks about going abroad, etc.. he's not being allowed to participate in the sting operation that there is an intervention constructed around and the frame is people say this is the last of fertility and we want to help, to take this opportunity. if you don't come if you choose to go on, then obviously the seat he comes in and you will be charged with something. but there is a last stop where people are being told to take advantage of this and maybe this gets you off and that sort of toole does not exist in the united states right now. the only choice between not doing anything at all and basically involving that

operation and that would be an interesting thing to look at. >> the framework document, the first one that came out in the 2012 recommendation at the department of homeland security you'll find three different sections where this issue is mentioned and how the government frankly needs to coordinate the intervention tools and the deployment of the hard intervention tools. and the president was actually briefed on the document that the oval office. so, there are a lot of people that are aware of the need to get this done. >> there are people in a number of cases i'm not going to go into any number of cases where they say that people from the government are provoking.

the case in boston this is an actual threat for the individual is online and despite the efforts of the community can't be in the basement of everyone's home. it's important that we use all of the tools at our disposal. it's to identify towards the radicalization to make sure the local communities have all of the intelligence and the information of the federal level in some cases there is a dialogue but in the local muslim communities and in the attorney's office and the field office. there's a problem they themselves can come in and say we are worried about three or four. this has happened on a number of

occasions. and there's cases in which local law enforcement if they see a problem that is happening again speak to somebody in the community not necessarily and say look we have noticed that there is some disturbing behavior going on here. and the members of the community themselves can go in and identify their information program that they are using to deal with this problem and to deal with the situation at hand. it is important to recognize it is obviously a very difficult situation. very difficult balance to manage the train knowing when you have reached the trigger point where the law enforcement traditional enforcement action as necessary. and when there is still opportunity for the social the intervention of the committee to be effective.

>> i have one observation and one question. my observation is that i have observed that 100% of the pakistan community we have migrated to america for social and economic reasons. the basic targets of all of the families is to earn their livelihood social impact, and none of them is interested to have the radicalization of issues. the only thing required is that the islamic by the first observation. what does that mean? the bottom line is that families as well as the institution is not integrating to be radicalized. i have observed that there are

stances of radicalization in the grievances and in the american institution and the [inaudible] did they find a refuge and finding something about the radicalization? because they have understood for the last decade that the requisition is a means to the institution. similarly now my question they have prickly analyst but from another and. i learned to the media they are

aspiring to represent america and boxing competition. and even to aspire for a boxing competition on a national level acquires one decade and if a person is so committed to making his career as a professional boxer and turned against america why? it is that he has been radicalized or has been meeting with his own country and that is why they didn't allow him to a recommendation did he find

something on that working for the internet? thank you to the hispanic the question is the social impact they are becoming radicalized. >> i don't know if i would address that with any real means but what we do see at times i think we've talked about this in the past it tends to be something outside of the theological realm to they could be problems at tallman, and it could be criminality, delinquency, a another set of the variables that cause the person to go down it is and always -- in fact it is usually the ignorance of theology that empowers them to act in a radical way and not their knowledge of theology so there are problems at home, delinquency, she feels maybe he was a drug dealer prior to this. those are areas that need to -- for example in boston we had it delinquency intervention program

of gang violence and drug usage in the muslim community. >> my question is with respect to civil rights. right now in guantanamo bay there is about 140 inmates that are starving themselves and basically protesting because it's been going on even higher now. about 86 of them have been cleared of all wrongdoing. there are some of them that are waiting there for about five, ten years. i know at least one inmate has been waiting for about 11 years

to have a day in court where they can be represented with an attorney in front of the court of justice. why is that not given to? >> espinel clich of reach of you had with the boston pd and will be taking an aggressive approach in the community? >> did anyone take guantanamo? >> we are going to have a lengthy discussions with this issue in the room. that is a good question but we cannot deal with it in 20 seconds. >> the last ten years we have had bridges in the community doing work on the radicalization which is actively involved with interfaith leaders, the fbi, the office of the attorneys involved cause of the relationship is with one of my congregants with the boston pt has been pretty

healthy making sure that using the language of mapping when you tell the community they are going to map you will and we are going to survey and watch you and they've been very receptive and creating that partnership. >> thank you, everybody will. [applause]

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when the senate returns next week. lawmaker are set to resume work on the five-year farm bill. they are working on overhauling the nation's immigration law. harry reid hopes to bring it to the floor the week of june 10th. on the other side of capitol hill, the house is set to take up bills funding the government for the next fiscal year. legislation funding, homeland security, military construction, and veteran's programs has been approve bid the house appropriations committee and awaits floor action. both chambers return for legislative work on monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern. live coverage from the house floor on c-span. and the senate live on c-span2. on the next "washington journal," we focus on yahoo! news and the coverage of the nation's capital. our first guest is yahoo! news

chief. "politico" reporter how yahoo! news covers congress. we wrap up with white house correspondent rachel. "washington journal" is live on c-span every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> we want to welcome back to the table vice president of lexington institute. "the washington post had the headline on the front page key u.s. weapons design hacked. officials point finger at china. what happened here? >> guest: apparently this is a report of a study done by the defense board last year. the classified report said that china in particular has hacked in to data bases that provide them with key information on a host of major u.s. weapons systems. missile defense systems, ships, planes and others. >> host: how were they able to do that?

>> guest: we're not quite clear. the basically said -- which is available on the defense website said basically that the chinese have gone through and gauged in a cyber campaign really a -- getting through e-mail. what we call phishing. sending phony e-mails and. using agents in place. and students to people most of the major weapons system is not just the lockheed more tin or whoever. they have suppliers down to the fifth and sixth tier. everybody communicates on billing and supply chain stuff. they got companies and walk the way up. >> what is the goal by the chinese? and how much -- how many resources. how much of the people manpower

time are they spending on trying to hack in to the united states weapon system. >> guest: if we take the chinese threat as a whole. there's a number of different things. one is economic information data which will help their economy design for commercial systems, planned companies have for how they sale their ware. on the military side there are three. they can reverse engineer it. they can leapfrog problems that may have taken the u.s. twenty years to get to. secondly understand the operational character. how is it used. if there's a war between the conflict and china. they can understand how to defeat the system and tacticses. thirdly. it's one of the major concerns, possibly at looking at waying of corrupting or sub verbing the system themselves. inserting malware or other kind

of virus to the software. all of our systems are heavily software dependent. if you can put a little bug to the system, you can turn on when you need to, airplane may fall out of the sky. >> host: and resources the chinese is dedicated to the effort? >> guest: it's interesting. it looks to be huge by all accounts. national intelligence estimate, the recent one, suggested they had a massive campaign. there was report february something called manatee ya which described semi official entity, part of the military, but not clear quite which part. hundreds of people had been doing the job for decades. and skilled tat. and as a result they had gotten data from at least 141 organizations and companies. . >> host: these are not traditional soldiers? >> guest: they're not traditional soldiers.

we're not sure they're in uniform in that sense. they are part of the -- they are connected to the pla. >> host: inside the "the washington post story. here is a expanded list of dod comprised via cyber exploitation. v22, 717. you went through some yourself. tanker convention, global hawk, all of these things. how does this rate as far as an act by another country against the united states? >> well, let's be honest. nations have always -- it's not necessarily all that different. there was a famous case where during the soviet union days they put bugs to the wall of the embassy we were building u.s. embassy in moscow. to the point we literally had to abandon the building so comprised. we do it all the time. the point here is the scale and

the level of success. the long list of weapons system. we're told the weapons haven't been comprised. we don't know how much they got any individual system. how deeply they penetrated. we may not able always to tell how well they did where they put anything in the weapons system until something goes wrong. >> you say we're told they haven't been comprised. the press secretary for the pentagon has the statement. we maintain full confidence in the weapon platform. the department of defense take the threat of cyber espionage, and cybersecurity seriously. we taken a number of steps to increase funding, strengthen capability, and work with the defense industrial base to achieve greater viz tobility the threat. the industrial part nears are facing -- they lead to the erosion of capability or technological edge are incorrect. what are they going do? how is the pentagon going to

combat them. this. >> guest: a number of ways. the derch companies do better at cybersecurity and maintain. many of the companies have done it. if you go to milwaukee, they have very good act i have continuous internal cybersecurity system. they are tracking threats 24/7. they are get soggy good they are starting to bring it to the marketplace to help other companies that aren't so good. with the entire list, in the first half of the statement doesn't connect to the second half. we are doing things to hire more people. it doesn't mean that our systems haven't been comprised up to this point. this is a war. we're in the midst of a real active espionage war. >> host: that brings up the question of whether or not what the actions by the chinese was an act of war. may 2010, two years ago, here is a story in the "the wall street journal," cyber combat is an act

of war. the pentagon concluded that -- opens the door for u.s. to respond using traditional military force. if you shut down our power grid maybe we'll put a missile down one of your smokestacks. >> it's the next season. we already had active war. the use of -- [inaudible] against the iranian nuclear enrichment facility. a cyber virus was deployed against a system causing damage. it fits the definition that the pentagon has and military has. by the way, we see that the iranians are reporting to use cyberattacks against u.s. and international oil and gas pipeline energy system. we're beginning in the phases. it's like in the 1930s watching the lead up to world world war ii. wars in unusual places ethiopia,

spain. does the specific action we're learning about from the report arrive to the level of active war. >> i don't think so. using the new means that are ave >> guest, you know, let's be careful of the term here. attack the chinese military. espionage is not an attack. we are very good, i'm told, what the we do among the cyber side. we have deand there's espionage tool and technique. i would assume that we are developing -- i know it's a defensive tool. the military supposed to be developing the offensive tool. the intelligence community is up to the chins in working cyber

espionage. we will be crazy not to. >> host: could you explain the significance the supply chain in the intersection with the chinese government. >> guest: sure. it's a great question. if you go deeply down to the tier. we are actually getting parts. ships that go in to the mother board that go to the computers that go in to the military system from china. people have concerns there are malware, if you will, things being literally hard wired on to the chips themselves. which is very difficult to detect. in a couple of cases where -- very hard to defect. you have something coming from china. the person building the airport has no visibility what is going on. six or seven levels down. they need to make shore it's quality and properly tested. by the time you get to the system. unless you are examining it every single stage of the

process, it could have been comprised. >> host: here is a quote inside the "the washington post paper . if they got to the basic algorithm for the missile and how they behave. somebody better get out a piece of paper and design all over again. >> guest: that's right. they can understand what the limitations are of the missile. they can figure out tactics that make the plane invulnerable. or figure out counter. they to use sensitive radar or red censers. if you can figure out how it's seen. the target. you can develop the court issue that spoof the missile and our pilots will be disarmed. >> host: what is the cost of this type of cyber espionage. if you have to rewrite things? >> guest: depends depend on the military or commercial side. the big loss on the commercial side.

it sproabl in the many tens of billions of dollars. possibly hundreds of millions of dollars of property overseas. on the defense side, potentially equally. if you have programs that are defense program. they now have to rewrite the code. you have to redesign the system. change out the radio or radar. or system will simply fail in combat. you talk about trillion dollars wort of coasts. >> host: gary said who cares about chinese weapon system. i'm working them about hacking our bank and destroying the monetary system. >> guest: there's that. there's a report by two congressman talk about the vulnerability of electricity power tbrid. we have seen attempts to penetrate the electricity power grid. even more basic than the banking system. take down the power grid. it's a quoted. take down the power grid and the country goes back to the dark

ages. >> host: a democratic caller. knicky you are up first. >> caller: good morning. i'm wondering for the guest believes that the corporations play any role in this? i know that in a state mainly a lot of product we buy are knead china. so it puts them a position to have the resources to use against -- [inaudible] i want to see if he thinks they have a role. if so what? >> guest: we are sort of stuck at the moment probably forever with a globalized economy. we go where costs are low. that's why a lot of stuff comes from china. the real question of corporations is who is responsible for cybersecurity? do we leave it up to the company. the service providers. each company. should they be made responsible?

what happens if they fail the responsibility. if the bank gets hacked. what happens what happens if a defense company loses critical data. we haven't worked it out in an appropriate way. the division wean homeland security responsible for defense of the homeland and infrastructure and dod with the nsa sphornl the military side of it. the problem is you don't have the resources, manpower, sophistication, on the department of homeland security side. companies are -- to spend money on cybersecurity if they can't show it provides value. how much insurance do you really buy with [inaudible] as a result you have to get out of here. >> host: alex, arlington, virginia. independent caller. >> caller: yes. [inaudible] i'm in the technology business since '*eu69. you try to scare the american people with cybersecurity the issue is american corporation by outsourcing on the jobs give all

the documents how to produce goods to china. so it's not like china needs to spy anymore. every country in the world, espionage. european union is spying on u.s. we spy on china. we spy on all the countries as well. but the issue of money factor in u.s. outsource all of the production of computer systems to china everything is done in china. singapore, and other countries. we give them blueprint. you can put -- [inaudible] and needs to, you know, check for the system. >> host: okay. all right. >> guest: perhaps the commercial system is the pressure tps. not the point for the military system. we take special scare not to essentially handle or the production blue pribility for fighter planes and missile system through the chinese. we try to check the pieces that go in to the substances system to the platforms. from mt. military side it's a

different success they've had is dramatic and dangerous. >> host: is it it true it was not government computers that were hacked by government contractor computers were hacked. get rid of contractors. >> having been a contractor one time and know a lot of them. you might as well close the door to the united states military. they couldn't produce a thing. having said that, it's not clear that the government is more secure. the computers and contractors are. and the contractors do a lot of work. but we know there are tens of thousands of attempted intrusion to government computers. we had government individuals. the wikileaks case. it was manning was not a contractor. he was a civilian. or military person working for the government. so both sides have a problem. >> host: democratic caller. >> caller: yes.

my question is why can't the military put this information on paper like it once was years ago instead of put it on computer where it can easily be downloaded. >> that's actually -- we are going to serve this use of computers because it's faster, cheaper in many cases, actually it's easier to store. you can store the entire library in congress in the room now if it's digtized. you share information much better and accurately. we now go because of computer aided design from a design on a computer right to the manufacturer to the machine to the machine itself and the machine starts putting out a piece of hardware. so in a sense, it is the way we manufacture now. it is the way we design now. it's the way we do things like improve drones.

because we do it with computer modeling. the part of the revolution is part of the -- we are stuck. >> heading to the discussion we heard from c-span radio that chinese officials say according to the associated press story they oppose computer hacking. and wants to work with washington to counter such activity following the new claim we are talking about here. it go ton say that china would like to refer to an agreement with the u.s. to former a cyber crime working group. what do you know about that? >> guest: the chinese have been saying nobody -- for many years. even though the information published information. i also talked to people who are working inside the system in the intelligence community. it's without question that the smoking guns are all there. trouble is we don't want to make them public. partly because we have technique by which we backtrack to the source we don't want adversary

spies to know about. it's kind of a problem. there are things that independents do. china has a problem with hacking by outsiders, if you will. not part of the government. or people from the west hacking in to chinese systems. so do we. there's a place cyber crime. it doesn't diminish the point that we are being indagated by government directed military oriented chinese cyber spies. >> host: how does the united states respond? >> guest: that's the really tough question. you obviously have to improve your deferences. you need to be operating 24/7. you need to have higher standards, frankly. brazilian system. it's the basis for "the washington post report. talk about military system. we have to figure out ways of operating when the chinese try to hack our systems. ways of making the system

hardened against that. ways of ensuring we detect intrusionses or viruses early and can fix them. excuse me. and also, frankly, we need to consider what page and what with ways do we retaliation. is it part of a strategy of program. >> host: president obama is meeting with the chinese.in california at the summit. does he publicly raise this issue in front of the chinese president? >> guest: one of the problems with the issue is it's a -- [inaudible] how it's done. what it's done. this is a kind of thing which, you know, grabbing the chinese president by the throat doesn't do a lot of good. it clearly has to be raised. and it has to be clear in the public discussion that it was raised. i don't think one needs to browbeat the chinese leadership. the new chinese leadership publicly in order to get a response. >> "the new york times" report on the summit. the two will meet over two cays

at east of los angeles bhap is built as a get-to-know-you-retreat. the in talk with the obama. one analysts said he wants the american president to recognize that china is dramatically rising in military and economic ways and wants the president to know he's active in world diplomacy. if the american president recognizes all of these things, then the chinese president can be nicer. nicer in his definition in a very tense situation. >> guest: one could assume that if we could capitulate the chinese will be nice. if we resist, the chinese may get snap any. on the other hand, china has enough military problems, economic problems. it's not there yet. it's much a chinese attempt to sort of get great powers status on the cheap, if you will.

and the president would be sorely mistaken to essentially get buffaloed, if you will. >> and charles in connecticut. republican caller. hi. >> caller: hi. gm. my question is this. before you listed a whole series of things in which they are essentially gathering information from our technologies. what i want to know is why can't we load those technologies with some little kind of things. so when they copy one of these things, and they fly the first airplane it doesn't get off the ground or they launch the first sub it goes right to the bottom. with false information and they don't know whether it is or not. they don't know what to follow. i'll just -- your answer. t a great question and people have suggested it. it may actually have been done. there were even stories about

computer programs to do thicks for oil, turbines way back in the '70s or '80s that were essentially loaded with viruses. the problem here is you can do some of that, but we're seeing they're going after the actual designers, developers, testers, producers of the military system. you can't load every one of our data bases with phony information without essentially causing ourselves ultimate problems. there's got to be, if you will, truce our own benefit. those are the systems that the chinese going after. those are the ones that apparently we -- and that's a question and twitter. he want to know what percentage of the hacks are trivial hacks. like password 1, 2, . >> thrurdz of hundreds of thousands attempted ib tryingses on dod computers every year.

probably 95. 99% are trivial. exactly that. there's some kid in oklahoma, whenever. doing exactly that. hack, one, two, three, whatever. the trouble is 1% is a large number. two in the 1% are the real proas such as chinese military organization. those people are going at certain sites day in day out. week in, week out. and eventually getting through. that 1% is enough to do terrible harm. >> host: we are talking with dan vice president about the front page story in the "the washington post." mario in connecticut. democratic caller. >> caller: good morning. how are you? i have a comment. what about -- it was a sixty minutes episode that dealt with espionage, they caught an individual within the u.s.

homeland actually trying to trade secrets to people for cash. what about the physical lack of oversight that could lead to somebody comprising whether there be a password or code or any type of material for the resource for the purpose of stealing it. that's my comment. thank you. >> guest: you have a tremendous problem with poor security practices. people leaving the passwords on the desk or whatever. that high gene, in cyberspace you can call it. you have people comprised. they can be foreigners in the united to work. they can be u.s. citizens or residents who are supported. it happens all the time. we have many cases during the cold war. russians did it, if you will, the old fashioned way. they support people and they carried off reames of information and took it back. some cases they carried off

hardware. we have the famous story of side winder missile. in germ i -- germany. they put in the car and drive it away. it request be done the old fashioned way. we think it is still done the old fashioned way. in cases sophisticated like russia, china, and the like they may have to do it the old fashioned way. you can't avoid the one and not spend time on physical security, vetting people. you have to do both. >> host: michigan, independent caller. >> caller: yeah. hi. i've been -- my -- [inaudible] for three years i've been trying to get him to remove most favored nation that titus with the chinese communist government. what i don't understand is we know they are hacking us. they are doing currency manipulation. why is that washington and obama are still giving them economic deals to most favorite nation status. i can't understand. when is washington going to

stand up for the american worker and the american people and stop giving the communist chinese government special economic deals for most favorite nation status. isn't that traitorous in a point. >> guest: we trade with china because it's in the our economic interest, and probably certainly even with the loss from the kind of hacking. the scale is still goes to the favor of trading with china. however, it cannot be if you an open checkbook or commodity. we have to figure out a way of saying it has to stop. if it doesn't. there will be consequences. and potentially think about what the consequences might be. it's really hard to do it in a trade sense. you can't impose a tariff on chinese imports of clothes. they are hacking us. but for steel -- stealing our secrets.

it may require us to do some very particular and argue mentive things. you can't expect it to be a one stop we attack or impose sanctions. and the chinese capitulate. we don't want to do it if we don't have to. it may be the discussion what is about. we don't want to have to go this way. we may be forced to. >> host: have they created or been more advanced in weapon system than we are? >> guest: not i'm aware of. they are buying develops and codeveloping stuff with the russians. the aircraft carrier was actually old russian -- that was supposed to be a casino that was bought by the chinese. they are getting better though. partly because we're giving them the skills.

.. is actually a stable balance. you don't go to war. we have to get the chinese to recognize that 10 to 20 years on the road 50 years down the road there is no gain for more.

>> caller: good morning. i want to tell you, you started the story in the middle because it's actually the corporations fall. back in the 80s once computers got, you know we got them on our desktops we invited people from all over the world to come and so they created the engineering software, the design and then they left. you can't blame them for using their education can you? this is totally the corporations fall. hewlett-packard, all the technical companies for years just for the fact that we had members here in united states but who did not get an opportunity at all for those positions. >> host: dan goure. >> guest: we invited

scientists into the country to work. some have gone back who couldn't retain their visa status. we don't offer enough of these people citizenship. we should have welcomed them here and made it so attractive that they wouldn't go back. the reality is that corporations do what is in their best interest for their shareholders and frankly the value that we all love and benefit from. so that really can't be the answer to the problem. this is at the level of espionage a battle of nations that is as old as the nation and has to be treated as such. we are simply doing it in a new domain but there's nothing new about the process itself. >> host: the chinese are beginning all the computer information they need at the american university since the late 1970s. an oversight gop who is our greatest cyberadversary? >> guest: you know that's an interesting question.

most of the report, for major. chinese are clearly number one and russians are close number two, very sophisticated. israel is identified as the third player large that for economic advantage in france interestingly enough is identified as a fourth major player. or the sources in france. in a sense, everybody who wants to play in the big leagues has essentially major power who are looking for a way to jumpstarting their economy. all of them are coming to united states as the cornucopia of this technology. >> host: -- asked him to treat what about al qaeda? >> guest: clearly al qaeda doesn't have a particular reason to go after the design code but

if you are thinking about them trying to hack into the special operations command database or some of the companies providing security for u.s. embassies and facilities overseas. clearly that would be something that al qaeda might be interested in. the other thing is if iran is going after and hacking into our infrastruinfrastru cture, our energy infrastructure, our power grid the terrorist groups be far behind? or it's going to be a terrorist group backed by a country such as iran. so it's just hard to tell where the responsibility really lies. >> host: nikki, waverly georgia republican. >> caller: yes, good morning. i wanted to find out -- a contract he gave china. the electric cars and buses and all that. that is what the discretion is

about so why would we outsource a factory instead of giving it to china billions of dollars to come over here to deal with electric buses in california? we have had a long history of problems with countries coming in and buying up our capability. beechcraft the aircraft company sold part of its business to the chinese company that non-defense part of its business. that business has stayed in the u.s. but it's chinese on. lenovo bought ibm's pc business so we are well into that. how we managed that and whether the jobs go overseas or the money comes here to create jobs in the united states is the real question. it's a tough problem because the chinese have the money ,-com,-com ma have the workforce and increasingly the technologies and they have a huge mark. a lot of companies would like to

send their capabilities overseas, do production in china because they see the hope of capturing part of the chinese market as well as the market back here. >> host: richard on pompano beach california, you are on the air. >> caller: i don't think you have made it clear that the united states is one of the leaders in espionage. think about the espionage with the drones. how could another country fire at john and the united states and kill civilians? what would we do? we do that all over the world. we don't do it intentionally but we are doing it and i think way back and i was a little boy some guy named powell was shut down with the you too rocket over russia. it was a long time ago but we are the leaders in espionage. that's what i find. >> guest: we are not saying that the chinese are bad and we are good. everybody does espionage and in fact some espionage is very good. the fact that we have five

satellites and so did the chinese and so did the russians and others that look at the world and can detect military maneuvers are the buildup for war can be a very good thing and can prevent war. espionage goes on. we all do it. we are very big. that was not the basis for "the washington post" article. what they were saying is the chinese seem to have had some spectacular successes which may diminish u.s. security. that was the key point. >> host: how did did "the washington post" get this report? >> guest: there was a report that this is a study going on for 18 months or two years. the defense sites for underperformers under secretary of defense for acquisition has been focused and cybernetwork security since he took over. the report that came out in an unclassified version late last year apparently the reporter got ahold of the confidential version. i suspect given the material there is a highly classified version as well so that version and like the unclassified

version names names and identifies -- >> host: weapon systems leaked by the administration? >> guest: i'm hearing stories that this was the effective administration which would fit coming into to this meeting so now the might have a basis for saying look high and getting public pressure here. you guys are bad to dial this down. >> host: in the meeting dan goure is is referring to his president obama will be meeting with his counterparts from china and a two day summit in california. headlining the near times this morning is the president is seeking a power relationship in talks with obama. brent in annapolis maryland independent caller. >> caller: good morning mr. goure and greta. i just wanted to ask basically are the chinese doing for us anything more than what we are doing for them as far as the hacking into military computers are concerned? >> guest: dealt no. i would hope they are not doing any more to us. i would hope we have essentially

run riot through chinese military computers in the industrial computers and all the rest. frankly get in the game here i would hope that we are conducting economic espionage and stealing their secrets. that would put everybody on equal field. don't know. what i do know by multiple reports from multiple sources is we are being assaulted by the chinese and at the very least need to take defensive measures. we are not talking about blaming. nobody is blaming anybody. it's just a fact. >> host: on twitter hashtag anonymous, where do they fit into this? >> guest: that's a really good question. we don't know in all cases where various groups fit in. one of the things about the internet is not only can he take over somebody's computer and use anonymous servers and we know from their poor the airport that the chinese are buying up companies in these military groups are buying up servers and establishing domain names all over the place. we are just literally beside

burst -- littering the cyberspace with potential launch points for attacks. in some cases groups are on their own and in other cases they may be subverted via nations or there may be criminal groups being paid to do the bidding of nations. we know that it's been happening in the russian cases. so part of the problem with making this sort of manageable is it's very hard to know in all cases who you are dealing with, who is in the front and was a real source. >> host: by the way way "the washington post" if you go to their web site has video of the various weapons that were hacked into so if you're interested in finding out what the chinese were able to get a look at you can go to "washington post" web site. dan goure vice president of the lexington institute, thank you sir for your time. >> guest: thank you.

peter suderman of reason magazine recently wrote an article called down the drain how the federal government flushed away $833 billion stimulus. he joined us recently on "washington journal." >> host: on wednesdays at this time we turn the spotlight on magazines and this morning we looked at reason magazine. our guest is senior editor peter suderman who has the cover piece down the drain of the federal government flushed away the $833 billion stimulus. thank you for joining us. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> host: the so-called

stimulus the bill we are talking about was passed in 2009. its is still being implemented today? where is it at? >> guest: at this point we basically spent the bulk of that money. it's out of the system. we put that money into the economy and we borrowed that money. so at this point it's more or less done. with this piece was in a lot of ways is an attempt to look back at why we got the stimulus we got, why they got a stimulus at all and then how was spent in some of the theories that underlie the design of the program. >> host: why did we get the stimulus and how did we commit the number we have arrived at? >> guest: so that is a bit of a lengthy questionnaire. if you remember the economy was looking a little bit jittery at that time and so president bush passed the $150 billion stimulus plan that just gave everyone a tax break that actually basically gave most everyone in

america not just a tax break but cut them a check. so obama been on the campaign trail sort of said we need more. we need more stimulus. we need to do a follow-up and it needs to be done differently. so that is where the ideas started. president bush did his stimulus, a tax break and it was tax focus so obama wanted to do a different kind of stimulus, one that was more focused on infrastructure spending, one that was more focused on projects that the democrats alike. green jobs and that sort of thing so that was really where it got started. and then with the collapse of wall street with a major economic calamities that came right before the election that year that is when there was really an influence to get going on something bigger and larger into get out the door quickly and the auma made a priority

number one for his presidency. >> host: a piece by peter suderman down the drain how the government flushed away $833 billion in stimulus. so give us your gauge of the impact it has had. >> guest: i think the best thing i can say is we don't really know. attempts to measure are in fact much less reliable and we should be less confidence in them that a lot of people say and that's a big part of the point i want to make in this piece. all of these efforts to measure the overall impact in terms of jobs, in terms of growth of the economy and gdp, when you look at those efforts to measure what you really find is that we don't know a lot, that they are not actually great guides to what we know to what the stimulus really dead and it's not because the people who were doing them are

doing a better job. it's just very hard to measure and an 800 billion-dollar program that's attempting to stimulate an entire national economy. >> host: peter suderman of reason magazine, democrats (202)585-3880 zero and republicans (202)585-3881 and independent colors to (205)585-3882. in your pc look at measuring the success or lack thereof of the stimulus, the american recovery and reinvestment act. a metric of this that this is a multiplier. explain what that means. >> guest: this was a big part of the theory that gave us the particular stimulus that we got. the idea that when the government spends money it can create additional economic activity throughout the wider economy so let's say the government spends $10 if you have a multiplier of 10.0 for every dollar the government

spends it will create $2 of economic activity so a $10 stimulus would create $20 of activity in the wider economy. so that is sort of the idea of the multiplier but if you look at a lot of the research into what multipliers are, what you really find is economy's don't have a great idea or a lot of agreement on what the multiplier is. we have seen big surveys of the best literature. what they tell us is that anywhere from as low as .5 which means if you spend $1 you only get 50 cents of economic activity to 2.0 is a reasonable rate. and so the fact that economists and the best research vary so much really tells us something about how uncertain this idea of the multiplier is. >> host: david writes for the "new york times" a few months

ago, don't tell anyone the stimulus worked and he looks at his opinions about the stimulus and why it would ultimately -- was affected. the stimulus farmer then stimulates. it protected the most vulnerable from the recession. the final cost, the $1.5 billion to rent subsidies in emergency housing that kept 1.2 million people under roofs. that is why the recession didn't produce rampant homelessness. increase spending on food stamps unemployment benefits and medicaid keeping at least 7 million americans from falling below the poverty line. >> guest: so that is talking about the portion of the stimulus that was spent on what we call transfer programs so the stimulus had three major parts. part of it was kind of a trickle out tax break. you saw it in your paycheck over the course of many many weeks and it wasn't a big lump sum like the bush tax break. part of it was what we think of

when we think of the stimulus which is spending on infrastructure type projects, construction that that sort of thing another big part of it was on these transfer payments, things like expanded unemployment benefits, more money for medicaid and things like that. the thing i get into my piece is that yes those programs did ease the burden of the recession for many people but it comes with a trade-off. when you make it easier to be unemployed you have fewer people or you create incentives any way for people to not stop being unemployed and to look for a job. there is some research that suggests as many as two to 3 million people would have had nearly as much disposable income under the stimulus had they had a job than if they had taken a job that paid about the same as the job that they previously had

had. when you have a couple million people who have an incentive to basically, where relatively easy i should say or easier for them to not work then you have to wonder did those programs, did those additional incentives in the transfer of spending push people and make it easier for people to not find another job? >> host: there is a -- from kramer on our independent line. hi cramer. >> caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. i have a question for your guest. basically which industries receive most of the money and which industry still -- the taxpayers and i will take my question off-line. >> guest: i haven't seen a breakdown in who in particular

got the money but a lot of the incentive was on construction type projects. however these projects were divided up over a large variety of types of firms. if you have a lot of environmental engineering firms and you had people who were construction firms, i start with a story about a firm from spokane washington they got money, about a half a million dollars to install toilets in mark twain national forest. these were unhcr style concrete toilets so that is where a fair amount of the money went. like i said a fair amount of money went to people, to individuals for tax breaks as well as through transfer programs like medicaid, like unemployment benefits and that sort of thing. so i don't have a break down here but the thing is, the

companies that got the money don't have to pay back the taxpayer. that's not exactly how it works. in fact what happens is basically the government is buying a product for them. like they are a contractor with the government or helps like a defense contractor. the government is paying a company from spokane washington to install toilets and they get money that is not a loan. the borrowing happens at the federal level. the stimulus was basically borrowed, the $833 billion so that is taxpayer money that adds to our spending debt is what it does. and it creates, adds to the $16 trillion that we are to have or have added to the $16 trillion that we are the head. >> host: for more information about the american recovery and reinvestment act ,-com,-com ma

the government web site recovery.gov and here's here is a map of the u.s. showing funding for federal grants and loans as part of the stimulus spending. you can see the various states and where more money was spent in less money was. our guest is peter suderman at reason magazine and we are talking about stimulus spending. let's go to those on the democrat line. hi grows. >> caller: hello. was a democratic governor and he participated in the stimulus program. in september of 08 my job and did so i was fortunate enough to be a will to slide onto social security which put me on a fixed income. and i've benefited from the stimulus package. i had an assessor come in, and find out what the home needed and my furnace was about 20 some odd years old.

i didn't know where the money was coming from. they replace my furnace which was made in north carolina and the irony of it is that most of the contractors came out of mississippi and there was some other work done, installation work and it put about 10 people to work for three weeks to a month. and i understand that they did about 40,000 homes to retrofit to make the more energy-efficient. that's amazing. my energy bill has gone down. it's hard to say exactly how much but it's much lower than that was before this was done. i want to thank my president because i really appreciate what he did for me. thank you. >> guest: so, the caller talked there about the 10 people that were put to work doing some

of this work in one of the interesting things that i talk about in my piece is in some of the surveys businesses that took stimulus funds to perform work they did end up hiring people to perform work. they did end up hiring people to perform work that was specifically called for by the stimulus but what they didn't do in some cases with higher people who were already unemployed. they hire people who had jobs previously so it's one thing to say that the stimulus, that the firm hired people with stimulus money. it's another thing to say that it hired unemployed people. and it's really difficult to tell how many the people who were hired with stimulus funds were previously unemployed. we have one interesting survey that is not a conference of survey but there is some suggestion that actually a quite large percentage of the people who were hired with the stimulus

funds to do some of these contracting jobs and these construction jobs were employed for they were hired with the state. >> host: peter suderman editor at reason magazine, one of your colleagues attached to your cover story looking at what companies got stimulus money in terms of jobs. the pie chart, no new hires 59%, kept all new hires 23%, fired all the stimulus hires 12% in enough cap all new hires 23%. what do those numbers mean to you? we are seeing 2023% the cap all new hires and 6% that kept some. >> guest: the interesting question for people thinking about the effect of the stimulus is with the people who were hired for the stimulus, were those people hired to create new full-time jobs that stayed in existence after the stimulus money went away? what we see here is that in some cases the answer is yes but in

many cases the answer is that the companies hired people with the stimulus money but the stimulus money ran out and those people didn't have those jobs created at the stimulus or created and funded with the stimulus funds anyway. the jobs didn't exist anymore so again it's an interesting question. how do you measure things? do we think of the stimulus as a success because it created some jobs temporarily for some people and those jobs didn't last or do we think of the stimulus is not quite doing what we really wanted it to do when those jobs don't last, when those companies don't keep those positions. >> host: washington, chad independent caller. go ahead. >> caller: thanks for taking my call. your guests talk about the multiplier factor earlier and i wonder the argument that the multiplier is wrong? he turned around and used his

own numbers which are based -- anybody going to college to take statistics. are you saying that it the multiplier that is wrong or inaccurate or should we not be using at? if we are using at wish you would we'd be using to judge these programs? >> guest: that is a great question and the way i would say when someone tells you that we are very confident that we know the exact effect of spending of a dollar of government stimulus, you should be a little bit wary of anyone who says they are very confident because in fact the best economists in the best economic research is not highly confident about the multiplier effect of government purchases, of government spending to stimulate the economy. and when you look at the surveys of the literature, you see that

multipliers can be as high as 2.0 or 2.5 and you also see that multipliers, some people think the multiplier is below 1.0. they even substantially view it as low as 1.56. all of this research is pretty useful research that we should be looking at. and so what that tells us, not that there is no such thing as a multiplier and not that we should guard completely but simply that the, we don't know is much about how the multiplier works as some people have kind of suggested we did. >> host: matt writes and wrightson twitter nast is there meaningful difference between hiring unemployed workers in keeping employed workers with new jobs? >> guest: in some ways no. if someone was going to lose a job or if we were going to hiring unemployed person, either

way you have a job that has created or saved and you remember back in 2009 when the stimulus was being passed, this was an issue of contention where president obama, the administration first used language suggesting that the stimulus would create several million jobs and then they kind of abstract a little bit when they realize that creating directly new jobs was something that they wanted to do so they change the language that they were using to say it created or saved jobs. so you know it's an interesting point and it's an interesting way to think about the effect of the stimulus and what it did. .. of expansive way of talking about this just because it is so hard to figure out exactly which

jobs the stimulus did and did not find an exactly where that money went. host: dallas, democrat line. caller: i am calling in regard to the stimulus. the gentleman said something about when they first -- when they first started distributing the stimulus, they were giving families $600. he said -- he did not mention the $250 they were giving individuals that qualified. also, most of the southern states kept the money. so they have some type of discrepancy. thank you. >> guest: to $600 stimulus was a separate program passed roughly a year previous to 2009

american recovery reinvestment act, which is the $833 billion deadly as we think of as the stimulus in many cases. the $600 checks are passed under president bush. when i was talking about that, the thing to remember is on the campaign trail something that was happening while barack obama was campaigning for president, so he framed his call for a stimulus in anyways and respond to president bush stimulus plan. as far as how state and the money and what dates date, there is some research i don't get into in the article, but there is research that suggests with these students to the money and borrowed less of a kind begin to end up by the new things with the stimulus money, buying new things that would create jobs, but what they did and said was simply to buyer that a less by the same amount of stuff and as

a result, there was not a huge multiplier effect. that was the conclusion of a couple who let it have the money was distributed and spent at the state level. postcode lets look at comments made by the cbo here, douglas elmendorf. here's an excerpt. the cbo estimated creator saved up to 3.6 million jobs that the director of the cbo has also noted if a real-world result were different, it's a lot created 5 million jobs or they created none at all, the agency would know. he touched on this, but explain more about the questioning. >> guest: this is a thing not any people pay attention to that the attempts to measure the stimulus by the congressional budget office that the stimulus was ruled out tells us a lot less than unleaded people seem

to think. ciresi said, the congressional budget office estimated the stimulus created up to 3.5 million jobs. as part of that there is also in the last event about five or 600,000 jobs. so that in another thought tells you something that the range here is very large and the congressional budget office company top and ammo and on it, but it could be anywhere between that could be as high as their low as. the other thing is the methodology for the congressional budget office is not to actually go and count the number of jobs or track the number of jobs that were actually created under the stimulus. what they did instead was used as a model, the same economic models they used to predict the stimulus would create jobs before the stimulus was passed

before any of that was spent. all they did was plug in new spending numbers into the old model. so as a result, a something completely different, something that has nothing to do with the model have been, the cbo estimates would not cut that hamas are congressional budget office director doug elmendorf was saying was that these estimates can only tell you so much and something totally different habitat in. if the stimulus created no jobs or many more jobs in the top 10 range. we wouldn't know because that's not what our reports are saying. >> host: peter suderman come the senior editor. the article is transcendent. kirk up next, ports about go,

maryland, independent collar. >> caller: i want to raise the point this was borrowed money. if the stimulus money were in fact taxed, that's redistributing well. as far as firing the number, will never know how much it actually cost us. we pass the debt on two grandchildren. interest rates -- interest payments on the 837 million will amount to a great deal of money, plus it could help us to dictate the implant, where inflation runs rampant, which after all is the cruelest tax of all. >> that's a really good point in really good way to think about it is this is our money. the thing i would say here is not is it our of money, it is

money we have to pay back through taxes because to spend its attacks and eventually gets paid back. the other part is that if the debt left over from the stimulus eventually creates a drag on the economy according to the congressional budget office. but the congressional budget office that was the stimulus increase gross domestic product here and make the economy figure 5.3% and 1.9%. but they also said is in a decade or so we are left with the debt from how i borrowed the $807 million, that is going to create a little bit of smugness. it's going to make it harder to grow because all else being equal, when there's more federal debt, that makes it more difficult for the economy to

expand. >> host: kansas, sheila is a republican. hi, sheila. >> caller: good morning. i wanted to ask about the government grant. i noticed a month ago a report came on a cause of action. i've been trying for the last two years to get someone to look into the illegal lobbying funded with grants. >> host: sorry, go ahead. >> caller: its tens of millions of these throughout the country. >> guest: it's not something i like that in my article. as far as my lobbying the federal intake and answer your question directly. fish is something that came up in my research at all. >> host: the article "down the drain" you can find in the latest edition of reason magazine. >> guest: the magazine of free mind and free market comes from

a broadly non-libertarian party, but libertarian is. the way we look at things is sort of how do we maximize freedom in the individual realm both in terms of how our money is spent, but how the government regulates personal activity, the bedroom in the boardroom is the preferred shorthand for i would talk about that. >> host: is widely recognized as a way to mitigate crashes. do you train to oppose all stimulus? >> guest: i do not necessarily postal stimulus. the idea at the heart of this piece is not that we should necessarily avoid all stimulus at all times, the simply this particular stimuli and in the stimulus we were able to get practically in the time we had in the rush to do some name may

not have been as effective as was promised in as many people hope, but also we kind of just don't know. so the idea is to kind of us to question, should we be spending this amount of money on something rare in many ways will never really know how well that were or if you worked at all. in what ways it may or may not have worked. >> host: utica, michigan. coordinate democrats line. welcome. >> caller: hey, how are you doing. i want to say guests you may not see the benefit, but let's say we never put an end and it got a million times worse. so what i'm saying is we have a lot of car companies that needed bailing out. if it had been bailed out, thousands of people would've been out of a job.

so it's going to increase taxes, but it could have gotten worse. sometimes you got to do something that costs money to make money. our community would be in a horrible position. will see more jobs created, but at least jobs -- which you rather have saved jobs are lost jobs? >> host: thank you, cory. >> guest: was to get it right there is an interesting idea about counterfactual, what would've happened if we hadn't done the stimulus, taken a different approach to addressing the economic crisis. that is the big what is at the heart of macroeconomics that we can't resolve and his wife so hard to track and measure this

kind of economic intervention. one of the economists i talk to and at peace with them both wrong research on the effects of stimulus and also surveyed a lot of the high-quality research describes a big problem to be something like this. she said but we want is the ability to take all bunch of countries and with some of them try a certain amount of stimulus and with others will have the stimulus at all. what we end up with is a controlled experiment. and that's the kind of controlled experiment that you just can't get in macroeconomics. you can't play games with the worlds economy that way. that is why the congressional budget office has said early on in the process that is just impossible to know what would've happened in the absence of the stimulus. we have no idea because we

cannot create -- we cannot know what counterfactual is in the cannot know the answer to the what-if question. so what my piece was about as the uncertainty created by the lack of counterfactual and inability to determine what happened if we hadn't done ms. stimulus. >> host: is here from republican michigan. laura century. hi, there. >> caller: i can gain a little weight, so i don't know the premise of your magazine. is it right-wing, left-wing and also wondering if you have any information in their own farmers they get subsidies. i read in "the wall street journal" a number of months ago for senator grassley has a farm

of course the sun and make a $738,000 a year subsidy for not growing things. is that fact dirt into the stimulus? in regards to down the drain, i think that doesn't sound good to me because i feel there's some americans that have gotten jobs as a result of the stimulus, whether it is for a few months or longer, it is people benefiting and the fact they are not collecting unemployment and things are better in all respects for our country is supposed to everybody just being on unemployment, which is a tragic thing. i think the countries in europe do not follow our stimulus are hurting more than what we are.

thank you very much. i enjoy c-span. >> thank you. a couple questions there in terms of farm subsidy, mostly doled out through federal farm programs that is a part of the stimulus so the programs that pay people to not grow things is most a separate program from the stimulus. reason magazine is published by the reason foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization or a nonpartisan nonprofit organization. but we like i said take a general libertarian approach to the world. free minds, free market. we asked questions about how to maximize freedom and individual realm, whether it's the economic or personal freedom. the final issue was about to us at jobs and who has benefited

here. is certainly the case we know that physicians have been funded by the stimulus. we have evidence at this, so we've seen some politicians suggest that there were zero jobs was the quote of one politician on the campaign trail last year or the year before. we know that the stimulus did find some jobs, but the question is what would've happened if we hadn't had a stimulus and also comment is that funding people who were employed before hand or people who were unemployed before hand? it looks in many cases the stimulus ended up finding jobs for people who already had jobs in part because the positions they were funding were highly technical, required a fair amount of experience as one economist who i talked to told me the best person for a job in many cases 30 has one so you end

up hiring someone who could've got word that did have work somewhere else. >> host: a patient is alive only because of life support is not alive. our economy is only alive because of the stimulus instead funding. share your thoughts with us on twitter by writing@c-span wj. he can find them at nine peter suderman. let's hear from mike, independent. >> caller: good morning, how are you doing? would have been to fund jobs versus employment. every job the federal government creates his deficit spending. every employee that tired% profit margin assault. the government is during money after money into the job pool and a job sector is not creating

any money to replace the job or. >> guest: with the stimulus, one thing i would say is many of the position from that they're purchasing the stimulus for private companies, so it's a little difficult to figure out -- i guess i should say, we have to think how this out of these categories of things using public money to pay private contractors to employ private individuals. that's part of the stimulus. but it is deficit spending and it's added to the debt and as the congressional budget office has almost been a quote when you add to the debt and the long-term, even if there's an initial upfront to gdp in the long-term, it doesn't make economic growth for the national economy somewhat more difficult

and more likely to be slower rather than faster. >> host: 10, toledo ohio, democrat sign, welcome. >> caller: hi, mr. suderman come a quick observation a couple questions. as i recall, about one third of the stimulus bill to tax cuts and expanded loopholes. i think i was 280 billion. what you make the observation not all stimulus is borrowed money. a big chunk of it was tax cuts. my questions have to do with the founding of the health records. i think i was 20 or $30 billion meant to initiate the computerization of american health records. i wonder how he would have started the process if we hadn't gotten a start from their investment act of 2009, which i have noted is producing more efficient doctor visits.

my final question if you can take all this at once is there was a big boost in medicaid funding in 2009 and that was a godsend because my mother would have been kicked out of her assisted residence in the last three years for life. she died in late 2012 at the age of 92. how may alter the people have been displaced as a hadn't been for expansion of medicaid funding in 2009? those are my questions. >> guest: a couple issues they are. let's talk about that tax cuts. and the government gives tax cuts, that can show up in the budget or less the same way spending does. imagine the government is spending a trillion dollars in manic as a tax cut under the not paying for the tax cut is still instead being effectively for a burgeoning sense borrowed money and adding to the deficit in the

same way that just borrowing to spend as if you're not cutting spending to go along with that. the interesting portion of the stimulus spent quite a lot of money creating incentives for medical providers to elect tronic health records. what these electronic health records were supposed to do was make the medical world more efficient, make it it cheaper and start the process of bringing down health spending or at least getting it under control. in the long-term, spending is a big problem for the economy and a big problem for the federal government because of volatile spending commitments. what we saw was that ended up finding programs that don't talk

to each other. they have these proprietary lock-in systems, where they have their internal health i.t. records for themselves, but it's difficult for them to send records to other medical providers. so it has been in anyways facilitated the communication. but it has facilitated this additional spending because what they use those programs to do about the programs have allowed them to do is gain the medical billing system is that there's been an interesting reporting that's actually showed it to increase spending for hospitals. as far as medicaid goes, i don't know how many people, but it didn't end up fighting medicaid for the states. >> host: train to come a. here's the piece, "down the drain." thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> more now with "washington

journal" with aspects of the economy. >> host: r. sub on a segment this week looks at perceptions, misconceptions and myths. we will dig into those that are cast, steve landefeld, director of the group economic analysis. and also ryan avent with the economist, correspondent. let's start by talking about federal taxes. it's tax season right now. here's something the dea but that appeared our federal taxes at a record high. what's the answer? >> guest: every number what combat is going to be bigger than the last number, so there's always a record. one look at federal taxes paid its 2.7 trillion. but when they look at it as a share of the economy, the way we

should be looking not at its 15% in recent years, which is a record low. we also have on our chart their income taxes a federal state and local as a share personal and comfortable which is more with the average person would be seen and we see they are a decline in recent years a record that was so. we quickly should note a lot of this is due to the recession of coors because we always fall during recessions. the congressional budget estimates by 2015 and a complete recovery will be 19% share of gdp, about the postwar average of 18%, but still below what we've seen in earlier years. >> host: biases and port number to people that their perception about how i taxes are? >> guest: it's important because the revenues are part of the calculation that goes into

the budget deficit in the way we fund the government. to the extent we are concerned about that, growing at an it's important to note this measure. not just based on the total amount of money flowing into the treasury, but how it feels when they pay taxes. on that score, even though the checks they write are smaller come i feel so burdened some given the state of the economy. that feels perception that it's important to note rates are not historically high and the money the treasury is not at historically high level. >> host: if you like to join that cannot economic perceptions, here's the numbers to call. if you live in the eastern or central time zone, bring us at (202)585-3880. i'm pacific or further west is

(202)585-3881. has the tax burden increase from other sources such as levees, things like that? >> guest: start over the past year or two we started to see tax rates go up largely due to efforts to address the federal government deficit. we saw a rates go up at the end of 2012 as some of the bush tax cuts expired. over the past year or so your states governments close gaps mostly due to the recession of one of the ways of increasing fees, tax rates as low as cutting spending on different programs. it's not incorrect for people to feel they are paying more than they used to. >> host: steve denisov for this to get his federal spending at a record high? >> guest: this one again is 4 trillion in spending. we aren't due to get another level as a share of gdp at 24%.

the advantages as proposed in her command in more detail components in the top line enters the black line for transfers. those are sometimes referred to as an item in an social security as medicare, medicaid and payments. if we take those out amok in which you may consider court government, things like federal contractors, buildings, military equipment. over time it will remain high as a share of gdp of 17% 3% reaching record lows at 6% in recent years and 2000 bombing of a big share decline is by declining defense spending as a share of gdp. nondefense spending has been knocking around a 2.5% gdp throughout that. those are things people aren't

aware of the become apparent when one goes down into the data to look at the composition of the federal spending is. >> host: when we break the deadlock of federal defense, nondefense, where the significant breakouts and what we learned? >> guest: it gives us a sense of what we spend our money on them but we need to look at what we think about cutting a reigning in the budget deficit. everyone would love to cut items we don't care much about. it doesn't end up in a large share of what the government is spending as you can see in that chart the entitlement of medicare, social security have been picking up the lion's share of the budget. defense is a large component, but something marilla had to cut back on. >> host: received a total federal spending including transfer payments. that doesn't entitlement.

over a transfer payment might be something people haven't heard. >> host: you take money from one group and give it to another. it's not part of what we consider production. >> guest: in a way it's like insurance becomes difficult to maintain not to have the demographic issue with the large cohort retiring and that is a source of the growth in spending and budget trouble. >> host: 's federal debt at a record high? steve landefeld >> guest: 10.4 trillion is a scarily big number. once again lets compare to something him a look at it as a share of gdp about 73% where we are now. certainly is rising. it's not a record to pay for the finance cost of world war ii at

108%, we certainly have been higher. one way to think about that and put it in personal terms if the married couple with a median income went and brought a median priced house with 20% down, their market should be about 250% of their income has said that they help people think about it because it's a relative numbers. another way is relative to total u.s. asset and it turns out the total that in 2011 was 5.2% of total u.s. asset which is the way the bank would look at your debt relative to assets. >> host: how can we compare what it was like in world war ii as steve landefeld mentioned. and what do you make, ryan avent, the dips and increase?

>> guest: world war ii and the spending resulted was nothing like what we observe now. mobilization in the entire economy to fight the war. it's comforting away were not the highest level ever, but a very different world at that point. i do take comfort towards the end and that we got a too kind of a local peak in the early 1990s. that was a time and there was a lot of worry about interest rates and when we got agreement in congress to raise tax rates and cut spending and that led to budget surpluses. when interest rates push us to get our act together, we can do it and be a little bit comforted. >> host: ryan avent is correspondent at the economist and chief author of free exchange. our other guest is steve landefeld, bureau of economic analysis director. our first phone call, howard from bardstown, kentucky. hi, howard.

>> caller: how are you doing, thank you for taking my call. >> host: sure thing, go ahead. >> caller: first, let me offer a comment that i'm glad to pay taxes in this wonderful country and there's very few countries to try what, west, north and south and that costs money. so why don't they pay in taxes. i do have something to say or to worry about how our tax dollars are spent generally across the board. it seems like the people that manage our money, whether democrats or republicans are very a net debt management. i don't know what the answer to the question or to the problem is, but we've got some economists on it this morning talking about it and there's things that bother me to some extent but i don't think our

political leaders take into consideration. when you see advertising on television or information on tv concerning maybe not misuse of our money, but for instance, and i know our president has to take vacations, but there was an immense amount of publicity about the first lady and the cost of her vacations that she's taken since our president has been in office and has indicated i'm an independent, so i vote my conscience every time. but i don't think it puts a good face on our politicians when this kind of expenditures, extravagant expenditures as far as the vacations are taken, i

don't think that that's a very good face on our management. >> host: howard comeau july to elected decide for your tax dollars go? would you like to see forms or you could allocate work taxes go and how they are spent? >> caller: no, that's above my pay rank. i would like to think that people would put their are more confident in their decision-making. >> host: let's get a response from ryan avent. >> guest: as far as i know, spending on vacation is not extravagant by historical levels. i think when i look at what congress has done, a couple years is not exactly confidence inspiring. shut down after shut down, stand off after sam often i understand why people feel their money as they manage particularly well. i think is a couple of things consider. one is when you look at the

growth in the nation's fiscal troubles to the extent we have fiscal troubles is not necessarily due to mismanagement. mostly to national demographic change and distribution of thing suspender spend money on and is also a fixable problem. i do think we could give more confidence if we improve the budgeting process and got away from these sequester standoffs fiscal cliff standoffs and proposals for exotic or receipt that when you file tax returns process essential to look at government spending, this is where many were two defense, social security, infrastructure investment things like that. it would be useful to have more of what the government was saying. >> host: greenville, mississippi, welcome. >> caller: hi. good morning to everybody. i do think our flat tax would definitely work for this country.

it's funny how corporations and the poor are fighting from our government and both seem to be getting it. i would like to see a flat tax for corporations as well as the general population. i don't like all these loopholes and rebuilding nations. i don't think it's our job to rebuild nations all around the world with their money. i think china will love our countrymen he had high interest rate just so we can police the world. i think they are laughing at us and that's a little disturbing in america. were too involved in other countries and rebuilding them and our bridges are falling down and china's finest money to police the world in that country has been around for centuries. they're probably laughing at us. >> host: thanks, george. let's look at this topic since our caller brought up china and we can see here who essentially

owns america and not by all foreigners versus china. tell us more, steve landefeld. host one of the things we do is maintain accounts and we put out reports on this topic and as you can see from these charts on the left-hand tal afar, foreigners own 25 trillion in assets in the u.s., while the u.s. owns 21 trillion in assets abroad. so anacreon 4 trillion or of us than we have them. once again it got to put that in some perspective, so we look at relative to u.s. not worth it. the u.s. has net worth of $60 trillion, said they have a little less than 6% of total u.s. net worth. over the rate be broken up the obvious interest expressed by the collar and china we broke

out in china in bayonne 1.6 trillion yen in net assets in the u.s. for about 2.3% of u.s. net worth. >> host: we see with the u.s. owns in china and what that meant is that steve lynn anthologist mentioned. we had the u.s.-china relationship where these numbers significant and be taken into account? >> guest: just to push areas is certainly a start date. there's other things to think about. the fact that china has purchased it gives them a direct interest in the economy to grow strongly so we can make good on our obligations. it's also worth pointing out to share umpiring that there is more internal borrowing and finance team.

there's not the level of dependence on the chinese economy and the figures we see their branding to those our little misleading. >> host: dayton, ohio, welcome. >> caller: i agree with the guy from kentucky in the previous collar. i want to pay my fair share and do. if they could talk about the history of taxes, the younger fellow there said something about during world war ii and world war i and world war ii, taxes were raised to pay for those wars and of course you can never pay for peoples lives, but the actual physical by the economic cost of tax payer. talk about taxes being raised during world war i and world war

ii. if the taxes are raised when you look at the figures, i believe i have read the iraq war costs are not included in our defense spending that they learned how to separated somehow about the real economic costs. if you could talk about the separation of my taxes were raised during iraq and also capital gains taxes, by when they are not working are making 50% of the average american citizen for 35%. >> host: we will start with steve landefeld. >> guest: as you see from the first chart, which is on a personal income taxes, there was some rise, you are correct in taxes. memory serves me correctly picot

back to the world war ii -- the air after world war ii, despite the large or circumstances described as the golden era of economic growth and a lot of that was weaker of a out of the debt. the growth in the economy produces receipt and that was one of the driving factors in terms of what happened. in terms of the level of defense date, i can assure you we take data from the department of defense and all those expenditures and dates are included in the statistics. i can't speak to the direct and effect directs, but those numbers are in there. >> host: ryan avent. >> guest: steve is right, but the color is also right marginal tax rate taken a point on

capital gains is certainly some dame to economic argument is investment and in general because investment is one of the key ingredients. you get less growth in less revenue in the future. u-shaped santa fe and that's why we have a tax. >> host: steve, haymarket virginia, welcome. >> guest: >> caller: yes, we used to have an alternative minimum tax, but it's called something different. it was called slavery, which was 100% of what you earn went to somebody else. but we need to do is establish an established alternative

maximum tax and each project of the total product at the wholesale level. you could have the retail tax and the estate tax is and the total receipt instead of the ingredient bomar underestimated on products. conversely, i think you all would agree that world war i is over? >> host: and your point is that? >> caller: we still have a withholding tax. the five banks closest to your polling place to deposit your withholding taxes and a christmas account on the cover 15, you would you would write a

check to the federal, state and local government and you could then go and vote. >> guest: certainly some interesting proposals. the first proposal is interesting, which is you can have a look there are and see how much taxes are part of that. they pay for social services at the value-added tax. each stage in the process same and at the end of the day because they share. it's those things that increase awareness and it's certainly sound vain beneficial in the u.s. >> host: steve landefeld, any comments?

>> guest: not on that topic. >> host: steve landefeld in ryan avent. he said she thought. the economics block on the economist called free exchange. areas are next collar new jersey. welcome. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. is there a good source of publication that breaks down several taxes, revenues and expand of a multiyear basis? second, i've always heard that the top 1% or 2% pay an enormous amount of income taxes. i was wondering if the payroll taxes and if you have a break down of federal taxes, both income and payroll taxes by

worse levels. >> host: before we get an answer, why are those numbers according to you? >> caller: just in a matter of fairness, i would tell you when i was in college in the 1960s, we were told we had a progressive tax system. and now we seem to hear a different vocabulary. we could talk about wealth transfers and transfers of wealth. i don't know when that crept in to the system. that just in terms of fairness, one other thing i'd mention when you talk about the value-added tax, i listen to a number of economic people and they talk

about the need for lowering our corporate taxes. one day i went to the web and try to compare corporate taxes with other nations, europe and asia and i saw that our rate is higher. >> host: you've given us a lot of thoughts on the table, a lot of questions. we will start with ryan avent. >> guest: the color is correct to say we don't have just one tax system and that is mostly progressivist marginal rates could hire an in room rates go up. we have another taxes and state and contacts, payroll and can tax which is a regressive tax, if the share of income paid by lower income earners much higher than for workers with higher income level, would you add all those things together, the system is mostly progressive

that wealthier people tend to pay a larger share but not nearly as progressive as a lot of people assume in the search consumer goods and things that fall more heavily on low income earners been on high income earners and i am come earners are better at taking care of tax loopholes and things like that. it's progressive, but only mildly so. >> host: mr. landefeld how he was asking for resources that were to find information of the revenue and expenditures. >> guest: colletti asked the question. naturally he can go to dea.gov and look at our interactive data set and find data on by type and including transfers, medicaid and medicare back to 1929 in the data set. while we don't have much at the second part of the question and

tries to combine administrative and household data that gives answers to those questions about distribution although they may save a dissent that we're working hard at because it's increasingly not only to understand distribution but economic recovery purposes. different groups having different marginal propensity makes a lot of difference who gets the increased income. >> host: steve landefeld. the statistical agency responsible for the national, international commemoration on industry account includes such estimates as gdp, personal income, corporate profits and goes on from there. lets talk about where just. what trends are we seeing? are there any surprises? >> guest: it's a little bit of surprise for most households in the way they think about their

income. many have the perception that their income after adjustment for inflation has fine, especially for workers. we look overtime in the charts we have here at the 2000, 2007. , 2007, 2000 night and then 29 and 2011. it is suggested per worker. we see about those buyers come even the recession that those wages per worker are increasing and in particular focus on the 2007, 2009. period from the viewpoint of wages and salaries, you see the various 0.1. those are hardly growing at all. poet is growing as the red bar, which is your employer puts in their pension plans, when

employers put in for a medicare plan, those sorts of things. those are things the average household doesn't be where you can get that information once a year. there's little bit different picture out there as they look at their full compensation package. before we get a lot of calls i will say every individual situation is different. these are national statistics. >> host: ryan avent, public perception versus number 16. >> guest: public reception as we have everything rising as strongly as it has in the past and part of that is when you get compensation and benefits form, a lot of that is health care and are not necessarily experiencing better health care outcomes. you sort of feel like that's new compensation, but just kind of in place and that's one of the big sources of misperception. >> host: ryan avent,

correspondent at the economist. let's look at personal income and what you're seeing personal income look like. >> guest: yes, since 8:30 this morning the households received. and we can tell from that chart isn't unusual. you're going along and modest growth we see there. >> host: let's get a context in february of last year and now we see the latest number or her last month. >> guest: those are month-to-month changes. as you can see the bars on the right rather large. we saw quite an acceleration in terms of concentration in november or december last year in anticipation of changes and

top rate seriously had a lot of that income been pushed forward. he had dividend payments going out which increase personal income to individuals to make up-to-date rant up in december and of course he fell off of that in january. that was just off of the rebound received a large decrease there. and then we see another large increase albeit if we look at the levels, we are about back to where we were in november. we sat the rearrangement of income and is now working its way out of the system. consumer spending growth of the last year and over the last year are disposable personal income after people pay the taxes through about 1%. >> host: ryan avent, did you

see the numbers that came out this morning. what are you learning from them? >> guest: it bounces around a lot and not make subtle difficult to pick up at the underlying trend. at the same time when you look at this and combined with the information that's been named and information from other sources on which gained in recent, it looks to me like we see some real turn in the labor market translating into pay increases. it's been a hard ever six years for most americans. i think we're finally getting back to substantial and meaningful wage gain. >> host: broken arrow, oklahoma. good morning. >> caller: hi, how are you doing? >> host: go to thank you for your patience. >> caller: i have two questions. one for ryan avent and the other for steve. >> host: we're listening. go ahead. >> caller: is a blessing you

have a job you're doing. take into consideration that my daddy was in the korean war. and now my firstborn military son has been in three wars and i want to know, why so many heavy duty cuts? i've got three grandbabies at that pace by fort meade. i just want to know, what do you think about the economic situation to the va and why would anyone -- by which you think wright hurt the other callers seem like they're veterans are what have you. why would anyone say they are not fighting a war in their mind since i didn't world war i, to now the korean war another afghanistan wars and the situation going on now. i say to understand about that. >> host: sylvia, hold on.

ryan avent writes about economic issues. you want to hear about defense spending? and your question for steve landefeld. >> caller: yes. i hope and pray you take another economic look at the values of cutting va benefits, social security benefits. ii think the season some i'm no. all the chairs pertained to personal income housing and the taxes. >> host: sylvia, i'm going to have fun. i'd taken a note of a fellow will go steve landefeld. >> guest: those data are available and are two others to evaluate. but the same website you can get the complete breakdown in those are important to people's work programs and how they change over time. >> host: thank you. ryan avent, once again defense

spending. >> guest: we definitely appreciate family member service. the country has had a high level think about an appropriate amount of money to spend on defense given threats around the world and things like that. it's on to talk about meaning and budgets to make sure for not cutting important services for soldiers who come back from the war who need retirement than if it had the budget is falling. that's a real problem. >> host: john, fenton, michigan. hi, there. >> caller: thank you for your intelligence. we have a couple more things since we've been waiting on the phone. as far as taxes go, listening to senior people back in the depression when asked about the people because they had the money and they give them to us

and if they pay the or create jobs. not just one or two jobs but a lot of jobs and we need to look after that. as far as wages, does anyone in their right mind spending $14 an hour in recent family. here in michigan it's like 50 cents more than southern states, stuff like that which is questionable. i've waited on the phone, but no big deal. >> host: do you mind if we look at a chart that touches on what you're talking about is a worker shared the national income, how workers income compares with others. can you touch on that, steve landefeld? >> guest: there's been a lot of discussion about how much the national income for the workers of compensation and how much is to an esters -- investors.

walters said he has been a decline over time as you can see, the longview increasing for both of those lines, the top one b. and labor share the bottom being capital share. we have had a lot of dramatic movement in either. as we look at that. from 59 covered, we've got end up at the same point as before on those lines. a lot of discussion. indeed, some of it about congressional budget office. has contributed to top 1%, but only one fifth of that. i don't think when they look at the longview this is one of the major movers pc with respect to what's happening to workers. >> host: reflate, ryan avent, can you reflect on these numbers? >> guest: i would say i think the numbers in the shift we've seen have a lot to do with raw

changes in the economy and the answer to those changes that the ball in terms of technological change, changes in the global economy. it's completely right we haven't invested enough in workers in the u.s., but i don't know we have an ecm or to this particular challenge. >> host: ryan avent come economic correspondent at the economist said she thought the referee exchange at the economist economic law. you can find at the economist website. our other guest is steve landefeld, director of the grew economic analysis. thank you to both of you. >> guest: thank you very much. ..

>> there tends to be a denigration of the u.s. military by some historians that whenever one german wehrmacht battalion fought an american battalion or e